Update: Oakland Muslim Bakery Linked to Killings (Update: Suspect Confesses)
Sat, Aug 4, 2007 at 10:17:21 am PDT
The latest news on “Your Black Muslim Bakery” in Oakland: weapons seized at the bakery have been connected to several murders, including the daylight assassination of journalist Chauncey Bailey.
One of seven men arrested on Friday was Yusef Bey IV, the son of the bakery’s founder, Yusef Bey, a well-known local black Muslim leader who died in 2003. The six other men arrested on Friday were not identified by the police, nor were two suspects who were still being sought.
The police said the raid came after a lengthy investigation of other crimes, including two kidnappings on a single day in May, and two killings in July that occurred in the same north Oakland neighborhood where the bakery is located. The police had connected those crimes and put the bakery under surveillance before Mr. Bailey was killed.
“During our investigation, Chauncey Bailey was murdered, and it turns out that the evidence in that case also linked the same individuals we were looking at in the other two prior murders to that case,” said Lt. Ersie Joyner of the Oakland Police Department.
Asked whether there were any regrets about not moving faster to arrest the suspects before Mr. Bailey was killed, Assistant Chief Howard Jordan said that the Oakland Police Department’s resources were “very thin” and that the long-term investigation involved the cooperation of neighboring departments.
“Today was the best day we had, that we could have done this with the coordination of our allied agencies,” Mr. Jordan said. “We weren’t just kind of waiting around.”
Mr. Jordan said it was “very disheartening” to hear about Mr. Bailey’s killing, “and it was particularly disheartening to know it was connected to our investigation.”
The bakery’s operators had been investigated by the police in the past. In 2002, the founder, Mr. Bey, was charged with rape, sodomy and lewd acts with a child under 14, stemming from accusations that he had fathered a child with a 13-year-old girl in 1982. Mr. Bey died of cancer in 2003 before his trial began.
In late 2005, several members of the group that operates the bakery, including the younger Mr. Bey, were charged in an attack at a small neighborhood grocery store, in which liquor bottles were smashed and other merchandise was destroyed. The attack was treated as a felony hate crime, the police said, because the store, which is owned by Muslims, had sold goods forbidden by Islamic law.
UPDATE at 8/4/07 10:34:27 am:
Police: Oakland Post editor’s killer confesses to slaying.
A 19-year-old handyman at Your Black Muslim Bakery admitted to police Friday night that he ambushed and killed Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, investigators said.
Police said Devaughndre Broussard told them he killed Bailey because he was angry over stories the journalist had written about the bakery, its employees and leaders in the past. Investigators said Broussard also was concerned about stories that he thought Bailey might be working on.
Bailey had apparently been working on a story about the group and its finances, authorities said.
Broussard made the admission to Sgts. Derwin Longmire and Lou Cruz. Broussard had been arrested at his home Friday morning in the 1000 block of 59th Street in Oakland, where police recovered the shotgun that they believe was used to kill Bailey the day before.
Police said Broussard had found out where Bailey lived and before the killing Friday morning had gone to the newspaper’s office to see if he was there. When he found that Bailey had not arrived at work yet, he began driving around in a van looking for him and spotted him in the 200 block of 14th Street, where he confronted him and shot him several times with the shotgun.
Frank says:
