The Fence: A Police Cover-Up Along Boston's Racial Divide (5 page)

It was in May 1988, while Mike and Kimberly began planning their life together and Mike was beginning to think seriously about police work, that a man named John L. Smith Jr. sat in his car smoking crack cocaine. He was parked near Fenway Park, home to the Boston Red Sox. It was shortly after sunrise when he began driving away erratically. Two Boston police officers in a cruiser picked up his scent. When Smith drove the 1978 Cadillac through a red light, the police wanted him to pull over. But Smith took off. Soon eight police cruisers raced after him. The chase ended when Smith’s car hit a curb, a tire went flat, and the engine died. Officers jumped from their cruisers and surrounded the Cadillac. They ordered Smith to get out. Smith flopped across the front seat. Two officers shattered the front windows with their flashlights. One dragged Smith out and threw him to the ground. Smith was unarmed and limp. Three officers piled on top of Smith while others stood by and watched as he got his licking.

In the beating’s aftermath, the thirteen officers stonewalled investigators: No cop saw anything or could explain Smith’s injuries. The case of police brutality and the cover-up, which became known as the Brighton 13 case, for the number of officers involved and the station where most were assigned, would haunt the department Mike Cox was planning to join for years to come.

Mike Cox and Craig Jones, in the Tango K–8 car, returned to the club Cortee’s shortly after 1
A.M
. Craig drove. They headed first to the end of a short street running right behind and below the club, “trying to get a feel, you know, if there were a lot of people up there,” Craig said. Nothing had changed since their walk-through earlier in the evening: Cars filled the parking lot, and the club scene was peaking.

The several hundred patrons inside were unaware they were being surrounded by teams of officers in street clothes from the Boston Police Department’s anti-gang unit. In the crowd was a young Roxbury man named Lyle Jackson and two of his friends, who were in a card game toward the back of the club.

Outside, Mike and Craig left their original position for a second one. They circled around and drove their unmarked cruiser down Washington Street past the club and then took the first left onto Bowdoin Street. The street went up a hill overlooking the club. In the winter, with trees barren of leaves, “you could see good down through the yards,” Mike said. Craig pulled into one of the driveways. He climbed out to see if there was an even better spot to view the club, but there wasn’t. Mike got out and took a pee.

They were in radio contact with others in the gang unit—two-man teams, such as partners Joe Teahan and Gary Ryan, which had staked out the club from various vantage points up and down Washington Street. One gang unit colleague named Donald Caisey sat in a cab on Washington Street directly across from the club’s entrance. The cab was a decoy vehicle the unit used for nights like this one. Caisey’s car had the best view.

Everyone was in place. A few minutes later Caisey radioed that two girls were in front of the club shoving each other. Mike and Craig were on their way in an instant. They didn’t want Caisey to out the surveillance cab for this. On the way, another unit radioed that one girl put something down her front, but they couldn’t see what it was.

Mike and Craig turned on their police lights and pulled up next to the girls. “What did you put down your shirt?” Craig demanded as he opened his window. The girl hesitated. “You just put something down your shirt—just give it to us.” Craig threatened to take her down to the station. The girl reached down her front and pulled out a butcher-sized knife. “It was like a hatchet,” Craig said. The girl handed the knife to Craig.

Even though the girl possessed a dangerous weapon, the gang unit wasn’t interested in a couple of girls getting into it. They were targeting the street gangs. Craig ordered them to scram. “Go home.” The girls, surly, went off into the night in separate directions.

Craig turned around to return quickly to their surveillance spot on Bowdoin Street. They had to be patient, and so they sat in their cruiser and “Just watched—watching and waiting, until two o’clock, until the place closed.”

CHAPTER 2

Robert “Smut” Brown

R
obert Brown III was his given name, but on the street he was known simply as Smut. It was just after midnight on January 25, 1995, when Smut pulled his maroon Volkswagen Fox onto a side street around the corner from the Cortee’s.

Smut climbed out of his car knowing Indira was waiting for him back at their apartment with a shrimp dinner she’d made for the two of them. But waiting for Smut was something Indira had gotten used to a long time ago, back to the fifth grade when they’d first met. Smut was twenty-three now, and Indira’s twenty-third birthday was coming up in a few weeks. They had two kids—their first, a girl, was already six.

