Monthly Archives: April 2016

Lawsuits

Mitchell v. LA Plaintiffs Respond to City’s Opposition to Application for Temporary Restraining Order against Further Property Confiscation, City Files Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Application to Strike and/or Seal Publicly Filed Documents,

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California-central(See Gale Holland’s excellent story in the Times for background).

Here’s a brief summary of what’s been going on in this turbulent case over the last week: On April 1 the plaintiffs in this already-hotly-contested suit against the City of Los Angeles for its policies regarding the confiscation of the property of the homeless on Skid Row asked the Court to issue a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) enjoining the City from further confiscations of their property. On April 6 the City filed a fragmentation grenade of a response accusing both plaintiffs and their attorneys of lying and asking that they be sanctioned by the court. The City’s pleadings had accusations that were sufficiently inflammatory that they prompted the plaintiffs the next day to lodge a request that some of the stuff the City filed be sealed due to privacy concerns.

This brings us to late Thursday afternoon, when the City filed its opposition to the plaintiffs’ application to seal along with a hypertechnical “clarification” that’s beyond my capacity to interpret. And yesterday, April 8, the plaintiffs filed a bunch of stuff in reply to the City’s opposition to the application for the restraining order. You can find it all here or see a list after the break. There’s too much going on for me to discuss it all, but the essential argument (and some pretty convincing photographic proof that the City is misrepresenting facts) can be found after the break.
Continue reading Mitchell v. LA Plaintiffs Respond to City’s Opposition to Application for Temporary Restraining Order against Further Property Confiscation, City Files Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Application to Strike and/or Seal Publicly Filed Documents, →

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Lawsuits

Plaintiffs in Mitchell v. City of LA Ask Court to Seal Yesterday’s Pleadings Due to Privacy Concerns

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California-central(See Gale Holland’s excellent story in the Times for background).

Yesterday the City of LA filed a bunch of material in support of their opposition to the restraining order requested by the plaintiffs in this case about the illegal seizure of the property of homeless people on Skid Row. The City’s filings included a Declaration of Lt. Andy Mathes, which included a number of videos of the plaintiffs and Carol Sobel in support. These videos were not available through PACER, but presumably they’re part of the public record and can be obtained somehow.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys today filed an application to seal some of the videos, which was supported by a declaration of Catherine Sweetser. Additionally they ask that Lt. Mathes’s declaration be removed from the public docket (which is where I got it), to be refiled once the private information is removed.
Continue reading Plaintiffs in Mitchell v. City of LA Ask Court to Seal Yesterday’s Pleadings Due to Privacy Concerns →

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Lawsuits

LA Catholic Worker et al. v. CCEA, City of L.A. et al. Trial Postponed Till October 4, 2016 Due to Discovery Delays

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California-centralOver the last few days, but for some reason just hitting PACER today, the parties in the LA Catholic Worker and LA Community Action Network v. the Central City East Association and the City of LA filed a joint stipulation to continue the various scheduled dates in the case due to what’s turned out to be an incredibly grueling discovery process in the case. This is not the first time the trial date has been postponed for this reason. Here is the judge’s order granting the continuance until October 4, 2016.

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Lawsuits

City of Los Angeles Treats Perfectly Legal Pornography as “Contraband,” Confiscates it from the Homeless and Destroys it

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Pornography seized from Salvador Roque and destroyed as contraband by the City of Los Angeles.
Pornography seized from Salvador Roque and destroyed as contraband by the City of Los Angeles.
(See Gale Holland’s excellent story in the Times for background).

Pleadings filed by the City of Los Angeles yesterday in Mitchell v. Los Angeles reveal that the Bureau of Sanitation confiscates and destroys pornography in the possession of homeless people, putting it on a par with hazardous and/or toxic material and other contraband. This practice is consistent with the moralizing attitude taken by LAPD RESET1 on their Twitter feed towards similarly legal activities when carried out by the homeless, e.g., alcohol consumption.

On Tuesday the City of Los Angeles moved that a number of the causes of action in the case be dismissed. One of their main arguments was that the plaintiffs failed to argue that their property “…was lawful to possess, and was clean or at least uncontaminated by direct contact with or close proximity to the hazardous materials common on a Skid Row street – feces, rats, maggots, blood, etc. – such that the property did not pose an immediate hazard to health.
Continue reading City of Los Angeles Treats Perfectly Legal Pornography as “Contraband,” Confiscates it from the Homeless and Destroys it →

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Lawsuits

City of LA Files No-Holds-Barred Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Application for Restraining Order Against Enforcement of LAMC 56.11; Accuses both Plaintiffs and their Attorneys of Lying, Requests Sanctions Against Them

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California-central[Updated on April 9 to remove information that the plaintiffs have requested that the court place under seal. I’ll reevaluate this elision after the court rules.]

