Crime & Safety

Berkeley Police Visit Reporter's Home at 1 a.m. to Ask For Changes in Story

Bay Area reporter gets an unwelcome visit from the Berkeley Police

Berkeley is abuzz today with news of the strange misstep taken by Police Chief Michael Meehan, who sent an officer to the home of a news reporter to ask for changes to an article.

The knock on door of Doug Oakley’s Berkeley home came at 12:45 a.m. Friday, as the Bay Area News Reporter Oakley was sleeping.

The Oakland Tribune reports that at first Oakley “and his wife thought something was drastically wrong or perhaps that a relative had died.”

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Instead, Oakley opened his door to public information officer Sgt. Mary Kusmiss. She was there to ask for changes to an article that Oakley filed hours earlier about a town meeting to discuss the murder of Peter Cukor

“Kusmiss said the chief was very upset that I wrote something in my article that he did not say,” Oakley told Berkeley Patch in an email. “[Meehan] wanted me to change it right then on the spot at 1 a.m. I said no way I could do it, and that I would have a look in the morning.”

Find out what's happening in Berkeleywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

On Friday, Meehan apologized citing extreme exhaustion as the reason for making what he now acknowledges to be a bad call. The police chief tells the Associated Press that he didn’t “mean to upset (Oakley) or his family last night."

Oakley says he doesn’t have much of a relationship with the police chief but has known Kusmiss for over five years.

“She's a real professional who I respect,” Oakley wrote in an email. “I don't know Meehan too well, so I don't know if it was [in keeping with] his character or not." But Oakley said it was definitely not in keeping Kusmiss' character.

"She was told to come over to my house, she said. She was very apologetic.”

A simple mistake brought on by exhaustion or is there something more at work? Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, suggests the latter to the Oakland Tribune.

“Ordering a police officer to a journalist's home in the middle of the night to demand changes to a story is an attempt at 'censorship by intimidation,' Scheer told the Tribune. "It's a violation of the First Amendment, let's be perfectly clear."

 Berkeley Patch readers seem to agree:

 Paul D writes:

The CHIEF of police sent an armed messenger to demand a journalist change his story….after MIDNIGHT, scaring him and his family.

Reverse the situation... the journalist is pissed off at Meehan’s evasive comments at the meeting...hires an armed thug to go to the Chief’s family home in the dead of night and demands he change his story. Pretty illegal behavior for a citizen but for someone under the color of authority to use armed intimidation to achieve a political end should be an immediate firing offense. 

A request for comment by Chief Meehan went unanswered at the time of publication. We'll update with his response. 


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