Yusuf Bey Sr. drills the young men of Your Black Muslim Bakery (contributed photo/1995)

Yusuf Bey Sr. drills the young men of Your Black Muslim Bakery (contributed photo/1995)

By Mary Fricker, Bob Butler and Thomas Peele, The Chauncey Bailey Project

Yusuf Bey and some bakery workers ran at least three security companies that had multiple contracts in the Bay Area at various times, including at the Oakland Ice Center, the Marriott Hotel and convention center and at other hotels, apartment complexes, schools and night clubs.

The contracts were an important budget item for Yusuf Bey, at times employing up to 65 people, who earned an estimated $10 to $13 an hour, and sometimes grossing more than $1 million a year, according to business credit reports.

Bey’s first security company, according to state licensing records, was the YBMB Security Department, which acquired a security license in 1992. The YBMB license expired in 2000. A newer, related company, EM Security Services, was first licensed in 1997, but its license expired in 2001. Later, the company renewed its license and kept it current until 2003.

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This on-again, off-again licensing became an issue in 2001 when an Oakland Tribune investigation discovered that Universal Distributors, a Bey company that provided security at the Marriott hotel and convention center in downtown Oakland and submitted the favored bid to provide security at Oakland International Airport, had never been licensed at all and employed some ex-felons who might not pass background checks.

Bakery security guard Mustafa Bey disputed the state records, telling Tribune reporters that Universal Distributors had a license but there had been “discrepancies and ambiguities about that.”

State law requires that companies providing private security services be licensed with the state’s Bureau of Security and Investigative Services.

In adding security companies to his bakery business, Yusuf Bey was following in the footsteps of the Nation of Islam, which first began providing security guards in 1988 at two apartment complexes in Washington, D.C., and started its first security company, N.O.I. Security Agency, in 1990, according to The New York Times.

For both the Nation and for Bey, the security guards were a natural outgrowth of their paramilitary groups called Fruit of Islam, where marching young black men were taught order and discipline. Like the Nation of Islam security teams, Bey’s security guards received praise from supporters for maintaining order, freeing areas of drugs and violence and promoting black empowerment, while critics denounced them for being violent themselves.

In police reports, officers alleged that the following incidents involved Bey’s security guards:

-In 1994, in an apartment complex on 24th Street in Oakland where the bakery provided security and bakery member Basheer Muhammad was manager, bakery men Nedir Bey, Abaz Bey, Larry Chin and Muhammad assaulted and tortured a man over a real estate deal, police said. When police responded, they were met by about 30 belligerent bakery men, they said. Nedir Bey carried out most of the assault, in Abaz’s apartment, police said. Yusuf Bey publicly defended his “adopted” sons Nedir and Abaz.

-In 1996, police officers were called to a fight on E 14th Street in Oakland where members of the Your Black Muslim Bakery security team and other Muslims had beat up a man named Jackson and fled in a vehicle registered to bakery worker Dahood Bey, according to police.

-In 1997, a tenant in the 24th Street apartments was beat up by bakery employees, according to police records. Residents complained of many threats and confrontations at the apartment building.

After Yusuf Bey died in 2003, some of his followers started their own security companies. For example, Yusuf Bey III and his mother, Esperanza Johnson, started Distinguished Security Services in February 2006 to provide detective and armored car services, according to state records. But the company is not licensed by the state Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, and it could not be located for comment.

Yusuf Bey IV, who became CEO of Your Black Muslim Bakery in November 2005 after the two men who succeeded his father were murdered, never had a licensed security company, according to state records. Still, he hired young black men to serve as security guards.

Bey IV and his security guards were suspected of at least six incidents of shootings, beatings and torture in the 11 months before Bey IV was arrested Aug. 3, 2007, according to police reports. He is still in jail, awaiting trial.

-On Aug. 25, 2006, Bey IV’s brothers, Yusuf Bey V and Fard, were charged with beating a man when he refused to move the car he was unloading in front of his business on High Street in Oakland. The bakery had a security contract in this area. Police said more bakery people arrived in the lot and would not leave when told to do so.

-On Dec. 18, 2006, Bey IV, Joshua Bey, Khalil Raheem and Muhammad Amari assaulted a man in the same area, police claimed. Bey IV, Joshua and Amari were charged with battery.

-On Feb. 10, 2007, a woman was shot at because she didn’t heed a warning to stop being a prostitute. She told police she thought she saw one of the suspects working for Your Black Muslim Security on High Street.

-On May 16, 2007, police responded to a shooting and suspected a member of Your Black Muslim Bakery security. They said they had gotten a call earlier about several members of Muslim security armed with guns.

-On May 17, 2007, Bey IV directed the kidnapping of two women and the torture of one in an effort to collect money that a drug dealer said they owed him, police said.

-On June 10, 2007, people started shooting at the Fanatics club in San Francisco, where the bakery had a security contract according to a witness’s statement to police. Yusuf Bey IV and a companion were there in Yusuf Bey III’s Corvette, which they abandoned when they fled. The next day police found an assault rifle in the trunk of the car.

Chauncey Bailey Project reporters and researchers contributed to this report.

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Special investigation
Day One:
–Two years later: The Chauncey Bailey slaying
–The Chauncey Bailey slaying: Key players
–From Texas to Oakland, the elder Bey’s path to the bakery
–Yusuf Bey built business empire with questionable tactics
–Welfare money-maker for senior Bey
–Bey’s security firms important financial arm of his businesses
–Yusuf Bey IV grew up in prominent yet troubled bakery
–Bailey suspects, associates left behind $6 million trail of bad loans
–Security business at Marriott earns praise
Day Two:
–The Oakland Post pushes forward despite loss of its prolific editor
–Chauncey Bailey’s family still in pain two years after killing
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