about taking the case to trial. “Our attempts to resolve the matter had been rejected over a long period of time and the City of Boston had never disciplined the officers.” Testimony began the same week the St. Clair report came out—a nonjury, civil rights trial before Superior Court Judge Hiller B. Zobel.
Eight of the thirteen officers were from the police district known as Area D, with five officers working in the D–4 station in the South End. This was Kenny Conley’s station, and January 1992 marked the seventh month Kenny had been on the street in uniform as a full-fledged officer.
“I didn’t know most of these guys,” Kenny said about the five officers going to court each day to attend the trial, as well as the other officers in his station. The politics and scrutiny of the department were swirling at levels far above his status as a twenty-three-year-old rookie. “I didn’t talk to many people. I did my job, and I went home.”
But the trial of the Brighton 13 was the talk of the police department—and especially in the D–4 station. Kenny overheard plenty. “The guys were just upset that there were injunctions getting put out against them.” Newspaper coverage typically triggered the talk. “Lunch, dinner, or breakfast, or whatever, the guys would be sitting around writing reports, and someone would have a paper.” That’s when the complaints, commentary, and existential questions began: What the hell’s going on?
It wasn’t pretty. “Guys were saying it was fucking stupid.” Most found the attorney general’s case traitorous, going after Boston officers for doing their job: “Getting charged with arresting a guy.” There was no debate about it—no opposing or cautionary point of view, where some other officer, sergeant, or supervisor was telling everyone to calm down. No one was making the point that brutality charges were serious matters and, if true, unacceptable. “Everybody was hostile towards it,” Kenny said. That consensus extended “throughout the department.”
The two-week trial featured some remarkable testimony. Ten officers took the witness stand and denied beating Smith or seeing him beaten. Two of them provided a rare and stunning peek inside their world. One officer testified that he would never report another officer’s misconduct or wrongdoing. When asked why, the officer talked about the job’s dangers and the need for brotherhood. The officer told the court he would not go against another officer because his own life depended on his colleagues.
The second officer, a veteran of more than three decades, unabashedly told the court that in all his years on the force, he had yet to see another officer commit so much as an infraction of the department’s regulations. When asked how this could be, the officer did not answer he’d simply never seen it happen. He said: “I never see it.”
The remark seemed a passage right out of the code of silence, or “blue wall,” where cops stuck together at all costs—turning a blind eye to any misconduct or worse—where cops refused to “rat” on another officer. This was true even though it was a police officer’s job to rat. Telling on people—ratting people out—went to the job’s core, the sworn duty to uphold the law. To catch lawbreakers, an officer must testify—inform on criminals, either as an eyewitness or by relaying evidence others have provided. But when the lawbreaker was a fellow officer, this principle collided head-on into the “blue wall.” It was all about bonds and ties—and ties that bind. With criminals, no such bond existed. With a fellow officer, it did—and so the culture’s code was one of see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.
The prosecutor cited the two officers’ words as part of the “evidence of the code of silence; that is, not that they sit around a darkened candle in a darkened room and make a pledge, but what we have from that witness stand…a plethora of
Eight of the thirteen officers were from the police district known as Area D, with five officers working in the D–4 station in the South End. This was Kenny Conley’s station, and January 1992 marked the seventh month Kenny had been on the street in uniform as a full-fledged officer.
“I didn’t know most of these guys,” Kenny said about the five officers going to court each day to attend the trial, as well as the other officers in his station. The politics and scrutiny of the department were swirling at levels far above his status as a twenty-three-year-old rookie. “I didn’t talk to many people. I did my job, and I went home.”
But the trial of the Brighton 13 was the talk of the police department—and especially in the D–4 station. Kenny overheard plenty. “The guys were just upset that there were injunctions getting put out against them.” Newspaper coverage typically triggered the talk. “Lunch, dinner, or breakfast, or whatever, the guys would be sitting around writing reports, and someone would have a paper.” That’s when the complaints, commentary, and existential questions began: What the hell’s going on?
It wasn’t pretty. “Guys were saying it was fucking stupid.” Most found the attorney general’s case traitorous, going after Boston officers for doing their job: “Getting charged with arresting a guy.” There was no debate about it—no opposing or cautionary point of view, where some other officer, sergeant, or supervisor was telling everyone to calm down. No one was making the point that brutality charges were serious matters and, if true, unacceptable. “Everybody was hostile towards it,” Kenny said. That consensus extended “throughout the department.”
The two-week trial featured some remarkable testimony. Ten officers took the witness stand and denied beating Smith or seeing him beaten. Two of them provided a rare and stunning peek inside their world. One officer testified that he would never report another officer’s misconduct or wrongdoing. When asked why, the officer talked about the job’s dangers and the need for brotherhood. The officer told the court he would not go against another officer because his own life depended on his colleagues.
The second officer, a veteran of more than three decades, unabashedly told the court that in all his years on the force, he had yet to see another officer commit so much as an infraction of the department’s regulations. When asked how this could be, the officer did not answer he’d simply never seen it happen. He said: “I never see it.”
The remark seemed a passage right out of the code of silence, or “blue wall,” where cops stuck together at all costs—turning a blind eye to any misconduct or worse—where cops refused to “rat” on another officer. This was true even though it was a police officer’s job to rat. Telling on people—ratting people out—went to the job’s core, the sworn duty to uphold the law. To catch lawbreakers, an officer must testify—inform on criminals, either as an eyewitness or by relaying evidence others have provided. But when the lawbreaker was a fellow officer, this principle collided head-on into the “blue wall.” It was all about bonds and ties—and ties that bind. With criminals, no such bond existed. With a fellow officer, it did—and so the culture’s code was one of see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.
The prosecutor cited the two officers’ words as part of the “evidence of the code of silence; that is, not that they sit around a darkened candle in a darkened room and make a pledge, but what we have from that witness stand…a plethora of
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