"Lies and silence," he repeated.
Sinsheimer walked back to his chair. Judge Young told jurors it was time for them to deliberate. "We should have lunch in there for you now," he said. The judge said they could eat first and then begin their discussions or they could start working right away. "Once we give the case to you, you are in charge."
Everyone in the courtroom stood as the jury left at 1:22 P.M. The judge"s chief clerk led them across the hallway behind the courtroom. They entered a rectangular-shaped room with a long oak table in the middle. The jury room"s four windows had an unremarkable view of a sprawling asphalt parking lot and, beyond it, the piers and undeveloped waterfront of South Boston. A court officer was stationed outside.
Some jurors grabbed sandwiches and drinks while others used the bathrooms at the far end. Soon enough each had chosen one of the oak chairs padded with blue cushions, and, on the afternoon of December 21, with the holiday season in full swing, they took up the case. "We wanted to get out of there," Bob McDonough said, "but we also wanted to do the right thing." Carol Goslant was the foreperson, and before taking a vote on any of Mike"s claims, "we began by discussing the events of the night."
Judge Young, in his instructions, had gone over the six questions the jury was to decide. "Let"s come to the first question," he"d said. Question One involved Jimmy Burgio, Dave Williams, and Ian Daley: Did any of them use excessive force? Mike c.o.x "doesn"t complain about being grabbed or stopped, even if the whole thing was a mistake," the judge explained. "What he complains about is the use of excessive force."
Question Two involved only Burgio: Did he commit a.s.sault and battery against Mike? The question covered the accusation that Burgio kicked Mike in the face. Question Three also involved only Burgio: Did he intentionally inflict emotional distress on Mike?
Question Four involved all four-Burgio, Williams, Daley, and Kenny Conley: Were they deliberately indifferent to the use of excessive force? Question Five was for Burgio, Williams, and Daley: Were they deliberately indifferent to Mike"s medical needs?
Question Six involved just Dave Williams and Kenny Conley: "Question Six is the so-called cover-up theory," the judge said. The legal definition for a cover-up was tricky. Federal civil rights law did not cover an attempted cover-up. It only addressed a cover-up that succeeded in blocking justice. So if the jury ruled against the officers in any of the other questions, then that meant the alleged cover-up had failed. "There"s no violation for an attempted cover-up that fails." Question Six would be moot.
In sum, the judge advised them: "You apply your common sense to evidence in this case as you are reasonable men and women so that justice may be done."
Now inside the jury room, Carol Goslant had the verdict slip before her. She was in charge of organizing the jury"s consideration of each question. "I was eager to get to it," she said later. For the first time in more than two weeks, everyone was free to talk about the charges, the evidence, and the witnesses. It seemed complicated at the start-all the legal principles combined with having four defendants-but very quickly Goslant discovered everyone readily shared her view that Mike"s civil rights had been trampled during a brutal a.s.sault. The deliberations would revolve around meting out responsibility.
"I was heartened," she said. The jury dug in and began with Question One.
Elsewhere in the courthouse, the waiting game had begun. While the jury deliberated throughout that afternoon and into Tuesday morning, the lawyers mingled in the hall, hung out in the cafeteria, called into their offices to deal with housekeeping matters for their many other cases and clients. In all his years of practice, Willie Davis never hung around during jury deliberations, but that was because the old federal courthouse was located only a few blocks from his office in Faneuil Hall. The new courthouse was too far a walk, so he stayed put. His partner Fran Robinson, meanwhile, was holed up back at the office preparing for the worst. She was trying to figure out ways to protect Kenny"s a.s.sets-as small as they were-in the event the jury found him liable. The jury had his perjury conviction as evidence, and that alone could be used to decide against Kenny. She couldn"t bear hanging out in court. "I was worried," she said. Kenny was doing his best to keep up routines-errands, the gym, walking his dogs-and Fran had his home and cell phone numbers on hand to call as soon as there was any news.
