By: The lead investigator into the slaying of journalist Chauncey Bailey is the subject of a police internal affairs investigation, the Oakland Police Department confirmed Monday.
Police spokesman Jeff Thomason said the department was investigating Oakland police Sgt. Derwin Longmire but declined to say what prompted the probe nor whether it was connected to the Bailey case.
The Chauncey Bailey Project, a coalition of San Francisco Bay area investigative journalists, reported Sunday that Longmire ignored evidence linking former Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusef Bey IV to Bailey's killing.
Longmire did not immediately return calls seeking comment. The Bailey Project, which has examined the relationship between Longmire and the bakery, says its reporting led to the internal affairs investigation.
A bakery handyman, 20-year-old Devaughndre Broussard, is charged with gunning down the 57-year-old Oakland Post editor in broad daylight in August 2007. Police say Broussard was upset about Bailey's reporting on financial problems at the bakery, which filed for bankruptcy in 2006.
Bey is being held without bail on unrelated charges that he and two other bakery members kidnapped and tortured two women. He has not been arrested or charged in connection with Bailey's murder.
Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums said Monday that he planned to ask for an outside investigation of the case by either the state or federal justice departments.
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"We have to decide the appropriate entity" to ask, Dellums told reporters with the Bailey Project. "The residents of Oakland deserve to know there is integrity in what we do."
The Bailey Project reported that the Alameda County District Attorney's office already has opened its own investigation into whether there was a conspiracy to kill Bailey. District Attorney Tom Orloff declined to comment on whether an investigation was under way.
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