When trying to assess whether something is strictly true but in normal everyday terms a lie, look for the weasel words - they usually stand out because they don’t need to be there. Here “have yet to see evidence of a city official directing the officer on the scene as to how to handle this particular situation.”
To me, that construction suggests that a truthful statement might have been “Officers at the scene were directed by a senior officer who was not at the scene and who was themselves directed by a city official. We know this but we haven’t, strictly speaking, seen evidence of it, yet.”.
I might be wrong about all that, but I wouldn’t be suspicious if the statement had been straightforward, and weasel word free. Something like: “To the best of our knowledge there is no evidence to suggest the collusion of city officials in influencing the handling of this event.”
