He was awarded the Congressional Law Enforcement Award in October 2005 for the same actions. Briggs was a member of the New Hampshire Police Association. Briggs was married and the father of two young sons. He was a friend and co-worker of Jeremy Charron, who was killed on duty in August 1997. In August, 2019, Mitchell Briggs, son of Michael Briggs, graduated from the NH Police Academy 18 years after his father did so. Born in Boston on March 19, 1980, Michael Addison was adopted at age two by Rosetta Addison, his maternal grandmother, and her husband Lucious Addison, a disabled Vietnam veteran. Lucious and Rosetta later divorced, and Rosetta reared her own teenage children and "Little Michael" in what was described as a chaotic setting. He attended high school in Dorchester but did not graduate. At trial, the defense presented material about Addison's troubled upbringing: he was adopted by his maternal grandmother at age two, and lived with her in Brockton, Massachusetts and also with his alcoholic mother in one of Boston's most violent and drug-ridden housing projects in the Roxbury neighborhood. The defense argued for life imprisonment without parole. According to court records, in the ten years before the October 16, 2006, shooting, Addison had numerous run-ins with the police. On August 10, 1996, he beat his birth mother Cheryl Kiser, threatening to kill her. According to court filings, Kiser was a fifteen-year-old girl with a history of psychiatric problems when she became pregnant with Michael. She neglected prenatal care and engaged in violence, drug abuse and alcohol abuse during her pregnancy. According to the defense filing, serious prenatal and peri-natal complications of Kiser's pregnancy resulted in Michael Addison's having impaired brain function. Addison was charged in South Boston Juvenile Court with delinquent threatening and delinquent assault and battery against Kiser. He pleaded delinquent, and both charges were placed on file for the first-time offender. According to court records, Addison was a 16-year-old juvenile in 1996 when he pointed a revolver at the face of another Dorchester high school student. The gun misfired and Manuel Andrade survived. Firearms expert Marc Dupre testified at the trial of Addison that the gun was in poor condition, but it was capable of firing a bullet. He said it might have been able to fire after several squeezes of the trigger or after moving the cylinder slightly. Addison was one of the first juveniles to be indicted under Massachusetts' new youthful offender law; it allowed him to be prosecuted as an adult and face potential adult penalties.