I reported last December that court filings suggested that Lavan case was likely to be close to settlement (see here for a summary of the issues involved). A Report on the Status of the Settlement Process that hit PACER just now gives more detail. In particular, the settlement agreement is scheduled for the Claims Board on April 11 and is likely to come before the full City Council by the end of April. Get the PDF here or read the important part after the break. You read it here first!
Continue reading Lavan Case Settlement Likely to Come Before Full LA City Council by End of April 2016
Monthly Archives: March 2016
In 2013 The Andrews International BID Patrol Arrested Homeless People at More than 57 Times the Rate that the LAPD Did and were Responsible for 1 in 14 Homeless Arrests in Entire City of Los Angeles
In 20131 the BID Patrol arrested homeless people at more than 57 times the rate that the LAPD did. Furthermore, they were responsible for more than 1% of all arrests made in the entire City of Los Angeles that year even while working only 0.13% of the hours that the LAPD did. Approximately one in fourteen arrests of homeless people in the entire city of Los Angeles that year was made by the BID Patrol.
Here’s how I calculated these figures: That year the LAPD made 14,838 arrests of homeless people2 whereas the Andrews International BID Patrol made 1,096 arrests.3 Reading through A/I’s 2013 arrest reports and examining A/I’s 2013 arrest photos I see no reason to believe that the BID Patrol arrested non-homeless people in 2013 in any significant number.4 Continue reading In 2013 The Andrews International BID Patrol Arrested Homeless People at More than 57 Times the Rate that the LAPD Did and were Responsible for 1 in 14 Homeless Arrests in Entire City of Los Angeles
LACW/LACAN Lawsuit: Settlement Conference Scheduled for April 5, 2016; Hearing on Discovery-Related Contempt Continued Until May 4, 2016
According to an order that just hit PACER, the parties in the LA Catholic Worker and LA Community Action Network suit against the Central City East Association and the City of Los Angeles are meeting on April 5 to discuss settling the case. You may recall that a hearing on an application for contempt was already set for that date. According to Magistrate Judge Andrew J. Wisterich, who’s handling discovery matters in the case, and whose order postponed the hearing:
The court has been informed that a settlement conference has been scheduled for April 5, 2016, at 9:30 a.m. To allow the parties to devote their full attention to exploring the possibility of settlement, the hearing is continued to May 4, 2016, at 11:00 a.m.
That’s all we know!
Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Formalizes Ongoing Document Destruction Policy Involving Thousands Upon Thousands of Public Records, Seemingly just to Thwart Our Investigations
Continue reading Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Formalizes Ongoing Document Destruction Policy Involving Thousands Upon Thousands of Public Records, Seemingly just to Thwart Our Investigations
Documents: 2015 HPOA/AI Emails, Carol Schatz Emails from CD4, LAPD
Here are a bunch of documents that I published on The Archive this morning. There’s some interesting stuff in there as well as the usual boatloads of chaff:
- Emails between HPOA and Andrews International from 2015. This is supposed to be all of them. It may be all that the HPOA has on hand, but it’s certainly not all that were sent. I’ll be writing on this soon, I hope. I had to redact these lightly because they included a number of social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and a home address. Not cool!
- Emails between CD4 and the Central City Association. This is part of a project to document the Downtown Center BID’s shameless disregard of CPRA and, ultimately, to hold them to account for same. These are from July 1, 2015, when David Ryu took office, to roughly a few weeks ago.
- Emails between Carol Schatz and Mike Oreb of the LAPD. Part of the same project. This is supposedly everything from January 1, 2013 through December 31, 2015. I don’t see how that could be right, but I also don’t see how to prove it. There’s some moderately interesting stuff in here, but nothing momentous.
Continue reading Documents: 2015 HPOA/AI Emails, Carol Schatz Emails from CD4, LAPD
City Ordered to Pay Plaintiffs’ Attorneys $38,818.49 in Fees and to Comply with Discovery; Additional Hearing Set for April 5, 2016
On Monday, March 21, 2016, there was a hearing on the plaintiffs’ application to have the City of Los Angeles held in contempt for its failure to comply with discovery orders in the ongoing lawsuit against the City and the CCEA over the illegal confiscation of the property of homeless people. Recall that the plaintiffs asked the Judge to award them more than $40,000 in fees and to declare that the City was at fault as a punitive measure.
Well, the order resulting from that hearing just hit PACER, and the plaintiffs got some but not all of what they asked for. In particular, they were awarded $38,818.49 in fees. Judgement on the rest of the plaintiffs’ requests was deferred. There will be another hearing on April 5, 2016, at 10:30 a.m. in in Courtroom 690 of the Roybal Building, presumably after which the rest of the matters will be decided. According to the order, by 48 hours in advance of the hearing,
The City is directed to complete its production, serve supplemental responses to the requests for production, respond in writing to the questions asked in plaintiffs’ March 15, 2016 letter from Myers to Whitaker, serve a complete and detailed privilege log, file and serve a report describing the status of its compliance with this and other court orders, and pay the sanctions awarded by this order…
And there are more selections after the break.
