The Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic (22 page)

The experience highlighted how difficult policing can be in a time of great social change. We were somewhat successful in that we were able to walk through the legal, cultural, and social minefields without major explosions. I don't know that we changed anybody's minds or attitudes, but we changed the behavior of the police. We even established an annual softball game between the cops and the gay community, though we did not have a gay liaison until several Boston cops came out of the closet in the mid-1980s.

In March 1978 I made lieutenant. I was on my way up.

IN THE SUMMER OF 1980, WORD SHOT AROUND POLICE HEADQUARTERS THAT
The Boston Globe
was preparing a multipart series on the deficiencies of the Boston Police Department, story after story hammering away at the incompetence and ineffectiveness of the department and its leadership. Headquarters got word that the
Globe
might even call for the commissioner's resignation.

Joe Jordan was an honest, hardworking guy, a career cop, the first ever to make it up through the ranks to commissioner. One of his great strengths was his willingness to try new initiatives and to go in new directions. However, the
Globe
series would charge he was not a very effective manager. Jordan had fallen into the trap of appointing a lot of his cronies to the command staff, some of whom weren't all that competent and a few of whom were thought to be corrupt. He also found himself in the middle of a bitter feud between his two top superintendents, Executive Superintendent John Doyle and Chief of the Bureau of Field Services (BFS) Eddie Connolly.

Despite this, Jordan had been in office about five years, having completed di Grazia's term and begun his own. Mayor White was up for reelection for his third term and was still high on Jordan, as was Steve Dunleavy, who had moved over to City Hall as director of public
safety, with oversight responsibilities for the police and fire department. One of the reasons White supported Jordan so strongly was that, through Dunleavy, the mayor influenced everything that went on in the department.

By the time you've been in office ten years, scandals are brewing, and White had lots of headaches. Crime was still a major problem in the city. He had union troubles; as a bargaining tactic, the police union was saying that the best thing civilians could do to fight crime in Boston was to move out and save themselves. Sure enough, people were moving out of the city. The mayor didn't want to get rid of Jordan, but he didn't need any police department problems, either. And the department had quite a few.

To head off this potentially devastating
Globe
series, they had to do something big. Between them, the commissioner, the mayor, and his political operatives decided to completely change the leadership and operational practices of the Boston Police Department. They were going to reorganize the command staff, make sweeping personnel changes, and take citywide the neighborhood policing program that I had been developing in District 4.

John Doyle was the number-two man in the department and had been Jordan's best friend for many years. The highest rank Doyle had achieved prior to his appointment as executive superintendent was detective, but by running the police squad in District Attorney Garrett Byrne's office, he had blossomed into a J. Edgar Hoover—he had all the confidential files, he knew where all the bodies were buried. He was a very smart, Machiavellian character.

Fortunately, Doyle liked me. In the mid-seventies I had been selected to work undercover as part of a district attorney's investigation of organized crime in the strip joints in Boston's infamous “Combat Zone,” and Doyle had identified me as an up-and-comer. When I was promoted to sergeant, he had told my family, “Your son's got a great future ahead of him in the police department.” Doyle worked closely with Dunleavy, and between them they were the power behind the throne.

The number-three man was Eddie Connolly, who was in charge of all patrol officers. Connolly was a hero cop. He had been head of the original drug squad in the sixties and been much beloved as an area commander in Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury before moving up in the late seventies. He had, unfortunately, moved one step too high. The chief of BFS must be good in the streets
and
at headquarters. Connolly was a great street cop, but he was not an administrator.

Connolly hated me. The reason goes back to an incident on a hot summer day in 1979. There had been a hostage situation in the working-class neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. A distraught man was holding his family hostage and was believed to be armed. Connolly responded to the scene with a civilian assistant, Chuck Wexler. In conformity with department procedures and protocols, the area had been cordoned off by the area commander, Deputy Superintendent Stanley Dirsa. I, along with Sergeant James Cox, had been summoned to the scene as hostage negotiator.

