Baston to head police academy
The highly visible founding chief of the Boston Police Department’s Bureau of Community Engagement will now head up the police academy, and her former deputy will step up to fill her old role.
Superintendent Nora Baston, who has been at the Boston Police Department since 1996, got the nod to head the bureau of community engagement from thenMayor Marty Walsh and then-Police Commissioner William Gross when the bureau was created in September 2018.
Baston made headlines last year when then-Acting Mayor Kim Janey prepared to named her police commissioner amid the controversy surrounding thenCommissioner Dennis White, who was fighting for his job after decades-old domestic violence allegations surfaced.
As legal battles postponed White’s termination, Baston was never appointed to the post.
Her new title is Superintendent, Chief Bureau of Professional Development, a division of the department that oversees officer training and the police academy. Multiple efforts by the Herald to reach her for comment Saturday were unsuccessful.
Baston had long been engaged in tying Boston communities with the police department, as she had previously served as a department deputy superintendent commanding the community support division, according to a city statement. Her Twitter feed is a parade of photos with children and other members of the community.
“We’re good at getting guns off the street. If you asked us who the gang members are we could give an eight-hour presentation with charts,” she had told the Herald for a profile in 2014 that highlighted community engagement efforts. “But if you ask a group of officers about building relationships and what kids they know, it’s something we really struggle with.”
Baston will be replaced as Superintendent of the Bureau of Community Engagement by her former deputy superintendent, James Chin, who she praised in a tweet following his promotion ceremony at police headquarters Friday.
Chin has worked at the department since 1993, according to his LinkedIn profile.