A former senior member of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ staff was sentenced to a year probation and 50 hours of community service for calling in a fake bomb threat that he told a judge stemmed from “mental health issues.”
During his sentencing hearing Monday afternoon, Brian K. Williams, a longtime law enforcement oversight official who served as Bass’ deputy mayor of public safety, admitted that last October he falsely told police that he had received a call on his city-issued cellphone from an unknown man who said he had placed a bomb in City Hall. The threat was blamed on anti-Israel sentiment.
Williams told U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner that the 18 months prior to that call were “perhaps the most difficult time of my life.” That year, Williams’ mother and nephew died and his brother was diagnosed with cancer.
Williams’ lawyer Dmitry Gorin cited “undiagnosed mental health challenges,” for which he said his client has undergone ten months of treatment.
“This was a call to action for him to get the right mental health treatment,” Gorin said.
Williams agreed in May to plead guilty to a single count of threats regarding fire and explosives.
Prosecutors said in a pre-sentencing memo that Williams called in the threat, “after he became overwhelmed with stress and anxiety and desperate to get out of an ongoing meeting.”
“It was motivated not by a political agenda or violent extremist ideology, but rather by defendant’s acute personal stress and anxiety due to numerous factors,” wrote David Ryan, a federal prosecutor who has since returned to private practice. “Those unresolved mental health challenges led defendant to convey the fake threat as an excuse to get out of an ongoing meeting. That decision was misguided and dangerous, but it was also an aberration.”
Prosecutors noted that Williams has no prior criminal arrests or convictions and “had spent many years serving the community with distinction.”
Prosecutors and defense attorneys had both agreed that Williams should receive a sentence of probation.
“There’s no question that your conduct was aberrational,” Klausner said. “It’s up to you where you go from here.”
Williams was in a virtual meeting at City Hall on Oct. 3, 2024, when he used the Google Voice application on his personal phone to place a call to his city-issued cellphone, according to his plea agreement.
He admitted to leaving the meeting, calling a top aide to the LAPD chief and falsely stating that he had just received a call on his city-issued cellphone from an unknown man who made a bomb threat against City Hall.
At no point did Williams intend to carry out the threat, prosecutors said.
About 10 minutes after calling the LAPD, according to the plea, Williams texted Bass and several other senior mayoral officials a message that read: “Bomb threat: I received phone call on my city cell at 10:48 am this morning. The male caller stated that ‘he was tired of the city support of Israel, and he has decided to place a bomb in City Hall. It might be in the rotunda.’ I immediately contacted the chief of staff of LAPD, they are going to send a number of officers over to do a search of the building and to determine if anyone else received a threat.”
When LAPD officers searched the building, they didn’t locate any suspicious packages or devices. Williams showed officers his phone records, which included a call from a blocked number on his city-issued phone. According to the plea deal, that call was the one Williams had placed from Google Voice.
Williams followed up with the mayor and other high-ranking officials some time later with several other texts, saying that there was no need to evacuate City Hall.
“I’m meeting with the threat management officers within the next 10 minutes. In light of the Jewish holidays, we are taking this thread, a little more seriously. I will keep you posted,” the text read, according to federal authorities.
Federal authorities revealed they were looking into Williams last December, when FBI agents raided his home in Pasadena. It sent shock waves through City Hall and the Police Department, where many expressed incredulity at the prospect of a respected government official faking a bomb threat.
Prosecutors said that when questioned by FBI agents at his home, Williams “initially denied that he had placed the purported threatening call himself, and he continued to deny it to the agents even after they informed him that call data records showed the call came from a Google Voice number assigned to him.”
Bass named a former FBI official to replace Williams in early April. The official, Robert Clark, led anti-gang efforts in Los Angeles during his time with the bureau before retiring in 2016, and served as a law enforcement consultant and director of public safety for the city of Columbus, Ohio, among other roles.
Williams has held a variety of government positions spanning more than three decades. He had spent nearly two years as a deputy mayor in Bass’ office, working on issues such as police hiring, public safety spending and the search for a new police chief.
Previously, Williams was a deputy mayor in the administration of Mayor James K. Hahn, who held office from 2001 to 2005. Before that, he spent several years as an assistant city attorney in Los Angeles.
“He betrayed the trust placed in him as a public official who was responsible for working with law enforcement to ensure public safety,” Ryan said in the sentencing memo. “False threats like the one defendant placed undermine public safety both by diverting police resources and by creating a frightening and potentially dangerous environment in which police respond to a purported emergency in a crowded building.”
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