Category Archives: Business Improvement Districts

HPOA to Oppose O’Farrell/Ryu Motion on Tree-Trimming. Kerry Morrison: This is Overkill. John Tronson: I’m Having a Fundraiser for Mitch; I will Talk to Him. Mark Echevarria: What the Fuck is a Tree Surgeon?! Hurr Hurr Hurr

June 17, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

The Hollywood Property Owners Alliance supports laws that prioritize the view on the right over the view on the left.

Maybe you remember in January when Outfront Media illegally, immorally, and with reckless disregard, vandalized a bunch of trees in Silver Lake. Well, that’s smack in the heartland of Mitch O’Farrell world, so the CM and his compatriot David Ryu introduced a motion directing the Bureau of Street Services to figure out how to prevent this kind of horror in the future (the full council file CF 15-0467-S4 is here). It’s a little off-topic, but nevertheless interesting, to note that Outfront is a client of megalobbyist Veronica Perez, at whom Silver Lake residents directed a lot of justified rage on Facebook and elsewhere about this issue in March.

Well, in April, BSS came back with a list of proposed amendments to the City tree-trimming ordinance, and they mean to put some teeth into it, and as we know, our old friends the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance just hate to have to follow any laws at all since, they think, laws are what criminals break and we’re not criminals.

HPOA staffies Kerry Morrison and Matthew Severson, who propound the views of their masters with a level of passion that only the paid flunkies of zillionaires seem to be able to muster, frame it as a matter of more misdirected and incompetent government regulation. Real-estate zillionaire, BFF of Kerry Morrison, and revealed plagiarist John Tronson is gonna talk to Mitch about it at the fundraiser next week. Mark Echevarria, boss of Los Angeles spiritual/cultural nexus Musso & Frank, proves that you don’t have to be a genius to run a holy site by chuckling over the fact that he’s never heard of tree surgeons. It’s just yet another display of ignorance, privilege, and conspiracy to bribe public officials; business as usual at the HPOA. You can watch the whole thing here, see a complete transcription after the break, and turn the page for line-by-line commentary.
Continue reading HPOA to Oppose O’Farrell/Ryu Motion on Tree-Trimming. Kerry Morrison: This is Overkill. John Tronson: I’m Having a Fundraiser for Mitch; I will Talk to Him. Mark Echevarria: What the Fuck is a Tree Surgeon?! Hurr Hurr Hurr →

Hollywood BID Patrol

Update on the Question of Why BID Security Patrols Aren’t Registered with the Los Angeles Police Commission

June 10, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Richard Tefank, Executive Director of the LA Police Commission.

I have some new information about, although not an answer to, the question, which I wrote about last week, of why BID security patrols aren’t registered with the Los Angeles Police Commission even though LAMC 52.34 would seem to require registration. If this is the first time you’re hearing about this, you should read that post first for background.

First of all, I exchanged a number of emails with William Jones, a senior management analyst with the LAPD permit processing section. He directed me to Officer Vicencio in the Police Commission’s Enforcement section. Vicencio was on vacation last week, but I finally got a chance to speak to him on the phone. He told me that BID Patrols were exempt from the LAMC 52.34 requirement because state law exempted them. He did not know what section of state law exempted them. He also told me that “about fifteen years ago” the City Attorney issued an opinion stating that BID Patrols were not subject to the registration requirement. He said that any private security firm that was under contract to the City or had an MOU with the City was not required to register.
Continue reading Update on the Question of Why BID Security Patrols Aren’t Registered with the Los Angeles Police Commission →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

How to Call Someone an Asshole in Kerrymorrisonese

June 9, 2016 Mike 2 Comments

One of the pleasures, one of the pains, of intensively researching the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance is that I have to read hundreds upon hundreds of pages of HPOA Exec. Direc. Ms. Kerry Morrison’s smug, privileged prose. It’s painful not just due to her smugness, but to her tacit insistence that she’s an expert on homelessness and everything else, her hypocritical alternation between whining about government and soliciting special favors from the government, her advocacy of arresting homeless people over and over and over again for breaking even the most inconsequential of laws while she herself masterminds ongoing criminal conspiracies, and so on.

The pleasure comes from the same source that mastery of any complex esoteric field of knowledge brings pleasure. From intense close reading and rereading of the complete works of Ms. Kerry Morrison, I’ve not only realized that she speaks a separate, unique language (which we affectionately refer to as Kerrymorrisonese),¹ in which the syntax and the vocabulary are identical to Standard American English, but the semantics is wildly divergent, but I’ve begun to master this idiolect and I’m here to share my knowledge with you. Tonight’s post is meant to be the first installment of a translation rubric. A phrasebook, if you will. I hope it will be useful to you, intrepid student of the fascinating subject that is Ms. Kerry Morrison!
Continue reading How to Call Someone an Asshole in Kerrymorrisonese →

Hollywood BID Patrol, Hypocrisy

Irrefutable Proof Captured on Video of Further BID Patrol Lawlessness, Reckless Endangerment, Breach of Contract

June 7, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Can you spot the evidence here that the law is being wantonly disregarded by a BID Patrol officer? Click to enlarge. — Can you spot the evidence here that the law is being wantonly disregarded by a BID Patrol officer? If it’s not clear, try the whole video.

Last year, apparently on August 7,² the BID Patrol drove one of their BIDmobiles eastbound on the 6300 block of Homewood Avenue. The driver of the vehicle, holding a Kodak Playsport Video Camera, Zx5, filmed the north side of the street as he drove the vehicle. You can watch the whole video here.

One huge problem with this scenario is that, as you can see from the image of the camera, Kodak Playsports have a video monitor that shows what’s being recorded.³ Now, take a look at California Vehicle Code section 27602, which plainly states:

A person shall not drive a motor vehicle if a television receiver, a video monitor, or a television or video screen, or any other similar means of visually displaying a television broadcast or video signal that produces entertainment or business applications, is operating and is located in the motor vehicle at a point forward of the back of the driver’s seat, or is operating and the monitor, screen, or display is visible to the driver while driving the motor vehicle.

Continue reading →

Hollywood BID Patrol, Miscellaneous

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%⁴ of the arrests that Andrews International made across the two HPOA BIDs⁵ 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.⁶ 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 Police⁷ 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.
Continue reading →

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 Code⁸ and came across LAMC 52.34, which discusses “private patrol services” and their employees, “street patrol officers.” The gist of it seems to be⁹ 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.

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 Streetplus¹⁰ 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.
Continue reading →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

Oh the Irony: Kerry Morrison, Proponent of Loud Music to Repel Homeless, Herself Complains Publicly About Loud Music in Restaurants

June 2, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Do to others what you want them to do to you. This is the meaning of the law of Moses and the teaching of the prophets.

We reported here about 10 days ago that BID bossette and self-proclaimed prayer warrior Kerry Morrison is a zealous advocate of blasting classical music at night to repel homeless sidewalk sleepers, even to the point of intervening with property managers whose tenants complain that they also can’t sleep. And that little item turned out to be one of our most popular posts for the month of May, so we thought we’d follow up on it tonight. Recently a friend of this blog drew our attention to Kerry Morrison’s staff bio from the HPOA “about” page. And we can learn a lot from this little item, friends. For instance, note that Kerry Morrison “…eschews¹¹ loud music in restaurants.”

Well, Kerry, Jesus had two things to say about this and we have just one.
Continue reading Oh the Irony: Kerry Morrison, Proponent of Loud Music to Repel Homeless, Herself Complains Publicly About Loud Music in Restaurants →

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 anonymous¹² 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.¹³ 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 →