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By Ken Stone,Times of San Diego, a member of the San Diego Online News Association
Photo: La Mesa Police Chief Ray Sweeney (right) succeeded Walt Vasquez (center) and Matt Nicholass in July 2021. Photo via Twitter
September 3, 2023 (La Mesa) - The announcement came Monday in Facebook.
“Join us Thursday at 10am for presentation and discussion about La Mesa community policing in three years since the rioting and looting of May 2020,” said the illustrated flier appearing in several La Mesa groups.
A photo showed La Mesa Police Chief Ray Sweeney in front of his station — an epicenter of protests that preceded violence. Text hailed Sweeney for leadership that “transformed” the “La Mesa City Police Department.”
By Wednesday morning, the event set for Journey Community Church in La Mesa was canceled.
Therein lies a tale that includes fears of counterprotests, an online advertisement seen as politically partisan and a new police chief caught “in a hard place.”
The drama traces to Janet Castaños, vice chair of La Mesa’s Community Police Oversight Board “who started all of this,” she said Wednesday night via email.
Castaños, a retired Grossmont College dean, originally was asked by the La Mesa Foothills Democratic Club to do a presentation on police oversight.
“I agreed to do it,” she said, and to be fair reached out to La Mesa Republicans to see if they were also interested. “They told me that they were.”
So she asked oversight board chair Leroy Johnson and Chief Sweeney if they wanted to join her. They agreed.
“Then the chief found that the Republican … flier promoting the event had completely misrepresented the presentation,” Castaños said. The flier had Sweeney’s picture alongside those of GOP firebrand Carl DeMaio, county supervisor candidate Amy Reichert and La Mesa Councilwoman Laura Lothian, another Republican.
Castaños noted that her and Johnson’s names were left off the flier completely. A later version had just Sweeney’s picture with Lothian, DeMaio and Reichert listed as guest speakers.
Photo, right: Journey Community Church space where Police Chief Ray Sweeney and others were set to speak Thursday. Photo by Ken Stone“Again no mention of Leroy or myself,” she said.
That led Sweeney to inform Castaños on Wednesday that he would have to cancel his participation “because he could not be perceived as political.”
Castaños says Sweeney called her Republican contact — who replied with an apology “for the politicization of tomorrow’s meeting. That was never my intention and I didn’t publicize nor authorize any flier that misconstrued the intent of your presentation. I’m so sorry.”
The Republican contact, who wasn’t identified, then canceled the event.
Thursday morning, Times of San Diego visited Journey Church to see if anyone hadn’t heard that the policing forum was a no-go. Two older men showed up. A church official explained the cancellation.
That official’s wife had been the “Republican contact,” and she confirmed the sequence of events, but asked not to be identified. She said Chief Sweeney felt he was put in a partisan “hard place.”
She also feared that black-clad Antifa types would stage a counterprotest. So she called off the event to be held in the Plaza Room of the multibuilding tan church off La Mesa’s Center Drive.
Castaños said she thanked her GOP contact for canceling, and the contact replied: “I certainly hope that the LMPD is not blamed for that which they had nothing to do with. Neither the Chief nor anyone else in the department were privy to the information shared within the flier.”
Sweeney also canceled his planned Sept. 6 appearance at the La Mesa Foothills Democratic Club “because he didn’t want to be accused of bias.” (The club website was still promoting its event late Thursday afternoon but sent email to members about delayed forum.)
Added Castaños: “Leroy Johnson and I plan to present information about the Community Police Oversight Board to the La Mesa Foothills Democratic Club on our own” at some other date.
Questions remained. Who created and posted the flier that led to the event’s demise? Why were DeMaio, Reichert and Lothian being featured as speakers? And what do Sweeney and city officials have to say about the events’ collapse?
La Mesa officials, including City Manager Greg Humora and City Council members, didn’t respond to email requests for comment. Neither did Chief Sweeney nor the trio of advertised GOP speakers.
But the Republican contact said county Republican Central Committee member Dan Bickford was behind the Facebook posts and flier.
In a brief Messenger exchange, Bickford told me it was a shame the event was canceled.
“Tell me, Ken, why can’t the [parties] hold community events open to the public? 1st Amendment and all,” he said.
Bickford — who in April 2022 was the Santee Chamber of Commerce’s Person of the Year for his work with parks and rec and as president of the local Kiwanis Club — declined to answer questions.
Castaños says no GOP club actually was interested in the topic.
“My contact finally organized an unscheduled event [at Journey] for those who wished to attend,” she said. “Then someone … probably caught wind of it and transformed it into something completely different.”
Why would GOP activists be involved with a police chief seeking to reform LMPD in the wake of the George Floyd protests?
Castaños said her contact was “very nice and seemed happy to give fellow Republicans the opportunity to ask questions about police oversight and to hear from the chief on this topic — even if only peripherally.”
As an educator, she said, she was “happy for an opportunity to educate the public” on the police oversight board.
Why wouldn’t DeMaio, Reichert and Lothian respond to questions?
“It was my event,” Castaños said. “The Republicans don’t want to talk probably because they blew it.”
Comments
This Chief was not in charge during the riot.
The former chief retired and was replaced by Sweeney.
The Republicans put out a misleading flyer that left off the original organizers of the forum---that's what led to cancellation of the event.
As for preventing any future riots, the new Chief rolled out a six-point plan and has implemented all of those points.
The meeting.