Smut was okay with Indira waiting because this was Tiny’s day—Tiny’s birthday. Smut and Tiny had been partying on and off all afternoon, and Smut had agreed to catch up with him at the Cortee’s. Tiny was John Evans, and the nickname didn’t really fit. He wasn’t so tall, an inch or so taller than Smut’s five-seven, but he was bull-necked and barrel-chested and topped two hundred pounds. Tiny’s hair was shoulder-length but he kept it braided. The two had become friends the summer before. They’d both grown up in Roxbury and Mattapan. They shared an interest in drug dealing, and were now associated with a street gang known as KOZ, an abbreviation for kilos and ounces. Tiny also had a terrible stutter, and Smut felt bad, even sorry, for him, because the stutter was frustrating to Tiny and sometimes made him seem stupid, and Smut knew that wasn’t true.

Smut strode toward the front of the club. By his side walked Boogie-Down—or Ron Tinsley. Smut had given him a ride. Boogie-Down looked menacing—had this coldness about him when he raised his eyebrows and stared. He wore a gold-colored ball earring. Like Smut, Boogie-Down was twenty-three, and he had a criminal record for possessing drugs and firearms. He’d violated his probation and was lately trying to lie low by staying at his girlfriend’s apartment. He was also packing—a black 9mm, semiautomatic Heckler & Koch pistol. Days before, he’d gotten into a beef with a few guys in his girlfriend’s building, and so he was carrying for protection. With bouncers stationed at the club’s entrance, though, Boogie-Down left the gun in Smut’s car.

Smut was familiar with the Cortee’s—just as he knew the area—but he didn’t much hang out there. He preferred the Rose Club or Conway’s in Mattapan. In fact, of all of Boston’s neighborhoods, Smut was most comfortable—and felt most safe—in Mattapan, the southernmost neighborhood before crossing into the suburban town of Milton. Mattapan was where his mother lived, and where Smut used to live with her.

The Cortee’s was busy. People milled at the front door. Smut crossed the street. He was dressed in brown jeans made by Guess?, a gray top, and a bulky, brown leather jacket. He wore a gold-colored watch and a gold-colored necklace with a square plate. In his pockets he kept his car keys on a BMW chain, his cell phone, and $795 in cash.

Smut was feeling good, or “nice,” as he liked to say. He’d been sipping E & J’s “Cask & Cream” during his day spent riding around with Tiny Evans. Smut liked the sweet taste of the creamy liqueur with its hint of butterscotch. He knew who’d be inside—plenty of girls, plenty of other dealers, plenty of guys from rival groups, or, as the police liked to label them, gangs named after a city street: like Castlegate, Humboldt, and so on. Hopefully, Tiny was already there.

Smut flashed an ID at the door and went in.

By definition, “smut” is a noun with several meanings—a particle of dirt; or a smudge made by soot, smoke, or dirt; or an obscenity. Negative connotations aside, the nickname was actually a term of endearment. One of his mother’s girlfriends had come up with it. He was five or six at the time, the kind of boy who could not sit still. He had a knack for turning the family’s apartment upside down. One holiday season he crawled under the Christmas tree and toppled it. Another time he tried to make breakfast for his mother, Mattie, but didn’t have any idea how to do it. He presented her with a concoction of peanut butter mixed with milk and anything else he could find in the kitchen, leaving a huge mess for her to clean up. But it was hard for Mattie to stay upset with her son, and it was during one of the boy’s well-meaning messes that her girlfriend laughed, looked at him, and exclaimed, You just Smut!

It stuck—a nickname born from soul and the latest mess he’d made. When spoken, young Robert heard only warmth, and he embraced his new name. “I guess I was like Dennis the Menace,” he said. “He didn’t mean no harm. He had a good heart. He was just always getting in trouble.” His mother would always still call him Robert while his father tended to call him Bob. But to everyone else in the projects he was Smut.

Mattie and Robert Brown Jr. were living in the Franklin Hill housing project in Dorchester when Smut was born on June 26, 1971, although he was not their firstborn. Living in Georgia, near where Robert was from originally, the couple had a boy named Bobby in September 1965. He fell ill with pneumonia and died in the hospital three months later. Mattie was disconsolate. The couple tried again and had twin girls, and then a third daughter was born in 1968. Smut was born after the Browns moved to Boston. Mattie decided to name him Robert after the first Bobby she’d lost, and Smut grew up a “mama’s boy.” He was the first to admit it. “Mama really took to me.”

