Free Republic

The former leader of an Oakland community group will spend the rest of his life in prison after being convicted of ordering the killings of three men, including the first American journalist killed on U.S. soil for reporting a story in more than a decade. An Alameda County Superior Court judge sentenced Yusuf Bey IV, 25, to three life terms in prison without the possibility of parole Friday. As head of Your Black Muslim Bakery, Bey ordered his workers to kill the men in separate attacks in July 2007, prosecutors said. According to trial testimony, Odell Roberson, 31, was killed...

OAKLAND — Police internal affairs detectives investigating the handling of journalist Chauncey Bailey's slaying will have state investigators present when they interview members of their department's command staff. Investigators from the attorney general's office will be there to monitor the interviews, according to a letter the Department of Justice sent to Mayor Ron Dellums in November. But the Justice Department won't take over the whole investigation — which is apparently what Oakland internal affairs investigators wanted, the letter stated. "We do not believe, as has been suggested by the Police Department's Internal Affairs investigator, that the Police Department investigation be...

The leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery expressed satisfaction on the morning Chauncey Bailey was killed, saying the journalist got what he deserved for taking on the troubled organization in his reporting, a bakery member told Oakland police in a recently discovered account given the day after the slaying. Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV summoned the woman to watch a TV news story about three hours after Bailey, 57, was gunned down on his way to work on Aug. 2, 2007, she told homicide investigators. As they watched the report on the Oakland Post editor's slaying, Bey told her, "That...

Armed robbers terrorized Oakland restaurants and small businesses in three separate crime sprees over the past year. The first wave targeted Asian eateries and struck during the 2007 holiday season. The second arrived last spring and was more indiscriminate. The third struck in July and August. All three made newspaper headlines and led television newscasts, shining a spotlight on the city's out-of-control crime problem and the Oakland Police Department's apparent inability to cope with it. In fact, the department's public response to the takeover robberies was both odd and illuminating. The department's mantra for dealing with the city's crime spike...