Former Boston police union president charged with indecent assault on a child

Patrick M. Rose testified during the body camera hearing at Suffolk Superior Court in 2016.Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff/file

Patrick M. Rose, a former president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, has been arrested and charged on multiple counts of indecent assault on a child under 14, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the matter.

Rose will be arraigned in the West Roxbury Division of Boston Municipal Court on Thursday morning, the official said.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh called for a full investigation into the charges.

“I am deeply disturbed by these horrific allegations, which must be investigated to the fullest extent of the law,” Walsh said.

Sergeant Detective John Boyle, a Boston police spokesman, said Rose is retired from the department. Boyle said he could not confirm the charges.

Massachusetts State Police referred inquiries to the office of Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins. A spokesman for Rollins could not be reached Wednesday night.

Rose did not respond to a phone call Wednesday night. It was unclear whether he had hired a lawyer.

Leaders of the patrolman’s association, which represents rank and file officers, declined to comment.

Rose joined the police department in 1994 and became leader of the union — the largest in the department — in 2014, succeeding longtime president Thomas Nee, who had battled with the late mayor Thomas M. Menino over contract issues.

Under Rose’s leadership, the union and the Walsh administration agreed in 2017 to a four-year, $68 million contract for patrol officers, marking the first time in nearly a decade that both sides voluntarily settled.

Rose made headlines in 2016, when the union went to Suffolk Superior Court to try to stop the city from implementing a pilot body camera program for police officers.

Then-police commissioner William B. Evans said he would assign officers to wear body cameras if officers did not volunteer to do so. Rose said forcing police to wear cameras would violate the union’s collective bargaining agreement.

The union sought an injunction to delay the pilot program, but Judge Douglas H. Wilkins ruled in the city’s favor.

That fall, the city began a one-year pilot program that placed 100 cameras on patrol officers. A review of the program later found that the number of complaints against officers who wore cameras dropped by roughly one a month.

Last year, Boston police announced that about 200 officers would don body cameras as the department started to roll out a new program.

Previous Globe reporting was used in this story.