Arresting Moment

Week in, week out, the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners convenes to set policy for the nation’s third-largest Police Department, sometimes to great fanfare, other times to little attention at all. Tuesday, however, marked a first: A citizen appeared before the board and placed the entire body under arrest.

“I insist that you respect the law and, more importantly, that you respect the public,” said William Tut Hayes, a regular commission gadfly who often complains that the five-member board violates various aspects of the state open meetings law.

Last week, he warned that the commissioners were wrong to keep copies of their agendas and minutes in an adjoining office rather than in their meeting room. On Tuesday, he returned to place the board in irons.

“You are being placed under arrest by me,” he proclaimed, then asked the commissioners to advise him on whether to call 911 or to have officers in the room carry out his mandate. When no one responded, he warned the police in attendance that their bosses were violating the law.

He seemed to excuse the cops themselves, however. “The criminals are giving them orders,” Hayes said in one of many unflattering references to the commissioners.

Having heard Hayes out, board members shrugged off his protests and prepared to finish up their meeting in closed session.

That was hardly the way to please Hayes, who continued to harangue from the audience, yelling that the commissioners had failed to itemize the issues they intended to address in closed session. Although the agenda did list a number of closed session items, Hayes again accused the board of violating the meetings law.

And once again, commissioners were unmoved. With Hayes harrumphing a few feet away, commission President Raymond C. Fisher politely thanked him for his suggestions. Then he and his colleagues gathered up their papers and ambled out of the room. One joked about needing a lawyer; the others just chuckled.

If the confrontation with Hayes was unusual, it also was not entirely out of the blue. In recent years, Hayes has protested the commission’s meeting time (it often conflicts with the City Council’s), has complained about the short time allotted for public speakers (they generally get three minutes to make their pitch), and has excoriated the integrity of commission minutes.

And though Hayes’ dismay with the commission generally is restrained, his anger has boiled over before. During one 1994 meeting, he exploited a loophole in commission rules by requesting to speak briefly on nearly every item on the agenda. Finally, then-commission President Gary Greenebaum, a rabbi, had all that he could take.

He tried to get Hayes to allow the meeting to proceed. When Hayes resisted, he was arrested.