Old-fashioned officer leads security effort

Almost two years ago, when he found out that Boston would host the Democratic National Convention, then-police commissioner Paul Evans knew he needed someone to draw up a security plan and only one officer would do: Bobby Dunford.

''There really was no one else I seriously considered," Evans said. ''If you look back over the history of policing in Boston the last 20 years, any time something big happened, Bobby Dunford was there."

And so the main responsibility for ensuring that in a post-Seattle, post-9/11 world, the city and some 35,000 visitors emerge from the next five days relatively unscathed fell in the hands of a man who has spent half of his 60 years in uniform, all of them on the streets where he made his bones as a cop.

Superintendent Robert P. Dunford is hard to pigeonhole. He can be stubborn, and he does not suffer fools gladly. But he has what admirers say is an endearing earnestness, an ability to connect with all kinds of people, from all backgrounds, especially in times of crisis. As the city's chief crisis negotiator, when someone is standing on a ledge or pointing a gun at his or her head -- or someone else's -- Dunford almost always gets the call, and almost always gets them down safely.

The Rev. Eugene Rivers, an African-American minister who helped formed the Ten Point Coalition to combat gang violence that racked the city in the early 1990s, said Dunford's sincerity about helping ordinary people allowed him to harness the energy of police and neighborhood groups to help make Boston a national model for community policing. He said Dunford is highly qualified to bring together similarly disparate groups to make the convention come off with minimal disruption.

''Bobby is, from a moral point of view and from a practical point of view, the best cop I know in the city of Boston," said Rivers. ''He tells it like it is. He is allergic to BS, nonsense, and fools. And he values every human life, no matter who that human is."

Five years ago, after a black teenager shot and killed a white man in Brockton, the killer's mother called Rivers to arrange his surrender. Although it was well outside Dunford's jurisdiction, Rivers called Dunford, who took the boy into custody.

''There were people who wanted to kill this kid," Rivers said. ''Bobby was the only one I trusted to make sure this kid didn't get killed that day."

At one level, Dunford is an old-fashioned Boston cop. The son of Irish immigrants, he is not one of those suburbanites who paste an OFD -- Originally From Dorchester --bumper sticker on their car. He is an AFD -- Always From Dorchester. He grew up in St. Peter's parish and now lives just a saint over, in St. Brendan's, where he and his wife, Dottie, raised a son and two daughters.

Dunford inherited his even-keeled tenacity from his mother, Marie, a seamstress from County Sligo who died last year at age 101. Those who know Dunford well marvel at his ability to keep his head when those around him are losing theirs.

''Bob has an inner strength," said the Rev. James Fratus, pastor at St. Brendan's Church, where Dunford does the readings at Mass. ''His faith is a source of that strength. He doesn't wear his faith on his sleeve. He lives it. It comforts him, and it allows him to comfort others."

Dunford has spent roughly half of his career as leader of the city's police academy. But he made his name on the streets. Walter Fahey, a legendary Boston police officer who retired seven years ago, recalled that even when Dunford was running the police academy, he was forever showing up at crime scenes, backing up officers. Fahey is the only officer in the department's history who willingly gave up a detective's gold badge to return to the patrol ranks. Fahey did so because he loved being a street officer, ''and because I loved working for Bobby Dunford."

''Street cops would run through walls for him," Fahey said. ''He can be stubborn, but he's got ethics second to none."

Some officers complained when Dunford cut back on court overtime. Others bristle at his sometimes brusque manner. But he is, in police parlance, someone who backs up his cops.

Dunford's students say he came into his own in 1991, when he was made commander of District 11 in Dorchester, the city's biggest and most diverse police precinct. It was a place he could apply all he learned in the classroom and all he knew in his heart.

Ten years ago, Dunford's beeper went off as he sat on a panel discussion with Attorney General Janet Reno. He raced to a convenience store on Geneva Avenue, the street where he played as a child, and found the shopkeeper, Manuel Monteiro, dead on the floor. Monteiro, 68, from Cape Verde, was shot by a robber who was furious that Monteiro had only $4 in the cash register.

Standing outside the store, Dunford's eyes appeared to water as he recalled how just days before the shooting Monteiro had cheerfully advised police cadets who visited him how to build relationships with the ordinary people who are often the eyes and ears of the community. ''He was a good man," Dunford said.

But then his voice grew steely and he vowed to avenge his friend's killing the only way he knew how. By doing his job.

While streetwise, Dunford is also book smart. He has two master's degrees, can chat up Harvard professors, and chill with gang members at the corner of Harvard Street.

''He's a Dorchester rat," Evans said, on the phone from London, where he is in charge of Britain's Police Standards Unit. Evans meant it as a compliment. ''He's a street guy, but he is also a theoretical guy, a remarkable tactician."

Last January, Dunford uncharacteristically presided over one of the Boston Police Department's biggest debacles, a riot that followed the New England Patriots' Super Bowl victory, and for which the police were woefully unprepared. Dunford admitted he made mistakes as the field commander.

But he emerged from the scandal with his reputation largely intact. The consensus was that those above Dunford, especially acting commissioner James Hussey, were responsible for not putting enough police on the streets. Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole, who got the job after Hussey's fumbling the Super Bowl, said she never considered replacing Dunford as chief architect of the convention security plan.

''Bobby Dunford has my utmost confidence," O'Toole said.

Evans said that while Dunford's plan is tactically sound, he believes there will be trouble. He said he believes civil libertarians will sue over what they see as Draconian security measures that crush free speech.

''Nobody's better prepared, but anybody who thinks this will go off without a blemish is kidding themselves," Evans said.

Rivers finds it ironic that Dunford is in the national spotlight.

''He always sought to avoid the limelight, not just because he was personally uncomfortable with it, but because he understood the downside of it, that when you look like you fly with the eagles, you bring out the hunters," Rivers said.

Bobby Dunford says he's ready for them.