Mayor Michelle Wu on Wednesday announced she plans to appoint Michael Cox, the current chief of police in Ann Arbor, as the next Boston police commissioner. His first day will be Aug. 15.

Wu and Cox spoke with reporters at a virtual roundtable Wednesday morning. Cox called the appointment a “homecoming,” and Wu said the Roxbury native and former Dorchester resident harbors a “deep faith in what we can achieve together and a deep love for the city that he grew up in and will be returning home to.”

Cox, who worked at BPD for more than 30 years before taking the job in Ann Arbor, said he would focus on a return to community policing and diversifying the department. “We need to go out and make sure the public understands we want to hear from them so we are on the right side of what their needs are,” he said. “We need to communicate in a much deeper and better way around what we do and we need to make sure our department, as the mayor herself has put out there before, that our department represents the city.”

The reporter roundtable lasted for about 45 minutes and preceded a formal announcement in Roxbury, steps from the Winthrop Street home in which Cox grew up. The answers have been condensed and edited.

How do you think the department can rebuild trust with communities, particularly communities of color that have long had really complicated and often fraught histories with police?

COX: When the trust has been broken over time, we just have to be consistent, we have to be present. We have to be consistent in the sense that we have to go out and put our hands out and show people we’re here, we care. We need to listen. We need to listen and take feedback. If folks have issues, historical issues, we need to listen and take that criticism, and show that we can take it and more importantly that we hear them and are responsive to that. If we were behaving in a way that was inappropriate, we need to know what that was and we need to make sure we don’t do that. It’s hard to do that if you don’t have a presence, if you’re not out there, if you’re not listening. And that’s exactly what we’re going to try to do. We’re going to try to get into all neighborhoods. And when I say revitalize community policing, that’s exactly what we’re going to try to do. Get back out of the cars, have more community forums, where we’re getting feedback from the public, own some of the historical stuff that has happened in the past so we can move forward together as a city, as a department.

I wanted to ask about your last post in Ann Arbor, in which at one point you were placed in administrative leave. The reason that was cited that you created a “hostile work environment.” There was no evidence you were yelling or berating your staff but there was a fear of retaliation that your employees felt while you were in charge. One of those examples was a lieutenant felt pressured to submit a report that recommended no disciplinary actions. I wanted to ask you about that incident and could you tell us from your perspective what happened there? And how can you assure Boston residents that kind of culture of either a hostile work environment or your officers will be held accountable for any abuse of power in any way?

COX: It was found I did not influence the folks involved, I did not intimidate them in any way, or at least wasn’t the intent. Part of my lived experience now is going from one part of the country to another part of the country and realizing cultures are different. People are different. I’ve always been fairly thoughtful. I don’t really raise my voice, I don’t really swear. I don’t do things of that nature. What I didn’t really understand, is that the mere fact that I came from a large police department to a smaller police department, that within itself was sometimes intimidating to other officers that don’t have that. To be quite honest with you, I was new to that location and new to the Midwest and I really didn’t understand people were even perceiving it that way. I apologized for that and as well as I should because that certainly was never the intent. As far as the issues of worrying about holding people accountable – well, I ran internal affairs for quite a while here and I held many, many people accountable. I don’t think that’s the issue. I don’t tell investigators what to do. But I will always try to coach all officers on good practices to make good decisions. And sometimes I can be intimidating to some folks. But either way, I apologized for how I was perceived. It was not my intention and I have learned from that quite a bit. I wish it didn’t happen, but it did, and it was found I didn’t intimidate anyone, and nor did I retaliate against anybody in that way.

WU: If I can add a word on this just from my perspective. There was a very, very thorough vetting process. I read through just about every document that has ever been available on the chief in Boston and in Ann Arbor. And much of this is public as well. Our investigators also spoke with many, many people in Ann Arbor, from all different roles affiliated with any of the documentation that was available as well. And I personally spoke with the mayor and town administrator of Ann Arbor, too. Those conversations, for me, confirmed what we already knew about Chief Cox from his years in Boston: That he is a leader of great integrity, that he takes every step of leadership very seriously, and in this case had taken full ownership over any miscommunications and used that as a learning opportunity with those around him as well. We are tremendously excited to bring a leader of his experience and wisdom and background to Boston in this role.

You spoke of the importance of diversifying the department. What approach do you think might work given the civil service rules and the circumstances in Boston?

COX: That’s something we certainly want to look to do. Give me an opportunity to get back —it’s been three-plus years here — to see what options are still available. But the cadet program has always been a good opportunity for us to do that. It’s worked pretty well for us in the past. But we really need to get into all of our neighborhoods and proactively – I hate to (say) market – the police department, to attract folks to it. Because that’s an issue now, an issue about who wants to be a police officer. There’s been so much negativity around policing the last few years. We need to make it more attractive to all walks of life and that will go a long way to help us diversify. And once you’re in the department, inclusion and the opportunities. We need to make sure we give everyone an opportunity to grow, develop and move throughout the ranks of the police department, civilian and sworn.

You mentioned the incident that happened nearly 30 years ago at the Boston Police, when you were beaten by other Boston cops who confused you with a suspect. You also mentioned you stayed at the department and rose through the ranks. Can you speak more about that incident, how that shaped your views as a police officer and also how were you able to develop trust in the system again, and how can you make sure that thing doesn’t happen again at BPD? I understand you also sued the department. The people responsible for this attack stayed at BPD. Can you speak to how you dealt with that through the years?

COX: Certainly some of the people were fired and some in some shape or form did stay. At the time I must admit it was a personal struggle for me because it was a tough time. But the reality is I love public service. I signed onto the job to do public service. And part of my healing process was, what do I want to do with my life? How do I want to give back? Do I want to walk away from a job? Or do I want to let this impact me in a negative way and nobody learns from it? I thought, you know what, I’m not going anywhere and I’m going to stay. I’m going to stick around and figure it out. I used my time there to both get educated, to pay attention, to learn, to be thoughtful so I can certainly give advice and grow and learn to make sure these kinds of events never happen again and help make policing better again for the public. We’re here to serve. Most of the people I know who signed up to be police officers, for the most part, that’s exactly what they want to do. They want to give back. And sometimes that gets drowned out by these incidents from time to time.

Mayor Wu, can you tell us who the other three finalists were? Were they internal, external? Your staff says you didn’t have application materials from the other finalists, resume and cover letter. So I’m wondering how you made the decision?

WU: The search committee had run the process entirely up until (recommending the four finalists). In fact, the committee had told me explicitly that I was not to get at all involved to maintain the integrity of that process. I don’t know, maybe what the staff meant I had not received any of the materials while the process was ongoing. But the four finalists ultimately were a mix of internal and external candidates. Great, great candidates across the entire group and I did have full access to all of the resume, cover letter, all the information, the vetting documents that had been completed for each of the finalists at that point as well. Then once I had interviewed all four of the finalists, and wanted to move forward with Chief Cox, then there was an even more intensive vetting process that kicked off after that.

Commissioner Cox, you mentioned community policing, getting out of cars and that sort of thing, and I’m looking for what that looks like to you. The other question is about police funding. What do you make of the current funding and staffing levels?

COX: I’m coming from a department that had a $31 million budget, going to a department that has a $400 million budget. I am not able to assess the budget right now because I have to get used to all of the things that are going on in the police department. I can’t comment on that right now, in general. But I will comment on your first part about community policing. When I say that, this is not about getting out of cars, pat/frisk, things of that nature, it’s really about officers reintroducing themselves to the public. It needs to start with me and our command staff, going to locations, doing peace walks again, things we did prior to COVID to build trust in the neighborhoods so people get to see us, so they get to know some of these officers before an incident happens. Boston’s a very diverse city. We need to go and learn about the diversity of the city and understand the cultures and the people in each part of our neighborhoods so we don’t offend them in any way or we don’t traumatize them in any way, unnecessarily, just because we’re ignorant to someone else’s ways. We have a history of strong community policing. It’s time for us to get back out there. It’s healthy, it’s good for officers. I think the public appreciates it and it gives us an opportunity to get the feedback we need to make sure we are policing appropriately.

The 2020 George Floyd protests gave birth to the defund the police movement, how did you interpret that? Do you see ways a redistribution of funding and resources could benefit both communities and the police?

COX: I struggle to understand that. I certainly spent a great deal of time trying to study what ways we can get better. We need to practice more. Training and practicing and developing, we need to do those things more. Unfortunately those things usually end up costing money. So at a time when the public, rightly so, expects a higher expectation as far as our service that we provide, our level of professionalism, at the exact same time people are asking for us to have less resources. And the two just didn’t match up. The reality is a lot of these services throughout the services, whether it’s mental health services, or other services around drug and things of that nature, rehab, they need to happen. We’re all for working and partnering with everybody and anybody we can to make Boston safe and make the community safe in general. We’re going to do what we can with what we have, as much as we can, regardless of what our budget is.

