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only the cache of this one remains, roo:

Duke officials back city on report source
BY PAUL BONNER : The Herald-Sun
pbonner@heraldsun.com; 419-6621
May 10, 2006 : 11:27 pm ET

DURHAM -- Duke University Police Department officials agreed Wednesday with Durham City Manager Patrick Baker that a Duke police report's doubts about the credibility of the alleged victim in the lacrosse rape case were based on remarks overheard from a Durham patrol officer.

Robert Dean, director of the Duke Police Department, told reporters in a press conference that the Duke officer who wrote the report didn't speak directly with the Durham officer he overheard saying on a cell phone that the victim changed her story several times, and that any charges arising from the incident would be only misdemeanors, he said.

The Duke officer, Christopher Day, didn't indicate in the report a source for the alleged victim's changing her story and attributed the comment about misdemeanors only generally to "Durham police."

The Durham officer was a sergeant who supervises front-line patrol officers in the area of the city that includes Duke, Baker said. Neither Day nor other Duke officers spoke with the victim of the alleged rape, Dean said Wednesday.

The report's contents figured strongly, however, in the university's initial reaction to the scandal. Dean relayed them to top university officials within hours after the lacrosse team party on March 13-14. A resulting skepticism about the alleged victim's account slowed Duke's reaction until nearly a week later, when lacrosse team members were ordered to submit DNA samples, according to a study that Duke released Monday of the university's response. The probe was conducted by two former university presidents at Duke President Richard Brodhead's request.

As a result, Duke officials initially underestimated the seriousness of the situation, concluded Julius Chambers, former chancellor of N.C. Central University, and William G. Bowen, who has headed Princeton University. Duke officials on Tuesday released the police report, which was alluded to in the Bowen-Chambers study. They distinguished it, however, from a police incident report, some information from which is public record under North Carolina law. In the lacrosse rape case, an incident report was filed by the Durham Police Department.

Even a strictly internal record like Day's operations report, however, should indicate its sources of information, said Aaron Graves, vice president of campus security and safety at Duke, who accompanied Dean in the press conference. Neither Dean nor Graves, however, would say Day erred in not including attribution, and they indicated they consider the report an otherwise an accurate account of what Day heard.

Baker said he plans to report on his findings Monday night to the City Council, after he has a chance to speak to Sgt. John Shelton, the District 2 patrol supervisor whose cell phone conversation Day overheard.

Baker also said he tried Wednesday to pin down what officers said and did at the Kroger store on Hillsborough Road where they found the woman, and at Duke Hospital, where the overheard phone conversation took place.

From what he's heard from department higher-ups, Baker said, the initial contacts Durham police had with the woman triggered "a pretty fast-moving situation where it appears they're thinking one thing and trying to clarify it."

Day heard one side of the conversation, pulled it out of context and had "drawn his own conclusions from it," Baker said.

Baker added that he's decided a report to the council is in order because police need time to answer his questions, and because he has to finish work this week on a fiscal 2006-07 budget proposal that's due to reach the council on Monday.

Staff writer Ray Gronberg contributed to this article.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:JlTyoWtJRJMJ:www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-733473.html+durham+rape+baker+shelton&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

I really think we'll find out Baker has some alterior motive in this whole thing. We can't find his fingerprints or involvement in other Durham criminal cases. One just mentioned yesterday in the media was the cross burnings, strangely, that investigation is being run by the Police Chief.

The Police Chief is noticeably absent in this case and Baker is hip-deep in it.

I saw the characterizations in Baker's Media interviews: Words like Eavesdropping were used. Another time a reference was made to the low rank of the officer on the phone. It was apparent what he was trying to do.

You are working on something in an office and someone that is in the same job position as you (does your same function)
is not available and a Superior or Customer asks you something regarding that other account that the other individual handles, if you pass on what you heard about it and say, I can't be sure, but I heard something about Thursday afternoon for the presentation; you'll have to check with him.

How many of us have done that? Is that eavesdropping? Eavesdropping is how it was purposefully portrayed, but that is not what is was. Eavesdropping has connotations of not being your business or someone doing it for their own benefit. The individual was a policemen and policemen constantly communicate informally. The work 24 hours shifts for God sakes.

I see a lot of spin coming out of that Durham PD, why though?