No Charges for Now in Berkeley Officer’s Slaying

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.

The 28-year-old Tsukamoto, who was born in a Japanese internment camp and entered law enforcement when few Asian Americans were doing so, was the third Bay Area officer killed in a two-month period.

His slaying ultimately led to the creation of the Northern California Asian American Peace Officers Assn., and a scholarship is granted to Asian American criminal justice students yearly in his name.

Tsukamoto’s 64-year-old brother, Gary, arrived at the news conference Wednesday morning “pleased that we can have some kind of closure,” but was promptly unsettled by the unexpected announcement that Graphenreed would not be charged.

Still, Tsukamoto said he remained hopeful that justice would ultimately be served. “I’d like to hear from the police what the reason is,” he said. “I’m not going to pass judgment.”

The slaying “left a pretty large hole in the family,” said the retired sales manager, whose parents died long ago. He planned to visit his brother’s grave in El Cerrito, north of Berkeley, in the coming days. “I think I’ll have a few words to say to him when I get up there.”

The arrest of Graphenreed came after a two-year investigation and as part of a broader effort by Berkeley police to solve cold cases. Tsukamoto’s murder triggered a dedicated hunt for the killer. But a source close to the case said investigators focused for nearly 25 years on a man whom they now believe had nothing to do with the crime.

Graphenreed’s stepbrother, Joey Evans, 45, said he did not know whether Graphenreed had been a formal member of the Black Panther Party, but that he did associate -- and proudly so -- with the Panther movement for militant self-defense of minority communities. When Evans was a child, he recalled, Graphenreed showed off photos of himself standing at a podium next to activist Angela Davis.

But Graphenreed’s fortunes shifted. Evans described his stepbrother as a troubled alcoholic and addict who had lived in recent years on the streets of San Francisco. His criminal record includes second-degree burglary and a string of misdemeanor thefts.

About a year ago, investigators began to focus on Graphenreed in the Tsukamoto case, Evans said. Then, three months ago, they visited his mother’s house in Fresno and confiscated family photos. About two weeks later, on March 18, Graphenreed was arrested on suspicion of trying to steal a bottle of brandy from a Fresno market. According to prosecutors, he warned two employees that he had a knife and threatened them.

Graphenreed faces two counts of robbery and one count of petty theft with a prior conviction. Evans said investigators had been telling Graphenreed that he could earn two strikes if convicted, leaving him vulnerable to life in prison if he was convicted on another matter.

“I think they just want him to tell on somebody else,” Evans said.

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Times special correspondent Kate Coleman contributed to this report.