Officer, once beaten by colleagues, to lead Boston police

BOSTON — A former Boston police officer who was beaten more than 25 years ago by colleagues who mistook him for a shooting suspect will be the new leader of the city’s police department, Mayor Michelle Wu announced Wednesday. “And I’m going to their biggest cheerleader.” Before becoming chief in Ann Arbor in 2019, Cox was part of the Boston police force for 30 years, where he rose through the ranks after fighting for years to get justice over his beating that left him seriously injured at the age of 29. “It was humiliating what happened to me,” Cox told former Boston Globe reporter Dick Lehr for Lehr’s book about the beating: “The Fence: A Police Cover-Up Along Boston’s Racial Divide.” “There’s no reason to treat anyone like that. The top prosecutor for Boston and surrounding communities, who has known Cox for years, called him “a man of high honor and integrity.” “The journey of Michael Cox from being beaten by fellow Boston Police officers to his appointment as Commissioner of the Boston Police Department is emblematic of criminal legal reform,” Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in an emailed statement. But a report said “there is evidence that people feared retaliation by the Chief, and they had a legitimate basis for that fear, whether or not that was the Chief’s intent.” He was reinstated less than a month after being placed on leave after being told by the city administration to apologize “for any misunderstandings and poor communications.” The mayor said the vetting process was intense and that she personally spoke with Ann Arbor’s mayor and town administrator about Cox’s time there.