Read The Fence: A Police Cover-Up Along Boston's Racial Divide Online

Authors: Dick Lehr

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Political Science, #Social Science, #Law Enforcement, #True Crime, #Criminology, #Ethnic Studies, #African Americans, #Police Misconduct, #African American Studies, #Police Brutality, #Boston (Mass.), #Discrimination & Race Relations, #African American Police

The Fence: A Police Cover-Up Along Boston's Racial Divide

BOOK: The Fence: A Police Cover-Up Along Boston's Racial Divide
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The Fence

A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide

Dick Lehr

TO KARIN
FOR EVERYTHING

HUNGER ONLY FOR A TASTE OF JUSTICE
HUNGER ONLY FOR A WORLD OF TRUTH.

—Tracy Chapman,
“All That You Have Is Your Soul”

Contents

Epigraph

The Cast of Characters

Map of Boston

Prologue:
January 25, 1995

Part One
—Two Cops and a Drug Dealer

1
Mike Cox
2
Robert “Smut” Brown
3
Kenny Conley
4
The Troubled Boston PD
5
Mike’s Early Police Career
6
Closing Time at the Cortee’s
7
The Murder and the Chase
8
The Dead End

Part Two
—True Blue

9
“8-Boy”
10
No Official Complaint
11
Can I Talk to My Lawyer?
12
Dave, I Know You Know Something
13
Cox v. Boston Police Department
Photographic Insert

Part Three
—Justice Denied, Then the Trial

14
The White Guy at the Fence
15
The Perjury Trap
16
A Federal Miscarriage of Justice
17
On His Own
18
The Trial
Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note on Sources

Notes

Appendix A:
Court Cases

Appendix B:
Books; Articles and Special Reports

Appendix C:
Boston Police Department Rules and Regulations; Boston Police Department Internal Investigations; Boston Police Department Labor Arbitration Proceedings; Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office; United States Attorney’s Office, District of Massachusetts

Searchable Terms

About the Author

Other Books by Dick Lehr

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

THE CAST OF CHARACTERS

 

 

 

 

ROBERT “SMUT” BROWN

   

Mattapan drug dealer and shooting suspect

MATTIE BROWN

   

Smut’s mother

JIMMY BURGIO

   

Boston police officer assigned to Dorchester

DONALD CAISEY

   

Boston police officer in the anti-gang unit

KENNY CONLEY

   

Boston police officer assigned to the South End

MIKE COX

   

Boston police officer in the anti-gang unit

KIMBERLY COX

   

Mike’s wife

IAN DALEY

   

Boston police officer assigned to Roxbury

WILLIE DAVIS

   

Conley’s attorney

SERGEANT DAN DOVIDIO

   

Burgio and Williams’s supervisor

BOBBY DWAN

   

Conley’s partner

JIMMY “MARQUIS” EVANS

   

shooting suspect and Tiny’s brother

JOHN “TINY” EVANS

   

drug dealer and shooting suspect

PAUL EVANS

   

Boston police commissioner

JIM HUSSEY

   

head of Boston police Internal Affairs

LYLE JACKSON

   

shooting victim at Walaikum’s

CRAIG JONES

   

Cox’s partner

TED MERRITT

   

federal prosecutor

SERGEANT DAVID MURPHY

   

supervisor at Woodruff Way

BOB PEABODY

   

assistant Suffolk County district attorney

INDIRA PIERCE

   

Smut’s girlfriend

JIMMY RATTIGAN

   

Boston police officer assigned to Roxbury

STEVE ROACH

   

Cox’s attorney

GARY RYAN

   

Boston police officer in the anti-gang unit

BOB SHEKETOFF

   

Smut’s attorney

ROB SINSHEIMER

   

Cox’s attorney

JOE TEAHAN

   

Ryan’s partner in the anti-gang unit

SERGEANT IKE THOMAS

   

supervisor of the anti-gang unit

RON “BOOGIE-DOWN” TINSLEY

   

shooting suspect

RICHIE WALKER

   

Boston police officer assigned to Mattapan

DAVE WILLIAMS

   

Burgio’s partner

WILLIAM YOUNG

   

federal judge presiding in Cox civil rights trial

Map

THE
NEIGHBORHOODS

Prologue:
January 25, 1995

W
hen Kimberly Cox was awakened by the telephone ringing in the middle of the night, the fourth-year medical student had been sleeping hard. She’d slept through the Boston police and ambulance sirens blaring an hour earlier on Blue Hill Avenue two blocks from her home. She was likely used to the discordant sounds; the wail of sirens was not unfamiliar in Dorchester, where she and her family lived, one of the many black families making up the neighborhood.

When the phone rang, she was alone in bed. Her first thought was that her husband, Michael, was calling. Michael was usually home by 2
A.M
.; if he was going to be later he would call. Then Kimberly noticed the clock: It read 3:30.

She picked up the receiver.

Mrs. Cox?

Kimberly did not recognize the voice.

The caller identified himself as Joe Teahan, an officer with the Boston Police Department. Kimberly worked to clear her head. The name meant nothing to her. In fact, Teahan was a white officer who worked with her husband in the department’s elite anti-gang unit, composed of officers working primarily in street clothes, who targeted the street gangs of Roxbury and Dorchester. The gang unit’s supervisor had instructed Teahan to call Mike’s wife. “Just don’t scare her,” the sergeant had said.

Kimberly listened as the voice told her Mike had been in an “accident.”

What kind of accident?

He’s alive but hurt. He’s on his way to Boston City Hospital.

Kimberly was up and standing by the bed. She was nervous all over. She dressed quickly. Teahan said they would send a car to get her. But it wasn’t that simple. Fast asleep in their bedrooms were her boys, six-year-old Mike Jr. and Nick, whose fifth birthday was still fresh on everyone’s mind. She told Teahan she’d call him back after figuring out the logistics. She hung up and hurriedly dialed her mother-in-law. Kimberly was thinking Bertha Cox could stay with her sons. But when Bertha arrived a few minutes later, she insisted on going along with Kimberly to the hospital. This led to more telephone calls to other family members to ask them to hurry to 52 Supple Road, where Michael and Kimberly and their boys lived in the second-floor apartment of the two-family home owned by one of Michael’s sisters.

BOOK: The Fence: A Police Cover-Up Along Boston's Racial Divide
7.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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