First blowback from Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan’s sending a cop to a reporter’s house at 12:45 a.m. to demand changes to a newspaper story he didn’t like: a dressing down from interim city manager Christine Daniels. Berkeleyside’s Francis Dinkelspiel updates the brouhaha over the chief’s highly-unusual approach to police-press relations, including a statement this afternoon from Daniels. An excerpt from it:There was no justification for contacting the reporter in this way and the Chief understands that the more appropriate response to his concerns about inaccurate statements in the article should have been to wait until the following day and make contact by phone or email. The Chief has acknowledged his lapse in judgment and assured me that nothing like this will happen again.Add: Doug Oakley, the Oakland Tribune reporter who was the subject of the late-night police house call, tells Berkeleyside it upset him so much he couldn’t sleep: “It was really intimidating.”
Image: Berkeleyside
