Muslim Bakery head wielded political clout

Politicians knew it. The community knew it. The police knew it.

If you really wanted to connect with voters in troubled northwest Oakland, to show people that you understood the importance of African American self-reliance in the Bay Area's most heavily African American city, all roads led to the late Yusuf Bey and his Your Black Muslim Bakery on San Pablo Avenue.

Bey and his followers knew they had political clout. They used it to great advantage in obtaining money from the city, lenient sentences from judges, and a virtual hands-off approach from the Police Department - even though evidence now shows that the bakery's leadership was implicated in serious crimes.

Jerry Brown - former governor, now state attorney general - understood the importance of the bakery during his successful run for mayor in 1998. He gave a stump speech at the bakery and spent an hour in Bey's private quarters. Elihu Harris, mayor before Brown, made the same pilgrimage to the bakery during his campaign.

Among others seeking audiences with Bey over the years were City Council members Nate Miley, Ignacio De La Fuente, Larry Reid and Dezie Woods-Jones, according to Saleem Bey and John Bey, so-called "spiritual sons" of the bakery founder. U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and state Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, each wrote testimonial letters for the bakery. Former Police Chief Joseph Samuels depended on Yusuf Bey to help improve police relations with the neighborhoods.

After the slaying in August of journalist Chauncey Bailey, allegedly killed by a bakery handyman, the story of city leaders genuflecting at the door of the now-disgraced bakery seems troubling. But those politicians willing to discuss the issue - and most declined to be interviewed - say that during the bakery's heyday, to ignore Bey and his business, let alone disdain them, would have been foolish.

For most of its existence from roughly 1968 to 2007, the bakery was a symbol of black enterprise and empowerment, setting a good - if sometimes intimidating - example in impoverished, crime-plagued North and West Oakland. The allegations of wrongdoing that have spilled out since Bey was charged with child rape in 2002 - vicious abuse of his numerous wives, systematic welfare fraud and unsolved killings - were mostly rumor before then, some politicians say, and they were rarely investigated by police.

It wasn't a matter of official corruption, say many looking back on the bakery era. Instead, the bakery benefited from what those in rough-and-tumble neighborhoods would call "juice."

"Dr. Bey was a power broker," said Miley, now an Alameda County supervisor. "My background is middle class, law school - I'm not one who can go out in the streets and talk with troubled kids that naturally. But Dr. Bey - he was out there.

"He presented an image, he spoke of hope, and if we could use him as a conduit to reach people, reduce crime, that was great."

Former Mayor Harris, now chancellor of the Peralta Community College District, said anyone trying to accomplish anything in that part of the city had to respect Bey's clout.

"A lot of people saw him as a guy who would challenge the system. He had respect," said Harris, who won re-election in 1994 over a field of candidates that included Bey. "His whole image was that he was helping the locked out and the locked up.

"Who could disparage that?"

If they could have seen what was going on behind the bakery's doors, some might have criticized Bey's operation.

And not everyone was convinced by the self-empowerment image.

Bey and his followers "were a bunch of bums and thugs," former Oakland police Lt. Burnham Matthews recalled bluntly.

Trouble beneath the surface

The bakery's ties with the Oakland political establishment have seemed increasingly problematic since police arrested a bakery member on suspicion of killing Oakland Post Editor Bailey, who was working on a story about power struggles at the bakery.

The shooting was the last of a series of violent acts allegedly linking the bakery to crime and corruption.

Yusuf Bey was never convicted of any crimes, but when he died of colon cancer in 2003 at age 67, he was awaiting trial on a charge that he had raped a 14-year-old girl, and was accused in a lawsuit of raping her and two other girls. After his death, a bitter and allegedly violent family power struggle ensued.

Waajid Aljawwaad, Bey's handpicked successor to run the bakery business, mysteriously disappeared and was later found dead. John Bey, the next in line, barely survived an assassination attempt at his home. The majority of the family was thrown out of bakery operations - including "spiritual sons" like Saleem Bey, the news source for Bailey's investigation of the bakery. Bey's son Antar then took over with the guidance of "spiritual adviser" Nedir Bey - but then Antar was shot dead in 2005 at age 23.

