Street-savvy Davis, imposing figure with sensitive side

At 6 feet 6 inches tall, Lowell Police Superintendent Edward Davis is an imposing man. At times, he has equally imposing opinions, as former Lowell city manager Bill Taupier discovered when he tried to offer advice on policing some of the city's tougher neighborhoods.

"Ed Davis would say to me: 'Taupier, please stay out in the pasture and eat some grass. Do not bother me,' " Taupier said yesterday.

Davis has clashed repeatedly with city administrators while he engineered a 60 percent drop in crime rates during his tenure in Lowell. He is widely hailed as a hero in the neighborhoods, but he has also aggravated some in the Lowell bureaucracy.

"Either you like him or you hate him," said Rithy Uong, a former Lowell city councilor and advocate for the city's Southeast Asian population.

As Boston's police commissioner, Davis will be taking on a department 10 times the size of Lowell's in a city with six times the population and a mayor with a penchant for micromanagement. Some Davis associates predict an uphill battle.

"I think [Mayor Thomas M.] Menino has a huge challenge in front of him, and so does Ed Davis," said Councilor Edward "Bud" Caulfield of Lowell, who has been a sometime critic of Davis.

For Davis, 50, policing ran in the family. His father and brother were both police officers.

As a boy in a tight-knit Polish- and Irish-Catholic enclave in one of Lowell's poorest neighborhoods, Davis said his childhood dream was to be a police sergeant on the late-night shift.

"I had no interest in going into the business world," he said.

His mother worked in an electronics factory, and the family attended church regularly. Davis attended Catholic schools, starting with St. Michael Parish School. When the only Catholic high school in Lowell was shuttered, his parents sent him to Bishop Guertin High School in Nashua.

"It was the only option," Davis said.

He put himself through college, earning a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from New Hampshire College and a master's from Anna Maria College. He joined the Lowell police force and worked his way from beat cop to vice squad to superintendent.

"Sometimes, you know when folks have been police officers a long time, they get kind of grizzly and hard-boiled and become insensitive to regular folks," said longtime friend John Sprague, a retired state trooper who worked with Davis on drug busts. "That has never happened to Eddie."

Since taking the top job in Lowell in 1994, he earned respect in some of Lowell's neighborhoods. A regular at neighborhood meetings, he is known to have defused tensions by professing a love for Eminem and for displaying a kind of street savvy rare for top police brass. He drives an unmarked Crown Victoria, and many said he had an authoritative presence that was never bullying.

"As big as he is, you don't get the feeling he is trying to tell you a thing or two," said Jerry Frechette, president of the Pawtucketville Citizens Council in Lowell.

Davis's sensitive side has earned him the nickname "renaissance man" in some law enforcement circles. During down time at a policing conference in Florida a few years ago, Davis decided to take a cooking class, rather than play golf like many of the other police executives.

Davis lives with his wife and three children in the Upper Highlands neighborhood, a section of Lowell one resident compared to Boston's West Roxbury neighborhood. He's a voracious reader, friends and colleagues say, devouring the latest books about police technology, community policing, anything that has to do with law enforcement.

"Anytime I've gone to his house he has a book in his hand," said Lowell Police Captain Arthur Ryan, who has known Davis for 30 years.

Davis's harshest run-ins with city officials have been with former city manager John Cox.

In 2000, they faced off over discipline for a police officer who fought in a drunken brawl. Davis wanted to fire him, but Cox elected to keep him on the force. In 2002, Davis's request for $700,000 for new cruisers was rejected.

In 2003, when Davis had a heart attack and was out of work for several months, Cox and the acting superintendent dipped into a police account of cash from drug seizures to pay for police overtime. Davis insisted the funds were not meant for that purpose. In 2004, Cox slapped a gag order on Davis, saying he wasn't allowed to speak with the media. Davis pointedly spoke with the media about the order.

Cox did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.

"Everyone talks about this -- the innovation he brought to the Lowell Police Department, the emphasis on community policing," said City Manager Bernard F. Lynch. "There's been some in the Police Department who didn't want that innovation. There are those who feel we shouldn't be spending more time walking the streets, but solving crimes."

Lynch said he believes Davis has managed to balance both priorities.

For his part, Davis said it was all part of the job. "In this business, there's a lot of hard decisions you have to make, and then you move on," he said. And people who call him hard-headed, he said, "don't know me very well."

Taupier, the former city manager, said that whatever the case, Davis delivered. "My advice to Boston is let the man do his job," Taupier said. "Just hold him accountable for it. "

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.