4.John DiFava — Direct (Recall)

JOHN DIFAVA: My name is John DiFava. First name common spelling, J-O-H-N, last name D-I F-A-V-A.

JOHN DIFAVA: Good morning, sir.

JOHN DIFAVA: I am the chief of police at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

JOHN DIFAVA: It is.

JOHN DIFAVA: I did.

JOHN DIFAVA: MIT is a very, very unique place. It's -- the reputation you hear about, it is very, very true. We have probably the smartest people in the world. They're a very, very special community. It is also a very large community. On any given day, we have 21,000 people on campus, not to mention the people that come and go on a regular basis. But that community requires special attention. And they're so focused on their research and on their scholarly activities, that sometimes they forget to look out for themselves. So we want to hire a police officer that understands service, that understands that we're community policing. That's an expression we've heard from the 1990s. But it's not an assignment; it's a philosophy. So we look for officers who embrace the community policing philosophy. We look for an individual who is respectful but also wants to engage our community and be a part of that community.

JOHN DIFAVA: Perfectly.

JOHN DIFAVA: Yes, sir, I can. I've been in police work for almost 42 years -- 28 years with the state police and now MIT -- and I've seen a lot of police officers both within the two departments I worked for as well as other departments, both on the local and state and federal level. And I got to tell you, Sean was one of the very best. He understood people. And what made him a police officer was not the uniform, it wasn't the badge; it was the character that he possessed. Whether he was in the suit or not in the suit, he was the same. He didn't rely on the authority that that he was granted; he relied on the strength of his character to be able to deal with the community. But I'll tell you, I never saw anyone be able to go in every nook and cranny of the institute the way he did. He engaged faculty, which is hard to do; he engaged staff, he engaged students, he engaged visitors. He knew everybody. My leadership style has always been on the street. I'm there all the time. I put in a lot of hours and I walk and I see. I guess it's management by walking around. And everywhere I went, I'd see Sean. He was the real deal.

JOHN DIFAVA: I do.

JOHN DIFAVA: I believe that was his photograph from the graduation of the Transit Police Academy.

JOHN DIFAVA: He does.

JOHN DIFAVA: No, he wasn't stern like that. By no means. Sean was extremely engaging, very friendly, and definitely someone that could relate well to people.

JOHN DIFAVA: Very.

JOHN DIFAVA: The way I met Sean is I have a -- it's going to sound like a little nepotism here but in the interest of full disclosure, I have a cousin that's on the Somerville Police Department. And he called me in the very early fall of 2007 and said, "Look, I have a young guy that works for Somerville, civilian employee." He says, "You got to meet him." He says, "You absolutely got to meet him." He says, "He's already academy-trained, he's on the auxiliary. But more than that, he's exactly what you want in this profession." So we have a very rigorous recruiting process at MIT. I don't have full discretion to hire, but I certainly was willing to meet with Sean, because if you can find someone good, you would like to bring them onboard if you could. So he came to my office and I met him and I understood exactly what my cousin was talking about. The first five minutes of the conversation I knew that, you know, I was on to somebody that could probably be very, very good at MIT.

JOHN DIFAVA: Extremely so, sir.

JOHN DIFAVA: Well, you know, if I had to define Sean Collier in one word, I would use the word "character." And probably there's 100 people in this courtroom who we'd all have a different definition of what "character" is. But for me, "character" is the ability to know what the right thing is and to do the right thing, and he always did the right thing. You know, we heard from his stepdad and from his brother that Sean knew right and wrong, and I have to really support that opinion. He had a very well-defined idea of what was right and what was wrong, and he followed that rule all the time. So, you know, you talk about ethics, I think that's the foundation of the bedrock of ethics.

JOHN DIFAVA: Very well. The one thing that I picked up on him right from the very beginning is he got along but he didn't get along to go -- he didn't go along to get along. Peer pressure did not work with Sean. You know, if he had an opinion, he stuck by that opinion. And it wasn't one of those things where even if he was wrong he stuck to it, but if he felt he was on solid ground, he would push back. And the police officers in the room understand how strong peer pressure can be in a police organization.

JOHN DIFAVA: Yes, it has.

JOHN DIFAVA: The atmosphere at the department changed greatly since April 18th of 2013. There is an atmosphere of sadness, there's a sense of great loss. They still perform admirably. They did right from the day that Sean was killed. But you can feel that they work at it a lot harder than they did before. I think that it will be there for as long as that generation of officers remain and I think what will cause it to change back will be a new influx of officers. But that's going to take a long time, and I believe that during that evolution, there still will be this sense of sadness, this sense of loss and this sense of grief. It's remarkable, the support that we got from the community down there, but even with that support, the grief just has not gone away.

JOHN DIFAVA: It has, sir.

JOHN DIFAVA: You know, sometimes I wonder if I want to continue as a police administrator. Policing is the only thing I've ever done in my life. And it's -- and I've always tried very hard to be good at what I do and I always take a personal interest in my people. And I lost one of my own. And I have two children at home, and I always thought I would be very, very proud if they wore the uniform. Now I'm not so sure I want them to do that.

JOHN DIFAVA: You're welcome.

JOHN DIFAVA: Thank you, sir.