Mike was in the courthouse, sticking close to Roach, Sinsheimer, and Roach"s partner and law school cla.s.smate Robert Wise. Kimberly was not with Mike; she was working. "I didn"t want her there," Mike said. He wanted to spare her the ordeal. Despite the stoic exterior, Mike wasn"t feeling particularly optimistic. He didn"t doubt the accused cops were guilty, but no one else-not Bob Peabody, not Ted Merritt-had been able to make a case against them. "No one had proven it. I didn"t expect to."
Rob Sinsheimer, as antsy as he tended to be, resisted talking about the case. Jury speculation was a useless, wasteful exercise, "a rookie thing to do-to wonder, guess, prognosticate." He did his best to busy himself and try not to think about the trial.
Inside the jury room, jurors had made considerable headway by Tuesday morning. They"d discarded the defense"s chaos theory as unpersuasive. It was a "smokescreen," Carol Goslant said, that failed to obscure the wrongdoing. "We knew right away these were the officers who had been involved." Deciding Burgio and Williams were culpable, she said, turned out to be a "fast decision." That meant Question Six-the one about a cover-up and the one directed at Dave Williams and Kenny Conley-was moot. They barely discussed it, except to note its irrelevance based on the other findings.
The sticking points were Ian Daley and Kenny. Some jurors were convinced Daley was one of the beaters while others argued the evidence hadn"t shown that. It was a question the jury kept circling back to before deciding not to hold him liable in the beating. Kenny Conley also drew considerable attention. Most had been impressed and found him likable, but Bob McDonough was one who wasn"t sure that was enough. "The tunnel vision-I didn"t go for that." He wondered whether Kenny was like "the nice young kid next door who"s really selling drugs." It was a tough one to figure out.
But other jurors were unwavering about Kenny-that he"d been unfairly entangled in the scandal. "He was honest, straightforward, and his story never changed," Sharon Schwartz said. Listening to his testimony about the foot chase and tunnel vision convinced her Kenny did not see Mike or the beating. "The way he testified solidified my point of view that he was innocent." She couldn"t believe he"d been convicted of perjury.
"Most people felt he got a raw deal."
Jurors went round and round-about Daley and, to a lesser extent, Kenny. By Tuesday afternoon, they"d ironed out remaining differences and reached unanimity. Through the court officer sitting outside the room, Goslant sent word to the judge. The jury then hung around waiting to be led back into the courtroom. They"d completed their work, to be sure, but a number felt a bit shortchanged, as if their hands were tied.
"I was frustrated higher-ups weren"t on trial," Schwartz said. "I was frustrated this was a civil trial and not a criminal trial." To her, the six questions had not gone far enough. "I would like to have ruled against the whole department." The case, she thought, exposed a dangerous culture of lying that went beyond the four accused officers. "I would like to have said there was corruption in the Boston Police Department."
Mike was downstairs when he heard the verdict was in. He rode the elevator and hurried down the hall to Courtroom 18. The lawyers were gathering at their tables inside the well. Mike took a seat in the gallery toward the back. The news was breaking so quickly he hadn"t called Kimberly; even if he had, she wouldn"t be able to get to the courthouse in time. The courtroom seemed empty compared to during the trial. Mike realized he practically had the bench to himself. No one was to his left or right. He was alone.
It was 3:45 P.M. when the jury took their seats in the jury box.
"Madam Forelady," Judge Young said, "has the jury reached a unanimous verdict?"
"Yes, we have." Carol Goslant handed the verdict slip to the clerk.
The clerk took the paper. The jurors stood up in the jury box.
"On the use of excessive force theory," the clerk read, beginning with the jury"s ruling on Question One, "We find for Michael A. c.o.x against David C. Williams and James Burgio."
Continuing reading for the jury, the clerk then announced Burgio had committed an a.s.sault and battery on Mike. And that Burgio and Williams had been deliberately indifferent to the use of excessive force. And that Ian Daley had been deliberately indifferent to Mike"s medical needs.
The clerk"s voice carried throughout the courtroom, but the rulings weren"t registering with Mike. He thought the clerk was saying the jury had decided for Burgio and Williams, that they were not liable. "I didn"t hear it right." Maybe it was because he was so conditioned to bad outcomes. "Nothing had gone well since that night."
