Denver Post

Plan of action and comfort
Black ministers channel anger into purpose after boy's shooting death
By Eric Gorski
Denver Post Religion Writer

Sunday, July 13, 2003 - The Rev. Patrick Demmer visited members of the Childs family last Sunday evening at the depths of their grief, even though they were strangers to him.

His church, Graham Memorial Church of God in Christ, is just three blocks from where 15-year-old Paul Childs was shot to death. Demmer believed it was his duty to go.

The preacher wore his Sunday best. His sermon that morning had been "God Is Able and He Will."

But that evening, as he sat in the living room and stared at a pillow the family had put down to cover a bloodstain on the carpet, the third-generation preacher found himself reaching for words.

"What do I say?" he said. "You hate to say the same old platitudes and cliches, but the truth is, we are praying for them, and that's what you have to say: 'You have our sympathy, you have our prayers and our love at times like this."'

The visit was the Childs family's first face-to-face contact with a member of the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance after Paul, who was mentally disabled, was fatally shot by a Denver police officer after refusing to put down a knife.

Demmer's comforting words and offers of help started a series of events that put the organization of black ministers front and center as the community searches for answers and accountability in a tragedy tinged with issues of race, authority and trust.

The ministerial alliance mobilized quickly to meet with the parties involved - the family, police chief and district attorney - to get as full a picture as possible before issuing statements that sought to be critical while keeping the peace, its leaders say.

The result was a five-point action plan that calls for a federal investigation of the Police Department, the removal from patrol duty of the officer involved and new policies on lethal force.

The alliance describes the plan as an evolution in its thinking from being reactive to proactive, focusing more on long-term solutions and prevention.

"This is a reaction, yes, but this is a different kind of reaction," said the Rev. Paul Martin of Macedonia Baptist Church, which Paul's grandmother attends. "Before, we would get on the stump and we would preach, we'd wail, we'd call everybody this or that.

"What we're doing is saying we are going to promote an investigation of the policies and activities of law enforcement and correlate our efforts with other interested groups."

Martin, for example, reached out to celebrity lawyer Johnnie Cochran, his boyhood friend from the rough Watts section of Los Angeles, who agreed to represent the Childs family. On a more modest scale, the alliance is talking with a group of white pastors from Park Hill who offered support.

Throughout U.S. history, black churches have played a critical role working against injustice, fighting Jim Crow segregation laws and marching and dying for civil rights in the 1960s.

"The black church has always played an important role within the African-American community," said Mayor Wellington Webb, who grew up in Denver churches. "It has been our sustenance. It's been the place we've held meetings when we couldn't get into hotels because they discriminated against us."

The role of the black church has evolved as many ministers from the civil rights era have grown older and given way to a younger generation less interested in politics and more eager to nurture neighborhood and personal development through computer training, tutoring, financial advice and other help.

The alliance in recent years has refocused its energy on influencing local politics and economic issues, including lobbying for minority contracts on the Stapleton redevelopment, Martin said.

The group formed in the 1950s and has taken several names and forms, said the Rev. Reginald Holmes of New Covenant Christian Church. Holmes became president of the alliance in January.

The 35-member alliance is not monolithic, however, and rifts have developed over whether to allow white evangelical membership in the group or endorse political candidates, an activity for which the group is probably best known.

The alliance was united in a desire to take a lead role in the Childs shooting, Martin said.

The group, which normally doesn't meet in summer, convened an emergency session Tuesday to hatch its five-point plan, which is based on approaches that have worked elsewhere, leaders said.

Holmes said the community must ask itself why Paul Childs' family thought it needed to call 911. To Holmes, that decision represents a failing of the community. Why, he asks, didn't the family reach out to a minister, neighbor or nearby community center instead of choosing an option he says carried a greater risk?

"A lot of times we as ministers get a bad rap because we just react, and then we vent, and we become a bunch of rabble-rousers and all we want to do is get the police, and get every politician, beat up on the mayor," he said. "Now we're saying let's do an internal critique. Let's look at how this can be prevented on every level."

Demmer said the alliance has been critical of the officer involved in the shooting, James Turney, but careful "not to indict the whole Police Department."

Demmer said it's a challenge to strike a balance in an emotionally charged case involving a black teen and a white police officer.

"If you try to come across as if to keep all race out of it, then you're not being honest to yourself and not honest to your community," Demmer said. "Then you're not genuine. On the same token, if you go as far as some people, who are looking to stir emotions at this time, you've got another agenda."

In other communities, conflicts involving race and police have led to violence. Two nights of riots broke out last month in Benton Harbor, Mich., after a black motorcyclist died in a police chase.

Martin, for one, said he does not think Denver is fertile ground for such unrest, in large part because the black community here is relatively small compared to those cities where problems have arisen.

Still, the alliance has tried to steer the conversation away from race as a potential factor in the shooting. On Thursday, the group appeared at a news conference with Webb and Police Chief Gerry Whitman to denounce a flier that labeled Denver police "racist" and called for shooting cops.

"It seems to me the alliance has been acting and speaking in a very sensible way, in a way to help people look at the larger issues involved, trying not to focus on race but upon the injustice of the situation, especially in light of the disability of the young man involved," said Vincent Harding, professor of religion and social transformation at Denver's Iliff Theological Seminary.

As Holmes spoke at a vigil Thursday that drew hundreds of people to a park near the Childs home, the Rev. Leon Kelly stood off to the side. Kelly said he almost didn't come.

"I'm rallied out," said Kelly, executive director of Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives.

"We are a reactionary people," he said. "When I do a funeral for a kid killed by another kid over a rag, I look behind me, and there's no clergy there."

Kelly said the alliance's greatest potential lies in each minister's influence with people in the pews, including mothers whose children are tempting danger in the street.

"If they see the ministers get involved from the top down, it will strengthen their hope that young people don't have to die before folks get involved," he said.

Webb said the alliance's role in the Childs case should involve working to ensure the investigation "is fair and impartial" and to "make sure there are positive interactions between the Police Department and the community."

Michael Hancock, recently elected to represent northeast Denver on the City Council, said he has been impressed with alliance's tempered, informed response.

"With all the voices that are yelling, the ministerial alliance is the only group that has really stepped up with some clear, very attainable recommendations," said Hancock, president of the Urban League of Metropolitan Denver. "They were not the first to speak out. They took their time."