Reddit rediscovers ‘Boston’s Rodney King’ — here’s what he’s doing now
The Today I Learned section of Reddit on Wednesday revived the story of Michael Cox, a plainclothes Boston police officer who in 1995 was mistaken for a murder suspect, viciously kicked and beaten by fellow policemen, and then harassed by his brothers in blue as they tried to bury the story.
The Reddit post, which linked to a 2009 story about Cox on Boston.com, garnered more than 5,500 upvotes and 1,500 comments by early Wednesday afternoon.
Cox’s story was detailed in The Fence, a book by acclaimed former Boston Globe reporter Dick Lehr. More recently, The New York Times called it “Boston’s Rodney King case’’ because of its high-profile mix of racial overtones and excessive police violence. Cox suffered kidney damage and head wounds in the beating.
“The Boston police department chewed up one of its own and spit him out,’’ Lehr said of the story to The Washington Post in 2009.
As the book explains, no officers were criminally convicted for the beating. Cox sued in federal court, saying his civil rights had been violated, and settled for a total of $1.3 million.
One officer present at the scene, Kenneth Conley, was found guilty of perjury for lying about what he saw, but his case was later overturned on appeal.
David Williams, one of the officers implicated in the beatings, was fired in 1998 for the beating, reinstated and given back pay in 2005, fired again in 2012 for allegedly using an illegal chokehold and lying about it, and then ordered to be reinstated in 2013.
Cox remains with the Boston Police Department, most recently as deputy superintendent. (A Boston police spokesperson declined to make him available for comment.)
Cox’s son, Michael Cox Jr., played football at Michigan and UMass and was drafted by the New York Giants in the 7th round in 2013.
Giants executives might have found the Reddit post helpful; officials told The New York Times that they knew nothing of Cox’s infamous family history when they drafted him.
Photos: Boston’s history of police shootings of unarmed teens.
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