Mike sat frozen in his seat. But in a few more seconds the truth began to sort itself out, and once that happened, once Mike could feel the truth sinking in and taking hold, he came undone. The clerk was completing the reading of the judgment against Burgio, Williams, and Daley. Mike c.o.x leaned forward and covered his eyes. He wept.
The judge dismissed the jurors, and the courtroom cleared. In the days to come, Carol Goslant would take her daughter to one of Boston"s holiday traditions-a performance of Tchaikovsky"s Nut-cracker Suite. She saw officers directing traffic in the city"s theater district and wasn"t sure she"d ever think of Boston police in the same way. "It scared me a little." Mike c.o.x stayed with her. She wrote him a holiday card with a nondenominational greeting: "Peace and Good Will to All." Inside she wrote Mike was a "man of high integrity" and "courage." She wished him well.
Inside the courthouse, word of the verdict had spread quickly, as reporters scrambled to catch up to a breaking story that would be front-page news in the next day"s Boston Globe and Boston Herald.
Willie Davis had immediately called Fran Robinson. "It"s okay," he announced happily. "It"s okay." Robinson tracked Kenny down. He was working out at a gym in Southie and had heard the good news on the radio. Kenny took some deep breaths. He was still facing prison-this jury"s verdict didn"t change that. But something felt very different. He"d had his day in court, and when he was given the chance to tell his side, a jury backed him.
Steve Roach, Rob Sinsheimer, and Robert Wise led Mike out of the courtroom and onto the elevator. The mood was restrained. "What for me was a high level of professional achievement was for him, at best, bittersweet," Sinsheimer said. They"d won, but Mike was far from feeling this was "a champagne popping moment." They took the elevator to the second floor, where they got off and began walking down a sweeping stone staircase into the lobby of the grand courthouse. The lawyers planned it that way. Television lights and cameras awaited them. There were more media than at any point during the trial about the worst case of police brutality in the city"s history.
The attorneys stepped up to the microphones. "Michael c.o.x and his family are pleased that the jury saw through the code of silence," Steve Roach said. Roach did most of the talking. Mike made only a few comments. "I just told the truth." His eyes were still wet, and he struggled to gain control of his emotions. "I just told the truth."
Mike was feeling "happy in a sad kind of way." He stepped past the cameras and the frenzied media bustle, and headed for the door. The hour was barely five o"clock, but outside it was twilight. Snow would soon begin to fall, replacing the day"s fog and rain. Mike walked out the door and into a city ablaze in holiday lights. He just wanted to get home, where he was Mike c.o.x, thirty-three, a husband and father of three. But for all the tumble of emotions, one fundamental truth was clear: He"d done it. He"d won justice where everyone else had failed. Leaving the civil rights trial behind, he found himself thinking about the police force he felt had betrayed him, and he said to himself, "Okay, do you believe me now?"
Epilogue.
Following the verdict, the spotlight turned from the individual officers to Police Commissioner Paul Evans and Boston Mayor Tom Menino. Based on Judge Young"s plan for Mike"s civil rights action, a second trial against the department and the city was scheduled to start in early 1999.
The court of public opinion was now fully behind Mike. Leading the charge was Brian McGrory, a popular metro columnist in the Boston Globe, who decried the city"s determination "to do battle with the decorated cop it failed to help, in a civil trial scheduled to begin next month."
In one column McGrory wrote: "There is a single, significant difference between the brutal beating of Michael c.o.x in Mattapan by a group of Boston police officers and the savagery committed against Rodney King on a Los Angeles highway in 1991: a videotape.
"Picture the consequences if a neighbor at the end of Woodruff Way stepped outside with a camera in those pre-dawn hours of Jan. 25, 1995, to record a group of cops kicking and pummeling c.o.x as he rolled into a fetal position on the frozen ground.
