The Fence - Dick Lehr [43]
The couple made it work, no matter how stressful their lifestyle. “Being away,” said Kimberly, “commuting back and forth, having two small kids, trying to get through medical school, and Mike trying to support all of us.” The challenge brought them closer. “We didn’t have really any major disagreements,” Kimberly said. “Basically, I was in school and he was taking care of the kids, and I trusted him and he did an excellent job and he managed and handled everything.” She valued Mike’s soft-spoken way, his steadiness and levelheadedness. She loved that Mike was a “nice, easygoing person who enjoyed doing things with his family,” and she loved how Mike made her laugh. “He would joke a lot. He had fun. We did things together.” They imagined a future when she was a doctor and he was a police officer armed with a law degree. “We were looking forward to this new and wonderful life together,” Kimberly said.
Mike was especially proud of providing for his family. In five years he’d doubled his earnings. He started out making $30,115.53, including overtime. His earnings jumped to $61,394.82 in 1994. The couple watched their spending and saved money by moving into the two-family house on Supple Road owned by Mike’s oldest sister. Cora L. Davis, eighteen years older than Mike, lived upstairs with her husband and kids. The couple’s future was bright. Mike even talked about taking a class here and there to finish college.
Simmering beneath the surface of Mike’s police work, however, was the problem of black police officers being mistaken as suspects. The department had not caught up to the vexing aspects of a police force with increasing numbers of black officers. There was no proven method for an officer in street clothes to signal other officers that he was one of them. Most of the time Mike and other black officers simply relied on being recognized.
Mike did once speak up about the problem. He and Craig, brand-new to the anti-gang unit, happened to cross paths with the newly installed police commissioner one night in July 1993. William Bratton, flamboyant and ambitious, had joined the Boston force in 1970 and then left to hold leadership positions with several different police agencies. Most recently he’d been chief of the New York City Transit Police. The new chief, two weeks on the job as Boston’s top cop and saying he wanted to check out the front lines himself, went out riding with a patrol officer in Mattapan. At 10:30
P.M., a dispatcher put out a call about shots fired nearby. Mike and Craig were the first to get there. They pulled up to a group of young black men. One kid turned and bolted. Mike called for backup while Craig ran and captured the fourteen-year-old suspect.
Bratton then arrived. He got out, looking around, and under a fence found something the fleeing teen had dropped—a silver.32-caliber revolver. The boy was arrested on gun charges. Despite the late hour, a Boston Globe reporter learned about Bratton’s hands-on police work and wrote the kind of flattering item the press-savvy Bratton cherished. “Police Commissioner Spends Night on Duty” was the story’s headline, and it quoted Craig. “He knows what he’s doing,” he said about Bratton.
Bratton switched cars to ride with Mike and Craig. Neither knew Bratton. The commissioner, who had a reputation as a progressive, hard-driving administrator, was the one who raised the subject of race and working in street clothes.
“He mentioned it,” Mike said. “He asked, had we ever been mistaken for suspects before by other officers and felt as though our life was in danger by the other officers.”
Mike and