(See Gale Holland’s excellent story in the Times for background).

Recall that on April 1, the plaintiffs in Mitchell v. Los Angeles asked the court to enjoin the City from confiscating the plaintiffs’ property while the case was pending. Today the City filed its opposition to this application. The pleading pulls no punches:

Defendant City of Los Angeles hereby opposes the Plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order. The grounds for the opposition are that the Plaintiffs have misrepresented the facts which led to the destruction of their property, there is no widespread practice violating federal law which requires enjoining, and there is no urgency justifying ex parte relief.

Further, should the Court deem it appropriate, the City requests that the Court set a Rule 11 briefing to determine an appropriate amount of sanctions against Plaintiffs and their counsel, jointly and severally, for submitting factual contentions which have no evidentiary support. In the alternative, the City requests that the Court set said hearing at least against Plaintiffs Escobedo and Roque and their counsel, jointly and severally.

The relevant part of Rule 11 seems to be:

(b) By presenting to the court a pleading, written motion, or other paper—whether by signing, filing, submitting, or later advocating it—an attorney or unrepresented party certifies that to the best of the person’s knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances:
…
(3) the factual contentions have evidentiary support or, if specifically so identified, will likely have evidentiary support after a reasonable opportunity for further investigation or discovery; and

The City also filed a number of other interesting items, which I have not yet have time to read in detail. You can find a list of them and some more detailed selections from the Opposition after the break.
Continue reading City of LA Files No-Holds-Barred Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Application for Restraining Order Against Enforcement of LAMC 56.11; Accuses both Plaintiffs and their Attorneys of Lying, Requests Sanctions Against Them →

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Lawsuits

City Files Motion to Dismiss Mitchell v. Los Angeles, Hearing Set for Monday, May 9 at 10 a.m.

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California-central(See Gale Holland’s excellent story in the Times for background).

Today the City of Los Angeles, defendant in Carol Sobel et al.’s latest suit on behalf of homeless people, filed a motion to dismiss many of the causes of action in the complaint. There is also an associated request for judicial notice regarding one of the facts recited in the motion. The issues seem mostly technical and beyond my capacity to interpret, but I will venture some comments on one claim by the City. They seem to assert (at p.5, L.9) that one of the causes should be dismissed because the initial complaint didn’t argue that the City didn’t have a valid reason for seizing and destroying the property at issue. Specifically that
Plaintiffs never plead that all of the property seized was lawful to possess, and was clean or at least uncontaminated by direct contact with or close proximity to the hazardous materials common on a Skid Row street – feces, rats, maggots, blood, etc. – such that the property did not pose an immediate hazard to health.
And further, that because it’s at least plausible that the property was contaminated just by being on Skid Row, the only allowed relief from the destruction of their property is money damages from the City. I don’t see how this can be right, though.
Continue reading City Files Motion to Dismiss Mitchell v. Los Angeles, Hearing Set for Monday, May 9 at 10 a.m. →

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Historical and Theoretical Perspectives, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Board Member Alyssa Van Breene: Financial Beneficiary of a Century of Poison-Saturated Environmental Racism in South Los Angeles

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Standard Plating Company at 826 E. 62nd Street, Los Angeles. Like the Hollywood Gower Plaza, this property has been in Alyssa Van Breene's family for four generations. She's not bragging about it on the internet, though, possibly because, rather than being associated with glamor and glitz it's associated with poisons saturating the land and the groundwater.
Standard Plating Company at 826 E. 62nd Street, Los Angeles. Like the Hollywood Gower Plaza, this property has been in Alyssa Van Breene’s family for four generations. She’s not bragging about it on the internet, though, possibly because, rather than being associated with glamor and glitz, it’s associated with poisons saturating the land and the groundwater.
When first we met Ms. Alyssa Van Breene, round about the middle of 2015, she was out in Boyle Heights, shooting off her privileged mouth about street vending and how it must be forbidden because she and her strange BIDfellows “…work very hard to keep the sidewalks clean, safe, and hospitable for all pedestrians: tourists, workers, residents, and students.” Make a note of that “clean” bit. It’s going to come up again later.

When next we met Ms. Alyssa Van Breene she was boasting in her Board bio that her family had owned the northeast corner of Hollywood and Gower for four freaking generations, as if this were some kind of accomplishment to be proud of, predicated as it was and is on the white supremacist real estate policies that made Hollywood what it is today.

