The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston's Racial Divide

by Dick Lehr

“A monumental account of an urban travesty….[It] has all the earmarks of a classic.”
—Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Mystic River and Shutter Island

 

Dick Lehr’s The Fence, subtitled, “A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide,” is a shocking true story of racism, brutality, official lies and negligence, when the truth about the savage beating of black plainclothes policeman by white officers was hidden behind a “blue wall of silence.”  Respected journalist Lehr, winner of the Hancock Award, the Loeb Award, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and bestselling author of Black Mass and Judgment Ridge, sheds a brilliant light on all aspects of this powerful, disturbing event and its aftermath.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Crime, History, Book Club, Politics, Police

400 pages, Hardcover

First published June 23, 2009

About the author

Dick Lehr is a professor of journalism at Boston University. From 1985 to 2003, he was a reporter at the Boston Globe, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in investigative reporting and won numerous regional and national journalism awards. He served as the Globe's legal affairs reporter, magazine and feature writer, and as a longtime member of the newspaper's investigative reporting unit, the Spotlight Team. Before that, Lehr, who is also an attorney, was a reporter at The Hartford Courant.

Lehr is the author of The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston's Racial Divide, a non-fiction narrative about the worst known case of police brutality in Boston, which was an Edgar Award finalist for best non-fiction. He is coauthor of the New York Times bestseller and Edgar Award winner Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI and a Devil's Deal, and its sequel, Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss.

Lehr was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University in 1991-1992. He lives outside Boston with his wife and four children.

Reviews

[Darlene · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to reading this book because I personally know one of the victims involved in the incident. However, I was completely and utterly bored with this story. The writer went into way too much historical detail for me. I could not wait until I was done reading it. There were far too many pages leading up to the incident and then far too few pages involving the actual incident and aftermath. Boring, boring, boring. Zzzzzzzz.

[Greg Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book makes me terrified of police. It's very well written, and very well put together, but this book is horrid. How could the people of the city of Boston let them get away with this...

[Matthew West · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am too young to remember when this horrific story took place, but I was excited to read it when a friend (who is a Boston Police officer) recommended this to me. Lehr is a terrific journalist and his retelling of the major events and his reporting on all the moving pieces in this story were top notch.

As a Massachusetts native it was at times both sad and eye-opening to read all the details of this case involving Michael Cox. It is a stain on the city and the police department, and while it's clear strides have been made to rectify the moral code of law enforcement and the general racial bias in the city of Boston, a lot is still clearly not where it should be. Overall, a very moving story and superbly researched and written.

[Matthew Valentinas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing researched and well detailed. And since this is real life, we don't get the Hollywood ending. But it's a great look into the gray world we all live in and as someone who lived in Boston and was going to law school during this time it was a great reflection of the city. I would have liked more on the daily lives of the men suspected of beating Cox, but I am sure they were probably not looking to be in this book. Change is slow, but I think what Cox and what the city went through was tragic and too slow in responding, but not in vain.

[Bobby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a must read for anyone considering a career in law enforcement, Boston or anywhere else. The events of the book center around the beating of Boston Police Officer Michael Cox during a pursuit by Boston Police. It speaks to the environment of racial tensions in the department and the city at the time. All in all, a book thats very core of race in the role of policing is as poignant now as it was when it was published.

[Mark Fidler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This true story about Michael Cox is riveting. Cox is a black police office in Boston, and is beat unconscious by fellow officers who mistake him for a suspect. More than 20 years later, Cox becomes Boston Police Commissioner. This book is about Cox's assault and the years that follow, where not a single officer admits doping or seeing anything. This is great reporting that makes the true story come alive.

[Hannah Guskie · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the twists and turns of a thriller, but so much more meaningful as this is a true story. Lehr does a wonderful job telling an engaging story but also addressing larger systemic issues at play. However, the book focuses on police policies and culture, with little attention to Boston's actual racial divide and the policies that create/sustain it.

[Jane Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

True Crime Story

This book tells the story of a strange case of police brutality. It was strange because the police attacked and beat a fellow policeman. They didn't recognize him as a cop because he was black. Then the blue line took hold and it took him five years to get justice .

[Boston64329 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read like a crime novel but unfortunately it was true. A sad time in Boston Police History. Hopefully there have been improvements but improvement is just the beginning of a need for changes in the training, organization/structure and funding of the role of policing in major American cities. This is not to say all police officers are bad but the broad brush sometimes make it seem that way.

[Ethan Mignard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lehr does a fantastic job of weaving together the parallel narratives of a police chase gone wrong, Boston’s historic racial divide, and some of the negative aspects of police culture, most notably the notorious “blue wall of silence.” Fast-moving and informative, highly recommend to anyone with an interest in any of the above topics.

