Nation of Islam Security Patrol Hearing Set Sept. 15 : Permit: Both sides have heavily lobbied the Police Commission, which will decide the issue. Jewish groups decry the deal for the group linked to Louis Farrakhan to protect a Venice housing project.

The fight over whether a security firm affiliated with the Rev. Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam should patrol 15 federally aided apartment buildings in Venice moves to the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners later this month when the panel considers the company’s application for a required patrol permit.

Partisans on both sides have already lobbied police investigators handling the application and are expected to argue their cases at the commission’s Sept. 15 meeting. Police officials said last week that they will probably recommend that the commission grant a permit to allow N.O.I. Security Agency Inc. to patrol on the streets surrounding the buildings, known collectively as the Holiday Venice apartments, scattered over several blocks of the Oakwood neighborhood.

Routine checks of the company and its Los Angeles office have shown the firm worthy of a permit, said LAPD Detective Richard Rudell, who is in charge of permit applications for the commission investigation division.

“It looks like these people are fairly disciplined and are making every effort to comply with the law, and we appreciate that,” Rudell said. He said that patrol employees will also have to get individual permits but that none has applied yet.

The fate of the firm’s pending contract with Alliance Housing Management Inc., which runs the low-income buildings, fell into doubt last month after Alliance officials discovered that N.O.I. Security had not provided proof that it had the necessary state and city licenses. After producing its security license from the California Department of Consumer Affairs and a city business license, the company was given until Sept. 15 to get the city patrol permit or risk losing the $53,676-a-month security contract.

Under the proposed contract, 14 unarmed foot-patrol officers are to guard the buildings at night.

Jewish organizations have decried the proposed deal, approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in June, charging that Farrakhan’s black nationalist organization has a history of anti-Semitism, racism and violence and is unfit to receive federal subsidies to patrol in Venice.

HUD officials have said that the department’s role was simply to endorse the bid process won by N.O.I. Security, not the contract itself. The Venice arrangement would be paid for through higher rent subsidies. It would be the first time in California that Nation of Islam was hired to patrol federally aided apartments.

In an Aug. 28 letter to Police Commission investigators, officials of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith said that “Nation of Islam is known for its discriminatory and hateful rhetoric directed toward Caucasians in general and Jews in particular.”

The letter charges that the local firm has tried to obscure its connection to Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam organization and notes confusion over exactly who runs the patrol service. Although the N.O.I. Security Agency Inc. that would patrol in Oakwood has a Los Angeles address, all previous bidding documents and correspondence had come from a Washington group of the same name.

Alliance Vice President David Itkin said this week that the Washington firm appeared to be the corporate parent. Attempts to reach Ishmel R. Graham, the licensed manager of the Los Angeles firm, and Dion Muhammad, who heads N.O.I. Security in Washington, were unsuccessful.

The Anti-Defamation League, which plans to oppose the permit at the Sept. 15 hearing, has been in touch with commission members who “understand” its position but are awaiting the staff’s recommendation before taking a position, according to ADL Regional Director David A. Lehrer.

Meanwhile, the commission has received petitions with signatures from about 100 Holiday Venice tenants who support the N.O.I. arrangement. Supporters are expected to turn out for the hearing.

Crime-weary tenant activists in Oakwood first proposed hiring Nation of Islam after hearing reports that patrols of the bow-tied Farrakhan followers had managed to push drug dealers and other criminals off housing projects in Washington and elsewhere.

Oakwood backers have argued that the Nation of Islam adherents, who have promoted black pride and self-reliance in visits to the neighborhood, would be more effective than police in communicating with young black people there and help stem the gang violence and open-air drug sales that tenants complain occur daily in front of the buildings.

The Police Commission has final say over business permits required by police--everything from pool halls to tow-truck services--and it considers community sentiment in controversial cases. Patrol permits such as the one sought by N.O.I. Security routinely go before the panel. Currently, 37 private patrol services have permits to work in Los Angeles.

Police Commission President Jesse A. Brewer on Thursday declined to indicate how he will vote, saying he has yet to hear both sides. He noted, though, that even with a favorable staff recommendation, the permit application needs the backing of at least three of the five commission members.