It’s unusual for one police union to get involved in a district attorney’s race. It’s even stranger for many of them to weigh in to support a challenger.
But it happened in the Middlesex County race. They put their weight behind a newcomer: David Solet.
“Dave is not the kind of person who will sit back and say ‘my hands are tied’ when approaching the issues facing our officers and citizens. He will not be afraid to speak out for what is right,” said Matthew Khoury, president of the Somerville Police Employees Association, in a July 1 statement endorsing Solet.
Solet, 49, a former cold case prosecutor who worked under 13-year incumbent Marian Ryan, has earned the support of police unions across eight Middlesex towns and cities, including Cambridge and Somerville. The 2025 Middlesex County Prosecutor of the Year has accused his former boss of letting politics influence her decisions, and framed himself as an apolitical alternative who will make decisions based solely on the law. The police think a change is needed, and that Solet can be that change when voters go to the polls Sept. 1.
A spokesperson for Ryan’s campaign team said that she joined other incumbent attorney generals in refusing to accept endorsements from police unions.
Solet has been happy to fill that void. Since launching his campaign, he has earned endorsements from more than 20 public safety unions. They list his commitment to stopping the flow of illegal guns into the state and his pledge to focus on cybercrimes as reasons for supporting him.
“I think it says a lot that the people who know [me and Ryan] best are on one side,” Solet said.
Cold case work
After graduating from Harvard University Law School, Solet became a prosecutor for the Middlesex district attorney. Apart from four years spent as chief legal counsel for the Secretary of Public Safety under governor Charlie Baker, he spent his entire working career in the DA’s office.
The county encompasses 847 square miles and 54 cities and towns, and at 1.6 million is the biggest in New England in population.
He said the idea for a cold case unit came from a conversation with Steve Loughlin, the first assistant district attorney, when discussing his role after returning from the Secretary of Public Safety’s office. From 2019 to 2025, he solved more than a dozen cases that seemed to be at the end of the road. One murder he tried in 2022 happened in 1971, making it the oldest cold-case murder solved in Massachusetts history.
His work caught local police officers’ attention, especially in Cambridge, where he solved three cold cases.
“They respect his intellect, but even more, they know firsthand his commitment to victims, and his commitment to helping us get it right,” said Chris Sullivan, president of the Cambridge Police Patrol Officers Association, in a statement.
Multiple prosecutors who worked with Solet said they were impressed by the care he showed to victims’ families during trials. Lisa McGovern led the 2013 murder prosecution of Nate Fujita with Solet as her second seat. She recalled Solet always being available for the family of the victim, Lauren Astley.
Denise Cosby grew close with Solet while he prosecuted her son Justin’s murder and accomplices. He called her often to keep her informed on what the lawyers did. She described him as easy to talk to. More than a decade later, she has a strong relationship with Solet and speaks with him often.
“We started out as working professionally, but we have adopted him as family. He became a friend,” Cosby said.
Choosing to run
Solet felt that under Ryan, decisions were made based on optics and politics rather than what was the just outcome.
He said Ryan refused to lobby the Legislature to reform the dangerousness statute, which allows prosecutors to ask judges to hold defendants accused of certain crimes who could pose a severe threat to public safety. The state Supreme Court struck down the previous law in 2019 for lacking detail. Without a replacement, people accused of crimes such as child rape and bomb making would be able to be released on bail.
Ryan did not want to lobby to reform the statute, Solet said, because she did not want to be held responsible if the law was used improperly.
In 2024, a man who molested his stepdaughter was released on bail with a tracker on his ankle and killed her and himself in Acton. “Even after this girl was killed, Marian Ryan took no steps to close this loophole,” Solet said.
“It is incumbent on the district attorney, the person who knows how the criminal law works and how it doesn’t work, to lead on these issues, not just to passively sit there and let our Legislature sit on a problem – which we know is a huge problem, which we know is hurting people,” Solet continued.
The final straw came last year. He identified the rapist in a cold case from the 1980s, and the man was alive and in Massachusetts. But Solet couldn’t prosecute because the statute of limitations – only 15 years for rape in Massachusetts – had expired.
He told Ryan to lobby the Legislature to extend the statute. According to Solet, she told him that while she thought it was the right thing to do, she didn’t want to push the issue because some people would disagree with it. He said she also decided not to tell the victim the name of the rapist unless she asked.
“I felt that was wrong, and that was not why I had become a prosecutor,” Solet said.
Solet handed his resignation letter to Ryan in September and announced his campaign to challenge her in December. He listed extending the statute of limitations for rape as one of the priorities for his campaign. That month, Ryan announced a press conference saying she would advocate for the same reforms.
Ryan’s campaign team did not respond to requests for comment.
Rethinking a police role
Solet acknowledges that police officers play an important role in the work he does as a prosecutor. He often worked alone on his cold cases. One assistant district attorney in the office said that Solet ran the unit by himself, getting only occasional help from interns and other staffers. Solet had to rely on state and local police to help him.
“I could not have done that work without being able to work with police. Police investigators were critical in every single one of those cases, in interviewing witnesses, in surveilling … the perpetrators, in gathering and analyzing the evidence, and in testifying in trial,” he said.
But parts of Middlesex County have tried to rethink how law enforcement and emergency response work. There have been two such efforts in Cambridge. Because police have a record of escalating situations and killing people in mental health crises, the city launched a separate Community Safety Department in 2024 that is independent and designed to respond to nonviolent behavioral health crises with a Community Assistance Response and Engagement team. Cambridge Heart was formed by residents in 2021 as an alternative to 911, but people have used its hotline more for case management than as immediate emergency response.
Solet is open to reforming how law enforcement officers handle mental health emergencies, including integrating social workers into responses. But he said it’s unrealistic to think police officers can be replaced.
“I believe that everybody has a right to live with dignity and respect and to be free from violence. And to make that a reality requires a police force that is capable of successfully investigating violent crimes and other crimes that interfere with people’s ability to live safely and with dignity,” he said.
“It remains a dangerous world for people in Cambridge,” he added, referring to a shootout on Memorial Drive on May 11.
Solet understands that law enforcement officers don’t treat everyone equally, and that it’s naive to think otherwise. He said he is committed to equality under the law. He noted that he solved cold case crimes committed against unhoused people, women and people of color.
“Part of my mission in that unit was to make real the promise of equal justice under law. And that is why my campaign literature says ‘Justice. For all,’” he said.
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