The Berkeley Police Department will revamp its media policies, spurred by a controversial March incident in which Chief Michael Meehan dispatched an officer to a reporter's home in the middle of the night to request changes to an article.
The city will pay the Irvine-based Cornerstone Communications to audit the department’s policies beginning this month and continuing till October, the Daily Californian is reporting. Costs could run as high as $24,000.
The department could choose to extend the review after October.
The department was widely criticized when Meehan sent department spokesperson Sgt. Mary Kusmiss to Oakland Tribune reporter Doug Oakley’s home at 12:45 a.m. on March 9. Oakley had written a story about a March 8 town hall meeting at which Meehan addressed the department’s response to a Feb. 18 murder.
The city has already hired one firm, San Francisco-based attorneys Renne Sloan Holtzman Sakai, to probe the incident,
