Berkeley homicide: Councilwoman wants answers from police

A Berkeley City Councilwoman wants police to answer questions about how calls for help were handled following the beating death Saturday night of a man who lives in her district.

"The residents of Berkeley need to know that public safety services are available to them 24/7," said Councilmember Susan Wengraf. "I need to reassure my constituents that the Berkeley police are there for them."

Wengraf is asking for a police timeline of events and more details on the response. Her request through the city manager's office comes a day after police said the first call for help from the victim, 67-year-old Peter Cukor, came in on a nonemergency line, and he was calmly reporting a person trespassing on his property.

Police did not immediately respond because at the time, "patrol teams were being reconfigured in order to monitor (an Occupy) protest" and only "criminal, in-progress emergency calls were to be dispatched, due to the reduction in officers available to handle calls for service," police said Monday.

A few minutes later when a call came in on the 911 emergency line about an attack in progress, police responded immediately, authorities said. A 23-year-old Alameda man, Daniel Jordan Dewitt, has been arrested on suspicion of beating Cukor to death outside Cukor's home on Park Gate Road about 9 p.m. Saturday. Dewitt, whose mother said has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday.

"I know

the police were geared up to monitor the march from Oakland to UC Berkeley," Wengraf said. "I need to know what that means in terms of deploying our police force."

In a statement to media Tuesday, Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan said the department is "carefully reviewing the circumstances of this case in depth to ensure everything possible was done to properly respond to this tragic event."

Wengraf said she knows Cukor from working in city politics for the last 20 years, and their children went to elementary school together.

On the other side of town in west Berkeley, City Councilman Darryl Moore said that police were not able to immediately respond to the first nonemergency call points to the need for more police officers in the city.

The department has 11 vacant positions and 183 officers, according to city budget documents. Since 2009 budget cuts have forced the city to reduce its entire workforce by 210 employees, mostly all through attrition.

During a Feb. 6 public meeting on burglaries in his district, Moore made a prophetic pitch to residents for more police officers, and he said Tuesday his comments apply to Saturday night's attack.

"We need more officers," Moore said. "There is an argument that we need more officers on Shattuck Avenue and on Telegraph Avenue, but it is our neighborhoods where they are needed most importantly."

Wengraf said it's easy to talk about needing more officers, "but if we are going to have more officers we need to find a way to pay for them."

Moore agreed.

"We need to find a way to adjust our budget to get more officers on the streets," he said. "Public safety should be our highest priority."

Doug Oakley covers Berkeley. Contact him at 510-843-1408. Follow him at Twitter.com/douglasoakley.

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