Drake Bucking Court’s Order

One day after a jury convicted him of illegally housing the homeless, the Rev. Wiley Drake vowed to stay the course of caring for the dispossessed, saying he owes it to the Lord to do so.

“This is bigger than Wiley Drake. This is bigger than Buena Park,” Drake told a media crowd and a handful of homeless people gathered outside his church. “It’s an issue that is happening all over America, and it’s an issue that has got to be dealt with.”

On Tuesday, an Orange County Superior Court judge signed a civil court order enforcing Buena Park’s zoning regulations. Shortly after 3 p.m., city officials attempted to serve Drake with the court papers ordering the removal of about 40 homeless men, women and children from the enclosed patio of the First Southern Baptist Church.

Drake wouldn’t answer the door at first. He later refused to accept the documents as they were thrust in his direction and fell to the ground, leaving city officials to mull over whether the documents were properly served.

Drake said earlier in the day that he would technically comply with the order--but would simply move the group to another building on church grounds, thus setting in motion a new legal fight.

D. Craig Fox, deputy city attorney of Buena Park, said Tuesday he was in no mood to put up with what he called the pastor’s shenanigans. He said city officials would continue to press the battle in civil court to remove the illegal homeless encampment from the church grounds.

“It’s kind of silly that he won’t accept the inevitable,” Fox said with a sigh.

The city attorney’s office succeeded Monday in winning a criminal case against the 53-year-old preacher, although jurors said having to side against him was, in the words of one, a crushing experience that will haunt them forever.

Drake was convicted of four misdemeanor charges that he violated city zoning regulations. He is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 22 in Municipal Court in Fullerton.

Prosecutors have said they plan to ask for probation in exchange for Drake’s promise not to illegally house vagrants on church property.

“Certainly, if he doesn’t comply [with the terms of his upcoming sentence], jail is an option,” said Gregory Palmer, the assistant city attorney who prosecuted Drake. ‘It’s up to him to move those people. We’re not storm troopers. We never have been.”

Sporting a bald-eagle tie and a look of hawkish defiance, Drake told the gathering Tuesday that he wasn’t willing to abide by the sentence he faces. Compromise isn’t in the cards when it comes to the homeless, he said, because God doesn’t compromise when it comes to the poor.

“I’m not going to accept that,” Drake said of the sentence ahead of him.

Raising his Texas drawl more than once to excoriate Buena Park city leaders, Drake appeared less like a man convicted of four misdemeanors than a crusader who seemed to relish the bright lights and minicams of network television.

Drake said he has received hundreds of calls from throughout Orange County, and one from Washington, D.C., as well. He boasted to reporters that Vice President Al Gore had recently phoned his church, leaving a message urging him to “hang in there.”

But on Tuesday, officials in Gore’s office flatly denied that Gore ever made such a call. Drake responded Tuesday that a prankster must have called the church.

Around lunchtime, the enclosed patio structure that provides the setting for the controversy was eerily deserted.

Only loaves of bread, canned goods, racks of donated clothes, blankets, teddy bears and Chiquita banana boxes stuffed with personal effects provided evidence that this was where the homeless had slept--and goaded an outraged neighborhood into action in what Drake’s attorney called a collective case of “NIMBYism.” (The term is an acronym for “Not In My Back Yard.”)

Legal experts said the civil court order could provide a more immediate resolution to the ongoing dispute if the city is able to remove the homeless people rather than wait for the criminal court sentencing.

The civil court order requires that Drake evict the homeless from the makeshift shelter in the patio area where the group has been housed for about three years. The order covers only the patio and no other part of the sprawling complex.

Judges are hearing cases similar to Drake’s all over the country, experts said. A recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court reinforced cities’ powers to enforce laws against religious institutions--as long as they are not intentionally targeting those entities.

Jon Alexander, Drake’s attorney, said he had spent Tuesday morning crafting an appeal to his client’s conviction.

Alexander said the crowd of homeless congregating on church grounds had actually swelled in number since the verdict to include nearly 40 men women and children who gathered to lend their support to Drake.

The male-dominated group of homeless “runs the gamut” in ethnicity and age, from 6 to 67, and includes a woman in her late 30s who is about to give birth to twin boys and a 67-year-old man suffering from cancer, Alexander said.

“Why are they homeless?” he asked of the minister’s displaced congregation. “It’s a case of, ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I.’ ”

Drake’s supporters said Tuesday that the city would not have interfered with the homeless were it not for the efforts of a nearby property owner who Alexander said feared a drop in home values.

But Palmer said dozens of Buena Park neighbors opposed the illegal encampment.

Kim Horton, a mother of three young children who owns her home a few doors away from the church, said vagrants leave cigarette butts and other trash on her lawn, and are often seen begging and drinking alcoholic beverages from brown paper bags.

“The problem that I have with them is that they go down our street and just kind of hang out. It makes you nervous,” she said. “I know there are some who are there because they need a place to stay, but I think that most of the ones living there are just living off the system. They could go out and get a job.”

But a woman who lives with her young son in an apartment building on the same street said the homeless are welcome.

“They’ve got to live too,” said Thihiesha Love, 21, who often donates old clothing and other items to Drake’s church.

Palmer said the case should not be viewed as pitting the city against the homeless. The minister could care for the homeless legally if only he would apply for a conditional-use permit from the city of Buena Park.

Drake said Tuesday he would not apply for such a permit because it carries conditions that he refuses to accept--namely, the adoption of a “secular operation,” meaning religious instruction would be barred.

Lest he appear cold and heartless, Palmer said that trying the Drake case “has given me fits. I’m not an unemotional man. I’m not some unfeeling big-government bureaucrat. This has been tough.”

Contributing to this report was Times correspondent Lesley Wright.

* GRATEFUL GUESTS: Homeless at Rev. Drake’s church are a mixed lot, but alike in gratitude. A12