A local church sought an apology Tuesday evening from Ward 4 Councilman Marty Turner over comments he made in a recent Dispatch article about local teenagers using Wi-Fi at the church.
Rev. Jesse J. Slater Jr. of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church spoke before the city council during Tuesday’s meeting.
Slater, reading a prepared statement, referenced Turner’s comments in a Nov. 4 Dispatch story about the data usage on his city-issued cell phone.
In that story, which focused on Turner’s high data consumption, Turner said he made a hotspot with his city phone to allow four local teenagers to have Wi-Fi access once they could no longer access Wi-Fi near the church.
Turner seemed to indicate the teenagers used Mt. Zion’s Wi-Fi. However, Slater said the church does not have a Wi-Fi network.
“Mount Zion has not had internet services at its church in almost 10 years,” Slater said, reading from the statement. “Secondly, any teens using computers with internet at Mount Zion 10 years ago did so with adult supervision and access codes inside the church.”
During the meeting and after, when he spoke with church congregation members, Turner acknowledged the Wi-Fi signal may not have come from the church itself, but was accessible to the teenagers when they were in the area.
He also apologized to the church for causing offense.
“If I offended the church or any of your congregation members, then I apologize for them being offended,” Turner said.
The statement went on to say that the congregation felt compelled to seek an apology from Turner and to request for him to retract his statement.
“We cannot allow these remarks, accusations and/or innuendos to go unaddressed,” the statement says. “After all, this claim is the basis for Councilman Turner’s gross consumption of data usage on his city-issued cell phone. Our congregation felt obligated to take this step today to make our position clear.”
Slater also voiced the church’s concerns about part of the Nov. 4 article that says Turner said the church “ran off” the teenagers.
“…We know of no teens hanging around in back of the church to ‘hot spot,’ which we may have called law enforcement with concerns,” the church’s statement says.
Slater asked for Turner to retract the comment.
“This has been placed in a local paper,” Slater said. “We have many who have read this article and have, no doubt, formed an opinion about our church — an image that we’re trying to change, and these kinds of comments aren’t helping that image.”
Turner, however, denied that he blamed the church for removing the teenagers from the property, noting that they were normally there after church business hours.
“I did not say that Mt. Zion or people at Mt. Zion church called the police on those kids,” Turner said. “I did not say that. It was police called — maybe neighborhood watch called the police on them because they saw four kids sitting by your church or on your steps where they could pick up Wi-Fi.”
Turner said the statement may have been a misprint.
“I will not retract what I said because it had to be a misprint or misspoken or something,” Turner said.
In a Nov. 4 phone interview with The Dispatch, Turner said “They tried to use Mt. Zion because Mt. Zion had Wi-Fi — at Mt. Zion, the church. But they ran them off from Mt. Zion — the church. They used to go there, you know, and it would get kind of dark, and then they used to go around the church because they could pick up the Wi-Fi there.”
The Dispatch stands by its reporting on the matter.
Wi-Fi access
Turner stood by his comments that the teenagers went to him after they were told to leave the area near the church. He said they came to his house on the weekends to use his hotspot.
“They came to me and asked what I could do about it,” Turner said. “Factually, that is so. I can show you the teens and who they are. This would happen at night, not during Sunday service or Wednesday night Bible class. But I can’t retract something that I know is the truth.”
In a phone interview with The Dispatch, Patricia Turner, mother of one of the teenagers, confirmed that her son and his friends did access Wi-Fi in the church’s vicinity. She said she wasn’t sure who provided the Wi-Fi or who made the call to police when the teenagers were told to leave the area. She noted that the church was not normally open when the teenagers were in the area.
“There are some shrubs and a retainer wall,” she said. “They would sit there, and they would use the Wi-Fi. They kept getting run off, and one night the police came and escorted them away. They said they had problems with break-ins.”
Patricia Turner is a relative of Marty Turner. He declined to say how they are related.
Turner said he used his cell phone precisely because the teenagers could no longer access the network near Mt. Zion.
“That is why I used the cell phone for a hot spot,” Turner said. “That is why I did it. That is why, like you said, I ‘grossly misused’ the data on the city cell phone for the neighborhood children. That is why I grossly misused that data.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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