Category Archives: Announcements

South Park BID Minutes 2012-2016

south_park_bid_screenshotFor no particular reason I asked for (and promptly received—hat-tip to Jessica Lall and Laronnia Jupiter for their law-abidingness and transparency!) 4 point something years worth of minutes of South Park BID minutes. I just now put them up on archive.org and there are direct links after the break. I’m not putting them in the directory structure as (a) I’m not hosting them locally and (b) I just got this stuff out of curiosity and it’s not that closely related to our actual mission (I mean, it might turn out to be, we’ll see…after all, Tanner Blackman, amirite?)
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A Vast Panoply of BID Quarterly Reports

TL;DR BID Quarterly Report: Bitch, moan, self-aggrandize, bitch, moan, self-aggrandize, whine, repeat if necessary.
TL;DR BID Quarterly Report: Bitch, moan, self-aggrandize, bitch, moan, self-aggrandize, whine, repeat if necessary.
As a follow-up to Tuesday’s release of all Hollywood Entertainment District and all Sunset & Vine BID Quarterly Reports I’m pleased to announce today that I have bunches of these reports from other BIDS. Although these collections aren’t (yet) complete, they’re nevertheless essential. You can access them through the menu structure above, and here are links:

These are also available on the Internet Archive, which is useful because you can download them via torrent, they have OCR versions, and so on. Links are after the break.
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Huge Document Dump: HPOA Quarterly Reports, DCBID Emails, Central Crime Control Documents

We're out here having fun in the warm California sun!
We’re out here having fun in the warm California sun!
It’s been a while since I’ve announced a pure, old-fashioned document dump, but the records just keep pouring in, and I have loads of them to lay on you this evening. First, from our friends at the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, we have pretty much all their Quarterly Reports, even going back to the 1990s. I also put these on the Archive:

BIDs are required to send these reports to the City Clerk, who keeps them on file. They contain detailed narratives of the BIDs’ activities and are invaluable for understanding what’s going on. I have a ton of these from other BIDs as well, but they’re not quite ready for prime time. If there’s something you need urgently, though, drop me a line and I will try to fix you up.

Also, courtesy of the much-more-helpful-lately-than-she-has-been-in-the-past Suzanne Holley of the Downtown Center BID we have a massive pile of Central Area Crime Control stuff from the LAPD. This is valuable because getting it out of the LAPD would be practically impossible, and yet here it is. See what Compstat output looks like and much else of interest.

Finally, I have a bunch of emails, and there are details after the break:
Continue reading Huge Document Dump: HPOA Quarterly Reports, DCBID Emails, Central Crime Control Documents

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

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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Documents: 2015 HPOA/AI Emails, Carol Schatz Emails from CD4, LAPD

Malta_-_Valletta_-_Triq_Nofs-in-Nhar_-_Pjazza_Jean_de_Valette_-_Jean_de_Valette_06_iesHere 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

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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

BID Patrol arrests per year 2007--2015
BID Patrol arrests per year 2007–2015
Last month I reported that BID Patrol arrests had dropped off precipitously between 2014 and 2015. At that time I didn’t have the final arrest total for 2015, so annualized the figure from November to 666. Yesterday I received the actual figures, and the total number of arrests turns out to be even lower than suspected. The BID Patrol arrested only 606 people in 2015, compared to 1057 in 2015 (and a running average of 1183 between 2009 and 2014.1 As I said before, it’s hard not to attribute this massive drop-off to our scrutiny.2 Note that the standard deviation for those years is 107.7, so that the absolute change of 451 arrests is 4.18 standard deviations, meaning that this result is exceedingly unlikely to be due to chance. I also really have to wonder, if they can arrest over 40% fewer people year over year,3 what were they even arresting them all for in the first place?
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

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BID Consortium Minutes 2007-2015 Available, Demonstrating Among Other Things that the City Clerk’s Office Has Utterly Abdicated its Duty to Monitor and Regulate BIDs

city_clerk_logoFor whatever reason I haven’t yet requested many documents about BIDs from the City Clerk, but I’m making up for it now. I’ve started a page here to collect the material. This morning I have minutes from L.A. BID Consortium meetings from 2007 through 2015:

And this material is also available on the Archive.
Continue reading BID Consortium Minutes 2007-2015 Available, Demonstrating Among Other Things that the City Clerk’s Office Has Utterly Abdicated its Duty to Monitor and Regulate BIDs

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Fashion District BID Executive Director Kent Smith’s Complete July 2015 Emails Now Available. FDBID Managing Director Rena Leddy Wins MK.org Excellence in BID Transparency Award!

