The Fence - Dick Lehr [79]
Then came this: “There is no assumption of any wrongdoing yet.”
No assumption of wrongdoing? Mike couldn’t get past that line. It was nine days since he’d been beaten, and everybody knew he’d been beaten—mistakenly, perhaps, but he was beaten, and the beating was overkill, a case study of excessive force.
“Everybody and their mother knew about it,” Mike said. Yet there it was, officials telling the public, “There is no assumption of any wrongdoing.” This did not sound like a department determined to get to the bottom of the beating of one cop by other cops.
For the first time, Mike wondered what was going on. One thing, he had not heard anything directly from the police commissioner. Paul Evans had not visited the house or called to ask how Mike was doing. Evans had not issued any clear signal inside the department that the brutal beating broke all the rules—written or unwritten—for which he was demanding accountability. In the newspaper stories, Evans was not even quoted; he’d let his spokesman handle what was at once a deadly serious matter and a potentially huge embarrassment for the police. The commissioner was certainly busy with other ongoing embarrassments—most notably the botched drug raid that had left an elderly Dorchester minister dead. The day after Mike’s beating, Evans had had to stand before the reporters to announce the suspension of one lieutenant and reprimands of two supervisors. Then, after announcing the disciplinary measures, Evans faced criticism he’d done “too little, too late.” Meanwhile, lawyers for the city and the minister’s widow were locked in sometimes nasty negotiations to settle her wrongful death claim.
The commissioner apparently did not have time for Mike Cox. And his remoteness, along with his spokesman’s wishy-washy comments, stood in sharp relief to all the public concern about police brutality fifty miles down the road in Providence, Rhode Island. The videotape showing an officer kicking a black man in the stomach during a melee after a concert was a big, ongoing story. The police chief had gone public with his concern and condemnation of the apparent misconduct, and he was soon joined by the city’s mayor, Vincent “Buddy” Cianci. “Let the chips fall where they may,” Cianci told reporters. “We will not tolerate excessive force. We will not tolerate any brutality.”
When the stories about Mike ran in the Herald and Globe, Mike’s family jumped all over them. They saw the stories as clear-cut evidence supporting the point they’d been making—the police department was in cover-up mode. They said, We told you so, Mike, you have to do something! Then lawyers began calling the house, despite the unlisted number, to discuss with Mike the possibility of legal action. “I was amazed about how many people had my phone number,” he said. Mike was appalled by the unsolicited calls. No, he said, despite his family’s protestations. No. Even if he’d begun to wonder.
His family persisted. To make them happy, Mike agreed to meet with an attorney one of his sisters had come across on her own. His name was Stephen Roach, a forty-five-year-old civil trial attorney. Roach had just struck out on his own, teaming up with another lawyer to start his own firm downtown. He had been practicing law for just over a decade, competently but without fanfare. He was not well-known in the halls of power or in the media as one of the city’s go-to lawyers who could make things happen in the corridors of justice. In Boston, it was always said that personal connections and who you knew mattered—in business, in politics, and in law. Roach was not a member of this elite club of insiders.
Roach was originally from the town of Houlton in northeast Maine along the Canadian border. He came to Boston to attend Boston College, graduating in 1973, and began studying law in Boston at Suffolk University Law School