In Muslim community, Baca wins support through conversation

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In Muslim community, Baca wins support through conversation, not confrontation
The L.A. County sheriff, a Republican with a strong reputation as a crime fighter, believes in building trust within minority communities. He reads the Koran and shuns hard-line tactics.


Deputies praying

Syed Arif Rizvi, left, president of the Islamic Center of the San Gabriel Valley, joins Deputy Sherif Morsi and Sgt. Mike Abdeen in prayers. The two lawmen work with the Sheriff's Department's Muslim community affairs unit. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times

April 19, 2011
Reporting from New York—
Three young women, all wearing delicate hijabs, are gathered outside a TriBeCa lecture hall in eager anticipation. It's not an actor or a pop star they're waiting for. The object of their giddiness is Sheriff Lee Baca, in town for just one night.

It might be unusual for a lawman anywhere to have fans, let alone one a continent away from his jurisdiction. But such is the life of Los Angeles County's chief law enforcement officer since his outspoken support of American Muslims vaulted him into the national spotlight.

"I just want to meet you and thank you," one young woman blurts out after catching Baca outside a recent speaking engagement on Muslim outreach. "You gave us a voice."

In an only-Nixon-could-go-to-China kind of way, Baca, a former Marine reservist and registered Republican, has been largely immune to the innuendo that has caused other politicians to distance themselves from Muslims post 9/11. He has bucked the hard-line law enforcement approach of security checks and surveillance in favor of outreach and cooperation.

His law-and-order credentials have made him an irresistible ally for Muslim advocates, earning him shout-outs on national TV shows, including "The Colbert Report" and invitations to the halls of Congress. On more than one occasion he's been the only law enforcement official willing to mix it up with Republican lawmakers on the issue.

In New York, where Baca preached the benefits of Muslim outreach on a panel about national security, the sheriff seemed energized by his warm reception. "Did you see those girls? Do they look like terrorists to you?" he said of the gaggle of young Muslim women who greeted him. "They're not terrorists. I know my public."

Reading the Koran

The events of 9/11 quickly took Baca in an unusual direction. When many politicians chose an arms-length approach to Muslims, Baca chose the Koran — literally. In the black sedan that ferried him from one engagement to another, he pored over the book, reading it from front to back, memorizing passages.

Within days of the terrorist attack, Baca met with local Muslim leaders, promising them protection. Responding to reports that Pakistani store owners were being hassled, Baca ordered his deputies "to go by the 7-Elevens and offer support."

His empathy for a persecuted minority, he says, isn't rooted in any sort of shared experience as a Mexican American but in an unusual childhood.

The son of a seamstress who had to care for three children on her own, Baca was sent as a boy to live with his pensioner grandparents in East L.A. His developmentally challenged uncle, then in his 30s, still lived at the home.

"He was a pound and a half at birth," Baca said. "Couldn't read, write, speak sentences. My uncle had no faculty, no capacity."

With no household car, 7-year-old Leroy, his uncle and his grandmother traversed the city by bus. Those rides had a lasting effect.

"People would sneer at my uncle, laugh at him, make fun of him, and I believe that's wrong," Baca recalled. "We're not bothering anyone. So how about just leaving us alone? Is that asking too much?"

His affinity for minority communities had political benefits. A long-shot candidate for sheriff in 1998, Baca got creative in his campaigning, tapping ethnic groups other candidates ignored.

"I had to have other bases of support outside the traditional realms," he said. Among them were Iranians, Lebanese and other groups with large Muslim populations.

But his decision to intensify those ties post 9/11, he says, wasn't political. Lapses on the federal level exposed by the attacks put a newfound pressure on local law enforcement. "All of our lives have been changed by 9/11," Baca said. "We're the ones who will get slammed if something falls through the cracks."

Thousands of tips flooded law enforcement agencies after 9/11. Even leads that seemed silly had to be followed. "The one you don't follow will end up being the one that matters," Baca said. In one instance, a local group of Muslim men frequenting paintball facilities were investigated as potential terrorist snipers. They turned out to be "a buncha guys who just liked paintballing," Baca said. "What are you gonna do? Ignore it?"

