Berkeley chief defends handling of slaying case (police were busy with Occupiers)

Henry K. Lee, SF Chronicle, 3/6/12

Berkeley's police chief on Monday defended his department's decision not to give priority to a complaint about an intruder from a homeowner who was bludgeoned to death a short time later.

Chief Michael Meehan rejected suggestions that his officers ignored Peter Cukor's call Feb. 18 because they were focused on an Occupy Oakland march that would be arriving in the city later that night. The chief said he had enough officers to deal with Occupy and calls about life-threatening emergencies and felonies in progress.

But Cukor's call on a nonemergency line at 8:45 p.m. was not deemed an immediate threat, so officers were not dispatched at once. The chief acknowledged that officers had been kept on standby for the Occupy protest, but said the department has to assign priorities to calls for service no matter what the occasion.

"You could use any other crime as a replacement for Occupy," Meehan said in an interview. "Is it possible that we have an armed robbery that causes us to prioritize other calls down? Sure it is, but that's true of everything. Any call can prioritize itself over another call, whether it's Occupy or something else."

full: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/05/BAM11NGESL.DTL