Boston Police Department Commissioner William Evans is reportedly leaving the department to run the Boston College Police Department, according to WBZ-TV.
When reached for comment, University Spokesman Jack Dunn said there was “nothing to report.”
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, BC ’08, said “[Evans is] the police commissioner” according to The Boston Herald. Walsh also expressed his disapproval of the WBZ story publishing the story without named sources.
BC announced that current BCPD chief John King will be stepping down this past April. King led the department for eight years and also ran university police departments at Tufts, Bentley, and Northeastern—his service on college campuses added up to a combined 45 years.
Evans has led BPD since January 2014. A native of South Boston, Evans went to St. Sebastian’s High School in Needham, Mass. and graduated from Suffolk University in 1982. He graduated from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2008. He began his police career in the BPD cadet program and has remained a part of the department ever since. He earned BPD’s Medal of Honor and served as a sergeant, lieutenant, captain, and superintendent before becoming commissioner. While a captain, he was in charge of the county where Harvard University, Boston University, and BC are located.
He later was in charge of the South End and Fenway areas of the city.
As superintendent, Evans played a part in keeping the Occupy Boston protests in 2011 peaceful. According to an ESPN Boston article, Evans ran the 2013 edition and stopped after the Boston Marathon Bombing took place, at which point he joined former BPD Commissioner Ed Davis in running operations surrounding the attack, including serving as the incident commander at the end of the manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Update (6/29/18, 3:06 p.m.): This post has been updated with University Spokesman Jack Dunn’s response, as well as the comments from Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, BC ’08.
Featured Image via WBUR