The human face of white supremacy, hypocrisy, and wanton saturation of the earth and water of South Los Angeles with poisons.
The human face of white supremacy, hypocrisy, and wanton saturation of the earth and water of South Los Angeles with poisons.
And when last we met Ms. Alyssa Van Breene, she was sitting in a room watching, not protesting, a gang of her white supremacist BID buddies laughing it up with Cowboy Cory Palka of the LAPD’s Hollywood Division about how fucked up South Los Angeles is. And really, this is how we meet her every month, as the HPOA plots to turn its BID Patrol into a tool for the LAPD to avoid civilian oversight, as they arrange the destruction of their own records to avoid criticism, as the BID Patrol continues to arrest the homeless merely to harass them, as they plot and plan to keep arresting street vendors, not to mention illegally destroying their wares, and so on. Her silence, obviously, equals her consent.
The famous four-generation Dulgarian/Van Breene strip mall at Hollywood and Gower is the non-toxic side of Alyssa Van Breene's holdings.
The famous four-generation Dulgarian/Van Breene strip mall at Hollywood and Gower is the non-toxic side of the holdings of Alyssa Van Breene’s people.
But we had assumed, without evidence or even much thought, that her destructive activities were confined to Hollywood, that yes, she was willing to oppress non-zillionaires by arresting them, mocking them, and chasing them out of Hollywood, but that that was the extent of the damage.

So what a surprise it was when the almighty Google turned us on to the fact that her mom, Dickie Van Breene (née Dulgarian) and her uncle Duke Dulgarian (and a bunch of other Dulgarians, but they don’t concern us here) were sued every which way but loose in 2013 in Federal Court by Kamala Harris and the California Department of Justice for illegally dumping a bunch of poisonous shit at a nickel-chrome plating factory in on East 62nd Street in South L.A. that they all inherited down the generations along with the Hollywood and Gower property, the economic benefits of which inure to Alyssa Van Breene just as surely as do those of the famous strip mall. You can read the initial complaint here, and it has some interesting history in it:
Continue reading Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Board Member Alyssa Van Breene: Financial Beneficiary of a Century of Poison-Saturated Environmental Racism in South Los Angeles →

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Announcements, Selma Park

Andrews International Arrest Reports and Daily Logs from 2009 Available, Another Victim of False Arrest at Selma Park Uncovered

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George Islas (Badge #128) falsely arrested a man in Selma Park on September 17, 2009.
George Islas (Badge #128) falsely arrested a man in Selma Park on September 17, 2009.
If you haven’t kept up with our investigations into Selma Park, here is good starting place. The short version is that in 2007 the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance illegally placed signs in the park stating that it was for children and caregivers only and proceeded to arrest some people and eject others from the park for the next 8 years until I got the signs removed by Recreation and Parks. When I first asked her for records on the matter, Kerry Morrison told me that

“A/I says that after looking into this, it is unlikely that any arrests ever were made by A/I in Selma Park with specific regard to the signs and penal code section you recite (as opposed to public urination, drinking, and other reasons)…”

Another victim of Andrews International Security, falsely arrested in Selma Park on September 17, 2009.
Another victim of Andrews International Security, falsely arrested in Selma Park on September 17, 2009.
Well, I then requested copies of all arrest reports and daily activity logs, and they’ve been trickling in at the glacial pace that Kerry seems to find acceptable for meeting her legal obligations under the California Public Records Act. Every new batch has revealed that, even if Andrews did tell Kerry that they didn’t arrest people for merely being in the park, they were not telling the truth. The same is true for the 2009 material, which is on Archive.org. In particular I found another case of a man arrested in Selma Park, accused of nothing more than being there without children:
Continue reading Andrews International Arrest Reports and Daily Logs from 2009 Available, Another Victim of False Arrest at Selma Park Uncovered →

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Lawsuits

A Flurry of Filings in Mitchell et al. v. City of LA et al. Suggests that Homeless Advocates May be Trying to have City Enjoined from Enforcing Newly Amended LAMC 56.11

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California-centralMitchell v. Los Angeles, the latest in a series of suits filed by homeless people who’ve had their property illegally confiscated by the City (see Gale Holland’s recent article for an excellent summary) took an interesting turn today, when a flurry of filings hit PACER. First of all, the plaintiffs asked the court for a preliminary injunction and a temporary restraining order enjoining the City from confiscating their property while the case is on. They filed a huge number of declarations and other evidence in support of this application, many although not all of which can be found on our page dedicated to the case. The City asked for extra time to respond and the court granted them some.
Continue reading A Flurry of Filings in Mitchell et al. v. City of LA et al. Suggests that Homeless Advocates May be Trying to have City Enjoined from Enforcing Newly Amended LAMC 56.11 →

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