John Upton/The Bay Citizen

Occupy Oakland protesters hold a candlelight vigil for the victim of Thursday's fatal shooting

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan on Friday issued another request for Occupy Oakland protesters to leave Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of City Hall, where they have had an encampment for a month.

Quan announced her request in a brief statement to reporters at the Cathedral of Christ the Light Church, where she participated in an interfaith thanksgiving prayer breakfast with religious and community leaders.

The request comes in the wake of the fatal shooting of a man shortly before 5 p.m. Thursday at 14th Street and Broadway, near the encampment.

"We need to peacefully close the encampment at City Hall and we're asking people to leave," Quan said.

She said city officials will give the protesters another official notice and will announce details of that notice later Friday.

"We're asking them to leave now and peacefully," Quan said.

Quan has asked protesters to leave several times in recent weeks but so far they haven't budged.

The mayor said she will ask for the assistance of religious leaders who participated in the prayer breakfast in talking to the protesters and asking them to leave.

More than 25 of those religious leaders issued a statement saying that they support the encampment and Oakland officials shouldn't use the shooting as a reason to close it down.

In their statement, they said they see Occupy Oakland as "a positive catalyst for hope and needed change in Oakland that is rendered even more important in light of more killings in Oakland."

The Rev. Kurt Kuhwald of the First Unitarian Church of Oakland said, "To evict the many people in this camp, many who are homeless and unemployed, does injury to them by pushing them back into the shadows and margins again. It also deals a devastating blow to the heart of a prophetic and hopeful movement that is calling for much-needed change."

Servant B.K. Woodson, the pastor of a church in downtown Oakland, said, "I believe that Occupy Oakland is precisely the symbolic and visible manifestation of the community's cry against violence, not just at the hands of guns, but at the hands of an economic system that leaves so many jobless, homeless and hopeless."

The religious leaders said they planned to march from the cathedral to the Occupy Oakland encampment Friday.

The Oakland Police Officer's Association, which represents the city's police officers, issued an open letter to Occupy Oakland protesters Friday asking them to leave the plaza in front of City Hall so officers can concentrate on fighting crime in other parts of the city.

Dom Arotzarena, the union's president, expressed frustration that Quan is only asking protesters to leave the plaza voluntarily and isn't taking more forceful steps to remove them.

Arotzarena said, "She is in charge of the city," but he thinks she hasn't shown any sense of urgency in getting the protesters to leave.

He asked, "What is the mayor going to do?"

Quan refused to take questions from reporters after she finished making brief comments at the cathedral.

Just before she spoke to reporters, Quan joined religious leaders in releasing doves from the cathedral's plaza in an effort to seek peace.

When she released a dove, Quan said, "May we be strong enough to find peace in our city."