The victim, Peter Cukor, called a non-emergency police line to report a suspicious man on his driveway. Berkeley police said, at the time, they had no reason to believe that Cukor was in immediate danger. Now the transcript of the call has some people questioning that. Keep in mind that Berkeley police say what has been released is not complete, nor verbatim.
Here's part of it:
The dispatcher asks: "And he is just standing around there?"
Cukor says: "He says he lives here. He wants to come in which is very strange. I'd like an officer up here right away."
On that February night, the dispatcher labeled the call "priority two" because there was not a crime in progress.
The man, who police later arrested, is accused of beating Cukor to death with a flower pot shortly after the phone call.
Also there is more controversy for Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan in how he handled the fallout from the case. Not only did he send a public information officer to a reporter's home to confront him about the story, it turns out the chief may have inappropriately asked the PIO to use the department's database to find the reporter's home address. An attorney for the PIO says the search was not illegal.
The emails between the chief and PIO were obtained through the Public Records Act. The emails also show the chief contacted two other media outlets about their stories.
