Walsh said in a statement Wednesday night that he had appointed General Gregory Long to serve as acting commissioner while the city hired an outside attorney to conduct a full and impartial investigation into allegations that White threatened and threatened the then-allegation. has to shoot. wife, also a Boston police officer, and was later ordered to stay away from his family.
“These troubling issues were not known to me or my staff, but should have been at the forefront,” Walsh, who was in Washington, DC, said during his nomination hearing Thursday to become President Biden’s Labor Secretary. “When I heard of these serious allegations, I acted immediately.”
The Globe urged police for the first time last week on White’s work history, including three home affairs cases, hours after Walsh announced he would appoint him commissioner. White served as Gross’s chief of staff. The department provided basic information but did not want to provide internal affairs.
The Walsh government responded on Wednesday after a Globe reporter presented the allegations of domestic violence to the city set out in court documents.
A judge issued a restraining order on May 5, 1999, forcing White to vacate his home, stay away from his wife and children, and hand over his service weapon. The Globe could not find evidence that White was charged with a crime. At the time, he denied the allegations in court documents.
White’s wife accused him, according to court records, of pushing her and beating her once. A friend of the couple also told police that White – after a confrontation with his wife and another acquaintance – said he “wanted to shoot her and him”, according to a summary of an interview by ” a detective from Boston. it was included in a trial and family court file.
White’s daughter, who was 17 at the time, tells the detective that her father told her not to scare him when he slept because “I sleep with a gun under my pillow.”
White’s sudden suspension raises a number of questions about what investigation, if any, was done before Walsh appointed White in one of the city’s most prominent positions on Thursday. One of the cases on internal cases requested by the Globe coincided with the time frame of the accusation of domestic violence, although it could not be confirmed that it was related.
In his statement, Walsh said he had asked White to step quickly into the role of police commissioner last Friday so Gross could spend more time with his family. Walsh made the move in the likely waning days of his government, shortly before he was due to be tried in the Senate confirmation.
Although Boston mayors have the sole power to appoint the police commissioner, the city has often taken its time to conduct national investigations, nominate finalists, and make efforts to engage the public, which criminal law experts say has become increasingly important in a moment when trust between the police and the people they serve has weakened.
City Council President Kim Janey, who becomes acting mayor when Walsh leaves office, said in a statement that she takes “any allegation of this nature very seriously.”
“I have had the opportunity to work with Commissioner White while I was on the Council, but this is the first time I have heard this issue, and I am deeply concerned,” Janey said in a statement before Walsh said has that he suspends White. “The public deserves transparency.”
A Globe study published in December found that Boston police officers accused of crimes over the past decade often encountered a more forgiving legal system than civilians. Allegations were sometimes investigated internally and not shared with prosecutors.
The current policy of the Department of Domestic Violence states that ‘arrest is preferable’.
Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins said in a statement that her office was not aware of the allegations against White and could not comment on them.
During White’s inauguration this week, Walsh spoke of the department’s commitment to ‘accountability and transparency’. But the process of appointing a white commissioner was strikingly opaque.
Under state law, Boston police commissioners serve five years, though it was not immediately clear whether White would serve a full five years or fill the remaining term of office of Gross, who was appointed in 2018.
White has a long history of public service and first works as a firefighter before joining the police force. The department had earlier described him as a “respected street man who spent his career around the neighborhoods where he grew up – Roxbury and Dorchester.” He studied at Jeremiah E. Burke High School and obtained a bachelor’s degree in law studies in 2005 with a concentration in criminal law from Newbury College.
In 1999, White was a sergeant and had been married to a fellow Boston police officer for nearly 20 years. In May of that year, White’s wife wrote in the application for restraint at the time: ‘We reason a lot and he always tries to push me down and I’m afraid he will come in and kill me because he’s angry. The Globe does not identify the woman because she was the possible victim of domestic violence. Reached by phone, she declined to comment.
In a subsequent divorce in September 2000, a lawyer for White’s wife wrote: “The man admitted that he beat the woman (once) and slept with a gun under his pillow.” A lawyer for the future commissioner wrote that his client ‘strongly denies that he ever beat the woman [or] threatens to harm her. ”
However, White’s lawyer also wrote that “the man admits that there have been incidents of fighting between the parties and that on some occasions they have increased to some degree of physical contact by both parties, including the woman.” But White’s lawyer argued that the allegations of restraint and abuse were an attempt to alienate White from his home and children and “humiliate him personally and professionally.”
White noted in his legal letters that his wife’s claims were inconsistent. She claimed in a divorce certificate that he had beaten her once, but in a police report of May 4, 1999 about the threat to shoot her, it was noted that she told the police that they had ‘arguments, but no physical abuse ‘.
The same day, a separate police report was filed against his wife for harassment for allegedly calling the Roxbury police station in search of White and shouting the officer who answered the phone, according to records recorded in their divorce files.
Boston has often been pleased with the appointment of its own police commissioner, said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, an organization that helps cities in their search for new leadership.
Both of his former commissioners – Gross and William Evans – have spent their entire careers in the police department. And despite the natural appeal of the job for national candidates, city officials rarely picked from outside the city limits.
“Boston is mostly the kind of place where the mayor knows who he or she wants, and that’s it,” Wexler said. He was once an operating assistant to the commissioner in the Boston police station. “Some cities, that’s just what they do.”
But even in those cases, there has often been an attempt to gather a wide range of candidates.
In 1985, Raymond Flynn, then mayor, traveled to Philadelphia and New York to interview candidates for commissioner before finally deciding on his friend, Francis Roache, a longtime Boston police officer.
And in 2006, then-Mayor Thomas M. Menino first hired Edward F. Davis at the Lowell Police Department after a nationwide search that included interviews with half a dozen candidates.
Last week after his appointment, White promised in a brief interview that he would work to ensure that we are very transparent so that the public has confidence in us.
“There will be no major changes at the moment,” he said. ‘The most important thing is to just go in the door and make sure the ship runs straight. I think the department is moving forward in a good direction. ”
Andrew Ryan can be reached at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @globeandrewryan. Dugan Arnett can be reached at [email protected].