"CNN would have replayed the tape at the top of each hour for days, highlighting the horrific twist that the victim was, in fact, a plainclothes Boston police detective mistaken for a suspect. A blue-ribbon commission would have been named to address the brutality within the Boston force. Shouts for sweeping reform would have echoed across the political landscape.
"Instead, the quiet rustling coming from the city government is the sound of Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Commissioner Paul Evans seeking cover from controversy."
Menino and Evans soon changed course. In early February, their lawyers worked out a settlement with Mike"s attorneys. There would be no trial-no opportunity for jurors to consider whether Menino and Evans condoned a police culture that turned a blind eye to police brutality and lying. The city would pay Mike and his family about $900,000 plus attorneys" fees, which pushed the package to more than $1.3 million.
Mike was relieved to be done with it. The financial settlement was fine, to be sure. For him, though, the case was never about money. "I"d gladly give every dime and some to go back to how my life was back before this ever happened."
Just before the settlement was made public, Mayor Menino finally uttered his first public comment in four years, telling the Boston Globe the c.o.x case was "an occasion we"ll never be proud of. It"s not a happy day, a good day, for the Boston Police Department."
In the end, the only justice would be Mike"s justice. "We have hit a blue wall," Donald K. Stern, the U.S. attorney in Boston, said on January 27, 2000, at a press conference called to announce he was shutting down Ted Merritt"s investigation.
The deadline for bringing criminal charges-known as the statute of limitations-had expired on January 25, the fifth anniversary of the beating. "We do not feel we have enough evidence to charge anyone with the underlying beating," Stern told reporters. "The federal investigation is in an inactive state."
Burgio, Williams, and any others may have been found liable in Mike"s civil rights case, but they"d eluded any criminal prosecution.
The blue wall notwithstanding, the federal probe had faltered in a huge rut of its own making-the misguided squeeze play and perjury conviction of Kenny Conley. Merritt had banked the investigation on Kenny-a miscalculation from which the effort to solve Mike"s beating never recovered. Stern, however, would have none of it; he stood by his prosecutor and always defended the controversial conviction of Kenny Conley.
Indeed, Ted Merritt was in for some high praise. The very next year, he was one of three federal prosecutors in the Boston office to receive the U.S. Department of Justice"s coveted Director"s Award for "superior performance" in a high-profile case.
Over at the Boston Police Department, a seemingly wayward cleanup involving key officers in the c.o.x affair continued. By the end of 1999, Jimmy Burgio, Dave Williams, and Ian Daley were kicked off the force. They were dismissed for a variety of departmental violations-Burgio and Williams for the use of excessive force and for the cover-up of the beating, and Daley for failing to stop the beating and for lying.
The trio vowed to fight and filed labor grievances. Attorney Tom Hoopes, calling Ian Daley"s firing a disgrace, insisted his client was a scapegoat. But in a ruling that followed twenty-five days of testimony stretched out over two years, the labor arbitrator concluded otherwise; Ian Daley was a liar, and his termination had been for just cause.
Jimmy Burgio fared no better. Testifying for the first time in any proceeding, he said he"d jumped out of the pa.s.senger side of his cruiser, run around the front of the car, and pounced on Ron "Boogie-Down" Tinsley. He said he pointed his gun at the back of Tinsley"s head. "I told him if he moved, "I"ll send you to your maker."" Burgio said he never took his eyes off the suspect, and the two remained frozen until more help came.
His arbitrator did not buy the do-no-evil account, calling Burgio"s story, replete with the Hollywood line about sending Boogie-Down to his maker, "implausible" and "demonstrably false," and ruled "substantiated misconduct" warranted his firing.
Burgio went to work as a pipe fitter and moonlighted as a bouncer. Nancy Whiskey"s was long closed down, so he took a job working the door at another infamous Southie bar that for decades was controlled by crime boss Whitey Bulger. Back then the bar was Triple O"s and nicknamed the "Bucket of Blood" for all the underworld shakedowns and much worse that went on in the back rooms. Following the bust-up of the Bulger gang in the late 1990s, and by the time Jimmy Burgio became regularly employed there, the pub had been renamed the 6 House.