To pinpoint legitimate concerns, Baca needed his deputies inside Muslim communities. His focus on homegrown terror grew after the 2005 London Underground bombings, when four men, all living and working in England for years, killed 52.

"I realized we didn't have a strategy for homegrown terrorism," Baca said. "Cops are not gonna be invited into an extremist plot. That's rule No. 1.... But if you get people to tell you something that's troubling them, that's the first sign of success."

To build enough trust to be tipped off to extremist plots, Baca needed his deputies to become hyper-responsive to the Muslim community's more routine crime concerns.

Less upfront tactics have at times backfired on other agencies. In Orange County, the FBI is still suffering from the fallout of a 2006 operation in which a paid informant posing as a Muslim convert infiltrated mosques.

The mole, equipped with a microphone keychain and a hidden camera, was outed soon after his talk of violent jihad became so extreme that one mosque was granted a restraining order. Many Muslims still point to the incident as proof that they're too often treated by law enforcement as suspects, not partners.

Baca is reluctant to criticize the FBI, but his disdain for its style of covert intelligence gathering shows.

"I think they learned on their own what the plusses and minuses are. I believe terror plots are more sophisticated. I'm more of a chess player," he said. "There are so few Muslim extremists in America. You can't burn all the hay to find the needle, because the people are the hay."

After initial struggles to make inroads, Baca's Muslim community affairs unit, which staffs two deputies fulltime, has well-attended community exchanges and receives regular calls from Muslims with concerns that are terrorism-related and other issues. Baca's personal involvement has softened up many of the community's older, more reluctant leaders. The department employs about a dozen Muslim deputies and half that many Arabic speakers.

"They want to be able to say 'I know the sheriff,'" said Sgt. Mike Abdeen, who leads the unit. "They like to go back to the community and say I know so and so, I'm a man of influence."

Baca has been quick to accept their invitations — and fully participates when he does. At a Pakistan Day celebration, he wore traditional garb. With Iranians, he'll throw in some Farsi; with Pakistanis, a bit of Urdu. He keeps a Koran in his office and another at home and is known to quote passages from memory. Inside mosques, he removes his shoes and during prayers, he joins in, going to his knees and pressing his forehead to the ground.

"He might not understand what he's doing," said Deputy Sherif Morsi, the other officer in the unit. "But the point is he's letting people know 'I'm your sheriff, I support you.'"

That commitment has taken Baca to more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries since 9/11. The tangible benefits of the trips aren't always clear, but Baca maintains they give him a unique window into Muslim cultures and to counterterrorism where the fight's the fiercest.

In Saudi Arabia, he watched hundreds of police recruits march as he and other officials sat in "very elegant seats as if we were heads of state." Afterwards, they sat on rugs in police headquarters and feasted on a barbequed lamb. "They ripped out the choicest pieces of meat for us with their hands," Baca raved.

In Egypt, he chatted with the national police chief about his "surgical" approach to beating back the Muslim Brotherhood on the Sinai Peninsula. In Pakistan, then-President Pervez Musharraf agreed to have Baca briefed on two assassination attempts. In one, Pakistani authorities used an Israeli cellphone scrambler to halt a remote bomb detonation. When Baca returned home, the Sheriff's Department purchased its own.

"I met the police chief of Mecca and I understand who he is. I'm on the street, you don't learn these things in your office," Baca said.

Baca's effort has not been without criticism.

Far right-wing websites have derisively described Baca as an "international" lawman, and a "Hamas-affiliated CAIR" sheriff, referring to the Council on American Islamic Relations, a Muslim group Baca defends. Last year, the innuendo followed Baca to Washington, D.C. One congressman seemed to surprise the sheriff by accusing him at a hearing of cozying up to CAIR despite the group's "radical" speech. "You've been 10 times to [its] fundraisers," the congressman said.

"And I'll be there 10 more times," Baca shouted back.

