Dick Lehr

Events: Conversations About Race

Book: The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston's Racial Divide

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Dick Lehr is a professor of journalism at Boston University. He is co-author of Black Mass: The Irish Mob, The FBI, and a Devil’s Deal, which won the 2001 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime book. He is also co-author of Judgment Ridge: The True Story of the Dartmouth Murders. As a reporter for the Boston Globe, Lehr was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting and won numerous national and regional journalism awards.

In The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide, Lehr tells the true story of how Michael Cox, an African American plainclothes officer, was brutally beaten in 1995 by his fellow police officers when he was mistaken for a murder suspect. While Cox was being attacked, Kenny Conley, an Irish American officer from South Boston, was chasing down the actual murder suspect. Weeks later, Cox was waiting for an apology from the Boston Police Department and federal investigators were accusing Conley of lying when he denied seeing the beating.

Based on extensive interviews with everyone involved in the case, The Fence follows Cox’s transformation from beating victim to lonely crusader for justice in his federal civil rights lawsuit against his assailants, the Boston Police Department, and the city. It is a gritty, riveting tale of violence, race, and injustice in a city where tribalism and a troubled history of race relations are part of the urban fabric.