That year, another son, 19-year-old Yusuf Bey IV, assumed sole control. After that, bakery members were implicated in a crime spree that included kidnappings, torture, fraud and Bailey's execution-style slaying in downtown Oakland.

Bey IV flaunted the belief that he could operate with impunity because of the bakery's political clout and community image, police say.

Even after he was jailed on charges of kidnap and torture, a conversation secretly recorded on videotape by police and subsequently obtained by The Chronicle shows Bey IV strategizing with followers about how to continue working with politicians.

"If they let us out, the City (Council) is gonna be terrified of us," Bey IV said. "After what happened to dude (Bailey), they gonna be like, 'No, I don't want to go back to working with them.' "

On the other hand, he said, the council might end up seeing the group as so "crazy" that it would have to work with the bakery again.

It's small wonder Bey IV should feel protected by the bakery's political clout, some current and former police officers said. For years, any investigation involving the bakery required a higher burden of proof, said Sgt. Bob Crawford, a 40-year veteran of the force.

"To make any arrest, you better have ducks in line," he said. "As a result of that, sometimes it is easier if you just keep on driving. If something happens, you are not going to get support ... you know there's nothing but trouble politically."

Power from the streets

The bakery's clout wasn't built on campaign contributions or back-door deals, according to dozens of interviews. Politicians simply felt the business was essential as a conduit to northwest Oakland.

"Remember, in the 1980s and early '90s, you had the crack epidemic, Oakland's murder rate was the highest in the nation, near 200. You had mothers not giving a damn about their kids," Miley said. "It was off-the-hook bad, worse than things are in Oakland today.

"You look at Dr. Bey in that context, and if we could have him out there, helping a hard-to-reach community, that was good."

It didn't matter that "Dr. Bey" had no doctorate, or that the bakery had no official ties to the Nation of Islam. The bakery's disciplined followers, nattily clad in suits and bow ties, were giving a strong example of black empowerment in an area where drug-addled despair, poverty and death are woven as tightly into the community fabric as pride and hope.

"The bakery did great business across the color line, and I always respected that," said Blanche Richardson, whose family owns the nearby Marcus Books, one of the oldest black bookstores in the nation.

"I know a lot of people say they were intimidating, but the brothers who came into our store were personally very disciplined, well-read and polite - as opposed to the (drug dealers) we have here on the corners ... who have no discipline, no goals."

Richardson said her most telling experience with the bakery came seven years ago after she and her daughter were robbed outside their store as they closed for the night.

The following Saturday, Bey showed up unannounced in front of the store with a convoy of 10 black Lincoln Town Cars.

"They pulled up, double parked, and as if on cue, out stepped all these young men in their suits and ties," said Richardson.

Accompanied by his entourage, Bey strode into the store, and every customer in the place fell silent.

"He was very friendly and said he'd heard what happened, how terrible it was, particularly that it had happened to women," Richardson said. "He stayed about a half hour. For several Saturdays after that, they came back and did the same thing."

After that first visit, Richardson said, there was no more trouble of any kind at the bookstore.

"That was the impact those visits had," she said. "Nobody messed with us. It was very powerful."

Even after allegations of child abuse and violence spilled out in recent years, many weren't ready to write the bakery off as a positive role model.

"For black people who have suffered so much under the injustices of the system, we were very sensitive to persecution," said Black Panther co-founder David Hilliard. "I personally withheld judgment until I could see the entire thing play out."

Community-based policing

In the early 1990s, Bey was positioned to take advantage of a new philosophy that swept over City Hall: community policing.

Oakland officials in 1993 ordered the department to embrace this form of law enforcement, then becoming popular nationally, which emphasized foot patrols and close coordination with residents in crime prevention. The ethos called for building relationships with groups that are tapped into the community but not necessarily part of a city's power structure.

To carry out this philosophy, the council hired Oakland's first black police chief, Joseph Samuels, a 17-year veteran of the department who had served two years as the Fresno police chief.

"They wanted a chief who would reflect the community a little more, the disenfranchised groups who were complaining that the Police Department was harassing them," said Tracy Police Chief David Krauss, who worked under Samuels. "That was Joe's mission."

