The Boston Police Department is under new leadership. Mayor Walsh introduced superintendent-in-chief William Gross as the new commissioner. Gross is the first black commissioner in the city’s history.
Boston police Commissioner William Evans is stepping down after nearly four decades with the department and he’s headed to Boston College as director of public safety. A native of South Boston, he started as a cadet in 1980 and became a patrol officer in 1982. Though rising to be the “Top Cop”, Evans said, “It’s been a great ride. I’ve loved every minute. In my heart and in my soul, I’ll always be a policeman.”
William Gross knows the City of Boston. A graduate of Boston Tech high school, he has friends all over the city from his youth playing sports. He started as a cadet and joined the force as a patrolman in 1985 and worked the streets the Downtown, East Boston, Dorchester, South Boston, and Charlestown precincts. He then moved onto the gang and drug control units, as well as the department’s training academy, before being promoted to sergeant in 2004, where he was assigned to the Mattapan, Dorchester, and Hyde Park districts. He became a deputy superintendent in 2008 and assumed citywide night commander duties in 2012, where he worked closely with the community members and groups to address violence in Boston’s neighborhoods.
In addressing the news conference, Commissioner Gross stressed the theme of family. He said, “When we talk about the men and women in the Boston Police Department … they are family. We’re the first police department in this nation. We started in 1630. We’d be nothing without our law enforcement family.” “I am a true street cop. I started in Dorchester in 1985,” said Gross, who recalled receiving “many calls from my mother, worried because of the atmosphere at the time betwixt the communities and BPD. But if you want change, be the change.” His mother Deanna attended the ceremony under the pretense of her son receiving another award.
Speaking of awards, the Boston Press Photographer’s Association honored Gross with the group’s 61st Bob Howard Good Fellowship Award. “Chief Gross was recognized for his ability to bring people together, foster understanding and restore calm, especially during particularly volatile situations, as he did during this year’s Free Speech Rally held on the Boston Common in August of 2017,” their press release said. John Tlumacki, who was covering the rally that day for the Boston Globe, was so impressed with the Chief’s ability to navigate and diffuse the anger and tensions of the assembled crowds that he nominated him for this year’s award.
More recently, Gross was honored to receive the 2018 Robert F. Kennedy Embracing the Legacy Award during a ceremony held at the John F. Kennedy Library in Dorchester, He received another honor when he was sworn into the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in Boston, which police described as “the oldest active chartered military organization in the Western Hemisphere.”
Many in the community Gross knows well, including members of the clergy, were pleased to witness this historic moment in Boston’s history and want this to be more than an historic gesture. They all hope that it will mark a turning point in further healing the racial divide that continues to plague the City of Boston, despite the strides made in building trust between the neighborhood of color and the police that former Commissioner Evans worked hard to make happen.
