Black Muslim-HUD Security Pact in Doubt : Housing: Farrakhan group appeared on verge of landing contract for Venice apartment buildings.

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development backed away Tuesday from a controversial proposal to pay security guards from the Rev. Louis Farrakhan’s Black Muslim organization to patrol 15 publicly assisted apartment buildings in Venice.

A proposal from the Nation of Islam’s security arm, N.O.I. Security, had appeared close to winning approval until news of negotiations became public last month, according to some participants in the talks. HUD had held confidential discussions with the Nation of Islam, tenants and managers of the 246 apartments about a contract to provide unarmed night patrols at an estimated cost of several hundred thousand dollars.

The contract would have been with the management firm for the buildings, subject to approval from HUD, and funded by a combination of rents and federal subsidies. But at a meeting Tuesday in Los Angeles, HUD officials asked the company that manages the apartments to take new bids from all companies interested in the contract.

“We wanted to provide all bidders with the same information to make the process fair,” said Scott Reed, a HUD spokesman.

The announcement followed an intensive lobbying campaign, primarily by Jewish organizations, against the proposal.

Some tenants of the Venice apartments, disillusioned with police efforts to blunt rampant drug dealing and gang activity, expressed anger that outsiders could foil their long campaign to persuade officials to hire the Nation of Islam.

“Who are they to tell the people what we can have? So many black babies are dying on crack, so many black boys think that’s how to earn money,” said Regina Hyman, who first called on the Nation of Islam after a drug dealer she had shooed away from her apartment came after her with a shotgun.

Lisa Smith, another tenant, said: “We have to live here. This is our lives and our decision.”

Critics of the Nation of Islam expressed alarm that the government would hold confidential talks and consider doing business with a group they consider anti-Semitic and racist.

The Jewish Defense League has threatened to send its own armed patrols into Venice to counter the Muslims’ influence. And the Anti-Defamation League wrote HUD that hiring the Nation of Islam would be as inappropriate as hiring the Ku Klux Klan.

“It’s problematic for taxpayer dollars to underwrite--directly or indirectly--Louis Farrakhan’s operation. He is among the nation’s most vitriolic racists and anti-Semitics, and ought not to be feeding at the public trough,” said David A. Lehrer, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League.

Jewish neighbors of the apartments voiced concern that the proposal could exacerbate tensions between blacks and Jews, and between black residents and the growing number of whites moving into the Venice neighborhood. Nearly all tenants of the buildings are black or Latino, in roughly equal numbers.

“I don’t understand how the federal government would contract with an organization that is perceived as racially prejudiced--this could further split the community,” said Phil Raider, a neighbor of the apartments and member of the Oakwood Beautification Committee, which is split on the issue.

Officials with Nation of Islam declined to comment on security efforts, or on the announcement that the Venice bids must be resubmitted, saying they did not want to jeopardize negotiations.

The Chicago-based Nation of Islam was founded in the early 1930s by militant black separatist Elijah Muhammad. The organization has flourished as it spreads its doctrine of self-help and black pride. Its elite security forces are trained in martial arts and are highly disciplined. Growing numbers of black community groups and celebrities--including the Rev. Jesse Jackson in his 1984 presidential campaign and movie director Spike Lee--have called on Nation of Islam for protection. Farrakhan’s disciples are credited with cleaning crack-infested streets in Harlem and East Arlington, Va.

This would not be the first time public funds would be used to pay for security guards from Nation of Islam.

In the fall of 1988, the group’s security organization signed contracts with management firms at two drug-infested housing projects in Washington, D.C., Mayfair Mansion and Paradise Manor. HUD officials refused to say how much the contracts are worth, but said that a combination of federal subsidies and rents pay for the security measures. HUD reviewed and gave final approval to the contracts.

Dressed in their trademark red bow ties and armed only with walkie-talkies, the guards provide residents of the 1,131 apartments in Washington with surveillance patrols, emergency phone lines and religious instruction.

The Washington arrangement is believed to be the first contract between Nation of Islam and a federal agency.

“The police are perceived as occupiers and enemies in the black community,” said Minister Conrad Muhammad, the Nation of Islam’s New York representative. “The Nation of Islam is the opposite. We are the black people’s champions.”

Muhammad said the group is attempting to spread its security programs into black communities across the country.

John Wilbanks, former captain of the Pacific Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, agrees that the Muslims might succeed in places like Venice, where police efforts to cut crime have been blunted by community resistance.

“We’ve reached the point where I don’t know what else we can do,” said Wilbanks, who is retiring after 27 years with the LAPD. “The Nation of Islam are respected and feared, and maybe they can do something.”

Tenants of the Venice apartments say that a special police task force and a security consultant hired by the company that manages the buildings have failed to eliminate gangs and drug dealing. Last September, for example, a former resident was shot and killed while chatting with his grandmother outside her Holiday Venice apartment on Indiana Avenue.

Officials with Alliance Housing Management Inc., the Los Angeles-based firm that manages the buildings, say they are dealing with forces beyond their control.

“It’s a jungle down there,” said Ron Nelson, regional property manager. “We’re dealing with a national epidemic.”

Four years ago Alliance hired William (Tony) Steinhart, a former Los Angeles police sergeant, to provide security services for $50,000 a year. Steinhart said he can do only so much.

“What can I do? I can’t put a moat around the buildings if the people who live there condone lawlessness and drug addicts,” he said.

Hyman and other residents say Steinhart and their building managers can do more. A recent visit found many of the entry gates to the complexes unlocked and the intercoms broken. At one building, young men were dealing drugs openly. A call to the tenants’ emergency number was put on hold.

After being accosted by the drug dealer, Hyman phoned a member of Nation of Islam who visits her neighborhood on weekends to hawk the organization’s trademark bean pies and religious literature.

The resulting proposal from the Black Muslims recommended hiring four unarmed men to patrol the properties from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. and providing an office on the premises--pretty much how the security organization operates in Washington.

When the Muslims arrived in 1988, the Washington complexes were open-air drug markets, apartment management and HUD officials said.

Officials with management firms at both projects said conditions were so dangerous they could not find a firm willing to provide security.

Residents pleaded with members of Nation of Islam, at a nearby mosque, for help. About a dozen young volunteers began patrolling the streets. Within days the drug dealers had moved up the block. Just why is a matter of some dispute.

Supporters of Nation of Islam attribute the decline in drug dealing to the Muslims and their teachings. In addition to patrolling the properties, they offer classes, counseling, religious studies and training, said Lt. Lowell Duckett of the Metropolitan Police Department’s 6th District. The security forces cleaned the neighborhood up “in days,” he said.

But other police officers argue that it was the police, not the Muslims, who chased off the drug dealers. The department actually had to increase patrols in the area to protect the Muslims against death threats, said Gary Hankins, Washington chairman of the Fraternal Order of Police.

Hankins complained that the Muslims used undue force--at one point breaking a drug addict’s arm and roughing up a newsman. “They were assaulting people on a regular basis,” he said.

Some tenants also are unhappy with the Muslims. Nell Roberts, president of the tenants’ council at Paradise Manor, said police scared off the drug dealers, not the Muslims. She says that the Muslims are not effective now, and wants to replace them with traditional armed security.

Lorraine Richardson, special assistant to the HUD regional manager for Washington, said HUD has no second thoughts about what is happening in Washington.

“They have been 100% effective,” she said about Nation of Islam.

Which is why Hyman remains determined to win them a contract in Venice.

“We can’t wait any longer,” she said. “Our lives are at stake.”