Bradley Steps In to Free CRA Gadfly From Jail

Mayor Tom Bradley’s office intervened Tuesday in the case of William Tut Hayes, a self-appointed watchdog of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency who was sentenced to 155 days in jail for disrupting meetings. As a result, CRA officials said they will support Hayes’ early release from jail.

CRA Commissioner James Wood said his agency told the city attorney’s office it “will have no objection to Tut’s being released” from jail because Bradley’s office has guaranteed that the agency will be assigned a police officer to keep the peace at increasingly contentious weekly meetings.

Bill Chandler, a spokesman for Bradley, said the mayor has agreed to provide an officer as long as the CRA pays the cost.

On Sept. 15, Hayes began serving five months in jail for disrupting an August meeting of the agency. A judge found that Hayes violated probation on a previous conviction for similar disruptions.

Hayes, who is scheduled to appear in court today to appeal his March conviction by Los Angeles Municipal Judge Lois Anderson-Smaltz, has become something of an overnight cause celebre . Several lawyers have contacted Hayes’ friends to offer the 54-year-old Watts activist legal help.

Wood said that if his agency has a police officer by next Wednesday’s commission meeting, he will no longer pursue charges against Hayes.

Wood, who has performed three citizen’s arrests on Hayes since late last year, said he has spent months trying to persuade the Los Angeles Police Department to assign his agency a police officer. “I would never have had to arrest Tut if only we had an officer present to keep order,” Wood said.

The Los Angeles City Council and County Board of Supervisors have law enforcement officers who can simply eject hecklers if they become uncontrollable. But Wood said CRA officials were unable to eject Hayes without possibly incurring a lawsuit.

“It was like I didn’t have a middle way, which would be to have an officer take him out of the room,” Wood said.

Hayes and the agency have been enmeshed in an escalating feud over the agency’s 1985 razing of an apartment building in which Hayes lived.

The building was torn down to make way for redevelopment, and Hayes, who bitterly fought the demolition, claims the agency still owes him $3,100 in relocation fees. Agency officials say Hayes has been paid more than $11,000 for relocation and for replacement of personal belongings lost when he was barred from the apartment.

Since then, Hayes has joined other self-appointed watchdogs, or gadflies, who regularly attend CRA meetings and challenge agency officials on a wide range of downtown development plans, housing issues and other controversies.

Last year, Hayes read aloud for more than an hour at a CRA meeting, complaining about the $3,100 relocation fees. Wood performed a citizen’s arrest and Hayes was convicted on a misdemeanor charge of public disturbance in March.

Anderson-Smaltz issued Hayes a suspended sentence and placed him on probation provided that he did not break any more CRA meeting rules. But last week, she ruled that Hayes had violated his probation by going beyond his three-minute speaking limit and disrupting an August meeting.

At the meeting, Hayes angrily disputed an earlier declaration by Wood that the United States has dealt honorably with Japanese interned in World War II by offering them reparations. According to witnesses, Hayes dropped or threw onto a table an audiotape containing a recording of a Japanese rally that protested U.S. foot-dragging over reparations.