Excerpt:
The man who died in an October shootout with the FBI reached for a gun and told a police officer, "It'll either be you or me," during a 1980 arrest in Livonia, according to interviews and records obtained under Michigan's Freedom of Information Act.
Christopher Thomas, who later became Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, struggled with the officer for control of the gun, according to a report prepared soon after the Dec. 5, 1980, arrest by Livonia Police Officer Robert Stevenson, now the city's police chief. Only after a second officer arrived was Abdullah disarmed, reports show.
"I should have killed him," a police report says Abdullah told the second officer, referring to Stevenson.