It turns out that vodka Nazi and Hollywood BID Patrol bossman Steve Seyler works part-time for his former employer, the Inglewood Police Department, as something called a “civilian investigative specialist” investigating cold cases and doing background checks. The IPD is famously incompetent and so is Steve, so perhaps it’s a good fit. According to Transparent California the City of Inglewood paid Seyler $15,180 in 2013 and $13,366 in 2014. This is in addition to his more than $66,000 pension. Many of the other Civilian Investigative Specialists are also former IPD officers, so perhaps this is some kind of informal retirement-payola scheme, which would certainly be consistent with Inglewood’s reputation for outrageous public corruption.

Seyler was still working for them in 2015 and 2016 but I haven’t been able to get his pay records for those years. According to¹ Inglewood City Clerk Yvonne Horton,² the city of Inglewood doesn’t have a contract with Seyler. Seyler famously destroys emails to cover his tracks, but nevertheless I managed, with the somewhat reluctant help of Assistant Inglewood City Attorney Derald Brenneman, to obtain a bunch of emails to and from Seyler’s IPD account,³

There’s nothing exceptionally interesting here, mostly a lot of hours worked and so on. There is evidence of some weirdo freeloading, too. For instance, in July 2015 Seyler emailed IPD Lieutenant Gabriela Garcia to ask if the Department would pay for him to take a Behavior Analysis Training Institute class in interrogation techniques. It’s probably at classes like this that Seyler and his BID Patrol buddies learn the creepy cop tricks of which they’re so very enamored. Garcia told Seyler that the chief would pay for the class but not for the hotel. In December 2015 Seyler was soliciting the use of official IPD cars from IPD Sergeant Peter Friesen. He was told to “…just grab any of the Crown Vics sitting out there…” He also signed up for a cyber-crime investigations class and something called Cal-Photo which, oh joyous day! lets Steve Seyler look at your drivers’ license photo if he wants to.

Image of Steve Seyler on a T3 motorized tricycle is a public record.

1. In a personal communication.
2. Who is an interesting story in her own right. She’s implicated in voter fraud and can be seen engaging in controversy on YouTube in Inglewood City Hall. It’s too off-topic for me to go into in detail, but there’s a lot of juicy stuff out there if you’re interested. Also, evidently Horton was attacked by Inglewood Mayor James Butts in 2010.
3. Which, if you’re interested, is sseyler@cityofinglewood.org.