The Fence - Dick Lehr [76]
Mike began hearing the same message from beyond his immediate family. Leaders from the local chapter of the NAACP and the Nation of Islam called the house. Mike had never been active politically or religiously. “I was amazed how many people got my phone number,” he said. The groups had heard about Mike’s beating through talk on the street, and they wanted him to do something about it. “What do you want to do?” they’d ask. One day Mike took a call from another black cop on the force. Mike didn’t know the other cop very well, but that didn’t stop the caller from getting into Mike’s business. “He’s asking me how I’m doing,” Mike said, “and then his tone changed and he said, ‘I’ve known you for a while and I’ve always respected you, but if you don’t do something I’ve lost all respect for you, as a person, as a black man, as a police officer.’”
Mike didn’t want any of it. To him, it was all noise and static. The ground beneath him was already unsteady—literally—and he was having enough trouble finding his footing. “I was just happy to be alive,” he said. “I’m just trying to deal with the day-to-day, with my injuries.” So he refused to let his sister photograph him. He rebuffed any other calls to action—there’d be no protests, no press conferences.
Instead, he told his wife, mother, and sisters it would all work out. They fired back that Mike was being naive. “They were like, ‘Why are you so trusting? What’s wrong, can’t you see?’” But Mike would not budge. They didn’t understand cops. They didn’t understand the split-second decisions of a high-speed chase. They couldn’t put themselves in the beaters’ shoes as could Mike. “Maybe, you know, they thought I was the murderer,” he said. “So maybe trying to arrest me was justified.”
Mike’s first instincts were true blue. The severity of the thrashing notwithstanding, Mike got that it had been a terrible mistake. Unlike his family, he didn’t see making a federal case out it. Friends from the gang unit came by the house the first week to check on him. He wasn’t up for talking much, but he listened, and Craig Jones told him what Dave Williams said about his partner, Burgio, messing up. Mike heard from Dave Williams, and Mike thought Dave sounded “very apologetic.” From others he heard gossip the brass was giving those responsible some time—a grace period, of sorts—to come forward before any kind of intense internal probe was begun. The tidbits gave Mike the idea this was going to get resolved and settled in a way he preferred both personally and as part of the fraternity himself—quietly and within the organization. “I felt this loyalty to police in general.” He was optimistic, knowing full well police officers tended to protect another suspected of misconduct. But he also believed this went beyond any unspoken code of silence. When the victim was one of your own, it was a different ball game.
Mike was figuring that within days he’d hear from the cops who’d beaten him. He was counting on an apology. “I expected the individuals to come forward and say what they had done.” They’d get disciplined in some fashion. Then they’d all move on.
Mike didn’t expect his wife, mother, and sisters to understand any of this.
“In the beginning I had a lot of faith,” Mike said.
In law enforcement it’s a well-known truism that the chances of solving a crime diminish the longer a case goes unsolved. For one thing, witnesses have time to think about what to say or to decide not to say anything at all. Offenders have time to work out the wrinkles in their cover stories. “The best moment for justice is right away,” one prosecutor said.
In the Cox case, some Boston police officials may have been hoping the department’s low-key response to the beating would result in a quick and quiet resolution that kept the matter largely in-house. They may have figured that given the unique circumstances—cops beating a cop—it was reasonable to expect the offenders to come forward. Mike had thought as much.