CAIR is generally considered a moderate, if aggressive, Muslim civil rights group. Attacks against it haven't dissuaded Baca. Hussam Ayloush, director of CAIR's regional branch, said Baca is one of the few public officials who have asked for his organization's side of the story.

"Most politicians I've worked with would have avoided the headache. It's not about the truth, it's about perception, and they don't want to touch it," Ayloush said.

Naive? That's OK

On a recent evening, Baca strolled along a seedy street in Manhattan's Chinatown. It was his second East Coast trip in as many weeks, both times to speak on Muslim outreach.

Street vendors, unaware that the stick-thin man before them was a major law enforcement figure, tried one after another to sell him knock-off purses and wallets. "How are you?" Baca greeted them, smiling wide.

Pulling in close as if to share a secret, Baca said he knew his post-9/11 stance has been attacked. Even among friends he's been warned of being naive. He's OK with it.

"I'm not endorsing Muslim groups. I'm defending them. 'Oh he's a Muslim lover, he's a Jew lover.' I don't pay attention to bigots.

"I know I'm a little naive. I know I am overly trusting. That's who I choose to be. If you're uncomfortable with others, you're not in a position to lead. I've created somewhat of a palace in my mind because, if you don't, this world is your prison…. I can take the attacks. Attack me! Am I going to change who I am? No. Because it works."

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

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LA Top Cops Partner With Islamists
Saturday, 02 June 2012 03:34 Right Side News
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Investigative Project on Terrorism

Few local law-enforcement officials in the United States have proven themselves more Islamist-friendly than Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, whose department has been dogged by allegations of malfeasance in office, and the Los Angeles Police Department's top deputy handling counterterrorism issues, Michael Downing.
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LAPD_IslamDowning has expressed a benign view of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian-based fundamentalist movement which seeks a global Islamic Caliphate as its ultimate objective. During a May 2011 town hall meeting, he acknowledged the group is operating in the United States, but his biggest concern was "not to demonize the Brotherhood here."

Downing has expressed a much darker view of American critics of Islamism and shariah law, suggesting they pose a threat analogous to that of Islamic jihadists. In remarks to the "Festival of Interfaith Unity" meeting last year, Downing railed againstShariah, the Threat to America, apparently referring to this book produced by the Center for Security Policy.

"One of my greatest challenges this year is this idea of two sides of extremism: The side of fanaticism and those who want to do violence on innocent people," Downing told attendees. "And the other side of the equation that want to instill fear in the hearts of the American people because they don't tell the truth."

Baca won adulation in 2010, when he testified before a congressional panel, exploding at a question about the wisdom of his close relationship with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization with documented ties to a Hamas-support network.

"CAIR is not a terrorist-supporting organization," he said. Anyone who says different is an "amateur intelligence officer."

He has equally warm views toward the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a group which routinely minimizes the threat posed by Muslim extremists in the United States and criticizes FBI sting operations against would-be terrorists.

Baca praised MPAC boss Salam al-Marayati during a March 2010 town hall as "a great man of thinking and wisdom," telling him: "Thank you very much. You've been an incredibly important friend to me." Baca credited Marayati with "helping me improve my thinking."

Now those sympathies are being realized in policies which some veteran law enforcement officials warn are equally misguided.

Baca and Downing won plaudits from Islamist groups like CAIR and MPAC in recent weeks, with Downing getting praise for surveillance "reforms" that may limit law enforcement's ability to investigate suspected radical activity and Baca for making a deal with MPAC and like-minded groups on recruiting Muslim chaplains to work in county correctional facilities.

A retired federal law enforcement officer who consults with local police agencies expressed concern that the surveillance agreement between Downing and MPAC could have a "chilling effect" on monitoring radical activities. He noted that MPAC issued a statement claiming that "Any reporting of incidents by law enforcement on individuals or groups must be connected to criminal activity."

Pointing to the case of Nidal Hasan, who massacred 13 people at Fort Hood Texas in 2009, the retired official noted that radicals often try to avoid criminal activity before attempting to carry out acts of jihad. Prior to the rampage, Hasan's most troubling activities largely involved radical presentations to colleagues and postings on jihadist websites – activities protected by the First Amendment.

