Exclusive: Inside People's Park Rape

By Ted Friedman/Berkeley Reporter
Sept. 6, 2013

EMBEDDED SOUTH SIDE

As I wrote in Berkeley Reporter (.com) recently, "crime blotter" releases from police public information officers is "blah-blah." [Berkeley Crime Blotter Blah-Blah, Aug. 8]

Crime "blotter" releases are not only twice-redacted, they may be purposely misleading to assist on-going police investigations.
That's why Berkeley Reporter reports from the ground.

In the case of last week's widely reported rape in People's Park, I went to the ground--in this case the scene of the rape.

People's Park is 2.8 acres of prime South Side real-estate. The reported rape occurred in a tiny plot near the park's Bowditch St. boundary, a four-block street between Dwight Way and Bancroft Way.

At least that's what university cops thought when they taped off the area near a blue utility box the morning after the rape allegedly occurred and launched a forensics-investigation. The attack was reported the next day.

Although university administrators were recently accused of inaction in student date-rape cases, UCPD takes such reports, especially if reported promptly, with prompt response.

The alleged victim's report that her assailant used a gun was viewed skeptically by UCPD investigators, however.

According to Berkeleyside's Emilie Raguso, "Lt. Eric Tejada, of the University of California Police Department, said Tuesday afternoon via email that this type of sexual assault, in which the assailant uses a firearm, is “not common at all.”
“I don’t remember one like this in recent history,” he said.

According to a long-time park regular who was first on the scene after hearing a commotion at 2 a.m--long after curfew--the alleged victim was hysterical. She told him that her assailant was not a park regular.

The description of the alleged assailant as a "Filipino" may have been a mistake or an attempt by police to fool the suspect into complacency.

I know the alleged victim and her close friend, who has a different version of events that night. The friend says the assailant was black. The alleged victim has accused the man, to anyone who will listen, of previously raping her, months ago, far from the park.

According to the friend, the alleged victim has "mental issues," which may color her accounts of the attack.
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