Yusuf Bey’s extended family is now linked to a string of crimes
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1409
Erin McCormick, Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writers
They were the youthful heirs to a multimillion-dollar business empire that offered jobs, faith and a sense of discipline to the poorest of Oakland’s poor.
But in a three-year reign of violence and crime that police say culminated in the Aug. 2 assassination of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey, the new generation destroyed Oakland’s Your Black Muslim Bakery, a prominent and controversial symbol of black empowerment founded by the charismatic Yusuf Ali Bey.
Since Bey’s death in 2003, the neatly dressed, heavily armed young men who ascended to power in the bakery’s hierarchy have been implicated in assault, intimidation, theft, fraud, kidnapping, torture and, finally, homicide, court records show.
The day after the killing of Bailey, who had been researching stories about the bakery, police raided its San Pablo Avenue headquarters.
They arrested Chief Executive Officer Yusuf Bey IV, 21, the founder’s son and namesake, on kidnapping charges, and booked a member of his entourage for Bailey’s murder. The bakery itself is bankrupt and its assets up for sale. Oakland police had long believed that the bakery’s members were terrorizing the community, but said they were unable to act. “That happened over and over again – there were allegations of either force or intimidation, but not many wanted to give us formal statements or pursue prosecution,” said former Oakland Police Chief Richard Word. “People were afraid.”
As a consequence, he said, bakery members began to feel as if they were untouchable. “There was an aura of invincibility,” he said.
The beginning of the end for the bakery arrived in the form of a sex scandal that engulfed its founder in the months before his death, according to court documents and interviews.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/10/08/MN6ASE0QN.DTL