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A fire that burned up two trash cans outside a Berkeley church that has been a longtime staple in the city has police looking for an arson suspect and leaders of the church calling it an “act of terror.”
In a virtual press conference Thursday morning, pastor Mike McBride of The Way Christian Center said the fires came less than 12 hours after a Black Lives Matter banner had been put on the building. His brother Ben, the church’s outreach pastor, called the blaze “what we believe is an expression of racial terror on Black people in this city.”
Police and firefighters responded to the fire around 12:45 a.m. Wednesday morning, after a nearby witness called 911. Officials have called the fire suspicious and said they are looking for an unknown suspect.
City Council member Ben Bartlett said Thursday that police “are gonna have to” investigate the case as a hate crime, “because nobody wants to have a hate crime on the books in their town.”
The Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations also condemned the fire and called on city officials and police to investigate the arson as a hate crime.
Police have yet to call it a hate crime, and Berkeley police spokesman Officer Byron White said evidence of a hate crime so far is lacking.
“We don’t want to discount the possibility,” White said. “But based on the evidence we have so far (it is not a hate crime). The sign, as we know, was undamaged. The fire was to the rear of the side of the building.”
The suspect was last seen walking away from the fire eastbound on University Avenue. Police said only that the suspect was wearing a tan poncho or jacket with reflective material.
The church has stood at 1305 University Ave. since 1980.
Mike McBride said the witness who saw the suspect approached police but that an officer “was dismissive and discouraging of making a (hate crime) report.”
He also said nobody from the city or police department contacted church leaders personally.
“With this act of terror, the only notification we received was a report slid underneath the front of our church,” Mike McBride said. “No phone call to our church. No phone call to me, the pastor. No one from the city called. The mayor didn’t call. The city manager didn’t call. The police chief didn’t call. They just slide a report under the front door of our church.”
Said White: “I did not receive an invitation to the press conference. I’ve since learned they were having one. But if we’re not invited … ” he trailed off.. White added that Police Chief Andrew Greenwood “reached out to Pastor McBride (Wednesday) night.”
The incident at the church came less than two months after protesters marched from San Pablo Park to Berkeley High School to protest the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, an event that sparked the most recent resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“It’s super alarming. It’s a church burning,” Bartlett said. “This is what you think about in Alabama and Mississippi, the height of racial terror. Just six weeks ago, this town had the biggest march in 30 years to bury racial terror, so this is a throwback to an era we declared an end to. It’s really emotional and intense.”
