Vallejo officer fired for Willie McCoy shooting had history of complaints before joining Vallejo police

VALLEJO – Former Vallejo police Officer Ryan McMahon, who was fired for endangering another officer when he and five others shot and killed Willie McCoy in 2019, had a history of misconduct complaints at two previous agencies prior to being hired by Vallejo police in 2017, newly released court records show.

McMahon’s tenure in Vallejo was rocky. He shot and killed Ronell Foster in 2018, and was placed on a performance improvement plan later that year after he was flagged for poor performance in connection with seven different incidents, according to records obtained by the Vallejo Sun. Then in 2019, he fired from behind Officer Bryan Glick when he and five other officers fired 55 rounds at McCoy, who was found unresponsive in a Taco Bell drive-thru. The shooting led to McMahon’s termination.

When McMahon was placed on leave following the McCoy shooting, Vallejo police Capt. John Whitney alleged that there were two bent tips on McMahon’s badge. Whitney later said in a lawsuit that the bends represented the two people McMahon had killed as an officer, and Whitney went on to publicly expose the department’s practice of bending their badges after a shooting. In his lawsuit, McMahon has denied he participated in badge bending, which has been contradicted by court testimony.

McMahon then joined the Broadmoor Police Department, a small agency in San Mateo County, but left that position after the Sun revealed new details about his tenure in Vallejo. McMahon then sued Vallejo seeking damages because confidential personnel information had been published by the Sun. He also sued Whitney, alleging that Whitney had disclosed details from his personnel record. In the course of that lawsuit, court records revealed that McMahon had faced misconduct allegations even before he was hired in Vallejo.

McMahon’s attorney Lenore Albert has sought to have Whitney’s attorney Alison Berry Wilkinson disqualified from the case because Wilkinson previously represented McMahon. Wilkinson specified in court filings that she represented McMahon in three allegations of misconduct when he was an officer with two agencies in Marin County. McMahon was not disciplined for any of the three instances of alleged misconduct.

When reached for comment, Albert threatened to pursue a restraining order to prevent the Vallejo Sun from publishing the information. "Do not do a story on it," she wrote. "It is confidential information that should not be on the docket. Reply immediately with your assurances that you will not use it or else I will see you in court with an ex parte application to prohibit you from using it."

Albert asked the court to order the Sun not to publish this story late Wednesday.

McMahon first became a police officer when he was hired by the Sausalito Police Department in 2010. In 2012, he was investigated because of conduct unbecoming of an officer while off duty, according to the court records. McMahon denied the allegations and the case was closed without disciplinary action the following year, court records show.

Then in 2015, court records show McMahon was investigated for an alleged policy violation for discourtesy to the public and conduct unbecoming of an officer. McMahon left the agency before the investigation was complete and was hired by the Central Marin Police Authority. However, Sausalito concluded the investigation and exonerated him the following year, according to court records. 

While working for Central Marin, McMahon was once again investigated for alleged misconduct, this time for alleged disrespectful and discriminatory treatment and unreasonable force. Specifically, court records say that he was accused of excessive force for using his baton on a person who was fleeing. McMahon was allegedly exonerated for that incident as well. 

McMahon was hired by the Vallejo Police Department in July 2017. He was part of a trend of lateral transfers to Vallejo police during that time, and had participated in a ride-along with then-Vallejo Police Officer Sean Kenney in 2012 when Kenney shot one of three people he killed that year.

Within a year of joining Vallejo, McMahon shot and killed Ronell Foster after he attempted to stop Foster for riding a bike without a headlight and chased him into a backyard. McMahon Tased Foster and hit him with his flashlight. Foster managed to grab the flashlight, and McMahon, claiming that he feared for his life, shot Foster seven times, including in the back of the head as Foster turned to flee.

An internal investigation into the incident cleared McMahon of policy violations, but then-interim police Chief Joe Allio disagreed with the conclusions and ordered the shooting to be reevaluated for violations of the department’s pursuit and body camera policies. McMahon was fired before there was a final determination on whether his conduct in the shooting violated policy. 

Three months after he shot Foster, McMahon was the subject of a counseling memorandum regarding two May 2018 incidents. In one instance, McMahon was found to have used “a lack of good judgment” for leaving his post as a traffic control unit. McMahon had left his post to join in a vehicle pursuit on the other side of town, which caused the officer investigating the collision to “sprint to safety so as to avoid being hit” when McMahon sped into the investigation scene, according to the counseling memorandum.

The department flagged five more incidents that year, including three in August 2018. McMahon was placed on a 90-day performance improvement plan.

In one incident, McMahon responded to a report of stolen property by conducting “an extensive interview of the suspects outside of [their] Miranda [rights] and while the suspects were detained in handcuffs,” according to the plan. McMahon conducted the interview in front of the victim and “the victim’s very young child while the suspects were seated in a [nearby restaurant] that was open to the public at the time of the incident.” 

After McMahon participated in the McCoy shooting, an internal investigation cleared him of unreasonable force but sustained violations of unsafe firearm handling and violations of safe weapons handling because he fired from behind another officer. McMahon was fired in October 2020 for those violations.

During the investigation, Vallejo police learned that McMahon added a plate to his gun with the words “Veritas” and “Aequitas," Latin for “truth” and “justice,” a reference to the 1999 film Boondock Saints, where two brothers engage in vigilante justice by killing men they believe to be evil.

As the department investigated the gun alterations, McMahon turned in his badge with two bent tips. McMahon told department superiors that those bends “signified the two people he had killed in the line of duty,” according to a lawsuit later filed on behalf of Whitney. McMahon has denied Whitney’s account. 

Whitney was himself fired after he approached city leaders about the badge bending scandal. He later went public with the scandal, and the city ordered an investigation conducted by former Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano. The city has refused to release the results of Giordano’s investigation, but a Solano County Superior Court judge who reviewed the document said that it showed McMahon had gone “off the rails.”

McMahon was hired by Broadmoor police in August 2022 but left the following year after the Sun revealed the full extent of his disciplinary issues in Vallejo, according to his lawsuit. 

McMahon recently completed arbitration proceedings to get his job back in Vallejo and the city is awaiting a final ruling from the arbitrator.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify that McMahon did not tell Whitney directly why his badge was bent.