An advocate for community policing, Cox said during a media briefing Wednesday that he is determined to “revitalize” the department’s efforts to rebuild relationships with residents, particularly in neighborhoods of color where mistrust of law enforcement is deeply rooted. He cited consistency and humility as the department’s best tools for building trust, noting that “if people have problems — historical problems — we have to listen to them and show that we can take that criticism, and more importantly “that we hear them.”
A former Boston police chief, Cox won a long list of accolades in his career, but is perhaps best known in his hometown for the successful civil rights lawsuit he brought against the department after a 1995 incident in which fellow officers they took him as a suspect in a murder, beat him unconscious and tried to cover it up for years. Cox’s decision to go public about his experience drew attention to the dangers the department’s few black officers faced, especially while working undercover.
“This is a homecoming for me… [and] quite an emotional moment,” Cox said Wednesday, his voice shaking. “Since that moment in 1995, I have dedicated my life to making sure that both the Boston Police Department and policing as a whole have grown and learned from the experiences I went through some time ago.”
Cox’s appointment closely follows Wu’s selection as a new fire commissioner and a new schools superintendent, cementing her stamp on city leadership, and comes after the city has gone more than a year without a permanent commissioner.
Wu said she is excited to appoint a leader who “brings decades of experience working at every level to our police department.”
“Chief Cox leads with a sense of possibility, a deep belief in what we can achieve together and a deep love for the city in which he grew up,” she said.
In February 2020, while serving as Chief of the Ann Arbor Police Department, Cox was placed on short paid administrative leave following allegations that he created a hostile work environment and improperly influenced an internal investigation related to parking enforcement.
Michael Cox speaks with community members in the lobby of the Ann Arbor Justice Center as he runs for police chief in 2019. Ben Allen Smith/Associated Press
An investigation commissioned by a city law firm found “no evidence” that Cox’s conduct created a hostile work environment, and Cox was reinstated after less than a month. Still, investigators concluded in a report that there was “no question” that many police department employees “were very uncomfortable with the chief’s actions and that they feared retaliation.”
The investigation came after a lieutenant indicated she felt pressured by Cox not to recommend terminating a parking supervisor she concluded had lied about canceling tickets. After conducting interviews with police officers, including the lieutenant and Cox himself, investigators concluded that Cox characterized the cancellation of the ticket as a minor matter and made jokes that some in the department “interpreted as derogatory.”
Asked about the incident Wednesday, Cox said he “learned a lot from it and I wish it hadn’t happened.”
“I’ve always tried to teach all staff good practices to make good decisions and sometimes I can scare some people, but I apologize for the way I was perceived,” he said. “That was not my intention at all.”
Wu said she personally spoke with Ann Arbor’s mayor and city administrator about the incident and was convinced that Cox “is a leader of great integrity, that he takes every step of leadership very seriously, and that he took full responsibility for any miscommunication and used this as a learning opportunity.”
He takes over a department without a full-time manager for more than a year.
Former Commissioner Dennis White was placed on leave two days after being appointed by former Mayor Martin Walsh, following a Globe investigation into allegations that White had threatened to shoot his ex-wife. White was later fired and Chief Superintendent Gregory Long has served as acting commissioner since February 2021.
In January, Wu appointed a five-member commission to search for a new police commissioner, hoping to name someone by spring. The search partnered with a search firm to collect over 40 applications and conduct two rounds of interviews to narrow the list of candidates down to four finalists.
The city put out a job application in April seeking a “proven transformational leader” for the position, and Wu has repeatedly expressed a desire to hire someone dedicated to reforming a department that has repeatedly been mired in controversy.
Multiple Boston police officers pleaded guilty to overtime fraud last fall after a federal investigation revealed that more than a dozen officers, including former union president Thomas Nee, falsified time sheets to pocket more than $300,000 for overtime.
Another former union leader, Patrick Rose, was sentenced in April to 13 years in prison for sexually abusing six children over several decades. A year earlier, the Globe reported that Rose was allowed to stay on the force for 20 years after police officials found it highly likely that he had sexually abused a child in 1995, exposing an institutional failure in the department to discipline employees accused of misconduct.
Ivy Scott can be reached at ivy.scott@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @itsivyscott. You can contact Emma Platoff at emma.platoff@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @emmaplatoff. Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Danny__McDonald.
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