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