“I decided the time was right,” Lynn Police Chief Michael A. Mageary said on Monday, explaining why he decided to retire after 3½ years as the city’s police chief.
Mageary’s retirement announcement made him the latest in a line of Massachusetts police chiefs who decided the time has come to leave the job.
Salem Chief Mary Butler announced her retirement last week and Revere Chief James Guido announced his retirement on June 30. Like Mageary, Butler and Guido worked as police officers for more than 30 years.
In announcing his retirement, Guido said he is leaving police work at a time when “… our profession is at a crossroad in history. I pray each night that some good and positive change can come out of the unrest that is facing our nation right now.”
The unrest Guido referred to is the protests and demands for change sparked by George Floyd’s May 25 death in police custody in Minneapolis. A police officer has been charged with Floyd’s murder.
A May 31 protest outside the Lynn police station brought a frank and forthright response from Mageary. The chief said he understood the anger and frustration driving protesters and issued this statement:
“When these types of incidents occur, they shed a negative light on police officers nationwide and shatter the bonds with the community that take years to build. The city of Lynn is a diverse community and we have worked hard to build relationships with the many different groups within our city.”
On June 5, Mageary’s name headed up a list of 169 Lynn police officers in a Daily Item advertisement condemning Floyd’s death. Department members vowed in the ad “… to restore the trust that has been damaged as a result of this incident.”
“We are all in this together,” read the ad’s final sentence.
Those six words sum up Mageary’s career. At his 2017 chief’s swearing-in ceremony, he said he has “always been proud to be a cop, but more importantly, I’ve been proud to be a Lynn cop.”
He rose through the department ranks and counted friends from one end of Lynn to another. A blunt speaker, Mageary said the department needed the resources required to do its job. Crime dropped in Lynn during his tenure as chief. But homicides are on the rise this year with the five to date in the city sure to exceed the total of six murders in 2019.
Even as Mageary discussed his retirement on Monday, community organizers called on City Councilors to cut the department budget and use money stripped away from the department to pay for unarmed crisis response workers to handle non-violent calls to police.
The calls for defunding the police came as Mayor Thomas M. McGee and Mageary announced revisions to the department’s use-of-force policy in June.
It took a leader to craft the June 5 department statement condemning Floyd’s death. Mike Mageary ends his 34-year police career as a proven leader and with a track record demonstrating commitment to law enforcement.
His ascension to the chief’s job was well deserved and his retirement leaves big shoes that need to be filled.