Calif. mayor defends police against Trump supporters amid fallout from canceled charity event

Thousand Oaks, Calif., Mayor Rob McCoy is pushing back against the organizer of a canceled charity football game who Mr. McCoy said tried to turn the fundraiser for a fallen police officer into a campaign-style rally for President Trump.

“[The charity organizer] tried to profit from our pain,” the Republican mayor said in an interview with The Washington Times Friday. “This is cancel culture, and we’re finding out the right can do it just as well as the left.”

Mr. McCoy, a Christian pastor who said he voted for Trump in 2016, blames a false narrative promoted by Mike Randall, vice president of the Fallen Officers Foundation, for misleading people about the motivation for Thousand Oaks Police Chief Tim Hagel pulling his department’s support for a flag football game to raise money for Ventura County Sgt. Ron Helus, slain last year in a mass shooting.

In a recent interview with a local television station, Mr. Randall said Chief Hagel objected to co-sponsoring the event because “Republicans would attend.”

The reality couldn’t be further from the truth, Mr. McCoy said, adding that Chief Hagel was merely following a longstanding precedent of law enforcement of Ventura County of not participating in partisan events.

“People are trying to ruin a good man,” Mr. McCoy said of Chief Hagel. “[Thousand Oaks police officers] do not participate in partisan events, whether they be liberal or conservative. It is the policy of the department.”

On Wednesday, headlines ran in news outlets that, Mr. McCoy argued, unfairly painted the chief as opposing Trump supporters.

The Times also reported that the “Blue Bowl” event, which was to be held this weekend to honor Helus at Newbury Park High School, had been canceled after Chief Hagel “reportedly dropped out and encouraged others to do the same” because of expected attendance by actor and high-profile Trump supporter Scott Baio, who attended the same church as the slain officer, and singer-songwriter Joy Villa, famous for her “MAGA”-themed dress at the Grammy Awards, who was to sing the national anthem.

In an interview with Fox 11, Mr. Randall paraphrased a phone call he had with the police chief.

“He basically said over and over in the conversation that this is not Trump country, that the slogan ’Make America Great’ is not favorable, popular, within 1,2000 square miles, that we don’t want Republicans here, I could not believe it,” Mr. Randall told the Los Angeles television station.

On Friday, Mr. McCoy acknowledged on Friday that his city trends blue, but said Chief Hagel was following protocol.

“We don’t participate in political events,” Mr. McCoy said. “That is a wall. We just don’t. And a lot of the officials around here are Democrats. But they know, too, when to draw the line against political rallies.”

In an email Friday to The Times, Mr. Randall stood by his account of the conversation with the police chief and asked why Mr. McCoy never raised the concern with him before.

“If [Mr. McCoy] considered this a ’political’ event, why didn’t he say so when invited to speak?” asked Mr. Randall, who said he had extended an invitation to speak at the charity game to the mayor.

Mr. Randall called on city and county leaders to donate money to the slain officer’s family.

“Will those that killed this off now donate their own money to the family?” Mr. Randall asked.

Mr. McCoy said that his office has received countless phone calls and email messages complaining about a political bias against Trump supporters.

“If I lose my next election, fine, but I will not stay silent while people malign our officers,” he said.

In a report in the Thousand Oaks Acorn, a local newspaper, Chief Hagel did not deny telling Mr. Randall in a phone call that Ventura County “is not Trump country” and felt some of the individuals invited to speak did not “represent the fabric of the community.”

Thousand Oaks, which is in California’s 26th Congressional District and is currently represented by Democrat Julia Brownley, supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election by double digits.

In November, a gunman opened fire inside a country music bar in Thousand Oaks packed with college students, killing 13 including Helus. The officer, a 29-year veteran of the force who had been set to retire this year, was among the first responders.

Mr. McCoy told The Times $4 million has been raised for Helus. He said Sunday’s event was canceled by the promoter because the sheriff’s department, as well as the officer’s widow, had declined to attend.

“We have many others planning fundraisers that [the department] may or may not participate in,” Mr. McCoy said.