Samuels had meetings with Bey. Sometimes the chief would call Bey for help with community relations in West or North Oakland, said Saleem Bey.

"It wasn't like we were getting a pass, but if there was any tension, the door was open for communication," Saleem Bey said.

Former Oakland police Lt. Matthews said that when he joined the department in 1968, he'd been shocked by the department's lenient attitude toward violent elements at the bakery. But Matthews saw Samuels' relationship with Bey as a deep betrayal.

"They were not doing what they were purportedly doing in the community," said Matthews, who became police chief in East Palo Alto and then Alameda. "But you had a chief, at the time, who I think sold out law enforcement and the department for his own aggrandizement.

"I'm as community-based-policing-minded as anybody around," he said. "The key is knowing who you're supporting."

Samuels could not be reached for comment for this article. Krauss, however, said Samuels would never have sacrificed the law for anyone.

"There's one thing to have a mandate of your bosses to improve police-community relations," Krauss said. "It's another thing entirely to condone crime or look the other way. No cop would ever put up with that - including Joe Samuels."

By one measure - the city's homicide rate - Samuels' community policing approach had a positive effect. Under Samuels' watch, Oakland's homicides plummeted from 167 in his first year, 1993, to 68 in 1999, when he was fired by then-Mayor Brown.

Even after he left Oakland and became Richmond's police chief, Samuels kept his door well opened for some bakery contacts.

"Me and John (Bey), we were able to meet with him directly," Saleem Bey said. "He gave us his personal number if we needed anything."

Bakery tries to join City Hall

The year after Samuels became Oakland's police chief, 1994, Yusuf Bey decided to seek political power for himself. He ran for mayor.

Scandal erupted during the campaign.

Nedir Bey, who had become the patriarch's right-hand man, and other bakery members were accused of kidnapping and torturing a business associate. When police came to arrest them, bakery members began fighting with officers, creating a near riot and drawing every on-duty officer in Oakland to the scene.

Nonetheless, Yusuf Bey continued to draw significant neighborhood support for his election bid. At his largest campaign rally, the featured speaker was ousted Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Muhammad, who peppered the 1,700-person crowd with racist screeds, including the remark, "I'd like to see one movie where we kill white folks."

Condemnation ensued, but in the end Bey drew over 3,000 votes - 5 percent of the total, a significant amount in an election where the top vote-getter got 21,090 votes.

"Rather than the politicians ignoring those people, now they're a bloc, and the head of that bloc was Dr. Bey," said John Bey. "If you want those votes that they would otherwise discount, you can get those votes, but you have to go through Dr. Bey."

Behind the scenes, Nedir Bey had encouraged Yusuf Bey's forays into politics, according to a longtime Bey family member who spoke on condition of anonymity. And he soon made good use of that political cachet - in the courthouse.

In the torture and kidnapping case, Nedir Bey and three other men had allegedly burned the victim with a heated knife and beaten him with a heavy-duty flashlight. In a plea bargain, they pleaded no contest to one felony count each of false imprisonment.

And when it came time for sentencing, the probation officer reported that Nedir Bey had references from County Supervisor Keith Carson as well as Larry Reid, who was then Mayor Elihu Harris' chief of staff and later became a city councilman. Oakland Police Department Officer Emelington Reese, whose beat included the bakery, also wrote a letter of reference.

In the end, Judge Martin Jenkins sentenced Nedir Bey to six months probation.

Carson and Reese confirmed vouching for Nedir Bey, based on their experiences seeing his work in the community. Reid has said the reference was listed without his permission.

Clout brings a loan

In 1997, the bakery cashed in - literally - on its clout. And in doing so, its techniques of getting what it wanted came to the public eye more than ever before.

That year, Nedir Bey received a 1ドル.1 million city loan for E.M. Health Services, which was meant to dispatch nurses and aides for in-home medical care. The business failed, and the loan was never repaid. Today, some officials say the loan was a justifiable risk - but others say they felt unfairly pressured to lend the cash.

