The Fence - Dick Lehr [72]
But the others weren’t about to let that happen. Craig maintained he’d arrested the driver. The towering Dave Williams then claimed he and Jimmy Burgio arrested the two suspects in front of the Lexus. Burgio even showed up at the station briefly to reinforce the point. “It was my arrest,” he said. “I wanted it.” Richie Walker then claimed he arrested the fourth suspect, Smut Brown. He acknowledged that another cop was there, but he didn’t know who—a “tall, white cop” was the best he could do. Craig chimed in the description fit Gary Ryan of the gang unit, and that was that. The second cop became Gary Ryan. Mystery solved. No one bothered to call Ryan to learn this was all wrong.
Instead, an overwhelmed Daley dutifully jotted down notes—and, for the purposes of the report, not only was Kenny Conley suddenly Gary Ryan, but Richie Walker was the hero. “Officer Walker never losing sight of the suspect,” wrote Daley, “ran through bushes and behind buildings and finally captured suspect.” It was all part of the misleading mess that Daley typed up in his three-page narrative. He did get some measure of revenge against Craig Jones; he avoided giving Craig credit for arresting Tiny by not describing Tiny’s apprehension. Otherwise, it was all there—the key inaccuracies that Richie Walker captured Smut Brown, and that Williams and Burgio had captured Marquis and Boogie-Down “after a brief foot chase.” The part about the foot chase was yet another fabrication; after they were knocked to the ground, Marquis and Boogie-Down barely moved, except to wiggle out from under the cruiser.
But not every cop orbited the guardroom making sure Daley got his name spelled correctly. Some went back to work—like Kenny Conley and Bobby Dwan. Capturing Smut Brown was a career highlight for Kenny. He’d never nabbed a shooting suspect before. He was certainly as competitive as anyone and always gave it his all—fighting for a rebound under the hoop, for example. But his game was more about grunt than glory, whether on the court or on the job. He’d never gotten a medal. His personality was not about ego. “I’m not like that,” he said. With Smut, Kenny saw himself as making an “assist.” He and Bobby had helped out the guys from the Roxbury and Mattapan districts, and at the shift’s end, that’s what he and Bobby wrote down in their log at their station.
Jimmy Rattigan was another cop who eschewed the ego mud wrestling. He and his partner swung by the station after their release from the hospital. They went upstairs and walked into the guardroom and found everyone going at it. Said Rattigan: “They were saying, ‘I cuffed him,’ ‘No, I cuffed him,’ and they were like, ‘Well, I’m gonna take this one, you’re gonna take that one.’” He saw Ian Daley, Craig Jones, Dave Williams, and Jimmy Burgio. Rattigan was disgusted. “I thought to myself, there’s Mike Cox sitting in the hospital and these guys are arguing over who’s gonna take an arrest. Me and Mark, we were like, ‘Can you believe this shit?’ and then we just left.”
It wasn’t as if they weren’t talking at all about Mike. By dawn most everybody in the guardroom was aware the ice story was bogus. “When people were coming up to the guardroom,” said Ian Daley, “they were basically saying who was the police officer that got, you know, beat up?” Said Richie Walker: “That was the topic of the conversation.”
The talk, however, mostly circled around the beating instead of focusing on what actually happened—who did what and who saw what. There were moments, however—fleeting moments—where key cops, still in the heat of the night’s events, made comments that started down the road of truth. Ian Daley was one who began heading in this direction. He pulled Donald Caisey aside at one