Friends, cast your minds back to the Spring of 2015! Kerry Morrison’s various BIDs were all in a psychotic tizzy about dark-skinned people coming to Hollywood on the weekends to drink and dance and have some damn fun. Kerry Morrison and her yes-mob started a campaign against the nightclubs on Hollywood Blvd whose patrons were insufficiently lacking in melanin.¹ This led, by the Fall of 2015, to Hollywood’s itchy skritchy little Council-snitchy, the one, the only, Mitch O’Freaking Farrell, starting a high-profile public campaign to shut down every nightspot that made Ms. Kerry Freaking Morrison wrinkle her freaking nose in disdain.

There was some pushback from the club owners in 2016, e.g. from the owner of the Rusty Mullet, whose lawyers played video from this blog at a Council hearing, and the organizers of the #blackhollywoodmatters campaign who, notably, convinced Marqueece Harris-Dawson to vote against the wishes of his smarmy little buddy from CD13 in a committee hearing, although naturally he reversed himself at the full Council vote. But in the usual way of things these minor victories didn’t have much of an effect,² and by the end of August 2016 Kerry Morrison was, like Grendel’s momma, sitting around her reeking lair counting her ill-gotten victories on her poisonous and twisted little talons.

Around this time, that is, in August 2016, I filed a public records act request with the LAPD asking for emails related to these matters. And because the LAPD is basically a criminal conspiracy with respect to CPRA and just will not comply with the freaking law, which is why they get sued under the CPRA all the freaking time, it took them two whole years to hand over the goods. But they finally did produce thousands of pages³ and I recently published the whole pile on Archive.Org for your pleasure and edification.

At this late date, of course, and this was doubtless the City’s intention, the battle for the soul of Hollywood Blvd is pretty much over, with the reprehensible frightening whitening brightening of its nightlife essentially complete. However, history is interesting as well as political science, so I plan to write on these emails from time to time as there’s a lot of really disturbing and important material in there. The texts for today’s sermon come from this set here, and turn the page for the details!

First, although it’s only tangentially related to nightclubs, take a look at this interesting item, which is an email from Hollywood Commander⁴ Peter Zarcone to his subordinates relaying orders from OWB, which stands for Operations West Bureau:

PETER ZARCONE <26271@lapd.lacity.org> 3/1/2016 11:15 PM

Peter A. Zarcone, Captain
Commanding Officer
Hollywood Area

Naturally, you’re wondering what had to be redacted there. Well, so was I. However, it turns out that the LAPD⁵ has a really irritating habit of supplying about a zillion copies of each email they produce, I believe because it makes it far harder to use the material and no judge is going to rule against them for producing too much stuff rather than too little. But something good often comes of this kind of aggression, which is that the redactor’s attention may stray, or their opinion may change, and one may get unredacted copies along with the redacted. And that is just what happened here! Take a look at this different copy of the same text and all is revealed, with the previously redacted material in blue:

PETER ZARCONE <26271@lapd.lacity.org> 3/1/2016 11:15 PM

Peter A. Zarcone, Captain
Commanding Officer
Hollywood Area

The CPRA requires that redactions be based on explicit exemptions enumerated in the law, and it’s surely hard to determine which of these the officer responsible for this might have been thinking allowed these redactions. I certainly can’t think of any at all. It turns out that the LAPD, unlike many agencies, will sometimes include a redaction log with produced material, and this form does have a column for the redaction reason. But in this case, well, take a look at the log for this set. The only reason given is “no reason.” Not that helpful.

It’s tempting to conclude that the redacting officer redacted these mentions of LAPD “chronic offender lists” because they’ve gotten so much bad press from their habit of putting people on lists without any kind of due process whatsoever and then targeting them for intense scrutiny and pretextual stops. Note that much of this reporting is predicated on the fabulously important investigative work of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition. And activists⁶ are right to be upset by this kind of thing. Take a look at these selections from the general orders from OWB that prompted Zarcone’s email, with the most shocking bits in blue:⁷
GED⁸ must work high violent crime RDs and missions. They need to go into the field each night with a list of gang members they need to pay special attention too. The list should be generated based upon current violence or the potential for violence. GED officers need to contact these individuals each night.
…
PCU⁹ needs to work a VC¹⁰ mission and go out in the field each night with a list of compliance checks to complete. The list should be updated every two days and we need to get into a rotation. These will be the individuals you believe that are either responsible for violence or have a high propensity for violence. Violators need to go to jail before they commit crimes.

So what they’re doing to these people who somehow end up on their chronic offenders lists because police, rather than juries or judges, believe they have the potential to be violent, is stopping them every night to see if they can arrest them for something, and if they’re on parole they’re following them around trying to send them to jail before they commit crimes. This is really disturbing and they certainly ought to be embarrassed that that’s what they’re up to. The sane response, though, is to stop doing it rather than trying to redact all mentions of it.

Anyway, I realize that this doesn’t have much to do with nightclubs per se, but I hope it convinces you that this material is well worth your time to look at. And, as I said, I’ll be writing about other parts from time to time, as or more interesting than this.

Image of Peter Zarcone is ©2018 MichaelKohlhaas.Org and is roughly kinda sorta related to this Peter Zarcone here.

1. As opposed to the nightclubs on Cahuenga Blvd, well freaking beloved of the bluenosed Ms. Kerry Morrison because their patrons are uniformly white, young, and well-heeled.
2. Although the Rusty Mullet, for reasons I haven’t taken the time to look into, managed to survive the onslaught of Hurricane Kerry and is still in operation on the Boulevard. All the others are long, long gone.
3. Albeit with a great deal of repetition; it’s not clear what the net yield is, but it’s not important. There’s a ton of stuff here.
4. At that time, anyway.
5. Along with many other City agencies.
6. And actually everyone else as well.
7. Scroll down to the email from Blake Chow.
8. Gang Enforcement Detail.
9. Parole Compliance Unit.
10. Maybe vehicle code?