Burgio tried marriage a second time in September 2004, but two years later the marriage was over. He missed being a cop. Burgio did not budge when asked about Woodruff Way: He did not know who beat Mike c.o.x, but if he had to guess, he said Ian Daley probably had something to do with it, and, of course, as his lawyer always argued, "the munies."
Lastly there was Dave Williams; he appeared before a labor arbitrator who might as well have said, Dave, this is your lucky day. The arbitrator overturned Williams"s firing. He ruled Williams deserved only a one-week suspension for filing the false report about him and Burgio being in two cruisers. He said Williams"s testimony about chasing Jimmy "Marquis" Evans and knowing nothing about the beating was believable. The arbitrator discounted Mike c.o.x"s testimony as unreliable, dismissed s.m.u.t Brown"s account entirely, and ignored the jury"s verdict in Mike"s civil rights trial.
Williams was on the comeback-reinstated and paid an estimated $300,000 in back pay. He went through a refresher course at the police academy in the fall of 2005 and was on the street by early 2006, working as a patrol officer in downtown Boston.
It was a reversal of fortune many familiar with the c.o.x case found shocking. "A jury of twelve good citizens made a fair decision," said Rob Sinsheimer. "I find it appalling to the point of shocking the conscience that this could be effectively overturned by a single arbitrator. Every citizen who cares about policing and the courts should be outraged."
s.m.u.t Brown stood at the gas pump at the Mobil station in Mattapan Square one spring day after the trial when Mike c.o.x pulled up to another pump to fill up. During their chance encounter, the two found they shared a common ground: Both had long felt hara.s.sed by ghosts from the Boston Police Department.
"He told me about getting phone calls in the middle of the night," s.m.u.t said later. For his part, s.m.u.t complained to Mike that he felt the cops were trying to hunt him down for cooperating. Mike had some counsel for s.m.u.t. "I told him that if what he says is true about being targeted, it might be best for him and his family to leave town."
s.m.u.t should have heeded Mike"s advice, but for reasons that did not involve Boston police. He and eight others in the KOZ gang were indicted in late 1999 on federal drug and conspiracy charges. s.m.u.t had been caught twice selling crack cocaine to an undercover agent.
s.m.u.t was off the street-for good now, caught up in the nation"s draconian mandatory drug sentencing laws. His attorney, Bob Sheketoff, sought out Ted Merritt, hoping to get some leniency for s.m.u.t"s cooperation, but none was forthcoming. s.m.u.t eventually pleaded guilty to one drug sale, and he was in Portland, Maine, in 2003 finishing a seventy-month sentence when he foolishly got caught up in a $300 c.o.ke deal. s.m.u.t was living at a halfway house and working at a Portland hotel. Instead of heading home to Indira and a third child, a daughter named Destiny, conceived during a conjugal visit and born on May 7, 2004, s.m.u.t was sentenced to do another twenty-one years in prison based on sentencing formulas that factored in his multiple prior convictions.
s.m.u.t did his best to adjust to prison life. He partic.i.p.ated in a Bible study program, took cla.s.ses in computers and writing, worked out regularly, and became known on the basketball court for his three-point shot. "It"s Smiggity for three!" he"d yell after releasing the ball on a long arc to the hoop. In the Portland County jail he became an inmate "trustee" and was known among the guards for his calming presence. A number of the corrections officers wrote on his behalf prior to his final sentencing, including one who credited s.m.u.t with saving him from a beating by another inmate. "Mr. Brown saw what was taking place and placed himself in harm"s way by a.s.sisting me in dealing with the aggressive inmate until my backup arrive," the guard wrote. "I have repeatedly thanked Mr. Brown for his help that day only for him to humbly say, "I just did what was right.""
In quiet moments, s.m.u.t took to composing dozens and dozens of rap songs, which he"d send home to his mother, Mattie, or to Indira for safekeeping. He dreamed of someday becoming a songwriter. One song he wrote included a verse about his misbegotten role as a witness for Ted Merritt in the conviction of Kenny Conley.
