In one town I visited, the courtroom was actually closed to the public, and I had to get special permission to be present. In another town, when my colleague, Andy Lehren, and I inspected one public record too many, a judge sent police officers to eject us from the courthouse. (Apparently he believed we were grifters trying to prey on the defendants of Pine Bluff, Ark., most of whom have no money out of which they could be scammed.)

For his part, Will, the photographer in Dothan, was having a more intense experience. Though he too had been careful, the police had followed him and pulled him over for failing to use his turn signal early enough. Moments later, a canine unit arrived. The dogs circled Will’s rental car and, allegedly, signaled the officers near the driver’s seat. On those grounds, the police searched first the car, then Will personally, but found nothing. They did not seem aware that he was a reporter, only that he had been driving around a poor neighborhood and, I later learned, had stopped in front of a “known crack house.” They let him go with a warning.

Coincidentally, I soon received a call asking if I would like to talk to Dothan’s chief of police. Yes, indeed I would.

Chief Steve Parrish has a complicated history, but he gave me the impression that, since he had taken charge in May 2015, he had been battling to make the department less vindictive and more professional. I described what had happened to Will as a hypothetical scenario — minus the crack house detail, which I didn’t know. The chief said it sounded like poor policing. “When I take two steps forward in building a positive relationship in the community, and you stop somebody because their tag light is out and write them a ticket, I have to take a step back,” he lamented. “I don’t like taking a step back.”

When I revealed that the events in question had actually happened, he seemed mortified. He wanted to apologize personally to Will, but we demurred, not wanting to become part of the story.

A day or two later, I spied the district attorney, Mr. Valeska, outside a law firm getting into his car. I got behind him, just to observe his turn signal habits. The first thing he did was turn without signaling.

Mr. Valeska proved to be extraordinarily elusive journalistic quarry. He deflected our open records requests almost entirely, asking for thousands of dollars to cover the cost of, for example, redacting a bank account number that we already had (it had not been redacted in response to previous records requests by others).