Berkeley Police Department hires outside firm to review media policies

http://www.dailycal.org/2012/05/18/berkeley-police-department-hires-outside-firm-to-review-media-policies/

Berkeley Police Department announced it will be audited by a communications company in a department effort to curtail criticism regarding its media policies, following a March incident when a department spokesperson was ordered to a Bay Area reporter’s home in the middle of the night to ask for changes in an online article.

The city will spend up to $24,000 for Irvine-based Cornerstone Communications to audit the department’s policies beginning this month and continuing until October, at which time the department can choose to extend the process. The department was widely criticized when Chief Michael Meehan sent spokesperson Sgt. Mary Kusmiss to Oakland Tribune reporter Doug Oakley’s home at 12:45 a.m. on March 9.

Oakley had published a story about a March 8 town hall meeting at which Meehan addressed the department’s response on Feb. 18 when Berkeley resident Peter Cukor was killed. Though Oakley ended up making changes to the story, he later admitted he had been intimidated by the house call.

Interim City Manager Christine Daniel announced in a statement in March that the city had initially begun investigations and hired a San Francisco-based law firm, Renne Sloan Holtzman Sakai, to look into the incident.

The department first initiated the involvement of the outside firm to support and review the department’s media and training policies, Kusmiss said in an email.

According to the contract the department signed with the company, the department’s policies and transparency, along with its timeliness in filing items like public records requests and responses to media inquiries, will be compared to those of similar small-sized local agencies, and attempts will be made to improve them.