Living Life Steeped in a Variety of Faiths

In the political world, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca is embattled. The Board of Supervisors is mad at him for spending beyond his budget, for the questionable death of a jail inmate, for buying the Sheriff’s Department a new passenger plane, for alleged ethical transgressions within the department.

But in the religious world, Baca is a hero, a man steeped in a surprising variety of faiths with an unapologetic belief in spirituality’s ability to change lives.

Almost every Sunday, Baca attends services at a different church, synagogue, Buddhist temple or mosque. At his urging, inmates are allowed to leave their cells at the Twin Towers Jail to attend supervised Sunday services at the First AME Church.

The sheriff’s views on religion and law enforcement converge in his commitment to inmate rehabilitation--whether for drug abusers, gang members or wife beaters. Call him naive, call him New Agey, Baca does not back down.

“I’m a person who sees good for the most part in all people,” he said. “I believe correcting one’s moral compass gives spiritual support to those who most need it.”

Under Baca, the number of houses of worship that belong to the department’s Clergy Council, a liaison-building organization, have increased fivefold, to more than 100. Baca last year hired a clergyman as a field representative with a goal toward building that number to 1,000. The sheriff has given advice to a member of a Tibetan Buddhist group who want to introduce sand mandalas at a state prison. He became an honorary board member of a Jewish academy in Sherman Oaks. He’s made friends among the Nation of Islam, historically suspicious of law enforcement.

His religious involvement has become more intense since the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks. He took the lead in convening large-scale interfaith gatherings, visiting mosques and trying to ease fears over hate crimes.

“He’s a kind of Don Quixote, but I mean it in a positive way,” said Father John Bakas of St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church in Pico-Union.

The question of whether Baca is a well-grounded idealist or a pie-in-the-sky flake has been a favorite topic of critics since he succeeded longtime Sheriff Sherman Block in 1998. But religious leaders are sold.

“He’s benefiting from it, and he’s helping Los Angeles,” said Salam Al-Marayati, director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. “It’s a very intelligent thing to do. Sheriff Baca is a real pioneer in tapping into the diversity of a community. He’s able to broaden his base [of support]. . . . But I think he acts out of principle more than political gain.”

Three days after the attacks, Baca sent a letter to Los Angeles-area police chiefs urging them to contact businesses owned by people of Middle Eastern descent to better protect them from hate crimes. He included a list prepared by 7-Eleven to help law enforcement identify businesses that might need help.

At one post-attack gathering, Baca stood in a mosque in his uniform and read from the Koran and the Old Testament. “America is not only the place of free people, but it is also the place for all religions,” he told the diverse gathering. “The challenges before us at this time are to prevent hate.”

Baca tends to speak in a stream-of-consciousness style. When he talks about his fascination with religion and law enforcement, he said, “One of the things I’ve tried to find out about religion is whether God is ever a criminal accomplice. And I haven’t found that. Not in the Koran, nor in the Bible. There’s no evidence that directly links God to criminal acts. Religion should not be be portrayed as an accomplice of murder. Those who use it that way are casting a dark cloud on their faith.”

William Darrough, a sociology professor at Cal State Los Angeles who has worked extensively with law enforcement, said Baca’s eclecticism is unusual. Episcopal Bishop John Bruno, a former Burbank police officer, is one of several Baca watchers who admits, “I don’t even know what religion he practices.”

The sheriff is Catholic. But he didn’t object when his first wife joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and decided to bring up their children as Mormons. “I’m not an insecure human being,” he said. His second wife, Carol Chiang, whom he married in 1999, is Buddhist. His best friend in college was Muslim, he said.

Baca said he is comfortable moving from faith to faith because “people are more important than their religion to me. I try to reach them for who they are. Religion happens to be a byproduct of who you are.”

Then he told the story of his mentally disabled Uncle Willy. Baca grew up in poverty in a racially mixed section of East Los Angeles, raised by his grandparents. He shared a room with his uncle, for whom he often had to care.

His uncle’s situation gave him pause: Willy couldn’t choose a religion. He couldn’t even understand religion. Baca said that made him start to question the primacy of any single faith, and eventually to explore other religions.

Later, while working for the Sheriff’s Department in some of the most ethnically mixed communities in the county, including West Hollywood, Lennox, Carson and Lomita, he began what he called “a quest for knowledge. . . . I knew that if I was going to serve the public safety needs of a diverse people, I was going to need to understand people more thoroughly.”

Part of that effort included getting to know religious leaders. He met the Rev. Tony Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam’s western region. He got involved with the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City. He visited Buddhist temples. He read various religious texts, and has a collection of them in his home.

One of his proudest moments in bridge-building came in 1994. Orthodox Jewish leaders had sought law enforcement advice after assaults by young Latinos in Sherman Oaks, which chilled community leaders’ determination to build a Hebrew academy in the neighborhood.

Despite the fact that Sherman Oaks is patrolled by the LAPD, not the Sheriff’s Department, Baca worked with the Latino community to protect Orthodox Jews. When the Jewish community celebrated the construction of the Emek Academy, it honored Baca.

“We had been talking about a new building for eight years, but his words crystallized our determination to move ahead,” Rabbi Eliezer Eidlitz said then.

Reflected Baca: “When you can help take away fear and help people build their dream of a better education for their children, it doesn’t get much better than that.”