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"As your city manager, I would expect that the buck stops with me," Baker, a lawyer and former assistant city attorney with responsibilities for Police Department issues, told the council. "I'm not asking them to 'get their story straight' at all, but I do think it's my duty to know what's happening at all times. I'm not wanting to be blindsided by anything at all."

The Bowen-Chambers report -- commissioned by Duke President Richard Brodhead -- hit like a small bomb at City Hall last week. It alleged that Durham police had told their counterparts at Duke that the case would blow over because the accuser kept changing her story during the early stages of the investigation on March 14.

The report, alluding to a Duke police document, claimed that the accuser initially told Durham police she'd been raped by about 20 men.

Defense lawyers immediately seized on the Bowen-Chambers report to launch a new round of attacks on the accuser's truthfulness.

But Baker took the document as an attack on the Durham Police Department. The morning after it came out, he contacted officials at Duke to find out what they'd heard from city investigators.

They quickly conceded that the information that formed the basis of the Bowen-Chambers report's claims about Durham police came from a single low-ranking Duke police officer, Christopher Day, who overheard one end of a Durham patrol sergeant's cell-phone conversation.

Baker said the sergeant, John Shelton, was talking with his superiors while police were trying to figure out exactly what they were dealing with. Patrol officers initially believed the woman was intoxicated.

But Durham authorities -- tipped off, Baker said Monday, by medical personnel at Duke University Hospital -- soon decided they were dealing instead with a potential sexual assault, and called in investigators.

"What the Duke Police Department officer overheard was simply one portion of an ongoing conversation [Sgt. Shelton] was having with a watch commander," Baker said, adding that Day would have drawn a different conclusion had he stuck around a while longer. Day instead traveled with two of his colleagues to the scene of the alleged crime, a Duke-owned house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd., to try to contact its residents.

"All of the evidence in the case makes it clear ... that we took it seriously from the get-go," Baker told the council Monday. "I've spoken with all the officers. Any conclusion or allegation that the Durham Police Department didn't take this seriously is incorrect."

The alleged attack occurred in the early hours of March 14 and had been classified as a sexual assault by Durham Police by 2:50 a.m. Police did not obtain a search warrant for the house where the attack allegedly occurred until 6:55 p.m. on March 16.

Baker did not criticize anyone at Duke other than Officer Day during his comments to the council Monday, despite the concession late last week by Joe Cheshire, a lawyer for newly indicted player David Evans, that Duke administrators had tipped off team members about the allegations before Durham police could secure a search warrant for the house.

The Chambers-Bowen report said Duke's dean of students, Sue Wasiolek, contacted former lacrosse coach Mike Pressler, Athletics Director Joe Alleva and other officials in the school's athletics department immediately after learning of the allegations the morning of March 14. The people she contacted in turn notified the lacrosse players.

http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-735122.html