VIEWPOINT: Williams Bomb Threat to City Hall a Hate Crime

Brian Williams
Photo: Instagram

By JEREMY PADAWER

Deputy Mayor Brian Williams’ bomb threat to City Hall on Rosh Hashanah must be recognized as a Hate Crime.  An open letter to Mayor Bass, our judiciary and our local media who failed to cover this reality.  Nobody has mentioned this.  I will.

Dear Mayor Bass et al,
Your appointed Deputy Mayor of Public Safety, Brian K. Williams, carried out his bomb threat plan on Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days in the Jewish faith on October 3rd, 2024… just 3 months prior to the wildfire.  Williams was responsible for fire, wildfire, police and emergency services.  That role was critical to our safety, critical to the Mayor’s office.

The fact that Williams got off easily with one year probation when Williams should have been charged with a hate crime is an indictment on our leadership, judiciary and media.

Williams anti-Israel bomb threat to City Hall was not about “anxiety,” as he now claims. It was calculated. It was timed.

On October 3, 2024, while Jewish families across Los Angeles were gathered in worship and reflection, Mr. Williams, the city official responsible for overseeing fire, police, and emergency services, called in a bomb threat that invoked anger at “the city’s support of Israel.”  The city’s nerve center was thrown into chaos.  What later came to light was chilling… Williams had fabricated the threat himself.

Federal prosecutors described Williams act as a “lapse in judgment.” But this was not a harmless mistake. It was a deliberate act by the singular most important  thread that linked the Mayor’s Office and our emergency services, just 3 months prior to the wildfire that burned 70% of the Palisades to the ground.

Not only did Williams anti-Israel language exploit an atmosphere of global tension and fear, it did so a day sacred to the Jewish people.  That, in my opinion, is the definition of hate crime.  For someone with this very special role to protect Los Angeles to receive 1 year probation, and for our media not to cover the true timing of this act, is… well… diabolical.  All of it.

To dismiss this as mere anxiety is to excuse behavior that spreads fear and normalizes hate. A fabricated act of terrorism (a bomb threat to City Hall is terrorism) targeting “support for Israel” during Rosh Hashanah is not a private mental-health episode… It is a public betrayal of trust, a moral failure, and a symbolic assault on Los Angeles’s Jewish community… it’s an assault on all people of spiritual faith.  This man was put in a role to protect ALL of us.

Mr. Williams faced up to ten years in prison. Instead, he received one year of probation. That leniency sends a dangerous message… that invoking hatred toward the Jewish people (or any people of a particular faith) can be shrugged off when wrapped in the language of stress.

Los Angeles deserves better.

I urge you, Mayor Bass, to publicly acknowledge the timing and gravity of this act, and to ensure that city leadership takes real steps to rebuild trust with the communities shaken by this event.

The public deserves to know that while our appointed Deputy Mayor’s bomb was fake, the harm was very real.

Mayor Bass, you left Los Angeles with your emergency response team in shambles during a well documented and known emergency threat.  Not having a Deputy Mayor of Public Safety in place, a replacement, OR a Mayor available all greatly contributed to the terrible outcome we’ve all faced in Pacific Palisades.  Acknowledge this.

Postscript – If an individual with no civic duty called in a bomb threat to city hall based on a dislike of another culture or religion on their most sacred day, that person would go to jail for a long time – deservingly so.  This was our Deputy Mayor in charge of Public Safety appointed by our Mayor!  The city burned down.  He got 1 year probation.

A hate crime is a hate crime.  If it’s against a color, a race, a religion, a sexual preference or orientation, call it what it is.  There is no pecking order.  This is as clear of a hate crime as exists – an individual with extraordinary power, a specific job function and duty to their constituents disrupting an entire city government based on directed hate toward a single group on their second holiest day.

Awful.  Los Angeles, we are better than this.