The Fence - Dick Lehr [36]
The prosecutor cited the two officers’ words as part of the “evidence of the code of silence; that is, not that they sit around a darkened candle in a darkened room and make a pledge, but what we have from that witness stand…a plethora of evidence that these officers lived by a code which they will not testify against another officer.”
Judge Zobel wouldn’t go there—he neither agreed with nor rejected the attorney general’s claims of a police code of silence. Instead of drawing any broad conclusions about the police culture, he focused on the thirteen officers before him. In so doing, he hammered them. In a forty-page ruling issued on May 8, 1992, Zobel concluded that thirteen “frustrated, disgusted and angry Boston police officers allowed emotion to supplant their training.” They violated Smith’s civil rights, “from a shared belief that in staging his own version of Smokey and the Bandit, Smith had showered a platoon of Boston police officers with disobedience and disrespect, in the process endangering their safety and making fools of them all. Thus they set out to teach this scofflaw a lesson.”
The judge did not rule specifically that any one officer had “kicked or kneed” Smith, but found that officers had “hurled themselves on top of Smith” after hauling him from his car and that “no law-enforcement reason justified the piling-on.” Moreover, the judge said the officers’ demeanor in court and their sworn testimony did not reveal “the slightest remorse or regret about any of that morning’s events.” “They don’t get it,” the judge wrote. “They do not understand how improperly they behaved on Borland Street.
“Being forceful does not mean using excessive force. The pressure that society puts on police to apprehend criminals and deter wrongdoing cannot justify a misuse of the physical power which society entrusts to every police officer.” The judge then concluded that outside judicial intervention was necessary—and he granted the attorney general’s bid to impose a permanent injunction against the Brighton 13.
“I have determined that because police officers are not likely to regulate police conduct, an outside sanction here is necessary for the public good.”
The officers were angry. “For the first time, to my knowledge, a judge has issued an injunction against on-duty officers,” said one of their lawyers. “It virtually renders it impossible for the officers to function on the streets, with this injunction hanging around their neck.” They appealed, but Zobel’s ruling was upheld by the state’s highest court, the Supreme Judicial Court. The Brighton 13 were then ordered to undergo “extensive retraining” in civil rights, the use of force, and telling the truth.
For all the hullabaloo surrounding the trial, life inside the department for the thirteen officers barely skipped a beat. Throughout, they’d remained on the job. Some won promotions. From the inside, it was as if rather than losing the court case, they’d won. Kenny Conley, not one to pay close attention to the case’s legal twists, reached that conclusion. Nothing seemed to have changed. While riding around on patrol during the remainder of 1992 and into the next year, he figured the police had prevailed. “I would assume they ruled in the police officers’ favor because they’re all walking the street.”
CHAPTER 5
Mike’s Early Police Career
The Boston Police Department is the oldest department in the United States. In the early 1800s, the city’s growth on every front—land area, population, immigration, and commerce—gave rise to a more socially complex metropolis. The city was fast outgrowing its original town meeting form of government aimed at keeping power in the hands of many rather than concentrated in the hands of a few. The need for a professional, full-time force to replace constables reflected these changes, and in 1838 the state legislature voted that Boston should assemble a formal police department.
For more than a century and until the civil