Ted Merritt hope you hear it, here"s the lyrics: I can"t bear it, tell the public I never lied And told you that Ken Conley was the white guy.
I"m the star witness Feds want a fast conviction Exploited my words had an innocent cop sentenced.
So now I"m finished, every cop hatin" my guts Now my days are dim, I"m condemned for being s.m.u.t.
The year after the trial, Willie Davis told Kenny Conley just before Labor Day to get ready to report to prison. So Kenny and Jen got married that weekend. "It was a forty-eight-hour wedding," Jen said. They rounded up about fifty of their friends and family. Jen"s brother flew in on short notice from Chicago. Her aunt drove up from Connecticut. Friends chipped in to put the newlyweds up at a new hotel along the South Boston waterfront, where they spent what Jen later called a "Boston long weekend honeymoon."
The next week, Willie Davis managed to win a stay of Kenny"s sentence in order to continue Kenny"s legal appeals-a pursuit that turned Herculean. Kenny"s circle of supporters expanded to include Boston city councilors and Ma.s.sachusetts congressmen Joe Moakley and Bill Delahunt. Delahunt called on Bob Bennett, the powerful Washington, D.C., attorney, who represented President Bill Clinton during his s.e.x scandals, for help. Bennett agreed to take over Kenny"s appeal on a pro bono basis.
Kenny"s case worked its way back and forth between federal court in Boston and the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Ted Merritt and U.S. attorney Donald Stern fought him at every turn. But then in the fall of 2001, Bob Bennett thought he"d achieved a breakthrough. Negotiating with the new U.S. attorney in Boston, appointed by the newly elected President George W. Bush, he"d come up with a deal whereby Kenny would plead nolo contendere, or no contest. Kenny"s conviction would stand, but, in return, prosecutors would ask the court to change his sentence to probation: no prison time. Bennett saw it as the kind of "win" he"d worked out in the past for a high-powered clientele of public figures and corporate t.i.tans caught up in criminal legal woes that included hard time.
Kenny right away said, No way. The lawyers urged Kenny to sleep on it, talk to Jen. But Ken had the same answer the next morning: No way. "I can"t do a no contest," he said. "In my eyes this is a guilty plea, and I wasn"t guilty." Taking the deal would also mean he could never return to the police force, "and that"s the thing I wanted."
They kept up the fight in court. By now, a centerpiece of the appeal was a doc.u.ment they could thank Bobby Dwan for. During his own legal wrangling after he was put on administrative leave, Bobby devoured doc.u.ments his attorney secured from the department as part of the discovery process. He came across one that seemed weird-the FBI agent"s report about Richie Walker wanting to be hypnotized to better recall Woodruff Way. Bobby realized this had never come out at Kenny"s trial and, after he notified Kenny, his attorneys were enraged they"d never seen the FBI memo before.
The lawyers took over from there. The FBI report on Walker, they argued, should have been disclosed prior to Kenny"s trial for impeachment purposes. While Bennett raised other issues on appeal, it was the FBI memo that ultimately proved to be the smoking gun needed to finally turn Kenny"s conviction on its head. "For me, the sockdolager is the FBI memorandum," wrote the federal judge, employing a fancy word meaning "conclusive blow." The jurist presiding over the appeal happened to be Judge Young, and, on August 14, 2004, Young decided that Kenny had been wrongfully convicted by federal prosecutor Ted Merritt. "Because the government has withheld crucial information, Kenneth M. Conley did not receive a fair trial," he ruled.
When the court of appeals upheld Young"s decision the next July, and the U.S. attorney decided to drop the case, Kenny Conley was at last free and clear. When he showed up for the midnight shift on October 4, 2005, at his old station in the South End, the usually perfunctory roll call just before midnight erupted into a welcome back celebration, where Kenny was presented his old badge-number 1016-as a keepsake.
He was thirty-six now, happy to be back in the only job he"d ever wanted. "Knowing me, I"ll be a cop until I"m sixty-five." He was promoted to detective in 2007. In a recent interview, he said that while working the streets had changed-more guns and shootings-nothing much had changed about the police force. His colleagues still had the tendency to mess around with the truth regarding an arrest: Too many cops add things to their reports to make their case seem stronger-the very problem people like Bill Bratton called testilying.
