The Fence - Dick Lehr [104]
In particular, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, one of Simpson’s lawyers, had been outspoken about testilying, and, indeed, at the Harvard forum he reiterated his combustible claims that cops not only lie routinely but actually teach one another how to do it. Many police and police unions were livid with Dershowitz, and some police chiefs boycotted the Harvard forum because of him.
Bratton, however, had not. Dershowitz and other criminal law experts, he told the audience, “have said police perjury is pervasive. If you asked the police unions, they would say it is minimal. I think the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
“This is enough of a problem that we need to address it. We can’t address it by ignoring it, and we can’t address it by boycotting conferences like this one.” The practice, he insisted, was basically well-intentioned. “Testilying is different from any other form of police corruption because it is usually unrelated to any opportunity for personal gain. Cops who testilie do so in the belief that they are helping to enforce the law…As the cops who testilie see it, they don’t lie to convict innocent people, but to convict the guilty.”
Bratton had chosen not to belabor the wholesale corruption behind the lying. But, truth be told, the made-up testimony—purportedly to give justice an edge—could indeed provide cover for the corrupt cop who was bad to the bone. Boston, at that very moment, had two veteran detectives who for more than a decade treated Roxbury and Dorchester as their own money store. Publicly, Walter “Mitty” Robinson and Kenny Acerra were known as street-savvy crime fighters often called on to help solve some of the biggest cases. They had press clippings saying so. The reality was that on the street they were a two-man crime spree. Lying routinely to obtain phony search warrants, lying routinely in court to cover up their actions, they shook down drug dealers for their money, drugs, and guns. Little did Bratton know, but as he spoke at Harvard, the two Boston detectives, having grown sloppy, were about to be caught. Federal investigators documented fifty-six cases where the two had shaken down suspects illegally. They were eventually charged with stealing more than $250,000 in cash, drugs, and guns.
When Bratton was finished, the Boston police union was not at all happy with him. The union’s president angrily told the Boston Globe the police commissioner’s views on testilying were “incredible.” The union official, a twenty-seven-year veteran, even denied testilying existed. “I went to court an awful lot and I can never remember any problems of this kind.”
The denial had a hollow ring to it—just like denials of a blue wall of silence.
Bob Peabody ran into a wall with Dave Williams. The unproductive standoff was emblematic of the overall lack of progress in his investigation. In seven months he’d put five Boston police officers and another two municipal police officers before the grand jury for questioning. With Farrahar, he’d interviewed twenty-two police officers and munies in the offices of the Anti-Corruption Unit in Fort Point Channel. He’d worked up a theory of culpability revolving around the big three—Burgio, Williams, and Daley—with Burgio as the principal assailant. In his reconstruction, Burgio exited the passenger side of Williams’s cruiser to find Cox standing right in front of him at the fence. “My theory was he was the first at the fence and brought Cox down.” Peabody found unofficial confirmation in Jimmy Burgio’s choice of defense counsel. Burgio showed up for his interview in July accompanied by Thomas Drechsler, one of the smartest attorneys around, who often represented police officers in trouble. “To me, that confirmed Burgio’s the guy,” Peabody said. “Why else would he have the top attorney?” It was, of course, rank speculation mixed with gallows humor, but Peabody was only half joking.
In truth, Peabody had not made any real headway toward charging anyone.