Evidence ignored in Chauncey Bailey case { Oakland's Your Black Muslim Bakery hit}

Contra Costa Times ^ | 10/27/8 | Thomas Peele, Bob Butler and Mary Fricker, The Chauncey Bailey Project

[SmithL]

OAKLAND — The lead detective assigned to investigate journalist Chauncey Bailey's killing ignored evidence linking Yusuf Bey IV, former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, to a role in the killing and interfered in two other unrelated felony cases involving Bey IV, according to an investigation by the Chauncey Bailey Project.

The Bailey Project's reporting has led to a police internal affairs investigation of that detective, Sgt. Derwin Longmire, and whether his relationship with Bey IV may have compromised the case.

Law enforcement officials said the investigation of the Bailey killing is in crisis.

If Longmire is charged with administrative or criminal wrongdoing, the chances of convicting the one person charged, Devaughndre Broussard, might be jeopardized.

At the same time, if a vigorous investigation of Bailey's killing is not quickly undertaken, chances of ever charging others and fully solving the most prominent slaying of an American journalist since 1976 could be lost.

In a highly unusual move, the Alameda County District Attorney's Office has launched its own investigation to determine whether there was a conspiracy to kill Bailey. The district attorney's probe is independent of the Oakland police and two investigators have been assigned to the work. Usually a case has one investigator.

Evidence the Bailey Project obtained during its lengthy investigation includes data from a tracking device hidden on Bey Advertisement IV's car that shows it outside Bailey's apartment seven hours before the Aug. 2, 2007, killing. Police say Bey IV and Broussard both admitted to being in the vehicle at that time along with a third man who worked at the bakery, Antoine Mackey.

The Bailey Project could find no documentation in case notes that Oakland police officials ever analyzed Bey IV's cell phone data. The Bailey Project, however, obtained and analyzed the records....

[SmithL]

Oakland Police Sgt. Derwin Longmire, a homicide investigator, outside the courtroom during the preliminary hearing for Devaughndre Broussard at the Wiley Manuel Courthouse in Oakland, Calif. on Wednesday November 21, 2007. Broussard is on trial for the murder of journalist Chauncey Bailey.