One for the mayor and two for the commissioner, if I may. The mayor of New York has talked about the moment he was going to appoint his commissioner. Is there any moment in this highly secretive process that you knew Cox would be it. And for the commissioner, we haven’t asked you what your Day 1 priorities are. What are they? You must be aware there are numerous accusations of a culture of coverup. It’s been part of recent scandals we’ve all covered. How do you change culture in the department?

WU: It’s easy for me with that first question. I knew just about as soon as we started speaking in the interview. I had read all of the materials all the way through for each of our finalists. I had read and had gotten the summary of what our search committee had heard from many, many hours of listening to community and getting a sense of how all of the qualifications and documents and experience lined up with how someone connects as a person, how they speak as a leader. I didn’t know how it would go with Chief Cox. Thirty years plus of service. He tells me we had met once years ago, probably during my first City Council campaign, when I was passing out flyers at his child’s sports games. We had not really connected during his time on the Boston Police. So it was getting to know him from scratch and as soon as we started chatting I knew he was the one and that our priorities and values aligned. That his love for Boston shines through in discussing every challenge. And there was a sense of hope and excitement and joy about what we could get done together. Even tackling very complex and quite entrenched systems.

COX: The Day 1 priority I have is internally, is certainly letting the department know that we have a leader amongst the group again and I am here to support and develop, include and work with each and everyone one of them in doing this very difficult job. And Priority 1B, is to now get let’s back out and feedback from them on what and how we need to go about our daily jobs of keeping them safe and building trust. That would be 1A and 1B, I would say. As far as the culture around coverup, that has been an issue for a while, but I said stems a lot from – I don’t want to say lack of professionalism – but the reality is you need to develop your entire team, particularly not just at the top and bottom but every command level in between and make sure they understand all of the things that it takes to run a professional organization and hold people accountable. And then when you investigate things you have to make sure you investigate them quickly, thoroughly and fairly. If you do those things consistently, your outcomes tend to be very good regardless of who’s looking at them. If they need to be separated from the department, they won’t get their job back because you’ve done that right the first time.

You mentioned community policing. I remember community policing, I covered it in the 1990s and early 2000s. A lot of little things were always taken care. But it seems in the community meetings I cover, the little things have slipped and a lot of things are fairly out of control. I hear a lot about the ATV usage. The police department has to close down major thoroughfares in Dorchester and Mattapan, well before dark, limiting how people can travel. Even this week in Mattapan at multiple places, people coming from in town and out of town set up with massive speakers and they just have parties in front of vacant lots. These little things, police haven’t been able to stop it. What can be done about little things like that, quality of life things that can spiral into gunshots or machetes? What can we do about the little things?

COX: I’m not as familiar with some of these things. I’m still away (in Ann Arbor), to be quite honest and I’ll be here fairly soon. It begins by the conversations, hearing from the community. Sometimes they’re not police issues, others can help better solve them. Then we have to educate folks. We live in communities where our behavior sometimes impacts a neighbor. And so we have to take the lead, or at least get other people involved in trying to educate people about how they may or may not be impacting their neighbors in some way or shape or form. We have many things at our disposal as far as laws. Before we get to that point we need to do everything possible to make sure if we’re getting involved in those kind of things, that we’re doing it appropriately and a procedurally just way. I’m looking forward to getting out there and seeing what issues are out there and seeing if we can solve some of these things.

How is Boston and the Boston Police Department different than it was in 1995, and what about it is the same?

COX: I haven’t been there for three years, so it could be very different just in the last three years. That I can’t attest to. Give me a month or so and I can get back to you on that part of it. But the culture’s different. Back in ‘95, it wasn’t as diverse. It was certainly nowhere near as diverse at the highest levels of the organization. That just wasn’t a thing back then. Community policing, that was in its infancy back then. I would say certainly the incident that happened woke up the police department to some of the failures if you don’t have strong supervision, if you don’t follow up on certain things. But it did change for me personally. The police department got younger. Younger people are different. They think differently. They’re more passionate about certain things. The older school have moved on, in some cases thankfully so. There’s a lot more education involved in how they do the job. Currently right now, there’s body cam footage on things, that was not a thing way back then. Transparency is a lot better now than it was way back then. Just to say, the overall nature of the people who come aboard. A lot of people now, particularly younger folks, are not going to take on the weight and responsibility of someone else’s mistakes… the culture of hiding and blue walls. Some of that may still exist but it is not in that same way because it is more diverse. People are from different parts of the world. It is changed in many ways and in some ways it might be simpler. But the fact is expectations are totally different. Expectations, certainly from my level on down are totally different and hopefully this will permeate the police department so people won’t make those kind of mistakes again, in that way. So give me a couple of months to get back in there and I can probably answer that question a lot better.