Training by Nation of Islam official canceled
NOPD to back out of contract after widespread local criticism
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
By Steve Ritea and Bruce Nolan
Staff writers
Four days after announcing that the security director for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan would provide sensitivity training to New Orleans police, the department said Tuesday that it had canceled those plans amid complaints from officers and local religious leaders.
Superintendent Eddie Compass is rescinding a $15,000 contract with Dennis Muhammad, who has provided similar training in other cities, department spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo said.
Tuesday's announcement came after a barrage of criticism from local religious leaders concerned by comments from Farrakhan, who once called Judaism a "dirty religion" and has preached racial separatism.
"You can't get a happy and successful result from a foundation of bigotry and rot. He has absolutely no credibility to stand in front of our community and do sensitivity training, because he is, by definition, insensitive," Rabbi Ed Cohn of Temple Sinai said before learning the contract would be rescinded.
Lt. David Benelli, president of the Police Association of New Orleans, said officers of all ranks, races and religions immediately began voicing "outrage and disgust" about the decision to hire Muhammad after getting word of the plan Friday.
"It was the most outraged I've seen my membership in a long time," he said. "I think Compass heard that . . . and I appreciate the fact that he listened and took action."
Defillo said Compass did not intend to upset anyone.
"His plans were never meant to be divisive," Defillo said. "He has heard from the community and he has heard from police officers, and they raised some concerns about Mr. Muhammad's relations with the Nation of Islam, and he is honoring those concerns."
Muhammad said late Tuesday that although it is "sad" that officers will not be able to benefit from his training, he supports Compass' decision, in light of the controversy. "I didn't want my training to become a stumbling block of his career," he said.
Muhammad said the city is not bound to pay him any money and that he will provide sensitivity training to a group of community members, to be assembled by local leaders, for free.
Earlier in the day, he denied charges of anti-Semitism, saying the media have routinely misrepresented the Nation of Islam and taken many of Farrakhan's comments out of context.
Wide-ranging plan
Defillo said Compass first connected with Muhammad several weeks ago through the city's Nation of Islam representative, the leader of a mosque in eastern New Orleans.
Providing sensitivity training to the Police Department was envisioned as part of a broader effort to build rapport between officers and the community. It was to have included various religious leaders as well as representatives of the gay and lesbian community, among others, Defillo said.
The decision to hire Muhammad was revealed to local clergy at a small meeting Compass called Monday with Cohn and the Rev. Michael Jacques of St. Peter Claver Catholic Church.
Opposition began building quickly.
Cohn spent much of Tuesday morning on the telephone talking to other people opposed to the idea. Cohn said it was his impression that Compass was deluged with calls. "There appears to be almost universal disapproval from the community. They don't buy this. They don't know where it came from. White and black officers alike on the Police Department seem to be nonsupportive," Cohn said.
Cathy Glaser, director of the local chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, said her group also was stirred to action. "We were getting ready to express our concerns," she said. "We certainly wanted to find out what all this was about, and we wanted to be given certain assurances. As it turns out, it didn't get that far."
Some open to the idea
Other community leaders were more willing to entertain Muhammad's program.
Michael Cowan, a psychologist and chairman of the city's Human Relations Commission, said the pragmatist in him wanted to give Muhammad a chance, despite his affiliation with the Nation of Islam.
"The situation here is so desperate and seems to be going in the wrong direction," Cowan said early Tuesday. "We're talking about people being killed. If the chief says this guy is a professional and his religious affiliation is purely his personal business, if he can come in and build bridges between people, I'd say let's give this guy a chance."
Cowan noted that the Nation of Islam has built a reputation for encouraging entrepreneurialism, self-esteem and self-respect among poor African-Americans.
Cowan was not alone in that view.
"Theologically, I'm miles and miles apart from the Nation of Islam," said the Rev. Moses Gordon, pastor of two Baptist churches in New Orleans. "But I'm looking at it from a citizen's point of view and a community point of view.
"I understand the gentleman has a track record in other cities and has succeeded. Based on that, I can't see a problem."
Gordon dismissed critics' comparison of the Nation of Islam to the Ku Klux Klan. "I don't see the nation lynching folks," he said.
"Just because they belong to a group you have ideological differences with, you know, if that's the problem, we're not going to get anything done, because we all have ideological differences," he said.
Muhammad, Farrakhan's security director for 25 years, said he was attracted to the Nation of Islam when he was 14, after a white police officer in Columbus, Ohio, pushed his head through a car windshield after catching him and his friends trying to burglarize a filling station.
Sentenced to a year in reform school, Muhammad said, he was subjected to further mistreatment by a white employee at the school. It was there that he first heard Nation of Islam "teachings that the white man was the devil, and it made me say, 'I knew there's something about these people that was evil,' " he said Tuesday. "Something clicked for me."
As time passed, Muhammad said, he abandoned that view.
"The more I began to respect myself and not put myself in circumstances that were wrong and illegal, so that I would not be victimized," he said, the more he began to realize that "the devil is in all of us" and "people sometimes do devilish things."
Taking on crime
A little less than a decade ago, Muhammad created an organization called Educating Neighbors to Obey Those in Authority.
"I realized, to fight inner-city crime there has to be a partnership with law enforcement," he said.
His eight-hour training sessions, cover "perception, profiling and prejudice," Muhammad said.
Although he is on hand to introduce the training sessions, Muhammad said, he typically has police officers from various departments around the country conduct the eight-hour sessions.
By several accounts, Muhammad's program for New Orleans was to be directed at police and local neighborhoods, and was aimed at building mutual respect.
Compass said Muhammad has worked successfully with neighborhoods and police in Syracuse, N.Y., and in Buffalo, N.Y., where he lives.
Program lauded
Officials in those communities were unavailable to talk about the program Tuesday, but a police officer in suburban Cincinnati who recently went through it said he found it so worthwhile he wants to join as an instructor.
Sgt. DeAngelo Sumler, who heads a SWAT team in Lincoln Heights, met Muhammad on a personal trip to Chicago, heard his presentation and sold his police chief on the program.
For two days in late May, Muhammad worked with a group that included the 17-officer police force and residents of Lincoln Heights, Sumler said.
Sumler said Muhammad urged cops to leave their peace officer mentality at work and cultivate nonpolice friends. "You have to become a human being again," he said. "It's OK to go out and meet new people. Go mingle. Everybody's not bad; everybody's not a criminal."
Simultaneously, he tried to revive a sense of pride in residents of crime-plagued neighborhoods, impressing on them that they needed to cooperate with police to improve their situation.
"His approach was self-love," Sumler said. "If you love yourself and if you respect yourself, there are so many things you can do for yourself, so you don't have to be in the situation you're in."
Although Muhammad's affiliation with the Nation of Islam "might have been an issue initially, after the training got going, I don't think (other officers) thought about it at all," he said.
And had an observer sat quietly in back of the church during the communitywide session, "he would not have a clue" about Muhammad's background, Sumler said.
Praise not universal
Muhammad received a $40,000 grant from a nonprofit foundation in Syracuse for his work there.
Jeff Piedmonte, president of the Syracuse Police Benevolent Association, said he agreed with some of Muhammad's comments during training there last year, but other statements were troubling.
"There were some comments about Arabs ruining the community because they sell alcohol and cigarettes. And we had an officer there who is Arab-American and owns a store," he said.
In short, "we did not see any improvements after the program," Piedmonte said. "I think a lot of it had to do with the Nation of Islam. . . . Because of the militant position it takes, I think, a lot of officers resisted it. It was not a success, and I wouldn't recommend it for other places."
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