"You can"t add things," Kenny said one day over coffee. He"d been through a lot because of other cops" lies and truth tailoring. "You either have it or you don"t."
"My name is Michael c.o.x, and I work for the Boston Police Department." Mike spoke those words on December 9, 2000, two years to the day since he"d testified in c.o.x et al. v. City of Boston et al.
But instead of U.S. District Court in Boston, Mike was bearing witness at Harvard Law School. He was one of six panelists addressing the "Impact of Brutality on Victims and Family," part of a daylong symposium ent.i.tled "Race, Police and Community." Mike sat in front of the crowded hall dressed in a navy blue blazer, a dark blue shirt, and matching blue tie-a getup that looked like a civilian version of police blue.
He was an oddity-the only cop on the panel; a cop who, strangely enough, was also a victim of police brutality. The other panelists-a Latino woman whose son was killed by police, an activist attorney who"d been involved in countless police misconduct cases-did not hesitate to condemn police while sharing their experiences with police brutality. Seated to Mike"s right was the marquee speaker: Abner Louima. The Haitian immigrant had been traveling the country, often in the company of the Reverend Al Sharpton and attorney Johnnie Cochran, talking about his brutal a.s.sault and sodomy by New York police officers. "Police brutality happens every day," Louima said. "Unless we all sit down and find a solution, it is going to happen again and again."
Mike followed Louima. He"d sat there stiffly, looking straight ahead, rarely turning sideways to look at Louima or any of the other speakers. "It"s tough for me to be here right now and talk about this kind of stuff," he told the audience. "For two reasons: One, it"s personal to me, and two, I"m still a police officer." He began by describing generally what happened at Woodruff Way. When the moderator interrupted to ask for specifics, Mike refused. "I think I feel comfortable with just saying [I was] brutalized."
His remarks lasted less than eight minutes. The point he wanted to make, he said, was that the problem of police brutality and the failure to confront it was rooted in "the police culture, and the lack of addressing the police culture by most organizations.
"The culture is just so strong," he said. "Police don"t even like to talk about brutality, and ending and stopping it and doing something about it. Many of them don"t partic.i.p.ate in brutality but they don"t realize they are partic.i.p.ating by not saying anything."
As the years pa.s.sed, Mike stayed on at the Boston Police Department. "First, I"m not a quitter," he said by way of explanation. Besides, he"d always felt safer on the inside and had never wavered in his belief that law enforcement was an honorable profession. "I like doing police work," he said. "There are many good things done on a day-to-day basis that you never hear about."
Mike was promoted to deputy superintendent in early 2005 by a new police commissioner, after Paul Evans left the force to take a job with the British government, evaluating the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies in that country. Mike even began taking courses at Suffolk University Law School in Boston.
But nothing would ever be the same, even if Mike felt vindicated by his successful lawsuit. When it came to police work, he was the first to admit this. "It"s different for me now," he said. "That trust, I don"t have it anymore, no doubt about that."
The change went further, though. "He"s not the same guy, not the same cheerful guy," said Mike"s best pal from boarding school, Vince Johnson. "I recognize his voice, but that"s it. His whole demeanor-there"s not that confidence."
Whereas Mike"s self-image was once built around cop and career, he now talked about no longer letting the work define him. He focused instead on family and took pride in his kids, watching his sons excel in ice hockey and football as they made their way through high school. The boys were college-bound and still he"d never sat down and talked to them about the night everything changed on January 25, 1995.
Mike was different, he knew that. But the thing he wasn"t sure about was whether the police culture was different as a result of his quest for justice. Sure, on the one hand, he"d observed a "heightened awareness of some of the issues."
But the big question was: Could it happen again? Could another police beating like his happen again, where the a.s.sailants were shielded afterward by a powerful blue wall of silence?
"I don"t know," he said. "I like to think not. But I don"t know."
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.