A criminal defense attorney who was pepper-sprayed and tackled to the ground by a masked federal agent on Friday plans to file criminal and civil rights lawsuits against the federal agents, he confirmed with Noozhawk.
He also filed a report with the Santa Barbara Police Department the following day about the incident.
“I am a criminal defense lawyer, and I know about crimes … ,” the 80-year-old attorney, Doug Hayes, told Noozhawk. “What they did to me was a crime. It was an assault, and it was unnecessary.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to a Noozhawk request for comment about the Friday morning incident.
On Friday, Hayes first heard a commotion near the Santa Barbara County Probation Office at 117 E. Carrillo St. from his office at 1035 Santa Barbara St., located a short walk away from Carrillo Street.
It wasn’t until he began hearing from people that ICE agents were detaining someone that he decided to walk over.
Hayes remembers seeing agents holding down a man dressed in dark clothes — later identified as 26-year-old Jack Randmaa — and telling the agents to get off of him.
“My thought that I had is, that is not how you treat somebody. I don’t care what he did, that is not how you do it,” Hayes said.
Randmaa was detained on suspicion of slashing a tire of one of the federal agents’ unmarked vehicles.
Video footage posted by the Santa Barbara Independent on Saturday shows Randmaa approaching the white federal vehicle.
He appears to be doing something to the right rear tire moments before a federal agent grabs him. A close-up of the flat tire is shown toward the end of the video.
In videos shared with Noozhawk and posted online, Hayes, dressed in red sweatpants, a blue jacket and a green hat, is seen standing near the agents saying, “Let me see your face asshole,” “Why don’t you guys do something sensible?” and “Get the f– out of town.”
“If anybody ever asks you about what you were thinking at the time, the answer is you weren’t thinking,” he said.
The videos then show Hayes attempting to remove a backpack from under Randmaa’s head. He was worried about Randmaa after hearing the crowd of bystanders yelling, “He can’t breathe,” Hayes recalled.
One of the federal agents pulled the backpack away from Hayes. When Hayes tried to grab the backpack again, the other agent pepper-sprayed him in the face.
Hayes then stumbled back before moving forward and, with his arms outstretched, made physical contact with one of the agents; the agent who pepper-sprayed him stood up and threw Hayes to the ground.
Hayes told Noozhawk that he doesn’t remember touching one of the agents. He said he approached the situation thinking he wouldn’t touch them.
“I had one thought — and that is because I have been a criminal defense lawyer for 50 years — and that is I am not going to touch these guys,” he said.
After reviewing the footage herself from different angles, Hayes’ daughter, Annie Hayes, an attorney with Hayes Law Offices, believes her dad fell onto the agents as a reaction to getting sprayed.
She said Hayes might have touched one of the agent’s hands while grabbing the backpack.
“He can’t even see after getting pepper-sprayed, and he just puts his hands out, but from the other side (of video footage) it looks like he grabs the agent first,” she said.
While his daughter wasn’t at the scene, she was informed by a public defender that her father had been pepper-sprayed and thrown to the ground.
She said she believes his intention “wasn’t violence — it was just to make them stop the violence they were doing to that kid.”
She also said that after her dad stood up, he appeared to be bleeding from his forehead, according to video footage, but he doesn’t remember that part.
He remembers keeping his eyes shut as people tried to wash the spray out of his eyes and worried that they might wash out his contacts.
He ended up washing the pepper-spray off in the shower and said he felt OK afterward.
“I have had experience with peppers before, and I wasn’t very impressed with the spray,” he said. “But it did burn. My face was red.”
He was left with some scratches on his hands, a potentially broken thumb and a shoulder that started hurting a couple of days later. He wasn’t sure whether the shoulder pain was from the incident.
Hayes said his doctors called to check up on him after the incident.
“I think my thumb might be broken, but I don’t care about that,” he said.
He intends to file a criminal and civil lawsuit in Santa Barbara.
He said he hopes to find a law firm in Los Angeles to “handle the federal violation of my civil rights case,” he told Noozhawk, “for taking away my ability as a citizen to believe that I can go safely where I wish without police intrusion.”
Hayes’ daughter said she received about 300 text messages the next day from “people checking in and saying he is a hero and that they were grateful that he stepped in.”
“I was not surprised (he got involved), and I wasn’t worried because they initially said he’s fine.”
Primitiva Hernandez, executive director of immigrant advocacy nonprofit 805UndocuFund, also spoke out in support of Hayes and condemned recent federal agent actions.
“What happened yesterday is not who Santa Barbara County is. We are a county that values all residents,” she wrote in a statement. “Our immigrant neighbors are workers, parents, elders, students and leaders.
“We are human beings who deserve to live in communities where we are respected, protected and able to feel safe.”
She also referenced Santa Barbara resident Beth Goodman, who was pepper-sprayed in the Eastside neighborhood last month while recording masked federal agents during an ICE operation.
“Violence and intimidation do not represent our values. Dignity and accountability do,” she said, “and we will not be intimidated.”
Hayes told Noozhawk that he believes federal agents were trying to scare the group of bystanders, not him.
“Because the people that are watching are like, ‘Oh God, I don’t want that to happen to me so I better not say anything,’” he said. “Bull–, you gotta say something and the more people that say something will encourage more people to do so.”