Islamic Leader Urges Support of 4 Men Charged in Denny Beating : Pacoima: The audience cheers the speaker's charge that the criminal justice system is 'criminal.' He urges anger to be directed at the 'Daryl Gates gang.'

Islamic Leader Urges Support of 4 Men Charged in Denny Beating : Pacoima: The audience cheers the speaker’s charge that the criminal justice system is ‘criminal.’ He urges anger to be directed at the ‘Daryl Gates gang.’

By JIM HERRON ZAMORA

May 31, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

A black Islamic leader on Saturday urged gang members in the San Fernando Valley to stop killing each other and instead show support for four men charged in the videotaped beating of truck driver Reginald O. Denny.

“When I saw Reginald Denny lying on the ground at Florence and Normandie,” said Khallid Abdul Muhammad of the Nation of Islam at the Pacoima Community Center, “I didn’t feel a . . . thing. I just saw Rodney King lying on the ground on March 3, 1991, just few blocks from here” in Lake View Terrace.

“I looked at the videos. I didn’t see burning, looting and rioting,” Muhammad said. “I saw not guilty.”

The event was held to rally support for the legal defense of Damian Monroe (Football) Williams, 19; Antoine Eugene (Twan) Miller, 20; Henry Keith (Kiki) Watson, 27, and Gary Williams, 33. The four men face a number of charges in connection with the April 29 beating of Denny.

The beating, videotaped by a news helicopter and several private citizens, occurred just hours after four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted of all but one charge in the Rodney G. King beating.

Event organizers said the northeast Valley, as the site of the King beating, was selected for the rally partly for symbolism’s sake. Although Muhammad, a top aide to Islamic leader Louis Farrakhan, has delivered similar speeches elsewhere in Los Angeles, this was his first major appearance in the Valley since the unrest.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson also visited the northeast Valley on Saturday, joining about 100 people at the stretch of road where the beating occurred to encourage the public to vote for a police reform measure on Tuesday’s ballot.

But the message conveyed at the Pacoima Community Center was far more blunt than the Jackson gathering.

“The criminal justice system in white America is a criminal criminal justice system,” Muhammad told a wildly cheering crowd of about 200. “Criminals wear black robes. Criminals are in the district attorney’s office and criminals wear police uniforms.”

Muhammad and other speakers repeatedly drew a link between the King beating in the Valley and racism throughout Los Angeles and the United States.

“The Valley should most definitely stand up and let its voice be heard,” said Duke X, a Nation of Islam leader active in the Valley.

Muhammad compared the unrest following the King verdict to the Boston Tea Party and the War of Independence. “We had the Los Angeles Tea Party . . . . It was like a volcano of 400 years of anger,” he said. “It was not a riot--you stop calling it that. It was an insurrection. It was a revolt.”

Audience members jumped to their feet to applaud many times during his speech, which lasted more than an hour. Many in attendance were supporters of the Nation of Islam from throughout Los Angeles, while many were gang members from Pacoima.

The event was also designed to extend the declared truce between the Crips and Bloods gangs to the San Fernando Valley, where no such agreement has been recognized, according to gang members who were present.

“There’s no truce here. That’s in South Central. This is the Valley and we’re going to do it our way,” said a self-proclaimed Blood. “If they want a truce, we can talk. But until then, they aren’t welcome.” His friend put it succinctly: “Somebody tries to smoke me, I’ll smoke them.”

People attending the event were subject to elaborate security measures by the Nation of Islam. Men and women, who were required to sit in separate areas, emptied their pockets and purses and then were searched thoroughly for weapons before being allowed to enter. More than 30 men clad in suit coats and bow ties carefully patrolled the crowded auditorium.

He said the gangs of black youths should not take their anger out on each other but instead on the white power structure as epitomized by the Los Angeles police and Chief Daryl F. Gates. “Their gang affiliation is Parker Center. They are the Daryl Gates gang.”

But while Muhammad said that the rage of black youth was justified, he discouraged looting, saying: “You can’t out-steal the white man. He stole you.”

Instead, he encouraged racial separation, economic empowerment and “black laws for black people.”

Muhammad called American Indians and Latinos as fellow victims of imperialism, describing European settlement of the Western Hemisphere as “strong-arm robbery.” He added: “Pyramids in Mexico. Pyramids in Africa. We are brothers.”

“The same dog who bit you, bit us.”