BERKELEY — One day after police here announced an arrest in the 34-year-old murder of the department's first Japanese American officer, officials said Wednesday that the suspect in custody would not be charged with the killing -- at least for now.
Don Juan Warren Graphenreed, 54, who has lived on and off the streets, will instead be returned to a jail in Fresno, where he awaits trial on unrelated charges.
In a brief announcement Wednesday, Berkeley police spokesman Joe Okies said only that the investigation was continuing into the 1970 shooting of Officer Ronald Tsukamoto, whose name adorns the building that houses Berkeley's Police Department and jail. Graphenreed is believed to have been a "participant and accomplice," Okies said.
Graphenreed has been described by a source close to the investigation as having been a low-level "associate" of the militant Black Panther Party. But David Hilliard, former chief of staff of the party, said Wednesday that neither he nor other prominent former Panthers he had spoken with knew Graphenreed.
"Certainly there were people who sympathized with our movement, but nobody in our rank and file or leadership even heard of this person," Hilliard said. "This is a further attempt at criminalizing us. The guy was not a member of our Black Panther Party."
The decision not to file charges now was made jointly with the Alameda County district attorney's office, which has cooperated in the two-year investigation, Okies said. Dist. Atty. Tom Orloff said that "at this time there is insufficient evidence to file formal charges. But the investigation is ongoing."
Sources familiar with the inquiry indicated that Graphenreed -- who was arrested on a warrant for murder and conspiracy to commit murder -- could still prove a strategic link in the case, the first slaying of an officer since the Berkeley Police Department was founded in 1909.
According to one source familiar with the case, investigators believe Graphenreed drove the getaway car, a 1959 light-colored Studebaker. Police hope to arrest at least two others: the shooter and a lookout. It remained unclear Wednesday what evidence led to the arrest.
Tsukamoto's shooting death came at a time of peaking tensions in the Bay Area between police and militants who advocated violence against them -- the Black Panthers among them.
