A couple weeks ago we wrote about a Zoning Administrator hearing being held for the purpose of revoking the Rusty Mullet’s conditional use permit. Well, the hearing was held on July 28, 2016. As far as we know a determination has not yet been made, but we recently obtained more than five hours of audio from the hearing. You can listen to part I and also part II here. It’s not easy to get through the whole damned thing, which is why you’re lucky to have us! We’ve listened to the whole thing and made clips of some interesting bits. Note that as long as we were haunting City Hall to get this material we also obtained audio from the CUP revocation hearings for the Cosmo Nightclub and the Cashmere, and you can find both of those on this Archive.org page.

Now, long-time readers of this blog will recall that in March 2015 we broke the story that Fabio Conti, Carol Massie, Kerry Morrison, Marty Shelton, and pretty much everyone on the Board of Directors of the Sunset & Vine BID except for Chase Gordon are a bunch of racists who want to shut down every bar on Hollywood Boulevard because they don’t like the skin color of the patrons. So imagine our pleasure at learning that Mike Ayaz, the Rusty Mullet’s lawyer, actually showed our video at the hearing! This was part of the evidence for his position, with which we concur, that the restaurant appears on a hit list of bars being targeted for racist reasons by the BID, the LAPD, and the City Government. You can hear the whole clip here, where he refers to Fabio’s speech as “disturbing video which I would like to play of a quasi-governmental agency that basically…I think I’ll let the video speak for itself.” And speak for itself it does:

Be sure to catch the audience reaction at the end. It doesn’t make anyone sane happy to hear Fabio Conti channeling Marty Shelton claiming that “the Lindsey Lohans of the world are not hanging out at the Rusty Mullet” with the regulars, who are “decidedly minority, brown and black, and my guess, from a lower economic strata.” These dimwits on the BID are clearly going to regret the day they neglected to listen to their one and only sane Board Member, Chase Gordon, who responded to this bullshit in March 2015 by saying that he didn’t “think that we should be, especially public-facing, going out with the distinction of ‘we don’t want lower economic statuses coming and visiting Hollywood.” Anyway, who can say what will happen, but we here at MK.org are inordinately proud on this beautiful Sunday morning that the citizen journalism of our intrepid correspondent is paying off in this big way. This story is a sleeper, but when it finally makes the papers, it’s going to be huge.

Turn the page for some other interesting bits!

First up, here’s LAPD Vice Squad Officer Benjamin Thompson (#39467) narrating a video and claiming that it shows a bunch of sketchy people loitering in front of the Rusty Mullet:

Lying cop: What you’re looking at is the North sidewalk of Hollywood Boulevard directly outside of the Rusty Mullet premises. This is the Southern wall of the Rusty Mullet property, you’ll see on the left side of your screen. Again, if you look at the other retail venues, the other expanses of Hollywood Boulevard, you don’t see these loitering crowds.

Audience member: It’s a bus.

Lying cop: For the record there is no bus stop there.

Audience: [outraged outburst in response to cop’s lies]

LC: I do not see a bus stop sign. It does appear on the video that that man is looking for a bus, but I have not seen a sign out there.

This is the cop who took up far more than an hour of this interminable hearing reading from a list of every violation of the law that took place within some fixed radius of the Rusty Mullet, who putatively visited the Rusty Mullet about twice a week for month after month after month counting dancers, photographing patrons, arresting bartenders, listening for music audible outside, videotaping everything and so on, and yet we’re supposed to believe that he not only never noticed this bus stop sign but that we wasn’t consciously lying when he stated FOR THE FREAKING RECORD that there was no bus stop sign. We’re guessing he’s just too used to lying with impunity to even worry any more about whether or not he’s making sense. This theory is borne out by this next clip, in which Officer Integrity, still narrating his video, is amused to see a bus pull up on screen:

Benjamin Thompson (giggling inappropriately): There’s a bus; so it appears you’re right…

Fascinating, isn’t it? He’s convicted of being a liar by his own freaking video, which one would assume that he would have watched before testifying about it and therefore have known that there was in fact a bus stop there. But not only did he not do that, he isn’t even ashamed when his own video proves him wrong. He giggles about it. Ha ha, Officer Thompson! You neglected to prepare for your testimony in this case, but maybe you can prepare in advance of your upcoming Board of Rights hearing;¹ by reading Section 110.40 of the LAPD Manual, which states that one of your department’s core values is:

110.40 INTEGRITY IN ALL WE SAY AND DO. Integrity is our standard. We are proud of our profession and will conduct ourselves in a manner that merits the respect of all people. We will demonstrate honest, ethical behavior in all our interactions. Our actions will match our words. We must have the courage to stand up for our beliefs and do what is right. Throughout the ranks, the Los Angeles Police Department has a long history of integrity and freedom from corruption. Upholding this proud tradition is a challenge we must all continue to meet.

We didn’t really think lying in a hearing and then giggling when your own evidence exposes you is consistent with meriting the respect of all people, but maybe we’re just picky that way.

And finally, here’s CD13 Hollywood Field Deputy Dan Halden’s testimony:
We were going to write about this today, but this post is already too long, and we’re a little worn out, so we’ll save it for another day. But give it a listen if you’re interested.. he’s reading some kind of prepared statement, and we couldn’t spot anything true in it past the point where he says his name, but ’tis par for the course, ain’t it?

Image of Fabio Conti and the neo-Manson girls is ©2016 MichaelKohlhaas.org, as are images of the freaking bus stop sign right in front of the freaking Rusty Mullet.

1. A Board of Rights hears accusations of misconduct against LAPD Officers. The chance that Benjamin Thompson of the LAPD is going to get in trouble for lying like this is approximately zero, so this is really just wishful thinking, but wishes sometimes do come true!