Muslims Tell Their Side of Violent Clash With L.A. Officers

A violent clash between 13 members of the Nation of Islam and 24 police officers in Southwest Los Angeles this week stemmed from the Muslims’ refusal to lie face down in a parking lot, an order they felt to be demeaning and unnecessary, a community activist close to the Nation of Islam said Friday.

Blows were exchanged between the Muslims and the officers only after one police officer attempted to put a chokehold on one of the Muslims in an apparent attempt to force him to the ground, said Chilton Alphonse, a non-Muslim anti-gang activist. Alphonse did not witness the incident but, after learning of it, he arranged a meeting between top officials of both the Nation of Islam and the Los Angeles Police Department.

Once they were subdued, said Alphonse, the 13 Muslims, including two teen-agers, were “handcuffed and beaten with night sticks because they refused to fall to the ground like animals.” One of the 13 was booked on suspicion of assaulting a police officer. The rest were booked on suspicion of “lynching,” or trying to take a prisoner from a police officer.

Police officials have denied most elements of Alphonse’s version of the incident.

Alphonse gave the Muslims’ version of what happened at a news conference Friday afternoon, called by Nation of Islam officials to give their account of the clash. The incident occurred about 5 a.m. Wednesday in a store parking lot at Crenshaw Boulevard and Vernon Avenue.

Alphonse gave this account of the incident, based on his discussions with the people involved:

The Muslims, traveling in a caravan of three cars, had been followed for nearly four miles by police after they left a nearby home on their way to a gym on Crenshaw just south of Vernon. Alphonse did not offer an explanation of why the men thought police were following them. At one point, officers pulled alongside their vehicles and flashed lights in their faces, Alphonse said.

Lt. Rich Molony, a supervisor at the Police Department’s Southwest Division, said he doubted that the Muslims had been ordered to lie down.

“The only time we use the felony prone position is when we feel we’re in a situation where our life is in danger,” Molony said. “The officers had only asked the driver of the car they stopped to step over to the side with his hands up so we could see them.”

Police have maintained that the clash was precipitated by one of the Muslims who repeatedly interfered as officers tried to write a ticket during a routine traffic stop. When police attempted to arrest the man they say was interfering, he tried to hit one of the officers, Molony said, and “his friends joined in and the fray was on.”

At Friday’s news conference, a representative of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan had been scheduled to make a statement about the incident, along with some of the men involved in the clash, but those portions of the program were abruptly canceled.

Minister Wazir Muhammad, western regional representative for the Nation of Islam and head of the group’s Los Angeles mosque, said the cancellation was made because Farrakhan’s representative, Khallid Muhammad, had uncovered new information about alleged brutality and cover-up by the Police Department. He declined to elaborate.

During the news conference outside a restaurant half a block from the site of the incident, about 250 members of the Nation of Islam and their supporters listened as officials of the group and others decried what they described as widespread disrespect for black men by los Angeles police.

Actor and former football star Jim Brown, who said he has had a “30-year friendship with the Nation of Islam,” told the crowd: “We are people. We are human beings. We demand equal respect.”

Alphonse said black men, sometimes in groups, are forced by Los Angeles police to lie down in the street and submit to questioning “on a daily basis.”

Those at the news conference described the practice as intentionally humiliating and called for police to end it.