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Don't Worry Guys, Fred Willard Won't Have to Go to Jail
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Fred Willard is not going to have to go to jail after his embarrassing brush with undercover LAPD vice officers this week. Officers say they caught Willard literally with his pants down (or at least his fly open) at the Tiki Theater in Hollywood (and the embarrassing part, we guess, is that he doesn't use the internet for this sort of thing). Willard insisted he was "not guilty" of the charges.
But the city attorney's office says that in lieu of filing charges against him, Willard will be sent off to a "pre-filing diversion program," according to the Los Angeles Times. The program is administered by an outside vendor and costs about $380.
A spokesman for the city attorney's office insisted that they have a case against him if Willard tries to get out of the diversion program. Frank Mateljan told the Times: "I want to stress this was and is a fileable case, and should the defendant choose not to enroll or not complete the program, we have the option of filing criminal charges within a year."
Prosecutors noted that Willard was arrested on suspicion of lewd conduct back in 1990 (and no, we don't know anything else about that). The Times notes that officers have inspected the Tiki Theater 40 times and have made 23 arrests since November.
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