The Fence - Dick Lehr [134]
Winfield then compared that dynamic to Mike’s experience. Before he was beaten, “Michael Cox believed in the American Dream; he believed in the goal of a color-blind society. Michael’s personal and professional demeanor reflected these values, and he incorporated them into his life: He sought success through education, perseverance, and hard work.”
The pummeling at the fence—and his abandonment by fellow police officers—had changed all that. “To him, it was a violation and a repudiation of the Dream by which he had directed his life.
“Like Vietnam Vets, Michael was exposed to a trauma that at once endangered his life and undermined his beliefs.”
The psychiatrist also minced no words in emphasizing the singular power race played in his assault. Trauma, explained Winfield, was defined clinically as the experience of being made into an object. While a beating of this sort would be difficult for anyone to process, “objectification has a special depth of meaning, and emotional resonance for black Americans.” During two centuries of slavery, the psychiatrist noted, blacks were considered objects, “chattel; i.e., an item of property.”
For Mike, concluded Winfield, the trauma as a black man “being made into an object” was therefore “especially intense, destructive and psychologically malignant: psychological ghosts of night riders, lynchings and Jim Crow were resurrected.”
During the evening after Kenny Conley’s conviction in June, the crank calls resumed at the Cox household. “You’re an asshole,” a voice told Mike. Mike hung up. Later in the night the phone rang again, but Mike hung up as soon he recognized the gravelly voice. It made him furious that even though he was the one who’d been beaten, somehow, in the perverted logic of the cop culture, he still was the wrongdoer for pushing for justice. Now a cop had been convicted of perjury and it was supposed to be his fault.
He didn’t know Kenny Conley, but he resented the support Conley was getting, whether nefariously—as with the crank calls—or above board: the fund-raisers, the “Time for Kenny,” and the media interest in his plight. No one had staged a rally or fund-raiser for him.
“The support I received has been quiet support by good friends and family, you know, a few people within the department,” Mike said. “His support has been overwhelming.”
In truth, some of the reasons for the disparity were less about the men and more about their neighborhoods. Roxbury was a neighborhood splintered socially and politically, while Southie’s cohesiveness was legend. Roxbury had nothing matching “Southie pride.” Early on, too, Mike had rejected the few overtures made by some of Roxbury’s political and religious leaders; he was private by nature and wanted no part of turning the incident into a political or racial cause. Kenny Conley, meanwhile, with his friends’ help, had gone public unabashedly with his insistence of innocence.
Importantly, part of Kenny’s public crusade was to make clear he was no cover boy for the police cover-up. He railed against the assault and the mistreatment of Mike Cox—and that included harassing telephone calls, tire slashing, or any form of ostracizing Mike. Kenny couldn’t control anonymous cops who mistakenly thought he was standing tall for the blue wall. What he could do was openly criticize the inability to get to the bottom of the beating. “I’d like to get across to Michael Cox,” he told reporters, “that I had nothing to do with it and if I could have helped him I would have.”
Cox and Conley: They’d become an odd couple. One from Roxbury, the other from Southie. Prior to January 25, 1995, they were young cops with nothing but bright futures ahead. Then they “met” at the fence on Woodruff Way chasing Smut Brown. The utter failure to solve Mike’s beating had derailed both their lives: Mike was the pariah—he’d protested too much; Kenny faced thirty-four months in prison due to a misguided federal prosecution. Both outcomes resulted because the beaters and eyewitnesses went mute. Cox and Conley were now