Category Archives: Hollywood BID Patrol

LAMC 41.47.1: This Seemingly Unknown Municipal Bathroom Law Could Change the Whole Public Urination Discussion in Los Angeles, but it has Never Been Used

June 7, 2016 Mike 3 Comments

These signs are hanging all over the City of Los Angeles, and it turns out that they're completely unenforceable. — These signs are hanging all over the City of Los Angeles, and it turns out that they’re completely unenforceable.

Arrests for public urination/defecation are a fundamental tool in the war against homeless people in Los Angeles, as well as being a major part of the BID Patrol’s work in Hollywood. In 2015, for instance, the BID’s data shows that about 8%¹ of the arrests that Andrews International made across the two HPOA BIDs² were for public urination/defecation, which is a violation of LAMC 41.47.2.

When the City Council passed LAMC 41.47.2 in 2003, they were roundly (and rightly) criticized by advocates for the rights of homeless people, who pointed out that it was inhumane to criminalize an activity that is necessary to sustain life without providing a practical alternative. My colleagues have written before about how Councilmembers responded to this by promising informally that it wouldn’t be enforced if there were no nearby public restrooms and by promising to install more public restrooms around the City. However, they failed to amend the actual statute, which has led to widespread abuse.³ And 13 years later there aren’t significantly more public restrooms.

However, there is another part of the public urination law, LAMC 41.47.1, which is never even mentioned in discussions of the issue, and yet it is not only relevant, but radically, transformatively relevant. It was adopted by the Council in 1988 and says:

If restroom facilities are made available for the public, clients, or employees, no person owning, controlling, or having charge of such accommodation or facility shall prohibit or prevent the use of such restroom facilities by a person with a physical handicap, regardless of whether that person is a customer, client, employee, or paid entrant to the accommodation or facility. Employee restrooms need not be made available if there are other restroom facilities available on the premises unless employee restroom facilities have been constructed or altered to accommodate the physically handicapped and such facilities are not available elsewhere on the premises.

This has the potential to change the entire conversation about public restrooms, public urination, and homelessness in Los Angeles.
Continue reading LAMC 41.47.1: This Seemingly Unknown Municipal Bathroom Law Could Change the Whole Public Urination Discussion in Los Angeles, but it has Never Been Used →

Hollywood BID Patrol

Lots of Pictures of BID Patrol Officers Illegally Dressing Like Police Officers

June 5, 2016 Mike 2 Comments

BID Patrol officer M. Gomez (Badge #148) looking a lot like a police officer.

One of the most important consequences of the Andrews International Hollywood BID Patrol’s failure to register with the Los Angeles Police Commission, as they’re almost surely required to do, is that they evade enforcement of LAMC 52.34(d)(1), which regulates uniforms and badges. It states:

Any badge, insignia, patch or uniform used or worn by any employee, officer, member or associate of a private patrol service, while on duty for said patrol service, shall be in compliance with State law. Any such badge, insignia, patch or uniform shall not be of such a design as to be mistaken for an official badge, insignia or uniform worn by a law enforcement officer of the City of Los Angeles or any other law enforcement agency with jurisdiction in the City.

In this post I’m collecting and discussing a number of images of BID Patrol officers looking especially like police (all these images and many more can be found on this new Archive collection). The only differences between BID Patrol uniforms and LAPD uniforms seem to be that the LAPD doesn’t always wear shoulder patches and the LAPD does wear nameplates. However, the LAPD is not the only Los Angeles agency that employs law enforcement officers.

Los Angeles Airport Police Officers, wearing shoulder patches and looking an awful lot like BID Patrol officers.

There are also the School Police and the Airport Police⁴ and both of those agencies have uniforms with shoulder patches, and to which BID Patrol uniforms are also essentially identical. It’s true that the uniforms of BID Patrol officers say “BID PATROL” in big letters across the back, but many police uniforms say stuff across the back. For this message to have the requisite effect, it’s necessary to already know that BID Patrol officers aren’t a kind of police. Also, the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance is famous for worrying about tourists who don’t know that they don’t have to tip street characters. Where’s the analogous worry about tourists who don’t know that the BID Patrol aren’t police officers? Turn the page for many more examples.
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Business Improvement Districts, Hollywood BID Patrol, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Why Aren’t BID Security Patrols Registered with the Los Angeles Police Commission?

June 4, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Any badge, insignia, patch or uniform used or worn by any employee, officer, member or associate of a private patrol service, while on duty for said patrol service, shall be in compliance with State law. Any such badge, insignia, patch or uniform shall not be of such a design as to be mistaken for an official badge, insignia or uniform worn by a law enforcement officer of the City of Los Angeles or any other law enforcement agency with jurisdiction in the City. LAMC 52.34(d)(1)

Recently I was reading the Los Angeles Municipal Code⁵ and came across LAMC 52.34, which discusses “private patrol services” and their employees, “street patrol officers.” The gist of it seems to be⁶ that private patrol service operators must register with the Police Commission, and also prove that their employees’ uniforms and badges don’t look too much like real police uniforms and badges. They’re also required to have a complaint process and submit lists of employees and some other things too.

Well, as you can see from the photo above, and from innumerable other photos and videos I’ve obtained from the Hollywood BID Patrol, there is a real problem with BID Patrol officers looking like LAPD. Their uniforms are the same color, their badges are the same shape and color, and so on. Also, they’re famous for not having a complaint process, or at least not one that anyone can discover easily. The Andrews International BID Patrol isn’t the only one with this problem, either. The Media District‘s security vendor, Universal Protection Service, doesn’t seem to have one either. In fact, it was UPS Captain John Irigoyen‘s refusal to accept a complaint about two of his officers that inspired the establishment of this blog. The A/I BID Patrol is as guilty of this lapse as anyone.

Richard Tefank, Executive Director of the LA Police Commission.

The fact that private patrol operators were required to file actual documents with a city agency means that copies would be available! So I fired off some public records requests to Richard Tefank, Executive Director of the Police Commission. He answered right away and told me they’d get right on it. What a relief to discover that Police Commission CPRA requests don’t have to go through the LAPD Discovery Section, which is so notoriously slow to respond that the City of LA has had to pay tens of thousands of dollars in court-imposed fines due to their tardiness. Mr. Tefank handed me off to an officer in the permits section, and he told me that none of the three BID security contractors I asked about; Andrews International, Universal Protection, and Streetplus⁷ were registered. How could this be, I wondered, given what seems like the plain language of the statute? The story turns out to be immensely complicated, and with lots of new documents.
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Hollywood BID Patrol

“Hold Your Beer Up and Smile.” Video Suggests that So-Called “Referral” Arrest is Actually Just a Warning, Demonstrating that 2015 BID Patrol Arrest Rate is Down 70% from 2014; Far More than Previously Thought

May 31, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

The BID Patrol orders a woman on Hollywood Blvd to perform for the camera as a condition of not being arrested.

“Hold your beer up. HOLD YOUR BEER UP. And smile, if you want to.” These are the words of an anonymous⁸ BID Patrol officer caught on video confronting a homeless woman on Hollywood Boulevard about the fact that she’s drinking in public. However, this is more than a particularly lurid demonstration of the BID Patrol’s almost ludicrously unprofessional reign of misrule in Hollywood. It also helps shed some light on a long-standing mystery about just how many people the BID Patrol arrested in 2015.

I’ve reported before that the BID Patrol’s arrest rate in 2015 was over 40% smaller than it was between 2007 and 2014. The new evidence in this video suggests that actually only 313 of these were full custodial arrests (as opposed to 606, as I previously thought), making the actual decrease from 2014 to 2015 more than 70%. Here is the spreadsheet containing the 2015 totals. Note that there are 606 total arrests listed, and that these include 313 “Al Ref” arrests. You can see the arrest total summary spreadsheets from 2007 through 2015 here.

The phrase “Al Ref” almost certainly refers to “alcohol referrals.” These were discussed by Steve Seyler at the March 2015 Joint Security Committee meeting, where he stated:

We are starting to see some early trends. Arrests are down by 56 compared to this time last year. This is largely due to a strategy change in our enforcement of drinking in public. These arrests have accounted for about 60% of our arrest year after year. That number is holding true for this year as well. We still believe that it is important to curtail public drinking as this has a direct effect on assaults and other crimes.

Our new approach involves more warnings and more importantly referrals. We have
made 56 such referrals so far. If the person is agreeable, we give them a warning and
information about local Alcoholic Anonymous meetings and other resources. We will
attempt to gather data to see if this will bring positive results.

This theory is further confirmed by the fact that the arrest report number included in the title of the video file is #15-0517R, where the “R” almost certainly stands for “referral.” Add that to the fact that there seem to be NO arrest reports with an “R” appended to their numbers among the 2015 BID Patrol arrest reports I recently obtained from Kerry Morrison, so that either those numbers don’t refer to custodial arrests or Kerry Morrison was lying when she told me that she’d produced all of them.⁹ Continue reading “Hold Your Beer Up and Smile.” Video Suggests that So-Called “Referral” Arrest is Actually Just a Warning, Demonstrating that 2015 BID Patrol Arrest Rate is Down 70% from 2014; Far More than Previously Thought →

Announcements, Hollywood BID Patrol

Many Years Worth of New Documents: Arrest Reports, Daily Logs, Photographs, Videos, Fashion District Emails

May 29, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

I’m pleased to announce a huge amount of records, mostly from the Andrews International BID Patrol. These include arrest reports and daily logs, which bring our coverage up to the end of 2015. I put these on the Archive because the amount of material would overwhelm our hosting plan. There are individual links after the break and also here.

Note that there’s something fishy about the 2015 arrest reports. There are fewer than 350 of them, when the 2015 totals spreadsheet claims 606. This may have something to do with a new category for 2015 called “alcohol referral.” If these turn out to not be genuine custodial arrests we will have reduced the BID Patrol arrest rate by far, far more than I previously thought.

Also there are:

And some more emails from the Fashion District BID. These are prepared in the inimitably complete manner of Rena Leddy and cover the time from January 2015 through March 2016. They have to do with street vending and such topics:

Finally, there are over 6 GB of 2015 BID Patrol videos. I will be putting the videos on our YouTube channel soon, but that takes a lot of time, so I thought I’d make them available here first.

As I said, look after the break for individual links to our complete collection of A/I BID Patrol arrest reports and daily logs 2007-2015.
Continue reading Many Years Worth of New Documents: Arrest Reports, Daily Logs, Photographs, Videos, Fashion District Emails →

Hollywood BID Patrol

Hollywood BID Patrol Arrest Rate Continues to Plummet in 2016: by Week 12 there were 23% Fewer Arrests than in 2015 and more than 50% Fewer than in 2014

May 22, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Steve Seyler in 2014, one day before he told Kerry Morrison that he was going to "have the Officers slow down a little more..." The effects of that statement continue to be felt in Hollywood. — Steve Seyler in 2014, one day before he told Kerry Morrison that he was going to “have the Officers slow down a little more…” The effects of that statement continue to be felt in Hollywood.

Recall that the Andrews International Hollywood BID Patrol arrested more than 40% fewer people in 2015 than they did in 2014, and that this precipitous drop was almost certainly due to our scrutiny. Well, newly obtained figures show that as of Week 12 of 2016¹⁰ the BID Patrol had arrested only 130 people. This is an annualized rate of

$\frac{130}{12}\frac{arrests}{week}\times 52\frac{weeks}{year}=564\frac{arrests}{year}$

Recall that in 2015 the BID Patrol arrested 606 people, so this projected figure represents a projected 7% decrease from last year’s already strikingly attenuated figures.

Furthermore, by week 12 of 2015 the BID Patrol had arrested 169 people, compared to only 130 this year. This represents a stunning 23% reduction from 2015’s level. For the sake of comparison, note that by week 12 of 2014 the BID Patrol had already arrested 261 people. Thus 2016’s week 12 total is less than half of the 2014 figure from the same week.

Read on for a little bit of editorial speculation.
Continue reading Hollywood BID Patrol Arrest Rate Continues to Plummet in 2016: by Week 12 there were 23% Fewer Arrests than in 2015 and more than 50% Fewer than in 2014 →

Hollywood BID Patrol, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Why is Kerry Morrison Willing to Lie and to Break the Law in Order to Keep BID Patrol Officers Anonymous?

May 13, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

BID Patrol officer Charles Mooney (Badge #124) pictured in a file originally named "mr. gooding ( actor ) and bid officer c. mooney.jpg". — BID Patrol officer Charles Mooney (Badge #124) pictured in a file originally named “mr. gooding ( actor ) and bid officer c. mooney.jpg”.

If you’re familiar with the BID Patrol situation in Hollywood you’ll have noticed that not only do BID Patrol officers dress like cops, but they do not wear name tags of any kind. No one seems to be willing to say why this is. Well, long-time readers of this blog will recall that in September 2015 I announced that I was taking on the task of identifying BID Patrol officers.

BID Patrol Officer Robert E. Reyes (badge #117) is on the left, according to Kerry Morrison.

In October 2015 I made an exploratory request, asking Kerry Morrison for:

…sufficiently many photographs of Robert E. Reyes to allow me to identify him. If you have a picture of him alone that will do. If you have only pictures of him with other people, please send enough so that he’s the only one in the intersection of the sets of people pictured. If there is no set of photographs such that he’s the only one in the intersection of the sets of people pictured, please send enough so that he’s the only man in the intersection of the sets of men pictured.

I phrased it in this awkward manner because it’s a quirk of CPRA that agencies have to hand over records but they don’t have to answer questions about them. On November 10, 2015, Kerry Morrison responded with the photo shown here. She told me that Robert E. Reyes, badge #117, was the man on the left. So far, so good. At this point I actually thought I would be able to identify BID Patrol officers via CPRA. But, as you’ll see after the break, ’twas not to be.
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Hollywood BID Patrol

BID Patrol Boss Steve Seyler of Andrews International Security Moonlights at Inglewood Police Department Doing Background Checks and Cold Cases

May 7, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Steve Seyler scooting and commuting between Hollywood and Inglewood.

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 to¹¹ Inglewood City Clerk Yvonne Horton,¹² 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,¹³ Continue reading BID Patrol Boss Steve Seyler of Andrews International Security Moonlights at Inglewood Police Department Doing Background Checks and Cold Cases →

Featured, Hollywood BID Patrol

In 2013 The Andrews International BID Patrol Arrested Homeless People at More than 57 Times the Rate that the LAPD Did and were Responsible for 1 in 14 Homeless Arrests in Entire City of Los Angeles

March 30, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

The BID Patrol can't make its numbers just arresting one homeless person at a time. — The BID Patrol can’t make its numbers just arresting one homeless person at a time.

(I apologize in advance for this necessarily data-heavy post, but it’s essential information).

In 2013¹⁴ the BID Patrol arrested homeless people at more than 57 times the rate that the LAPD did. Furthermore, they were responsible for more than 1% of all arrests made in the entire City of Los Angeles that year even while working only 0.13% of the hours that the LAPD did. Approximately one in fourteen arrests of homeless people in the entire city of Los Angeles that year was made by the BID Patrol.

Here’s how I calculated these figures: That year the LAPD made 14,838 arrests of homeless people¹⁵ whereas the Andrews International BID Patrol made 1,096 arrests.¹⁶ Reading through A/I’s 2013 arrest reports and examining A/I’s 2013 arrest photos I see no reason to believe that the BID Patrol arrested non-homeless people in 2013 in any significant number.¹⁷ Continue reading In 2013 The Andrews International BID Patrol Arrested Homeless People at More than 57 Times the Rate that the LAPD Did and were Responsible for 1 in 14 Homeless Arrests in Entire City of Los Angeles →

Announcements, Hollywood BID Patrol

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

March 19, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

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 2014.¹⁸ As I said before, it’s hard not to attribute this massive drop-off to our scrutiny.¹⁹ 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,²⁰ what were they even arresting them all for in the first place?
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