Michelle Wu, a fierce advocate for police transparency before becoming Boston mayor, now has a dismal record of holding her own police accountable from blocking body cam footage from going public to declaring her commissioner a civilian to avoid scrutiny. With one notable exception, Wu has said little about police accountability after being elected mayor four years ago and instead won the endorsement of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Union. The exception was when Wu said the city’s Office of Police Accountability and Transparency (OPAT) was collecting reports on alleged abuses by ICE officers. But when it comes to holding her own police department accountable, Wu has been lax. Her administration has often resisted the media’s public records requests for body cam footage and has insulated Commissioner Michael Cox from potential scrutiny by hiding behind technicalities that he’s not a police officer. Wu’s administration, which is being sued by an ex-city employee involved in a City Hall love triangle, has refused to release body cam footage from the night of the employee’s assault arrest. The arrest prompted Wu to fire her. Marwa Khudaynazar claims recordings she has seen from police will show she never punched a female responding officer, and has asked a Boston federal court judge to reconsider its approval of a motion to seal the body cam footage. Police body cam recordings are governed by public records law and Secretary of State William Galvin has fought a bill to make them exempt from the law. He noted that only footage that could identify witnesses or victims is generally allowed to be withheld by police. “Allowing police departments to withhold any footage captured on these cameras would interfere with the public’s ability to oversee their own government,” Galvin, who is in charge of enforcing the public records law, wrote to lawmakers. “This is an issue of particular importance to minority communities, and withholding videos of police interactions would only breed mistrust. This is an area where we need more transparency, not less.” Wu’s administration also became embroiled recently in the Karen Read case after Read’s attorney, Alan Jackson, wrote a scathing letter to Wu and the state Police Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission asking for a disciplinary review of Cox for “dishonesty, lack of candor and conduct unbecoming of an officer.” Jackson suggested Cox lied when he said he didn’t know about former officer Kelly Dever’s involvement in the Read case and pressured her to change her testimony a charge Cox has strongly denied. Dever is a former Boston police officer and Canton police officer who worked the night before John O’Keefe was found dead in the snow. But the POST Commission executive director Enrique Zuniga rejected Jackson’s letter, saying Cox was not subject to review because he’s a civilian. Cox is a former longtime Boston police officer picked by Wu to lead the department. “According to the City, Commissioner Cox does not personally carry out police duties and functions,” the letter from Zuniga said. “Based in part on this information, the Commission thus far has not required non-sworn civilian executives such as Commissioner Cox to obtain law enforcement certification nor has the Commission treated them as being subject to other statutory and regulatory provisions governing sworn law enforcement officers.” WBUR has also reported that Cox “routinely” rejects recommendations by the Office of Police Accountability and Transparency (OPAT) to punish officers accused of wrongdoing. The office, which includes a civilian review board and was created by the City Council and signed by then-Mayor Marty Walsh after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, has reviewed 18 citizen complaints and recommended discipline in some cases. “The ordinance says that we make recommendations to the police commissioner,” said Joshua Dankoff, who serves on OPAT. “I think it is not within the spirit of the ordinance, or the intention of it, to then have those recommendations not be responded to at all.”.
https://www.bostonherald.com/2025/11/25/battenfeld-michelle-wus-lax-record-holding-boston-police-accountable/
Battenfeld: Michelle Wu’s lax record holding Boston police accountable
