Mayor Rahm Emanuel presided over his annual Martin Luther King Jr. interfaith breakfast Friday morning as some African-American religious leaders chose to boycott the event and a handful of protesters outside continued to call for his resignation.

Emanuel used the event’s stage, in a Bronzeville hotel ballroom filled with 800 guests, to pledge his continued commitment to overhauling the Chicago Police Department in the wake of the Laquan McDonald police shooting scandal.

“We will not be the city we need to be and can be unless we restore trust between our police and our communities,” Emanuel said. “To deal with the violence that claims lives on our streets, mostly the lives of young African-American men, we also have to root out the cancer of police abuse.”

Prior to Emanuel’s breakfast, three African-American pastors leading a boycott of the event from religious leaders attempted to hold a news conference at the main entrance of the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place. Their bid to speak to the assembled cameras, however, was delayed by several minutes as a half-dozen angry protesters shouted obscenities at the ministers and claimed they had long been part of the city’s problems.

Those protesters then made their way inside the hotel, forcing their way past police officers and hotel security to go up an escalator and toward the ballroom where the breakfast was held. They attempted to enter the breakfast but were turned away and ultimately escorted out of the building.

The event also was interrupted on three occasions as individual protesters shouted during the program. They included the Rev. Matthew Ross, a South Side minister who shouted, “16 shots and a coverup!” as he was escorted out of the room, a reference to how many times the black teen McDonald was shot by white Officer Jason Van Dyke, who was charged with murder 400 days after the shooting as police dash-cam video was about to be released following a judge’s order.

 Photos: MLK breakfast goes on amid protests
Mayor Rahm Emanuel presided over his annual Martin Luther King Jr. interfaith breakfast Friday morning as some African-American religious leaders chose to boycott the event and a handful of protesters outside continued to call for his resignation.
“I did what I did because when I take this collar off, I look just like Laquan McDonald,” said Ross, who was dressed in black wearing a clergy collar. “I believe Mayor Rahm Emanuel is like a spouse who cheated on his wife. Now, he’s trying to buy us back with apologies and gifts. We’re not going to buy it. We’ve had enough.”