Dear Friend,

I've started this letter a dozen times.

I never know how to begin. How do you explain to a stranger that your husband might go to prison for stopping a riot? That the man who made your kids' lunches this morning could spend the next 99 years behind bars for doing his job?

I don't know how to make that make sense. Because it doesn't.

My name is Kimberly Bretches. Chance is my husband. We have four kids, a mortgage, a life we built together. And right now, all of it is hanging by a thread that a politically motivated prosecutor keeps pulling.

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Here's what actually happened:

May 2020. Austin was on fire — literally. Cars were burning. Buildings were looted. A man was caught with a Molotov cocktail before he could use it. The city was dissolving into chaos, and the mob was getting bigger every night.

On the third night, Chance and his fellow officers stood their ground at Austin Police headquarters as the crowd descended. They did what their training demanded. They deployed non-lethal, department-approved beanbag rounds. Nobody died. The riot didn't swallow the city whole. Chance's supervisors praised him.

He came home that night. I remember it.

Then the election happened. A new DA took office — one who had campaigned on prosecuting police officers. And just like that, everything changed. Chance was indicted. Not for breaking the rules. For following them.

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We've been living in this nightmare for years now. The trial was finally supposed to happen in December 2025. Then it was rescheduled to June 2026. Now it's been delayed again, with no new date set.

That means more legal bills, more sleepless nights, more conversations with our kids that no parent should ever have to have. They say justice delayed is justice denied. I believe that now in a way I never wanted to.

Every month this drags on is a month Chance can't fully be our dad, our husband, our future. He goes through the motions. And God bless him, he does it with grace. But there's a weight on him that wasn't there before. There's a weight on all of us.

The National Center for Police Defense has been a lifeline. Without them, I don't know where we'd be. But legal defense at this level is brutally expensive, and we need help. Real help, from real people who believe that an officer who stopped a riot shouldn't lose everything for it.

So I'm asking you, plainly, the way I'd ask a neighbor:

Please help us.

$50 helps. $100 helps more. $250 or $500 is the kind of thing that makes our attorney sleep a little better at night. And me too, honestly.

You don't have to know Chance personally to know that this is wrong. You don't have to follow politics to understand that a man who followed every rule, protected a city, and came home to his kids should not be staring down 99 years in prison.

I believe we're going to win this fight. I have to believe that. But we can't do it without you.

Thank you for reading all the way to the end of this letter. It means more than you know.

With so much gratitude,

Kimberly Bretches
Austin, Texas

P.S. No trial date has been set. That sounds like relief but it isn't. It means the clock keeps running on legal costs while our family stays frozen in place, waiting for justice that keeps getting pushed a little further out of reach. Please give today if you can. We are so grateful for every single person who stands with us.