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.