Read attorney: Boston police commissioner should be investigated for false statements

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A lawyer for Karen Read demanded in an Oct. 27 letter that Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox be investigated for “lying” about the criminal case against her.

Attorney Alan Jackson represented Read, who was accused of hitting and killing Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe with her SUV in 2022, throughout her two trials. Read was acquitted in June. He wrote to Boston Mayor Michelle Wu claiming Cox had falsely denied having any connection to Read’s case.

“Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox has been caught in a lie — and not a small one,” Jackson wrote.

Jackson said Cox previously stated he had “nothing to do with” Read’s case and that he did not know that Boston Police Officer Kelly Dever, who testified in the trial, was even associated with it.

Read’s attorney said that these were false statements by Cox, and that Cox was wrong to claim he did not have anything to do with Read’s case, as O’Keefe was a Boston police officer.

“For the Commissioner to suggest that he had ‘nothing to do with that case’ defies both logic and leadership. Common sense tells us he had everything to do with it,” Jackson wrote.

However, Cox’s predecessor, Gregory Long, was the Boston police commissioner at the time of O’Keefe’s death.

Jackson also stated that in February 2024, the FBI sent Cox an email about Dever, who was working patrol as a Canton police officer on Jan. 28, 2022, the night before O’Keefe’s death.

Cox then had a meeting with Dever noted on his official calendar, “exactly as Dever would later testify and Cox would deny,” Jackson said.

Jackson called Cox’s claims “a bald-faced lie.” He said the commissioner should be investigated for “dishonesty, lack of candor, and conduct unbecoming of an officer” under department policy.

The attorney also said Cox should be referred for inclusion on the “Brady list” of law enforcement officers with a history of misconduct.

Neither Cox nor Wu immediately responded to requests for comment.

Read was accused of backing into O’Keefe, her boyfriend at the time, with her SUV outside a Canton home after a night of drinking in January 2022.

After her first trial ended in a mistrial, a second jury on June 18 found her not guilty on charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death. She was convicted of operating a vehicle under the influence and was sentenced to one year of probation.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger.

Reporting by Bailey Allen, USA TODAY NETWORK – New England / The Patriot Ledger

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