Winning Support Through Conversation, Not Confrontation

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)


In Muslim Community: 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.

By Robert Faturechi,
April 18, 2011, 5:27 p.m.
Courtesy Of "The Los Angeles Times"

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 PakistanDay 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."