When the Browns moved into the Franklin Hill housing project it was nearly two decades old, a complex of nine three-story buildings built on the rocky terrain and ledges just south of the city’s sprawling Franklin Park. The red-brick buildings were clustered around concrete courtyards, asphalt parking lots, and patches of grass. The Browns’ unit at 11 Franklin Hill Avenue was located in the corner of one of the courtyards. The entry door, painted gray and made of heavy metal, led to a set of stairs. The Browns’ apartment was on the second floor, one of four off a windowless landing. The subsidized rent was $40 a month.

From his top bunk, Smut could look out into the inner courtyard and see anyone approaching their entry. He saw lots of fist-fights. “Every day there was a fistfight,” he said, or so it seemed to a little kid. One time he was in the entry with one of his sisters when a man from the project began to bother her. The man would not let his sister go past him. She pushed, and they struggled. Smut was scared. When he was older he wondered if the man had been trying to rape her. Beyond a flagpole on the courtyard’s far side was a playground where Smut’s sisters took him when he was a toddler. The Dumpsters they passed made a lasting impression. “Rats flew out of them in the summer.”

Smut daydreamed about growing up and becoming an astronaut, and, for a time, he was into what he later referred to as the “firefighter thing.” “Robert was a very active kid,” his mother said. “He used to jump in the air and do this flip, and scare me so bad.” Smut had lots of cousins and “cousins,” the kids of his parents’ friends. Families were always getting together. “Mama Janet” Jackson, for example, lived with her family on the other side of Franklin Park near Humboldt Avenue. Smut’s aunt would take a carload of kids over to play at Mama Janet’s, or Mama Janet would visit the project with her sons. The boys played hide and seek, tag, or football. Smut and Mama Janet’s oldest son, Dino, were the same age, while a younger son, Danny, was almost two years younger. Danny was a nickname; his given name was Lyle—Lyle Jackson.

Smut’s father was a model of steady work. When the family first moved into the project, he worked as a packer in the shipping department of the Vanity Dress Company in downtown Boston. Laid off, he quickly went to work for a florist and then, just before Smut was born in 1971, he got a job at Doherty, Blacker and Shepard driving a lumber delivery truck. “He worked there forever,” said Smut. Bobby Brown worked hard and was proud of his long service with the company. He had a photograph taken in late 1976 of his flatbed DBS truck parked in the company yard, loaded with lumber. The black-and-white picture of the truck—just a truck, no person in sight—was kept in a large envelope filled with photographs of birthdays, picnics, and other family moments.

Unlike other kids Smut knew, his father was home, the head of the family. But Smut and his father were not close, and early on Smut got the idea his father did not like him. Smut felt his father was distant and hard on him. “He was there, but not there,” Smut said. “He was always yelling at me.” Smut would complain to his mother, saying his father didn’t love him. Why you sayin’ that? Mattie would ask. She tried to reassure her son, but she also knew he had reason to feel the way he did. “I think Bobby loved Robert,” she said, “but had a poor way of showing it.” Her husband was abusive. “Robert was afraid of his father.” The relationship only worsened as time went on.

Bobby Brown did want more for his family. He began looking at houses, and by the late 1970s, he and Mattie found one a few miles south of the housing project in Mattapan. The seller of 231 West Selden Street was the federal government—the department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD—which had taken control of the home in 1977 and was selling it off as part of a national housing program. The price was $24,000. Under the program, if Bobby and Mattie Brown came up with $750 in cash, they could finance the balance. The couple seized the chance. They took out a thirty-year mortgage for $23,250, with monthly payments of $195.53.

West Selden Street was long and wide. The top of the street, right off the busy and commercial Morton Street, had mostly two-family homes tightly packed on small lots. Farther south the street opened up—larger lots and more single-family homes. Behind the homes on the even side of the street were the wooded grounds of the Boston Sanatorium, which the city developed in the early 1900s to care for the poor suffering from tuberculosis. Bordering the sanatorium’s fifty-one acres gave this end of West Selden Street an almost suburban feel to it.