It turned out that Connolly knew the shooter. Arriving at the scene before Cox and I did, he immediately took charge. The man was holed up in his house with his wife and one or two of his kids. It was a two-family, two-story house next to the elevated train tracks, two doors facing out onto a small porch. Connolly went in the front door by himself and stood at the hallway door leading to the second-floor apartment. He called up to the man.

The department's procedures and protocols for hostage negotiations were quite specific. You closed off the area, evacuated civilians, brought in the Tactical Patrol Force and hostage negotiators, who would be responsible for negotiating with the perpetrator. Dirsa had done all of that. But before the negotiators could arrive, Connolly tried to open a dialogue. He pounded on the door and called the guy's name. “It's Eddie Connolly,” he announced. “I want to talk to you!”

Boom, boom.
The guy shot Connolly in the chest, right through the door.

Connolly staggered out of the hallway, bleeding profusely. “Jesus, he shot me. He shot me!” There's a famous photo of Connolly being walked off the porch by Wexler, one hand on his chest wound, the other over Wexler's shoulder, blood spewing out of him. You can see the terror on Wexler's face and Connolly not believing he's been shot. He nearly died.

All hell broke loose. You can imagine the atmosphere, the number-three person in the Boston Police Department shot in uniform. For the rest of the day, it was like a war zone. They stopped the trains. Finally, after hours of negotiation, the man surrendered without harming anyone else.

In my role as a hostage negotiator, I had to write the after-action report. I labored over it, but finally I could do nothing but criticize Eddie Connolly. In department jargon, all the subsequent actions were precipitated by his deliberately taking a police action in direct violation of department procedure and protocols, putting the lives of police officers and civilians in jeopardy.

Connolly convalesced for months and then finally came back to work. When he saw the report, he went crazy. He ordered me into his office.

“Who the fuck do you think you are to criticize my actions?”

“With all due respect, my role was to critique this. You were wrong. It almost cost you your life. Here's all the procedures of the department. You violated every rule. It endangered the lives of other officers who had to deal with the situation generated by this guy shooting you.” It was a pretty knock-down-drag-out fight. From that point on, Connolly hated me.

In September 1980, Lieutenant Jack Geagan and I were sent out to Detroit for three weeks on a loaner program to serve on promotion panels for that department. I missed my flight coming back and had to stay over on a Friday night. I checked into the Hyatt in Dearborn, Michigan, close to the airport and found it filled with college kids. Maybe it was a back-to-school celebration or perhaps a football weekend, but the place was a zoo.

I was taken to my room and found the door next to mine wide open. I smelled marijuana smoke, saw kids swilling beer, the whole bit. Naturally, I didn't want to hang around that scene, so I went downstairs and complained to the management. “I'm a sergeant in the Boston Police. I can't be in a situation where you've got all this type of activity going on. You, as a manager, shouldn't allow it.” They were very apologetic and ended up putting me in their penthouse suite.

It was amazing. The glass in the penthouse window had to be twenty feet from floor to ceiling. A king-sized bed lay on a raised platform and from it you looked out at the city skyline. Management sent up wine and fruit. I was this thirty-two-year-old Boston kid. I had probably not stayed in a hotel more than half a dozen times in my life. It was incredible. I patted myself on the back for my good fortune and went out to have dinner—McDonald's, I think. When I came back to my suite, the message light was blinking. Call Jack Geagan.

“You're coming back tomorrow, Bill, is that right?” he asked.

“Yeah, I'll be in in the morning.”

“The commissioner wants to see us in his office at noon. He asked me to call and make sure you'll be able to make it back in time.”

“Of course. Do you know what it's about?”

“I don't know, but the place is abuzz with rumors.”

Everybody knew the
Globe
series was imminent, and the scuttlebutt around the department was that a big change was coming. Geagan was rumored to be making superintendent. I had been getting some good reviews for the neighborhood-policing initiative in District 4, and it was widely speculated that I was going to be moving up to deputy superintendent.

