TRI In The News

Community Activist Shaheed Omar: His Voice a Blunt instrument

From The Roanoke Times
Original article available here.

Shaheed Omar, self-appointed thorn in the side to the powers that be, kept cool when the police officers approached. Confrontations with authority are nothing new for the veteran community activist. He's being sued for defamation by a Roanoke police officer whom Omar denounced at a city council meeting, comparing the officer to a Klansman for shooting a teenager. It's likely the first time in 15 years that a Roanoke officer has sued a critic.

Omar, 60, spent one morning last week in the Lansdowne Park subsidized housing complex firing back at the lawsuit -- handing out fliers adorned with clip-art depictions of police beating and kicking people. He asked residents if they'd been harassed by the officer who is suing him.

"Violations of Citizen's Constitutional Rights" read the flier's arching headline.

Moments after Omar dropped off the last of the stack of fliers, police Officers K.A. Roszak and L.K. Bowman asked if he had a permit.

"A permit for what?" Omar asked.

Little guy, big voice

Omar pushed himself into police and prison issues decades ago, first as a lawbreaker who served two short prison stints for drugs and breaking and entering. He converted to Islam in the mid-1970s and went back behind bars to lead religious classes and services.

In 1976, he began working for the just-created Virginia CARES, a pilot project begun by Roanoke-based Total Action Against Poverty to help released prisoners find productive lives. Omar was there as the program expanded statewide, offering education and counseling services to people in and out of prison.

With encouragement from TAP leaders Cabell Brand and Ted Edlich, he earned a bachelor's degree from Roanoke College and a master's from Radford University, both in criminal justice.

As crack cocaine swept through Roanoke about 1990, Omar led city officials on tours of neighborhoods where open-air drug markets thrived, and lectured on how poverty could lead to trafficking.

Reginald Shareef, a Radford University political science professor and former Roanoke Times columnist whom Omar cites as a lifelong friend and mentor, said Omar was outspoken even as a boy.

"He was a little guy with a big voice, telling everybody he could beat them playing marbles," Shareef recalled.

Shareef said Omar is driven by a religious determination to address wrongs, and by a mindset that admits few ambiguities.

"He's not a value relativist," Shareef said. "For Shaheed, there's right, and there's wrong.

"I think Shaheed will push things until they are out in the public square," Shareef continued. "He pushes until he gets someone to hear him."

Focus on force

Omar spent much of the 1990s in Atlanta. When he returned to Roanoke, still working with prisoners, it was a private undertaking. He corresponded with inmates and tried to help them connect with relatives. He sent money when he could.

Partly, Omar said, he was motivated by memories of getting letters during his own time in prison.

"It made you feel like somebody still cared," he said.

He focused on complaints about brutality and prison conditions, especially after his son, Luqman Omar, began serving a 19-year sentence for robbery and malicious wounding and said he was beaten by guards at the Red Onion supermax prison.

Last year, his daughter, Safiyyah Omar, was sentenced to two and a half years in federal prison in a heroin conspiracy case. Having both children behind bars is heartbreaking, Omar said.

Omar's name began to circulate in prisons as someone who wanted to hear reports of mistreatment. He'd call the weekly "Holler to the Hood" radio program broadcast from Whitesburg, Ky., toward some of Virginia's highest-security prisons at Red Onion, Wallens Ridge and Keen Mountain. He asked inmates to tell him if their rights were being abused.

The letters began filling Omar's home office. And boxes down the hallway. And a spare room.

Last month, Omar said he received 17 prisoner letters in three days. He averages 30 to 50 a month, he said.

He pays his bills working as a dishwasher and splits the rest of his waking hours between caring for his elderly mother and answering prisoners' letters. A small band of supporters helps with postage, a printer and filing.

Much of the mail comes from inmates who have corresponded for years with Omar. But a disturbing number of letters speak of beatings, restraints and other mistreatment. At Virginia's highest-security prisons, guards seem to direct the harshest treatment toward black and Muslim inmates, Omar said.

