Michael A. Cox Sr. (born June 17, 1965) is an American police officer, currently serving as the commissioner of the Boston Police Department. He previously was the chief of police in Ann Arbor, Michigan, from 2019 until 2022.
Cox was raised in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. Before being appointed Ann Arbor's police chief in 2019, Cox served approximately 30 years as an officer in the Boston Police Department. In 1995, Cox (working in plainclothes) was mistaken by fellow officers for a suspect during a chase, and was seriously beaten by fellow officers in a notable police brutality incident. Cox reached a financial settlement with the department and continued to work as an officer. He worked his way up to Superintendent, the second-highest rank in the department, before departing for Ann Arbor in 2019. He returned to Boston in 2022 to serve as the city's police chief.
Early life Mike Cox was born in mid-1965 at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston to David and Bertha Cox. The youngest of six children in an African-American family, he was raised in the Roxbury neighborhood of the city. Cox's father, David, was the first Black person to own a Boston-based landscaping company. His mother, Berta, worked for thirty years as a wire sorter at Raytheon in Waltham, Massachusetts. Cox's parents met and married while living in Tennessee, and had resided in Boston for more than a decade by the time of Cox's birth. They were middle-class and homeowners, owning a relatively large two-family residence. Cox's grandparents also resided in the home. The Cox family home was located in Dudley Square (today known as Nubian Square), an area that in the 1970s and 1980s experienced higher levels of unemployment, homelessness, and crime. In the early 1970s, the city built a new police station and courthouse serving Dudley Square on a lot that abutted the Cox family's backyard. As a youth, Cox became acquainted with some of the officers who worked there. This, combined with his affinity for television shows about police, inspired him to later pursue a career in law enforcement.
Cox attended private school in Brookline, then the private Milton Academy for one year, where he faced class-based discrimination. He moved to Wooster School in 1981 and was admitted to Providence College in 1984. Cox frequently saw his differences from other private school students as the result of a class divide and not a race divide. He finished his college education at Morehouse College, an HBCU in Atlanta. After graduating from college, he took a civil service exam to begin a career in law enforcement.
Initial tenure at the Boston Police Department Cox joined the Boston Police Department (BPD) in 1989, after graduating from college. From then until 2019, Cox spent approximately 30 years as a police officer in the department. Over the course of his initial tenure at the department, he rose through the ranks, ultimately becoming Deputy Superintendent in 2013. Cox twice received the Boston Police Department Medal of Honor, in addition to other department commendations.
Early career Cox joined BPD in 1989. When he joined the department, he befriended many white officers and was regarded as "color-blind" in his own views on race.
1995 beating of Cox by fellow officers In the early 1990s, around the that time Cox first joined the police force, levels of crime were high in Boston's majority-minority neighborhoods. The BPD's internal culture regarded loyalty as more important than adherence to the protocols taught in training, which resulted in widespread brutality and a code of silence ("blue wall of silence"). BPD officers frequently used stop and frisk tactics on black men and women, and beat black men with impunity. Officers lying under oath (perjury) to cover up such incidents was common. A mayoral blue-ribbon commission to reform the police and a permanent injunction placed by a judge had both failed to change police culture.
While doing plainclothes work as an officer in training, Cox was twice mistaken by other police for a suspect and briefly beaten. In one of these incidents, he was purposefully hit by a police vehicle and then pinned by officers to a wall. He recovered quickly both of these times and decided not to file complaints.
In 1995, while Cox was working in plainclothes, his car was at the front of a high-speed chase in pursuit of gang members suspected of homicide. The chase involved several cars from the BPD and other departments. Cox left his vehicle to pursue the suspect on foot, and was again mistaken by other officers for a suspect. He was badly beaten by four officers and hospitalized, suffering a serious brain injury. After the officers realized his actual identity (upon one officer noticing a police badge under Cox's jacket), they quickly abandoned him, still bleeding on the sidewalk. It took Cox six months to recover from many of the physical injuries he incurred.
Cox learned only from newspaper reports that involved officers had failed to report the incident, and has recounted that he became upset after discovering the efforts by the officers to coverup what had occurred. Before he ultimately decided to file a complaint, Cox began receiving harassing phone calls from other officers seeking to intimidate him. For the next four years, Cox sought formal acknowledgement and apology for what had taken place. In pursuit of this, he ultimately brought a lawsuit against BPD over the incident, breaking years of internal silence within the department on such misconduct. This defied the department's so-called "blue wall of silence." While justice for his beating, Cox was rendered a social pariah within the department, and faced threats and harassment from colleagues. However, he remained committed to his job as and officer and refused to leave. The lawsuit Cox brought ultimately resolved with a settlement from BPD, with Cox receiving $900,000 in damages and $400,000 in attorneys' fees. However, no officer admitted to the beating. Following the legal battle, three of the officers were eventually fired; but one, Dave Williams, successfully sued for unjust termination and was returned to the service in 2006. Williams was again fired for brutality in 2009, but reinstated after that. As of 2023, Williams was still with the department, assigned to domestic violence cases. Additional involved officers did not face firing.
