A charity event planned in honor of an officer killed in a 2018 mass shooting at a country music bar in in Southern California has been postponed indefinitely — reportedly because a police chief didn’t want Republicans invited.
The Blue Bowl, a charity flag football game, was intended to raise money for the family of fallen Ventura County Sgt. Ron Helus as well as other officers killed in the line of duty, FOX 11 of Los Angeles reported.
Helus died last Nov. 7, when a 28-year-old suspect allegedly attacked the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, killing a total of 13 people and wounding about a dozen others. The suspect died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities have said.
Thousands of dollars had already been raised for fallen officers’ families, but the money is now being returned to donors because Thousand Oaks Police Chief Tim Hagel reportedly withdrew the police department because Trump supporters would be speaking at the event.
“He basically said over and over in the conversation, ‘This is not Trump country, that slogan ‘Make America Great’ is not favorable, popular, within 1,200 square miles,’ that we don’t want Republicans here. I could not believe it,” Mike Randall, vice president of the Fallen Officers Foundation, said, according to FOX 11.
“’The only thing,’ and I quote, ‘the only thing you [could have done to make] this worse, Mike, was to invite Dick Cheney and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.’ – READ MORE