McClatchy CEO Pruitt: We've Got No Beef With Google Ken Doctor's 'Newsonomics,' a Fitz & Jen Book Review Guild: 'Post-Dispatch' Contract Talks Turning 'More Acrimonious' Bollinger Named 'Aberdeen American News' Publisher While Leone on Medical Leave Remembering Subscribers in Mill Valley -- By Painting Stripes in Front of Their Houses Media General Also Paying High Price To Spread Out Debt UPDATE: St. Louis Gay Newspaper Comes Back From Dead, But as Magazine Minneapolis 'Star Tribune' Achieves Record Web Month Union, Management Set Tuesday Meeting on 'Newsday' Financial Status 'N.Y. Times' Ombudsman: I'd Transfer Jerusalem Bureau Chief With Son in Israeli Army | This week's top stories Mediaweek: Top Headlines

OAKLAND Firearms linked to the slaying of an Oakland journalist were seized during early morning raids Friday targeting members of a Black Muslim group that operates a chain of bakeries, police said.

Colleagues said Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, 57, had been working on a story about Your Black Muslim Bakery before he was ambushed and killed Thursday in downtown Oakland.

Officers raided the Muslim group's headquarters at the bakery and three houses in Oakland. They arrested seven people on charges including homicide, robbery and assault, but it was unclear whether any of those charges were tied to Bailey's slaying.

Homicide detective Lt. Ersie Joyner, however, said "scientific evidence" had linked the firearms to Bailey's killing.

The last reporter slain in the line of duty in the United States was Don Bolles, a reporter for the Arizona Republic killed by a car bomb in 1976 while covering organized crime.

Bailey, editor of the Oakland Post and a longtime reporter for the Oakland Tribune, had written stories about the bakery. KCBS-AM reported Friday that Bailey had been researching a new investigative piece about Your Black Muslim Bakery.

Television stations reported that S.W.A.T team negotiators and various high-ranking police officials were at the bakery to oversee the operation.

The late Yusuf Bey founded Your Black Muslim Bakery in 1968 as a haven for struggling urban families. It sells natural baked goods alongside books by Malcolm X and other black leaders

The New York Times late Friday quoted Lt. Joyner: “During our investigation, Chauncey Bailey was murdered, and it turns out that the evidence in that case also linked the same individuals we were looking at in the other two prior murders to that case."

The Times continued: "Asked whether there were any regrets about not moving faster to arrest the suspects before Mr. Bailey was killed, Assistant Chief Howard Jordan said that the Oakland Police Department’s resources were 'very thin' and that the long-term investigation involved the cooperation of neighboring departments. 'Today was the best day we had, that we could have done this with the coordination of our allied agencies,' Mr. Jordan said. 'We weren’t just kind of waiting around.'

"Mr. Jordan said it was 'very disheartening' to hear about Mr. Bailey’s killing, 'and it was particularly disheartening to know it was connected to our investigation.'”