Compton Turns to Prayer and Persuasion : Trials: Community leaders and police enact a strategy for heading off trouble after the King and Denny verdicts are announced.

Weekly prayer meetings are being held in a hotel. A city councilman has taken to playing basketball so he can talk to young men between jump shots about the need for cool heads. Ministers and council members are helping the Brotherhood Crusade set up a food and emergency aid tent, and the city held a candlelight peace march last weekend.

Compton, hit hard by last year’s civil unrest, is hoping these measures will head off trouble after verdicts are reached in the federal trial of four Los Angeles police officers accused of violating Rodney G. King’s civil rights and in the Reginald Denny beating case.

“We’re trying to direct our community to have a nonviolent response to whatever the upcoming court decisions might be,” said Councilman Omar Bradley.

“People have forgotten the days of Martin Luther King Jr. We want to remind them. We need to tell the world that we don’t appreciate what is going on, but we aren’t going to demean ourselves with violence,” said the councilman, who has taken to the basketball court to spread his message.

In the rioting last year, two people were killed and 98 businesses and 63 other buildings were destroyed in Compton.

Police were without a plan to quell the unrest, and on the first night of rioting council members and city staff rode along with officers in patrol cars, directed traffic and appealed for calm.

This year, the city will not be caught off guard, officials said.

“We’re developing an extensive plan to prevent another occurrence like last April’s,” said Police Chief Hourie Taylor, who took over as head of the department on the first day of rioting last year. “We will be well prepared for any eventuality.”

Like several ministers, Taylor is appearing on a local cable channel to appeal for peace.

While Bradley and others are hoping that flyers, prayer meetings and marches will spread the message of peace, they are also making preparations for massive civil unrest.

Danny Bakewell of the Brotherhood Crusade approached Bradley and Councilwoman Bernice Woods about erecting a tent to provide aid to residents in case of a riot. The council immediately agreed.

One of 10 “Brotherhood Rescue Units” Bakewell hopes to have around Los Angeles County, the Compton tent has been set up on the corner of Compton Boulevard and Willowbrook Avenue.

Bakewell’s organization will stock the tent with refrigerators, food, soap, shampoo and other toiletries. It will also hold community “rap sessions” to vent concerns, Bakewell said.

“What causes rebellions is not a trial, it’s the conditions we live in that cause it. That’s what we’re trying to address,” Bakewell said.

The tent will provide shelter for homeless people in case of a curfew. Many homeless people were arrested during last spring’s riots for being on the street after dark.

Bradley, a high school teacher in Lynwood, has been hitting the basketball courts for the last week, playing pickup games with teen-agers. Between games, he talks about the trials, trying to gauge the level of anger in the community.

“We have to let the people know we care,” Bradley said. “If they think we’re trying to talk them out of it (rioting), they won’t listen. But if we just talk to them, we can maybe redirect their anger positively.”

After the games, Bradley leaves flyers on benches and tables.

Organized by the Rev. Lonnie Dawson, pastor of New Mt. Calvary Missionary Baptist Church, the effort to distribute flyers has been embraced by the Southern Area Clergy Council’s 25 member churches.

Dawson hopes to distribute about 500,000 “Keep It Good in the Hood” flyers that warn of the aftermath of violence. “Violence destroys our family’s future, demeans our local economy, divides our community and costs too many lives,” the flyer says.

Dawson has raised money for 10,000 flyers and estimates that he needs $3,000 more for printing and, possibly, paying a few young people to distribute the message.

City Council members led a candlelight peace march on Sunday, singing “We Shall Overcome,” from Compton Boulevard and Central Avenue to the Martin Luther King memorial behind City Hall.

“It was a beautiful march with more than 200 people,” Woods said. “We had all races there in togetherness. I don’t see how we could have any unrest after that.”

Ministers and city leaders have also been holding Thursday night prayer meetings at the city-owned convention center in the Ramada Hotel. The city has offered a free banquet room for the meetings. Bradley and Woods both say the question of separation of church and state is less important in the face of a possible citywide emergency.

In these uneasy days, city leaders hope their efforts will help keep the city calm.

“You have to believe your effort will have some effect,” Dawson said. “So I believe we can head off (riots)--or at least minimize participation.”