April 30, 2021
Everett police are investigating the uprooting of a large wooden cross from outside a Black Baptist church early Thursday morning as a possible hate crime, officials said. The vandalism took place overnight at Zion Church Ministries on Broadway in the city’s Glendale section, police and Mayor Carlo DeMaria said in separate Facebook statements Thursday.
Bishop Robert G. Brown, senior pastor of the church, said its office manager had come to work Thursday morning and found the cross missing from the spot where it had stood for the last two or three years. She then saw it lying in an adjacent yard and called Brown and police, he said.
Vandalism at Black church in Everett being investigated as hate crime
Updated Apr 30, 10:28 AM;
Posted Apr 30, 10:28 AM
Everett police and the city’s mayor are characterizing vandalism reported at Zion Baptist Church, a Black church in the city, as a hate crime. A large wooden cross that has rested in the same location at the church for years was found in a nearby yard. (Google Maps)
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Everett police and the city’s mayor are characterizing vandalism reported at Black church earlier this week as a hate crime.
Zion Baptist Church’s property was vandalized early Thursday. In a statement, the Everett Police Department said it’s treating the action as a hate crime.
A large wooden cross was uprooted and left in an adjacent yard
Published April 30, 2021
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Police in Everett, Massachusetts, are investigating vandalism at a church with a largely Black congregation as a possible hate crime, authorities said.
A large wooden cross that stood outside the Zion Bapist Church was uprooted and left in an adjacent yard, Bishop Robert G. Brown, senior pastor of the church, told The Boston Globe. Download our mobile app for iOS or Android to get alerts for local breaking news and weather.
The church’s office manager noticed that the cross was missing when she came to work Thursday morning and called police, he said.
Mayor DeMaria calls the incident a ‘hate crime’ against the church
Vandals struck the Zion Baptist Church overnight Thursday by uprooting the large cross from the ground in front of the historic Black church and tossing it in a yard down Broadway.
Bishop Robert Brown said he was alerted to the vandalism Thursday morning and was incensed, but still doesn’t know the exact motives for what was done but said there could be a number of possibilities.
Bishop Brown – who is the chair of the City’s new Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Equal Employment Commission – has been outspoken lately in the Independent and on his RGB Internet Radio Program about the verdict in the Derek Chauvin case, and he said initially he has wondered if it could be a hate crime directed at his speech. That, he said, is one possibility and, if true, such an act won’t cause him to back down.
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