Clergy Scorn Funds Hahn Offered

Two African American ministers whose South Los Angeles churches were recently promised $25,000 grants from Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn rejected the money Wednesday, calling it an effort to buy their silence on the mayor’s controversial decision to oppose the reappointment of Police Chief Bernard C. Parks.

“We will not be silenced by any force,” said Bishop Charles Blake of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ during a news conference at the church. “We don’t want anybody in the community to feel that this gift would cause us to alleviate our stand or to speak softly when we should be speaking loudly for justice.”

Blake was surrounded by about three dozen ministers, many of whom backed Hahn in last year’s mayoral campaign, who say they now feel betrayed by his decision to oppose the black police chief.

The mayor said he is offended by suggestions that he was attempting to buy support for his stance on the chief. Hahn said the grants were some of the many that his office has given out since he took office in July.

“I think it’s just wrong to characterize these as having any connection to any other issues,” Hahn said during a news conference at City Hall.

“I don’t think it makes any sense that somebody like [First AME Church] Rev. [Cecil “Chip”] Murray or Rev. Blake or any of the other ministers would somehow be willing to give up their rights to freedom of speech for a few pieces of silver,” he said.

“I’m offended that they would even think that’s the way that I operate,” said Hahn, who grew up in South Los Angeles. “They’ve known me for 20 years.”

The denunciation of Hahn by dozens of former supporters Wednesday was the latest in a series of public criticisms of the mayor’s decision last week to oppose a second term for Parks.

Hahn said he is disappointed in the chief’s lack of progress on community policing, recruitment and the implementation of a federal consent decree. Parks has said he has done all the mayor has requested on those issues.

Although Hahn expected his decision to upset some people, he said Wednesday that he was worried that “troublemakers” were using a “whisper campaign” to keep the issue alive. The mayor said he did not know who these people were.

In the meantime, several African American ministers said Wednesday that they thought the grants they were promised by Hahn, which they did not formally apply for, were attempts to keep them from speaking out against his decision.

“You cannot place a ‘For Sale’ sign on a preacher called by God,” said Murray of the First AME Church. “It is possible that the gifts may have come without strings attached. It does not appear to be that way.”

On Jan. 20, Hahn visited West Angeles and presented Blake with a mock, oversized check for $25,000 to fund economic development. A month earlier, he had given Murray a similar check.

On Wednesday, both ministers ripped up the mock checks in front of news cameras.

Blake acknowledged that Hahn had never asked the ministers not to voice their opinions about Parks’ reappointment.

“It was just a strange coincidence of the closeness of the time,” he said. “It would seem he had to know what he was going to do when he brought that check to West Angeles.”

The grants came out of $2.5 million in federal urban development action grants left over from previous years, Hahn’s aides said. The mayor’s office is now negotiating to give $750,000 of the funds to six programs throughout the city, including West Angeles and First AME. The grants had to be negotiated and approved by the City Council before the programs could get the funds.

“This money is for worthwhile programs that already are in operation,” Hahn said. “If they’re not able to get the funds to continue those operations, the only people who are going to be hurt are the community.”

At least one minister who recently received a grant from the mayor did not believe Hahn had an ulterior motive.

The Rev. William Epps at the Second Baptist Church in South Los Angeles said Wednesday that he resents the implication that he or his church could be bought.

“All of us who have community programs have benefited from these grants in the past, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking these moneys,” Epps said. “I don’t think the mayor was trying to buy me.”

But many of the clergy who had embraced Hahn when he was campaigning for mayor said they now don’t trust him.

“During the election, implicit in our support was the fact that Bernard Parks would be reappointed,” Blake said. “We feel the mayor deceived us because he may even then have had very strong feelings about the matter, but he concealed those feelings to our community. And if we had known how he felt, we would not have elected him.”

The Rev. Frederick Murph of Brookins AME Church held a victory party for Hahn when he was elected. Now, Murph said, he will help a letter-writing campaign protesting Hahn’s decision.

Murph said he feels especially betrayed because he was one of a dozen black leaders from South Los Angeles who met privately with the mayor and the chief several times during the last month, trying to negotiate an agreement between the two men.

“He was dishonest, he lied to our community,” Murph said. “He used the African American community for his own advantage, and then he decided he didn’t need us any more.”

Hahn said he had not made up his mind about whether he could support a second term for Parks until very recently.

The mayor said he knew his position would spark anger among some black supporters, but said he believed he had to speak out.

“I could have done the easy thing,” he said. “I could have kept my mouth shut and worked behind the scenes and sent the signals of what I wanted to have happen and not have my fingerprints on anything. But I don’t think that’s leadership.”