The Fence - Dick Lehr [46]
The next month his response to an “excessive noise” call led to another brutality complaint. Williams was one of three Boston police officers arriving at about 1:30 A.M. to a party in a third-floor apartment. After talking to the party’s host, Williams walked past four young men hanging out on the front porch. One was a teenager named Valdir Fernandes, a seventeen-year-old high school student. As Williams walked down the steps, Valdir spat. Williams turned and demanded to know if the spit was aimed at him. Valdir denied any such thing. Valdir said later that Williams then bounded up the steps, pushed him against a wall, and “grabbed me by my throat, smacked me on the right side of the face.” Valdir’s mother rushed outside and confronted Williams. Williams insisted the boy had been disrespectful. He denied striking him at all. Valdir was taken by ambulance to Boston City Hospital, where he was treated for head trauma and for cuts and marks on the tracheal area of his neck. The family photographed the teenager’s battered face and soon after filed a complaint against Williams with Internal Affairs.
That made two abuse complaints against Williams in two months—or a total of four in just over two years. In theory, the two recent complaints should have triggered the department’s Early Intervention System, created in the early 1990s as part of a major reform effort. The intervention system was supposed to kick into gear when an officer received three complaints within a twenty-four-month period. But theory was one thing, the practices of the police department were another. By the night of January 24, four months had passed since the Valdir Fernandes incident and Williams hadn’t heard a word about any intervention or retraining requirements. For the officer the brutality complaints were more a nuisance than any real threat to his standing in the department.
Having abandoned his assigned patrol, Williams was parked alone in his cruiser down the street from the Cortee’s. He knew the club’s reputation for trouble; the club, he said, was a place “where gang members were going and they were having fights and shots were fired.” Initially he’d driven up a hill with the idea of watching the club from there, but then he spotted a gang unit vehicle. The unmarked car—which was Cox and Jones’s—was sitting in a driveway. He didn’t want to get in the way of an ongoing operation so he’d decided to keep moving. He’d driven down the street a few blocks past the club and pulled into an empty lot. He was out of sight and had his radio going.
“I just sat back,” he said. “I think I was reading the paper.”
Mike and Craig were back to their lookout on the hill when Lyle Jackson and Marcello climbed into Stanley’s car to head over to Walaikum’s. It was just before 2 A.M. Moments later, Smut Brown, Boogie-Down, Tiny, and Marquis left the club. Smut and Boogie-Down walked toward Smut’s Volkswagen Fox around the corner. Smut had told the others the bar to go to was Conway’s, where he knew the manager. He told Tiny to follow him. Tiny and Marquis walked toward the parking lot across from the club where Tiny had parked a 1994 gold Lexus, a “loaner” from the dealer. Tiny had bought a brand new GMC Jimmy SUV—a birthday present to himself—but the truck wasn’t ready and the dealer had given him the Lexus to drive for a few days.
Smut pulled his car around the corner and was facing the club so Tiny and Marquis could see him. He and Boogie-Down sat there with the engine running and the heat cranked up against the sub-freezing cold. Smut noticed Tiny walking quickly toward them. He could see Tiny was agitated, moving in a jerking motion. Smut opened the window, and Tiny was stuttering about Little Greg, saying Little Greg was up to no good. Tiny pointed to the far side of the Cortee’s entrance, where Smut saw a group of Castlegate gang members. Tiny talked nonstop, explaining he and Marquis had noticed the group