“I’m really not sure what’s going on here," former Suffolk County sheriff Andrea Cabral said Thursday about the controversy surrounding Dennis White, the new Boston police commissioner.
Cabral, who also served as Massachusetts' secretary of public safety, said that Mayor Marty Walsh's decision to appoint White left her confused.
White was chosen to lead the nation's oldest police force after the surprisingly sudden resignation of Commissioner William Gross. Days after White was sworn in, The Boston Globe released reports of domestic violence allegations made against him by his then-wife in 1999.
White, a 37-year veteran of the Boston Police Department, has been placed on temporary leave while an investigation is conducted into the 20 year-old allegation.
"For any one of a number of reasons, the schedule of making this appointment seems to have been sped up,” Cabral said during her interview on Boston Public Radio, positing that Walsh likely sought to fast-track Gross' replacement before leaving office to head the U.S. Department of Labor.
Read More: New Police Commissioner On Leave Following Domestic Violence Allegations
"Ordinarily, it takes a lot more time, but … one would think that, at a minimum, you would want to know what the disciplinary background is — even if the person has obtained a certain rank," Cabral said.
Cabral said his appointment is especially confusing in light of the fact that the case in question is a matter of public record.
“That’s the part of this that sort of baffles me," she said, "that that information was more readily available, even, than something that was just internal disciplinary information — and it does not appear to have been known, because I can’t imagine that he would have made the appointment and made him sworn in if he had known.”
"Why didn’t anyone know?” Cabral asked.
Andrea Cabral is the former Suffolk County sheriff and Massachusetts secretary of public safety. She's also the CEO of the cannabis company Ascend and a frequest Boston Public Radio contributor.
