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‘This has nothing to do with us,’ BPD commissioner says amid Karen Read attorney’s calls for disciplinary review
“I’m not going to speak on this again,” an adamant Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox said Monday.
Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox is firing back after Karen Read’s defense attorney accused him of telling “a bald-faced lie” about his knowledge of the infamous case.
In a scathing letter to Mayor Michelle Wu last week, Alan Jackson called for a disciplinary review over Cox’s remarks about Kelly Dever, a former Boston police officer who testified during Read’s second trial. He also demanded Cox be referred for immediate inclusion on Suffolk County prosecutors’ Brady list, which is used to track law enforcement officials whose credibility has been called into question.
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Jackson’s demands centered on comments Cox made to reporters in July, when he denied pressuring Dever into changing her testimony and claimed he didn’t even know she was associated with the case.
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Prosecutors had alleged Read drunkenly backed her SUV into her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, on a snowy night in Canton in January 2022, but her lawyers maintained she was framed in a law enforcement conspiracy. Jurors ultimately acquitted Read of her most serious charges in June, convicting her only of a drunk driving misdemeanor.
Cox was still chief of the Ann Arbor Police Department in Michigan when O’Keefe died, though he later faced scrutiny after Dever testified about meeting with him before taking the stand.
Dever, who was working as a patrol officer in Canton the morning O’Keefe died, offered some of the most explosive testimony of Read’s second trial. During a testy exchange with Jackson, she walked back statements she’d made to federal officials about seeing witness Brian Higgins and then-Canton Chief Kenneth Berkowitz enter the police station garage where Read’s SUV was stored.
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Dever told jurors she was later reminded she had left the station before the vehicle even arrived, and Cox, for his part, dismissed allegations that he’d meddled in the case.
Asked about Jackson’s demands Monday, Cox again sought to distance himself from Read.
“What I need, you know, is not to be asked this question ever again, because it’s not … pertaining anything to do with the police department,” he told Boston 25 News in remarks caught on camera.
“My condolences to the O’Keefe family for what they’ve gone through, because we did lose a department member,” Cox continued. “But outside of that, this has nothing to do with us, and I’m not going to speak on this again.”
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