Continue reading City Ordered to Pay Plaintiffs’ Attorneys $38,818.49 in Fees and to Comply with Discovery; Additional Hearing Set for April 5, 2016
LAPD Captain Cory Palka and Hollywood White Supremacists Have A Good Laugh Over Fucked-Up State of 77th Street Division Even as they Continue Decades-Long Tradition of Thriving on its Misery
You can read a transcript of the ongoings after the break, as always, but today we’re focusing just on a little bit of unplanned, unscripted joking around, for in such situations, according to Sigmund Freud (as our friends at Wikipedia put it), we can discern “…forbidden thoughts and feelings that the conscious mind usually suppresse[s] in deference to society.”
KM: I have one fun thing to show you. When you were here, I remember you said “Ooooh! I really want one of those star placques!” So I made this up for you for 2013–2014 and then I kept texting, like I want to go down and tour 77th Division.
And Cowboy Cory Palka has a little joke about this:
CP: You don’t want to go to 77th…
Now, it’s hard to see what’s funny about that, right? We mean, really, what’s funny? But the HPOA thinks it’s fookin’ hilarious. Just watch.
Totally different environment. My first year in 77th Street I had fifty murders and then last year I had thirty three. And I remember, I was telling my daughter we were doing some great things down there, and she was like “Great things? Man, pretty dangerous down there.” And I had ten when I left this year, so, Pete still has ten, I haven’t had any, I’ve been here, this is my second week, so, it’s just a different community and with a whole different set of challenges. Um, that’s a whole different discussion, so…
Very smart, very wise folks have been trying to decipher this kind of coded lingo forever now (as well as some very smart, not-so-very wise ones). There are whole academic departments in our finest universities filled with scholars who spend entire careers trying to explain what these people mean when they say stuff like this, not to mention why they laugh at it, so we’re probably not going to settle it here today. On the other hand, we do have a few comments, which you can find after the break.
Continue reading LAPD Captain Cory Palka and Hollywood White Supremacists Have A Good Laugh Over Fucked-Up State of 77th Street Division Even as they Continue Decades-Long Tradition of Thriving on its Misery
Updated Exhibit F Filed Tonight in LACW/LACAN v. City of LA, CCEA Lawsuit, Includes Detailed List of Weird Lacunae in City’s Discovery Production
This is just a very quick note to memorialize tonight’s filing by the plaintiffs in the Los Angeles Catholic Worker and Los Angeles Community Action Network’s suit against the City of Los Angeles and the Central City East Association. Last Wednesday the plaintiffs filed a massive set of declarations and other stuff about ongoing problems with the City’s discovery production in preparation for tomorrow’s hearing (at 10 a.m.) on the plaintiffs’ application to have the City held in contempt. First there is a notice of errata stating that they left part of one exhibit out of the Declaration of Shayla Myers in support of the application for contempt, and then, more interesting, the corrected Exhibit F. Some details after the break.
Continue reading Updated Exhibit F Filed Tonight in LACW/LACAN v. City of LA, CCEA Lawsuit, Includes Detailed List of Weird Lacunae in City’s Discovery Production
Final Figures for 2015 Show that Arrest Rate Reduction Even Higher than Estimated: 42.7% Drop From 2014 Total, Which is 4.18 Standard Deviations from the 2009-2014 Mean
Continue reading Final Figures for 2015 Show that Arrest Rate Reduction Even Higher than Estimated: 42.7% Drop From 2014 Total, Which is 4.18 Standard Deviations from the 2009-2014 Mean
City Files Response to Application for Contempt and Sanctions Stating Essentially that they did Hand Over Documents, they are Handing Over Documents, and they Will Hand Over More Documents and the Computer Ate their Homework so it’s not their Fault
On Wednesday the plaintiffs in the LACW/LACAN lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles and the Central City East Association filed materials in support of their application for contempt and sanctions against the City of Los Angeles, who, they claim, is not producing discovery materials according to the already-much-extended schedule. Tonight the City filed two documents in response: A declaration of Ronald Whitaker, who’s the Assistant City Attorney handling the case for the City, and a declaration of LeShon Frierson, who is a senior system analyst with the LAPD, and is the Person Most Knowledgeable (PMK) regarding the LAPD’s email systems.
Continue reading City Files Response to Application for Contempt and Sanctions Stating Essentially that they did Hand Over Documents, they are Handing Over Documents, and they Will Hand Over More Documents and the Computer Ate their Homework so it’s not their Fault