Rena Leddy headshot
Rena Leddy, Managing Director of the Fashion District BID and MK.org CPRA Hero of the Fricking Year!!
Just this morning I received, via Dropbox, every one of Kent Smith’s emails for the month of July 2015. You can see all 1098 of them on the archive. Most of it’s dismal mass-blasted junk, of course, but even a lot of that is interesting. E.g. search in there for CCA (Central City Association) to see bunches of their bulletins, like this one, advertising special guests Jessica Borek and Matt Rodriguez. Unfortunately there’s probably no way to find out what was said there, but at least we know it happened.
Yet another smoking gun, as if it weren't clear enough that Marie Rumsey is a big-time lawbreaker.
Yet another smoking gun, as if it weren’t clear enough that Marie Rumsey is a big-time lawbreaker.
The most amazing thing about this document dump is the formatting. They’re PDFs, which often is a bad sign for emails, although these are text-based4 so they can be searched reasonably effectively. Too many agencies think somehow that a scanned PDF of a printed email satisfies CPRA’s requirement that electronic documents be produced in native formats. These PDFs are on a level I’ve never seen before, though. First of all, the links are live, including the links to remote images. Also the links to attachments are live and the attachments are embedded in the PDFs. For instance, look at this email about anti-street-vending strategies from Marie Rumsey to various people. It has an actual schedule of actual meetings with Councilmembers that CCA set up for street vending opponents attached, and you can click on it and read it! Or here it is if you’re lazy. This is the real deal! Look at the properties in that last item and see that Marie Rumsey spent 2015 breaking the revolving door ordinance to an even greater extent than anyone here imagined. Also take a look at this email from Jessica Borek to the gang which comes with a copy of a Power Point thing by Jessica Borek about the Coalition to Save Small Business strategy as well as a marked-up copy of ELACC’s proposed framework. This is the real deal, friends! It’s what CPRA was actually meant to yield.
Continue reading Fashion District BID Executive Director Kent Smith’s Complete July 2015 Emails Now Available. FDBID Managing Director Rena Leddy Wins MK.org Excellence in BID Transparency Award!

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Downtown Center BID PR Materials from Macy + Associates, Hollywood BID Patrol 2007 Arrest Reports and Daily Logs

Screenshot from 2016-03-04 19:25:18Well, getting records out of the Downtown Center BID is like pulling teeth from a fricking hippopotamus,5 but after almost four months and one exceedingly detailed complaint to the Los Angeles City Clerk about their general bloody-minded uncooperative stonewalling, they have released a bunch of records relating to their public relations firm, Macy + Associates.6 You can find this material here on the Archive. Note that they’re, as usual, mercilessly and certainly illegally redacted. I’m working on this, but I don’t expect any results quickly.

Also, the big prize, obtained yesterday, is 2007 arrest reports and daily activity logs from the Andrews International BID Patrol. These are also on the Archive:

There are almost certainly significantly many arrest reports missing, and some details on this may be found after the break if you’re interested.
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New Documents: 2015 Emails to the Mayor’s Office from Kerry Morrison, Carol Schatz; All 2015 Fashion District Safe Team Daily Activity Logs

Carol Schatz in January 2008 at Bringing Back Broadway.
Carol Schatz in January 2008 at Bringing Back Broadway.
I have a number of interesting documents to announce this morning. There are emails to and from Eric Garcetti’s office in 2015:

Finally, there are the 2015 daily activity logs for the Fashion District Safe Team. These are interesting for a number of reasons, not least of which is that they barely seem to arrest anyone, in stark contrast to the outrageously high number of custodial arrests made by the Andrews International BID Patrol in Hollywood.
Continue reading New Documents: 2015 Emails to the Mayor’s Office from Kerry Morrison, Carol Schatz; All 2015 Fashion District Safe Team Daily Activity Logs

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