A Black Police Officer Brutally Beaten By His Own, A Cover-Up in Boston

In "The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston's Racial Divide,'' bestselling author and former investigative reporter for the Boston Globe, Richard Lehr tells the riveting story of the brutal beating of an African-American plainclothes officer by a pack of his fellow officers when he is mistaken for a murder suspect.

On a cold icy night in 1995, the plainclothes officer, Michael Cox, and his compatriots are engaged in a chase of a suspect. Officer Cox follows him over a fence when suddenly he feels a blow to the back of the head. It "rocked his brain, causing it to collide with the inside of his skull...The second blow ripped open the right side of Mike's forehead,'' Lehr writes.

There are more blows until Cox somehow manages to flash his badge and handgun from underneath his bloodied parka. Then he hears a fellow officer say, "Oh my God.'' Meanwhile on another street, Officer Kenny Conley is chasing down the real bad guy.

But that is not the word on the street that night or in the days, weeks or months to come. Everyone is told that Officer Cox hit his head on a bed of ice. The cover-up results in a lone fight for justice for Officer Cox in a federal civil rights lawsuit against his assailants, the Boston Police Department and the city. He wins verdicts against three officers and settles with the city for about $1 million in a case that highlights the intractable and persistent problem of police solidarity that trumps all else.

In "The Fence,'' Lehr, now a professor of journalism at Boston University and author of the bestselling 'Black Mass: The Irish Mob, The FBI And A Devil's Deal,' tackles a broad issue with the zeal of a seasoned investigative newspaper reporter, weaving important biographical information about each character throughout a gripping story about police brutality, the history of race relations in Boston and "the blue wall of silence.'' In spite of it all, Officer Cox goes on to make an interesting career choice.

"Mike chose to stay with the department and today he's actually a Deputy Superintendent,'' Lehr says in a prepared news release. "He's the first to say this incident will always stick with him.''

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