"The Fence is a monumental account of an urban travesty. Dick Lehr's
depiction of one of the darkest chapters in recent Boston law
enforcement history and the savage injustices perpetrated on two hero
cops--one black, one white--has all the earmarks of a classic." --
Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River
The Boston police officers who brutally beat Michael Cox at a deserted
fence one icy night in 1995 knew soon after that they had made a
terrible mistake. The badge and handgun under Cox's bloodied parka
proved he was not a black gang member but a plainclothes cop chasing the
same murder suspect his assailants were. Officer Kenny Conley, who
pursued and apprehended the suspect while Cox was being beaten, was then
wrongfully convicted by federal prosecutors of lying when he denied
witnessing the attack on his brother officer. Both Cox and Conley were
native Bostonians, each dedicating his life to service with the Boston
Police Department. But when they needed its support, they were
heartlessly and ruthlessly abandoned.
A remarkable work of investigative journalism, Dick Lehr's The Fence
tells the shocking true story of the attack and its aftermath--and
exposes the lies and injustice hidden behind a "blue wall of silence."