Omar responds to prisoners' accounts by writing letters of his own to state officials, from the governor down to prison guards named by prisoners. He calls for investigations and mocks those accused of wrongdoing.

He recently wrote to guards who were said to have attacked prisoners and questioned their sexual identity, saying this was often a problem among men who abused helpless people.

In another case, he wrote two guards: "You should be thankful that Na'im is not my child. If he was there would be no need to prosecute you. I would have a talk with you and you would apologize to my child and pay him for the physical damages that you caused.

"One day the world is going to know what is taking place. ... I won't stop until that happens!"

Federal investigators have at times over the years promised to look into complaints forwarded by Omar, he said, but he never heard from them again.

Virginia Department of Corrections Director Gene Johnson didn't answer letters alleging prisoner abuse, Omar said. But Johnson did help Omar resume prison visits with his son after Shaheed Omar was punished for threatening a guard, Omar said.

"We are well aware of Mr. Omar's allegations" of prisoner abuse, Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor wrote in an e-mail last week. "Our inspector general's office has investigated and found these claims lack credibility. We are confident there is no such pattern as alleged."

1st Amendment question

Omar also speaks out about local matters, especially those involving the police.

In January, he rose during a Roanoke City Council meeting to comment on the death of Raheim Alleyne, a 19-year-old who was killed by police the month before.

Officer Jason Hicks shot Alleyne, a suspect in a home-invasion robbery, after Alleyne opened fire, police said. Hicks is white. Alleyne was black.

Omar had another view on the officer's conduct.

"He is acting no different than members of the Klan did years ago," Omar told city council members and the meeting's audience. "The only difference is that he and his other buddies have uniforms on now that provide them with legal cover as opposed to the white sheets.

"He's been wanting to shoot someone for a long time. Well, he finally has."

Mayor David Bowers called Omar's remarks "inflammatory" and "libelous," but told those at the meeting Omar had a right to make them. The mayor said Alleyne's death would be fully investigated.

Roanoke Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell later said his review found Hicks justified in opening fire.

In April, Hicks filed a defamation lawsuit against Omar in Roanoke General District Court, seeking $15,000 in damages.

Local lawyers, court workers and city police spokeswoman Aisha Johnson couldn't recall a similar lawsuit since 1995, when a Roanoke officer was investigated for an excessive force complaint, then after being cleared, sued his accuser. He was awarded $2,500.

The Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville-based legal organization that provides representation in civil liberties cases, is defending Omar.

Institute founder John Whitehead said Omar's comments at the meeting should be fully protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.

"He knows the policeman's not a member of the KKK. He's speaking metaphorically," Whitehead said. "Can you go before an open forum and speak on a matter of public concern and speak forthrightly? That's the real concern."

"You can get up and complain all you want," responded attorney Gary Lumsden of Roanoke, who is representing Hicks. "The issue is at what point do you cross the line, when you start making accusations you know aren't true."

The case is scheduled for trial June 28.

Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, said lawsuits such as Hicks' are few. The ACLU is concerned that the suits could have a chilling effect, causing people to be afraid that speaking out will bring retaliation, he said.

'Why I'm out here'

At Lansdowne last week, most people had little to say about Omar's fliers. One man shouted that he knew someone who'd been harassed. A woman asked if Omar was handing something out for the local school.

Omar's knock at most houses went unanswered. He left fliers tucked in screens.

Then the two police officers told Omar he should have a permit.

Roszak said there was a citywide requirement that anyone going door to door have a permit. She took Omar's driver's license, asked where he worked and jotted notes. A supervisor would be along soon, she said.

Omar took back his license.

"Unless I'm under arrest," he said. "I'll be on my way."

He headed off down the sidewalk, leaving the two police officers to return to their cars.

City Attorney Bill Hackworth and Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority Executive Director Glenda Edwards later said neither the city nor the housing authority, which manages Lansdowne, requires permits to pass out fliers such as Omar's.

Omar said he found it funny.

"That stuff don't surprise me," he said. "That's what they do.

"That's why I'm out here."