After a restless night I flew back to Boston and was home by ninethirty. I changed, speculated with Mary about what was going on, and headed into the commissioner's office. Joe Jordan, John Doyle, Jack Geagan, District 1's Lieutenant Detective Frank Coleman (a close friend of Jordan's), and Steve Dunleavy were already there. Commissioner Jordan began.

“As you're well aware, the
Globe
has this story coming out, and we've decided to make some changes in the leadership and structure of the department. We're here today to put it all together.” Between Jordan and Dunleavy, working from an organizational chart, they started laying out the reorganization.

Lieutenant Coleman, they announced, was going in to replace Eddie Connolly as chief of BFS. Geagan was being made a superintendent, head of labor relations. I thought, “Jack and Frank got a triple promotion out of this one!” They were both lieutenants and were skipping right over the ranks of captain and deputy superintendent. In the Boston Police Department, the police commissioner was authorized to promote anybody from any rank into the command staff positions of deputy superintendent and superintendent. They were outside the civil service system, which stopped at captain.

It quickly became clear that this organizational change would just about double the size of the department's command staff. They were moving all these people around, taking suggestions, matching names to positions down to the rank of deputy superintendent. They asked my opinion of who should go where. I was a lieutenant—this was way above my station. I thought, “Wow, here I am in this inner circle completely reorganizing the Boston Police Department. It's the opportunity of a lifetime!” Jack Gifford moved up to deputy superintendent, and I tried to get Al Sweeney considered for a deputy superintendent slot, but they shot him down. The “Wise-ass Kid” had made a few enemies in the department, and it was payback time.

In the most controversial aspect of this reorganization, they were going to divide the city into north and south zones, another layer of bureaucracy, and put a superintendent in charge of each. These people would be sort of ambassadors without portfolio. Dunleavy and Jordan were somewhat vague about the positions, but it was understood that these positions were not going to be very powerful. They would report directly to the commissioner but would not have any control over the other superintendents. They were going to put Connolly in charge of the south zone, so they wouldn't have to break him from superintendent.

As the afternoon went on, the slots started to fill up; all the substantive positions were being taken. Meanwhile, there was still no discussion of the north zone and no discussion of where I might fit into all this. I thought, “Jeez, maybe I'm going to get the north zone.” I supposed that would be all right—it would be a superintendent rather than a deputy superintendent, but it would be a figurehead position.

John Doyle's office was right next door to the commissioner's, and he had to step out to take a phone call. When he had left I said, not being shy, “Well, pretty much everything's filled here. Who are you putting in the north zone?” Without batting an eye, Jordan said, “John Doyle's going in there.”

Doyle, the executive superintendent, was being slipped into what was, by general consensus, a nonentity position. All of a sudden, this shuffling of the deck was even more significant than I'd thought.

“Well, who's going to replace John Doyle?”

Joe Jordan looked at me and said, “You are.”

“As superintendent?”

“Yeah. You'll be the executive superintendent. You'll be the number-two person in the department.”

I was thirty-two years old, I'd been a lieutenant for a year and a half. Every other superintendent in the department was in his fifties. Almost all of them had been on the job longer than I'd been alive.

Doyle walked back in the room, and the discussion went on as if nothing had happened. After a couple of minutes, Jordan said to the rest of us, “Will you excuse me, I need to talk to John.” Outside, I was so nonplussed I had to make sure I'd understood what had just happened. I asked Geagan, “Did Jordan mean what I think he means?”

“Yeah.”

About three minutes later, Doyle came out, ashen. He walked right by us, went into his office, and closed the door. I think we all worried that we were going to hear a gunshot.

Press speculation was going wild. Eddie Corsetti of the
Boston Herald
had always been spoon-fed news of promotions and transfers by Steve Dunleavy. Usually, you could read Corsetti in the Saturday morning edition and know what was going to happen before it came out in personnel orders on Monday. This time, the mayor must have said clearly to Dun-leavy, “There will be no leaks,” because even Corsetti didn't have it.