The incident and its aftermath was the subject of the book The Fence, written by author and former reporter Dick Lehr of The Boston Globe. Lehr has opined that, in Boston, the incident of which Cox was the victim was "one of the worst cases of police brutality in modern times."
Cox has expressed that he does not harbor continued resentment about the experience. After being appointed chief of the department in 2024, he remarked that while he regards himself to have been a victim of "unconstitutional policing", he does not view this experience as defining himself,
Continued work and promotions After the lawsuit was settled, Cox remained in the BPD and continued to work his way up in the department through promotions. Lehr has opined that Cox's continued presence within the department served as an important implicit reminder of the 1995 incident and the systemic culture that had fostered it, importantly preventing the department from forgetting about it. Lehr has opined, "The fact that he stayed, that the story did become a big story and a big lawsuit, sensitized the city and some in the command staff that the power of the blue wall of silence is something that needed to be confronted."
Cox worked as a sergeant detective in the department's intelligence unit. He also worked on assignment to protection details for visiting dignitaries, served as a liaison to the United States Secret Service, and was a supervisor assigned to the city's Joint Terrorism Task Force. In 1997, Cox completed a continuing education program at Providence College.
In the early 2000s, Cox began serving in the department's Bureau of Investigative Services, in which role he oversaw the bureau's forensics division. Cox's supervisor at the bureau, Paul Joyce, has credited Cox as being instrumental in reforms that were made to his division which modernized how the department conducted forensic investigation.
Deputy Superintendent and Superintendent (2013–19) In 2013, Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole promoted Cox to the rank of Deputy Superintendent. Within a few years, he was further promoted to Superintendent, the second-highest rank in the BPD. As a bureau chief, Cox headed the as Bureau of Professional Development and the Boston Police Academy from 2018 until leaving the department in 2019 to accept a position in the Ann Arbor Police Department.
Around this time, Cox decided to continue his education. He has cited his interest in fixing the shortcomings of police departments as his primary motivation for returning to university, as he wanted to receive further relevant education both about criminal justice and running organizations. He earned a master's degree in criminal justice, and an MBA from the Questrom School of Business at Boston University.
Chief of the Ann Arbor Police Department (2019–22) In June 2019, Cox had received the recommendation of Ann Arbor, Michigan's Independent Community Police Oversight Commission to serve as the Ann Arbor Police Department's new chief of police. Two other candidates were seeking also the position. In July 2019, his appointment was unanimously confirmed by the Ann Arbor City Council. He was sworn in as chief in September 2019.
Cox's interest in working in Ann Arbor in part arose from an interest in the experience of heading a department with a smaller police force than Boston's (Ann Arbor had approximately 120 police officers compared to the more than 2,000 BPD had).
During his tenure, Cox faced the challenges of leading the department in navigating the COVID-19 pandemic and George Floyd protests. Nathan Clark of mLive wrote towards at end of Cox's tenure in Ann Arbor, "While Ann Arbor Police Chief Michael Cox only served with the city a short time, his tenure has been marked by successes, challenging times and controversy."
Transparency and community policing Increasing the department's transparency with the public was a central focus of Cox during his tenure in Ann Arbor. When he had been interviewed for the position in March 2019, Cox had expressed his support for public transparency and opined that Ann Arbor's Police Oversight Commission played an important role in bridging Ann Arbor's divide between police and the public. The Ann Arbor City Council tasked Cox with expanding the city's community policing initiatives, and Cox worked to re-engage and grow citizen crime watch groups.
2020 administrative leave In February 2020, Cox was temporarily placed on administrative leave due to personnel concerns involving allegations that Cox created a hostile work environment and that employees feared retaliation, as well as separate accusations of insubordination. The concerns primarily emerged from a dispute between Cox and a department employee over the firing of a department colleague.
A review judged the accusations overall to have been unfounded. The investigation commissioned by the city concluded that there was no evidence of Cox behaving in a manner that would have created a hostile work environment, but did find that (regardless of Cox's intent) there was evidence that some employees feared retaliation by him with a legitimate basis. After the conclusion of the investigation, Cox was reinstated.
Cox admitted he had made some mistakes in communicating with others in the department. He cited his failure to adjust to the difference in the culture surrounding communication in the Boston Police Department (located in a large East Coast city) versus that of Ann Arbor (located in a smaller Midwestern city). He acknowledged that he needed to better his communication.