BOSTON — On March 1, 2025, at a Chick-fil-A on Boylston Street, a 32-year-old man named Lmark Jaramillo pulled a knife and tried to stab at least two people. An off-duty Boston Police officer shot him dead. That night, at the press conference, Mayor Michelle Wu offered condolences to Jaramillo's family. She said the words alongside her police commissioner. When critics pushed back, Wu doubled down — "I expressed condolences along with our police commissioner and district attorney because every loss of life is a horrible tragedy," she told reporters.
The commissioner she named was Michael Cox.
Sunday night — 16 months later — a lone Boston Police officer rolled up to a noise complaint at Old Road and Ellington Street in Dorchester and found himself surrounded by 100 to 150 people. He was pelted with trash and open containers of alcohol as he tried to arrest a dirt-bike rider. He was rescued by his own union president posting the story to X the next day — not by a public statement from his own commissioner.
The Sunday-night attack on a lone Boston Police officer at a Dorchester street takeover. (Photo: Bystander video via BPPA.)
Four days later, Commissioner Cox has said nothing publicly about the attack on his officer. He has not appeared at a podium. He has not released a statement. The department's official channels have continued to push traffic advisories, homicide-investigation updates, and reminders about FIFA watch parties across Boston.
The Commissioner had condolences for a knife-wielder. He has silence for a cop.
The union has not been silent. The Boston Police Patrolmen's Association called the attack disgraceful, warned that the officer was "lucky to be alive," and put the blame directly on understaffing.
A pattern
This is not the first time Cox's silence has followed a police-staffing flashpoint. In May, Mass Daily News reported that Mayor Wu's office instructed Cox to stay away from a City Council oversight hearing on the department's staffing crisis. It was Cox's second Council no-show in six weeks.
Commissioner Michael Cox at the podium. Mayor Wu appointed him in 2022. (Photo: City of Boston.)
MASSDAILYNEWS
STAY UPDATED
Get Mass Daily News delivered to your inbox
ADVERTISEMENT · Interested in advertising?
ADVERTISEMENT · Interested in advertising?
Sources at City Hall told MDN at the time that the mayor's office viewed Cox appearing before the Council as politically risky — the hearing would have given councilors a chance to ask the commissioner directly whether Boston has enough cops to police the city. Cox did not appear. The mayor's office would not confirm the direction.
Now, with an officer publicly attacked and his union openly warning of a cop being killed, Cox is again absent from the public conversation. The pattern is holding.
Whose commissioner?
Boston's police commissioner serves at the pleasure of the mayor. Cox was appointed by Wu in 2022 after a national search that the administration framed as a fresh start following the Dennis White nomination collapse under Wu's predecessor. He arrived with a reformer's résumé — a 30-year BPD veteran who had also served as police chief in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
But his role is not to be the mayor's spokesman. It is to lead the department — a job that includes speaking publicly when officers are attacked in the street.
In Dorchester Sunday night, an officer was outnumbered a hundred and fifty to one. He was hit with debris and alcohol. His union president is telling the public he was lucky to survive. And his commissioner — whose job is to lead him — has said nothing publicly.
BPPA president Larry Calderone has been the department's public voice — warning the City Council "before a cop gets killed." City Councilors Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy have publicly answered the union's call. The Commissioner has not.
The 'safest city' line
Mayor Wu has repeatedly called Boston "the safest major city in America," a talking point that has become a fixture of her public appearances. She used a version of it again in June, even as the department logged multiple shootings and two homicides in 48 hours.
ADVERTISEMENT · Interested in advertising?
ADVERTISEMENT · Interested in advertising?
Mayor Michelle Wu at a June press event. Her "safest major city in America" line has become a fixture of her public remarks. (Photo: City of Boston.)
Larry Calderone, the BPPA president, has pushed back on the framing publicly and directly. On June 30, following a triple shooting in the Theater District, he answered the mayor's talking point on the union's official X account.
Critics of the Wu administration argue the safest-city framing has become a substitute for supporting police work. They point to a broader pattern: Cox's silence on the Dorchester attack, the mayor's office reportedly steering the commissioner away from a Council oversight hearing on staffing, the ongoing shortage of officers on the street, and the administration's continued insistence — through all of it — that Boston is safer than any other major American city.
The union does not share the framing. Neither, increasingly, do the councilors asking the questions.
The silence is the story
There is a version of this month where the police commissioner walks up to a podium, condemns the attack on his officer by name, calls the Dorchester incident what it was — a mob assault on a Boston Police officer — and pledges publicly that his department will not accept it. That version would have arrived by now.
Instead, the department's public voice has been the union's. Calderone has done Cox's job for him.
At some point, silence stops looking like restraint. It starts looking like protection — of the mayor, from a hearing, from a question, from a moment the administration would rather the public not talk about.
The commissioner who found condolences for a knife-wielder in 2025 has not found the words for his own officer in 2026.
Loading Comments