If the new rules agreed to by Downing have the effect of preventing investigations of such activities, "the results could be catastrophic," the retired officer told the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Patrick Dunleavy, formerly a senior official with the New York State Corrections Department, says he is troubled by unanswered questions about vetting of jail chaplains as well as Baca's admission that he didn't know what was going on in jails he is responsible for overseeing.

Baca's department has been under investigation by the Justice Department and the FBI over inmate beatings and other misconduct by deputies. Adding to his troubles, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that Baca can be held personally liable because he was told about the jail violence and took no action to prevent it.

Baca complained that his commanders kept him in the dark about the problems. "I wasn't ignoring the jails. I just didn't know," he told the Los Angeles Times. "People can say, 'What the hell kind of leader is that?' The truth is I should've known."

Baca's administration of the jail "has been fraught with corruption and mismanagement of security," Dunleavy observed. "In light of the Justice Department investigation of systemic abuses, can we really trust his administration to conduct proper vetting of religious workers or volunteers?"

The sheriff needs to explain who should be responsible for vetting organizations and individuals who want to come into Los Angeles County jails to work with Muslim inmates, Dunleavy said. He noted that Baca has vehemently defended CAIR even though the FBI cut off relations with the group, saying "until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner."

That decision was based on evidence including the presence of CAIR founders on an internal telephone list for a Hamas support network called the Palestine Committee, and CAIR's inclusion on a meeting agenda involving the committee's front organizations.

If Baca doesn't accept the FBI's word about CAIR, then "who will he accept? Would you accept the word of MPAC?" in deciding who is suitable to work with Muslim inmates, Dunleavy asked. Given the apparent disarray in Baca's department, unsuitable applicants could be "rubber stamped," he said. That's something he saw happen with Warith Deen Umar, former New York State Corrections department chaplain.

Baca's statements, including his rabid support for CAIR, raise questions about his ability to recognize radicals. He has included Iran on a list of Islamic countries that are not interested in supporting terrorism.

"The truth is that no Islamic country that I've been to" in the Middle East "is interested in supporting terrorism, including Iran," Baca said at a February 2011 MPAC Capitol Hill forum. The State Department has long expressed a very different view, calling itthe world's "most active state sponsor of terrorism."

At the MPAC forum, Baca stressed the need to work with Islamist groups as "our way of saying that Muslim Americans, at least in Southern California, are part of the protected fabric of America. "

These organizations had joined in forming a local "Congress" of Muslims, Baca said, alluding to the Muslim American Homeland Security Congress (MAHSC). The group's "core values" are "justice, moderation, education, peace and cooperation."

And Islamists in Southern California have embraced Baca. He "is our champion, is our hero in defending our country and in defending us against McCarthyism in our era," Marayati said at the same meeting.

Marayati's MPAC colleague, Maher Hathout, gushed that when Baca defended CAIR, "he actually was defending democracy of America."

Hussam Ayloush, director of CAIR's Los Angeles office, apparently quoting Baca's aggressive defense of CAIR in congressional testimony, stated: "These were amazing, amazing words. We commend the sheriff for standing up for American values. We commend him for that. I know he also stood for what protects our country. He refused to play politics into (sic) national security."

Like Baca, Downing, is also an advocate of "outreach" to Islamists. Speaking at an April 2011 LAPD-Muslim Forum, Downing boasted of his efforts to ignore the role of Islam as a motivating factor in jihadist efforts to attack the United States.

"I've been talking for 20 minutes and I never used the term 'radical Islam.' The terms that I use are 'violent extremists,'" Downing said. "You can be as extreme as you like. But when it turns violent, then it does break the law. And I did not use [the term] 'radical Islam.'"

Downing received MPAC's Community Leadership Award at its annual convention in December 2010. It "honors individuals and institutions whose relentless work has contributed to the empowerment of the Muslim American Community and the society at large," MPAC's Haris Tarin said. "It is this tireless work of these individuals and institutions who partner with MPAC on a daily basis that allow us to amplify and strengthen our message."