[Jill G · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is such an important story to tell but the writing is an utter disappointment. Too much detail on the parts that don’t matter. It was a real slog to finish the book. Wish it was a better book to help get Mike’s story out there.

[Ryan Hannay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye-opening and infuriating. The Boston police act more like a gang than public servants, and this book illustrates why prosecuting corruption and misconduct is so difficult in this environment. Unfortunately, not much has changed since this incident and it mostly left a bad taste in my mouth.

[DD · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book should have been more intense. The subject matter was there, just read flat to me.

[Mary R Rosales · Rating 3 out of 5]

From a murder scene that two undercover policemen race after the shooter. Mike C. is brutalized. Unrecognized as one of the force of Boston. The investigation and trail seem repaticious.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating reading and very eye opening.

A true story of police their lives and issues with trust and brutality among their ranks. Of justice and injustice, of lives lies.

[Lindsey Glines · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I’ve read about law enforcement. Certainly demonstrates that unconscious bias is everywhere.

[Jillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

at one point this might've been considered hard hitting journalism but its pretty bootlicking/apologist by today's standards

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great book. I was amazed at how the stories of the different "Characters" were put together and told as if it were a piece of fiction. The fact that this happened, and so close to where I live, made me WISH it were fiction. Unfortunately we know too well that this and the likelyhood of it happening again is not fiction.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A police cover-up, yes. Along Boston's racial divide... well, maybe, but you wouldn't know it from this book. That isn't to say race is missing: the victim of the beating, Michael Cox, is black, and the police had been getting into trouble for other beatings of black victims. But I was really hoping Lehr would use the Michael Cox beating to explore race relations in Boston (you know, because the subtitle all but promises such an exploration) as they evolved through the 1990s and into the early 2000s, a period that saw major demographic shifts in the city's neighborhoods, culminating in the 2000 Census finding that Boston had become a "majority minority" city. But he doesn't. He shows well enough how justice gets squeezed between police silence on one side and bureaucracy on the other. The street and courtroom scenes are vivid. And Lehr has some great characters in the bad guys, especially Burgio and Williams.

But one doesn't come away from this book any wiser about black-white relations in the city. What effect does Lehr, a veteran crime and gang reporter, think that this and other acts of police brutality against blacks had on the ability of black youth in Boston to trust cops? One also gleans next to nothing about politics in Boston. Mayor Tom Menino is mentioned only in passing. Those mentions don't flatter him, but he was the mayor - that is, the most powerful person in the city, and at whose desk the buck would have stopped if it had stopped anywhere. That his role goes largely unexamined is a pity given that he is one of the few authorities in power both at the time of the beating and at the time of publication 14 years later (which coincided with his most fiercely contested reelection campaign). Finally Lehr is not helped by the fact that the victim, while certainly deserving of sympathy for what he went through and admiration for his courage in standing up for his rights, is at bottom a quiet, retiring family guy who, by Lehr's own admission, was a reluctant subject. His character is, frankly, boring.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a fascinating look into police culture through the story of Mike Cox, a police officer who suffered a brutal beating following being mistaken for a suspect during a police chase in Boston in 1995. But it wasn’t the chase that was remarkable; it was the lengths to which the police force, from fellow officers to department leadership, went to cover up the beating. Dick Lehr is an award-winning journalist who followed the story for years, writing dozens of articles and compiling his research into this book; which tells the story of Cox and his partner Kenney Coley. It begins with profiles of the two officers: their backgrounds and the background of the police force they entered. It then chronicles the night of the beating, the Internal Affairs investigation, and the court case which finished five years after the beating.

In the end, the books greatest strength turned out to be its greatest weakness: it was written by a journalist in a very journalistic style. It's full of well-researched details, but almost all of the details are very specific to this case, discussions of race relations and police brutality are brief and always in discussion of how they relate specifically to this story. I understand why such brevity might be called for in a newspaper article, but a deeper discussion of the issues surrounding this story would have made this book more fulfilling. Still, the insights provided were a fascinating look into police culture that are very informative for anyone trying to understand how police can act in ways the general public finds so unacceptable.

[Kelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fantastic look at the beating of Mike Cox while he was working as a plainclothes cop. Cox had been mistaken for a suspect prior to the beating, and knew other black cops who had as well. Not being especially race conscious, he tried to ignore the incidents. But this incident was far worse: he was beaten and then left to lay on the ground, badly wounded, while the beaters tried to ignore what had happened. The blue wall was quickly erected as all the cops on the scene went silent or lied about what they'd seen, including other black cops, one of whom had initially tried to cuff and arrest Cox. This is a story that illustrates how institutionalized racism works. Lehr is careful to point out that the blue wall is usually erected by the police, to protect them, from the outsiders. But the blue wall effect Mike Cox experienced was erected against him, an insider. Yet, because of his race, and the Boston police force's inability and refusal to deal with the racial divide in Boston and on the force, the blue wall was a mechanism for harming those on the force who refused to accept institutionalized racism. Lehr tells the story, mostly through Cox's perspective, as he tried to get a handle on what happened, struggles with his own feelings of betrayal, on the part of the police force, on the part of indidividual cops and on the part of black cops on the force who, as Mike had in the past, wanted to ignore the racial divide.

[Keith Tharp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disturbing story of the disregard for actual justice or humanity that comes from brotherhood culture.

[Fred Leland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book about a bad scar left on police and our history. Police brutality is something that should never be tolerated as it deeply destroys trust. In this case the bad cops used their egotistical bravado led beating on not a bad guy but indeed a brother police officer on duty and I pursuit of the same subject they were. The beating is not where this story end but the conspiracy and coverup that only makes the real facts all the more egregious as corrupt cops attempt to finger at innocent cops they think don't have the know how, believability or the backing to defend themselves. This is a book every cop and citizen should read. It is a black eye to police which just so happens to be my profession but the lessons from this story if we learn from them can crate meaningful and lasting change in how we police the type of candidates we seek and build a greater trust in the community. Sad and tragic story worth reading!

[Sophia ☕️🍂 · Rating 2 out of 5]

⭐️: 2.5/5

“To Kimberly, the talk was mostly in covered, hushed tones. But this she was able to hear: “I think cops did this.””

The Fence reports on the beating of Michael Cox, a plainclothes officer by other uniformed officers after the high-speed pursuit of a known drug dealer. It examines racism, police brutality, and the lengths people will go in order to cover their tracks.

I had previously enjoyed Black Mass, also by Lehr, so I thought I enjoy would this one too, but that didn’t happen.

This book had a lot of potential but it wasn’t executed properly. As many people have stated in other reviews, this book contains a lot of historical context and information that wasn’t always needed. I do enjoy history, but this book delved a bit too much into the whole life story of each character which I felt really took the focus away from the main incident against Cox.

I would’ve enjoyed this book more had there been more suspense and less extraneous details.

[John Pappas · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intense, true-life police procedural that details the accidental beating (with excessive force) of a black plainclothes Boston police officer by his fellow officers. The resulting fall-out nearly claims the life and career of the victim and a white officer who was mistakenly assumed to know what happened that night. Taking the reader through the streets of Dorchester, South Boston and Roxbury and the hallways of the Boston Police Department Headquarters and the courthouses of Boston, Lehr shows the power of police culture, the extent of corruption and cover-ups in this case and the determination of a small group of people to ensure that the civil rights of the victim, his family, and the wrongly accused police officer are not further violated. Includes the results of subsequent arbitration decisions as the police officers who were convicted of the beating were disciplined.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

this reminded me a bit of All Souls (i.e. on the street version of Boston neighborhood) and also had overlapping themes with the book I just finished Wrong Place Wrong Time (violence, racism). The author is overly sympathetic to his subjects and you're left completely in support of the 3 major characters Mike, Kenny and Smut. And fair or not, you cannot help but think differently of the BPD after reading this. At the same time, it's a completely engaging narrative and even though I lived in Boston throughout the entire drama, I didn't follow it closely (except who could not notice all the "Justice for Kenny Conley" bumper stickers all over town?) so the story was somewhat suspenseful because I didn't know the details of how it would end.

[David Buse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book about the hard scrap interracial divide between Roxbury and Southie? Why not? Dick Lehr's "The Fence" is a inside look at the 1995 police coverup and code of silence involving the brutal beating of an undercover officer. The most amazing part of this story is the complete lack of an internal probe into what happened from the outset. Michael Cox is left to fend for himself and his family and the posturing of those around him only adds to his problems. Lehr does an effective job of bringing some depth of personality to his characters. I hate to say it but this book was written in many ways like a screenplay.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

A fifteen-year old incident in Boston resulted in this molehills-into-mountains screed from a reporter with a strong anti-cop bias. I should have judged this book by its cover and left it alone. Recommended for bleeding heart lefties only.

[Brock · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book isn't the most well-written, certainly, but it's the kind of book everyone in urban America should read. And certainly everyone in Boston should read it. It's amazing what alarming things can happen, be covered up, and go unexamined even by those watching it all unfold.

[Charles Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disturbing

Being former law enforcement myself, this book was really disturbing to say the least. I know this occurred in the mid and late 90's but I do question why decided to trace the harassment and phony 911 calls if the Feds were helping him with his case.