At the start of the year, Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox spoke with NBC10 Boston about his goals for the 2024, the biggest challenges facing his department and the work that goes into fighting violent crime in Boston.
He also elaborated on the apology that he and Mayor Michelle Wu gave this month in the Stuart murder case, calling it a "no-brainer" to say sorry to the men, who were caught up in a police dragnet that was based on the killer's racist lie.
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"I don't even think it's that brave. It's just common sense," Cox said.
Watch the full interview, or read lightly edited highlights from the transcript below.
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NBC10 Boston: I was looking at some of the end-of-year crime stats in the city of Boston, specifically gun incidents, shootings. It looks like there was a pretty significant decline in gun violence in Boston in 2023... Is that what police are seeing, too?
Commissioner Cox: I'm pretty proud of the officers that work for our department and the partners that we have just here in the city, whether it’s the mayor and her team and our violence reduction management team that we work [with] in the city to work on lowering those. So as far as the number of people shot in the city, it's a record low. We haven't had this few people actually shot since we began keeping records since the BRIC [Boston Regional Intelligence Center] was formed, as far as my knowledge is concerned. In homicides, we had a very low rate last year. It was like 40. This year it’s 37, which is tremendous, but that is a pretty low number going back many, many, many years in general. And so I know it takes a lot of hard work to do that and a lot of partners to do that. More importantly, I want to thank the public. We've been asking the public to help participate and understand that it's not just a public safety issue, it's a community issue, and they've been getting more involved, and they've been very helpful in some of our high-profile incidents that we've had. We've gotten tips and help from them to help resolve some of these issues and hold people accountable. And we're very thankful to all the people in the city that help us keep our rates low as what they are.
I know that's one thing — when there is some sort of incident and you guys are out there, you and the district attorney are always saying, ‘We need your help. We need your help.’ In general, police have trouble getting stuff from witnesses. But you're seeing an improvement with that?
Correct. In this past year, we have seen, certainly, people who have come out and helped us with information to directly contribute to us holding people accountable for those acts. And we appreciate it tremendously, and it's important. Without the public's help, it's virtually almost impossible for us to solve crimes in this way unless we witness it ourselves.
Why do you think people seem to be more willing to share what they know and share what they saw?
I don't know, but I'm happy it's happening or it's starting to occur. I think we spend a lot of time trying to build trust in our community. We've been practicing community policing for a long time here in the city. And we went through a period, certainly, with COVID and the period associated with it, where maybe there was a break between us and the public in a lot of ways, but we're really trying to mend those ties. And I think we're receiving the benefit of actually establishing a true partnership with the public like we had before, and this is the fruits of that relationship.
I'm sure you have many, but what is your biggest goal for 2024?
One of the main goals is trying to make sure that we have officers to fill some of these vacancies that we have and engaging the public in getting them to understand that we are a service industry and that we give back to the public. That's all that we do. And trying to enlist more help from people who want to help others and want to give back and get them to take that exam and join our ranks, because we need that. And so that's a big goal of ours. Another is just to try to continue to lower our crime statistics across the board and create new partnerships and actually reach out to other areas of the city — Boston is a changing city, it's a growing city, it's a big city — just to make sure that we have a presence in all our neighborhoods where they see a true community where they trust the police and police have a relationship with all the residents in these areas.
The Stuart case that you and Mayor Wu — a formal apology was issued recently. Having that back in the spotlight because of some documentaries, does that make that public trust harder? Or is revisiting it in that apology and the transparency helpful? How do you feel about that?
That's up to the public to decide. I do know that that was a period of time when we were probably at the highest point of homicides and shooting victims. And when I say high, probably five to six times higher than what we have today. We probably didn't have as much trust in the community. We weren't practicing community policing back then. All of those things are different today than they were then. The Mission Hill community is totally different. The city is a totally different place today than it was then. I think looking back on history, when you look back, you really have a 20-20 vision on what occurred. Apologizing for the wrong, that clear wrong, that occurred back then is a no-brainer. And I don't even think it's that brave. It's just common sense... And the police department is a total 180 of what it was then. It is a totally different place, from leadership to the officers that come on to the goals and priorities that we have in general. And you can see it in our crime statistics. You can see it in our partnerships. You can see it in so many different ways. Hopefully, you can even see it in our leadership. That's what I hope that people walk away with from that.
Any other trends or anything that you have been seeing lately that might be interesting or noteworthy?
There's been some trends that we haven't had much of an impact on, like some of the drink spiking things that have occurred. We've certainly put a lot more attention on that, but the fact is it's still occurring from time to time. Just dealing with the larcenies that are out there. We're hoping this year we'll create some type of task force to work with both the DA's office and our business partners to figure out, similar to violent crime, are there drivers of this? Are there certain people that are perpetually doing this all the time that maybe we need to pay special attention to or get them special assistance or something to prevent this from happening? ... And that's something we're going to look towards. ... Our solving of some of the shootings that aren't homicides is nowhere near the rate of homicides, and that's something that we probably need to work on and we will work on, hopefully with creating a task force of some type to deal with our non-fatal shootings.