In the May 2011 interview in which Downing cautioned against demonizing the Brotherhood, he portrayed the group as a politically diverse organization, likening it to the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States. "Just like Republicans and Democrats have a more conservative and more liberal [ideology], that's what we have" with the Brotherhood, he said.

Not everyone shares Downing's benign perspective regarding the Muslim Brotherhood's "diversity." Just days after he made these comments, it issued a statement in Arabic criticizing Osama bin Laden's death in a U.S. military operation as an "assassination" and hit the United States for not bringing the terrorist leader to trial. The same statement defended "resistance" (violent jihad) as necessary for innocent people to defend themselves against "oppression," as "is the case of the Palestinian people and Israel's Zionists."

Kemal Helbawy, at the time a senior Brotherhood official based in Britain, praised bin Laden and suggested he was falsely accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks, which Helbawy said were actually "planned" by Americans.

The Quilliam Foundation, a British research group dominated by former Islamists, saidthe reaction to bin Laden's death "is a reminder that the Muslim Brotherhood is a deeply problematic organization whose attitude to mass-murder and terrorism is problematic at best."

In Quilliam's view, the Brotherhood's "diversity" (touted by Downing) has been little more than a trick aimed at deceiving the West:

"Helbawy's statements are the latest example of senior Muslim Brotherhood members giving different messages to different audiences. When speaking to mainstream audiences Helbawy presents himself as a moderate reformer; when speaking to Islamists he praises Osama bin Laden. This doublespeak undermines trust between Muslims and non-Muslims and hinders genuine efforts to tackle extremism and terrorism."

Downing's comments came at a time when the Brotherhood behaved in an increasingly aggressive fashion, contradicting earlier assurances that it would not attempt to dominate Egypt politically. For example, after pledging not to contest more than a third of seats in Egypt's first free parliamentary election in more than 30 years, some Brotherhood officials spoke of targeting half or more of the seats in Parliament. There were also reports that the group would form an alliance with hard-line Salafist groups – which contrasted sharply with earlier talk of adopting a more moderate, inclusive approach.

Brotherhood representatives (who had previously indicated the organization would respect the peace accord with Israel) dropped the pretense of moderation. "The Egyptian nation believes that normalization of relations with the Zionist regime is among the most important issues which should be stopped completely," senior Brotherhood official Mohammed Habib told Iran's Fars News. "The Egyptian nation believes the Zionist regime is a danger threatening the national security of not just Egypt, but also other Arab countries."

The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is an offshoot of the Brotherhood. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal traveled to Cairo in May 2011, where he visited the Muslim Brotherhood's headquarters and sat shoulder to shoulder in a display of unity with Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie, who said Egypt should move toward "continued unity against the 'Zionist' occupation."

It wasn't clear whether Downing was aware of any of this when he likened the Muslim Brotherhood's disinformation efforts to Democratic vs. Republican ideological battles in the United States. In the same interview, Downing boasts about his knowledge of the Muslim Brotherhood. But he seemed to have been caught off-guard by a question about a Muslim Brotherhood document about a "civilization jihad" aimed at "changing life as we know it" in the West.

Downing responded with a rambling discourse mentioning Brotherhood founder Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Student Association and the fall of the Turkish Empire but ignored the substance of the question. At the 2008 terror-finance prosecution of five former officials of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, prosecutors introduced a 1991 internal memorandum outlining the agenda of the Brotherhood-linked Palestine Committee, which created to advance the Hamas cause in the U.S.

The document spoke of a "Civilization-Jihadist Process" in which Muslims in America work to advance "a kind of grand Jihad" aimed at "eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within."

Downing and Baca are not the only senior law-enforcement officials in the county who appear to have a soft spot for local Islamists. In October, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck met with Muslim community leaders, including Muzzamil Siddiqui, president of the Fiqh Council of North America. The council issued a fatwa, whichappeared on the LAPD website, declaring that Muslims would respect U.S. law, including the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, "so long as there is no conflict with Muslims obligation for obedience to God."