Louis Brandeis famously stated that “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman. And publicity has already played an important part in the struggle against the Money Trust.”¹

We here at MK.org find that these words are as true now as they were 101 years ago. You will recall that we recently received a treasure trove of emails pursuant to a Public Records Act request to the HPOA. In these documents we’ve uncovered two very interesting remarks by Steve Seyler, most exalted pooh-bah of BID security.

Our intrepid correspondent first attended a meeting of the Joint Security Council on October 9, 2014, and requested some documents of Kerry Morrison that same day. On October 10, Steve Seyler wrote to Kerry Morrison, saying:

“I apologize for unloading on you. You have enough worries and I will not be another one. I just had a moment of frustration. We will hold the line here. I am going to have the Officers slow down a little more until we get a handle on this new development. I promise to return from Vegas with renewed hope and a positive attitude.”

Now, one flaw in the Public Records Act is that, although one can ask and generally be given copies of any record, no one is required to explain what they mean. We could email Kerry or Steve and ask what the heck Steve meant by this and perfect, unpunishable silence might very well result. So we can only speculate, in an informed manner, about what Steve means here. We believe that Steve is talking about our correspondent’s request for information, and in response to this, is telling Kerry that, whatever “the Officers” are doing that might look bad under scrutiny, he’s going to have them “slow down a little more” while doing it. We read this as an admission that there is something those officers were up to that wouldn’t look good in the bright light.

A hint at what this might be is found in another email, this one from October 27, 2014, in which Steve Seyler says:

“We are taking 20 some Officers³ to Burbank to train on our new BID Directives and Use of Force Policy. This is timely in light of the continued scrutiny that we find ourselves under.”

Again, we have no way to know what Steve’s talking about here, but we see no evidence to suggest that it’s anything other than our correspondent’s inquiries. So Seyler first says he’s going to have his “Officers” “slow down a little more” and then relates the “Officers'” training in the “Use of Force Policy” to “the continued scrutiny that we find ourselves under.” It is not at all an unreasonable inference that whatever he was going to tell the officers to slow down on it was related to the BID Patrol’s use of force policy.⁴

And so we see that Brandeis was right yet again. The mere knowledge that people were watching was enough to get Steve Seyler to tell his officers to slow down a little more in some way that’s related to their use of force. This is a positive development for Hollywood even as it reflects badly on the BID patrol and their overlords, the HPOA. And it’s only the beginning, eh? Another part of Brandeis’s essay, not so often quoted, is apropos:

“But there should be a further call upon publicity for service. That potent force must, in the impending struggle, be utilized in many ways as a continuous remedial measure.”¹

In other words, all eyes on the BID patrol and don’t blink! Perhaps enough sunlight will paralyze them entirely or, if we’re especially lucky, as it does to the literal archetypes of the metaphorical vampires that are the BIDs, cause them to burst into flame and disintegrate.⁵

1. In What Publicity Can Do, Chapter 5 of his essential series Other People’s Money published serially in Harper’s Weekly beginning in November 1913.
2. A paraphrase of the incomparable John Donne (not that other guy, Ernest Whatever-it-was), Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation 17.
3. We don’t know why Steve habitually capitalizes the word “Officers” in his emails, but evidently he does. Maybe it’s just the influence of his very German, a language in which all nouns are capitalized in print, mindset leaking out into his orthography.
4. We know this is inference rather than proof. We’d welcome either confirmation or contradiction from those who are in a position to know. Kerry? Steve? Feel free to set us straight in the comments or by email. Your continued silence is evidence in favor of our interpretation. Or if you’re someone who knows for sure what Steve is talking about here but can’t tell us publicly for whatever reason, please consider leaking anonymously. Some hints for doing this can be found here. Please think of some way to verify your bona fides as well.
5. According to the scientists at the Federal Zombie and Vampire Agency in their essential document The Science of Vampirism, it is a myth that “vampires burst into flames upon exposure to sunlight.” However, we consider most federally funded science to be unreliable at best and are choosing to ignore this point of view until randomized trials are conducted by independent researchers.

Image of rich guy ruining Hollywood by Walter Enright from Harper’s Weekly, December 20, 1913 is in public domain due to age and is available here. Image of the great Louis Brandeis is by Harris & Ewing and also resides in the public domain due to having been made prior to 1923. It came to us via Wikimedia