Nedir Bey's business plan was skimpy at best, even supporters agree. But he argued that the loan was no riskier than other council-approved public ventures that had lost millions, such as a downtown ice rink and a 200ドル million loan to help the Oakland Raiders move back to Oakland from Los Angeles.

Community groups, including the NAACP and Bay Area Black Contractors Association, also lobbied the council in favor of the loan. They noted that the money would come from federal funds aimed at helping marginal businesses, particularly minority-run ones, get off the ground.

"That's what this money was for," said then-Mayor Harris, who added that his mother subsequently paid E.M. Health Services to care for his father before he died in 1998. "The money was for small, local businesses that were just starting and needed a chance to succeed, not based on their prior success."

Council members said they approved the loan in part because they believed black-owned businesses weren't getting a fair share of city loans. But some were also intimidated by the rows of stone-faced young men in military-style formation who attended the meeting.

"They were never overtly threatening - but they would stand there in their black suits and bow ties, and it seemed threatening," said Dick Spees, who is white and was an Oakland city councilman from 1979 to 2003. "It was a huge factor.

"If you were to go out on a limb and say you did not want to support the bakery, you were concerned, frankly, with what might occur. You were accused of racism."

Councilmember Reid, who is black, said he never felt intimidated. But he agreed that "the guilt trip" influenced the council to approve the loan.

"Those of us on the council as African Americans were always being accused of giving loans to white people and not to the African American community," Reid said. "And the bakery raised a good, valid point on that."

After the business collapsed, the city attorney said the loan was found to be "unrecoverable" because it was not tied to any assets. The FBI investigated, according to a source, but no one was prosecuted.

In 2006, under the leadership of Antar Bey's successor, Yusuf Bey IV, the bakery's financial luck ran completely dry. But even then, as politicians finally began to back away amid the allegations of violence swirling around the bakery, Bey IV was still able to draw on some of his father's leftover clout.

With the bakery choking on debt run up under his slain brother, Bey IV filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to restructure its debts. When Bey IV failed to abide by the terms of Chapter 11, the judge converted the case to Chapter 7, which calls for a liquidation of the business to pay off creditors.

The young leader was frantic that the family legacy would be lost. So he began turning to politicians.

Mayor Dellums and Assemblyman Sandré Swanson, D-Alameda, wrote letters of support. And inside the Oakland office of Congresswoman Lee, Bey IV had another ally.

Sandra Andrews, Lee's aide working with constituents, had known Nedir Bey for years and declared herself his "big sister" or "surrogate mother," according to Saleem Bey. She came to court and presented a letter on behalf of Lee to try to save the bakery, he said.

This time, the support fell flat. The judge ordered the bakery compound to be sold at auction.

Julie Nickson, Lee's chief of staff, said Andrews formerly had the authority to issue letters supporting constituents on behalf of Lee. That has changed.

"Sandra going to bankruptcy court and participating in the letter was a huge error in judgment," said Nickson. "As a result, she was reprimanded and her responsibilities were changed."

After the letter was delivered, Saleem Bey warned Lee's office that the bakery was involved in criminal activities. However, Nickson said that it was not Lee's responsibility to investigate and that Bey was advised to go to law enforcement - which he had already done.

In a statement issued a week after Bailey's slaying, Lee said the bakery was "no longer" a respected institution.

End of an era

Today, the hollowed-out shell of a building on San Pablo Avenue that until recently was the bakery gives no hint of the power the organization wielded.

Workers renovating the place into a new AIDS treatment center said they found dozens of abandoned women's driver's licenses, pornography, gallons of urine in soft drink bottles, used condoms, expended and unexpended bullets - all, like the allegations of late, testifying to an existence behind closed doors that didn't seem to match the tidy, disciplined image that held sway for so long.

But back on Aug. 3, when 200 police officers raided the bakery and arrested a suspect in Bailey's slaying, they found one last reminder of the group's political pull on display. It hung near the pie case - an August 2002 letter to the bakery founder from state Sen. Perata.

It read: "The leadership you provide should be an inspiration to all concerned over the city's future."

-- For a multimedia presentation and links to past Chronicle coverage of the slaying of Chauncey Bailey, go to sfgate.com/bailey.