Hollywood Property Owners Alliance staff members implementing their new document retention policy. What have you got to hide, friends?!Longtime readers of this blog will recall that one of my very first successful CPRA requests of the HPOA yielded a bunch of emails between AI and the HPOA from October 1, 2014 through November 12, 2014. In fact there were 69 of them during this 43 day period, or more than 1.5 per day. There’s no reason that this period wouldn’t be representative, so we might expect over 500 emails total for 2014. However, I didn’t get around to asking for the rest of the 2014 emails until November of last year and didn’t receive them until January of this year. They are available here, all (only) 90 pages of them. Incredibly, HPOA supplied more distinct emails from October 1, 2014 through November 12, 2014 than they did for all the rest of 2014 when asked a year later. Statistically, therefore, it’s almost certain that they deleted a bunch of stuff. They handed over significantly more emails from 2015, almost 9 MB of them. In all cases there’s demonstrably material missing, e.g. only a small fraction of the weekly reports from AI are present. It wasn’t clear at all what was going on, although I certainly had my suspicions, until a few things happened: Continue reading Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Formalizes Ongoing Document Destruction Policy Involving Thousands Upon Thousands of Public Records, Seemingly just to Thwart Our Investigations→
Here 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 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.
Cory Palka, new boss of the Hollywood Division, speaks to an organized gang of exceptionally jolly white supremacists on St. Patrick’s day.Watch and listen to LAPD Captain Cory Palka speaking at the most recent meeting of the Board of Directors of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance. Captain Cory recently replaced the now transferred Peter Zarcone as Hollywood honcho, and evidently a good-will-drop-in mission to the local zillionaire’s club is de rigueur in that situation.
You can read a transcript of the ongoings after the break, as always, but today we’re focusing just on a little bit of unplanned, unscripted joking around, for in such situations, according to Sigmund Freud (as our friends at Wikipedia put it), we can discern “…forbidden thoughts and feelings that the conscious mind usually suppresse[s] in deference to society.” Har-de-fooking-har-har-har!
The fun began when Kerry Morrison, her inimitably sycophantic affect in full flower, told Cpt. Cory that she had a surprise for him! (This bit starts here).
KM: I have one fun thing to show you. When you were here, I remember you said “Ooooh! I really want one of those star placques!” So I made this up for you for 2013–2014 and then I kept texting, like I want to go down and tour 77th Division.
And Cowboy Cory Palka has a little joke about this: CP: You don’t want to go to 77th…
Now, it’s hard to see what’s funny about that, right? We mean, really, what’s funny? But the HPOA thinks it’s fookin’ hilarious. Just watch.
White people in Hollywood laughing it up about 77th Street Division.So really, what’s so funny? There’s no clue in Cpt. Cory’s follow-up remarks, either, although we do get the sense that he almost talked about, just barely refrained from mentioning, the dreaded “those people”:
Totally different environment. My first year in 77th Street I had fifty murders and then last year I had thirty three. And I remember, I was telling my daughter we were doing some great things down there, and she was like “Great things? Man, pretty dangerous down there.” And I had ten when I left this year, so, Pete still has ten, I haven’t had any, I’ve been here, this is my second week, so, it’s just a different community and with a whole different set of challenges. Um, that’s a whole different discussion, so…
BID Patrol arrests per year 2007–2015Last 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→
John Tronson and Kerry Morrison at the March 17, 2016 meeting of the HPOA Board of Directors. Despite appearances, Ms. Morrison evidently did not throw that pencil at anyone during this meeting.Recall that last month the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance spent a good 40 minutes yammering on about a misbegotten plan of Peter Zarcone’s and Bill Farrar’s to have their armed minions, the BID Patrol, stay out way past everyone’s bed-time in order to put the old kibosh on the herds of outta-control dark-skinned people who, at least in the BIDsies’ fantastically fretful obsessive delusional view of things, occupy the Boulevard on weekend nights. Well, Zarcone got transferred, Steve Seyler backed off the plan, and Kerry Morrison told the Central Hollywood Coalition on March 8: “Yeah…it’s not happening.” A good friend of this blog wrote to Mitch O’Farrell asking him not to pay for this nonsense, and we found out just a couple days ago that as early as February 22, O’Farrell staffers Rodriguez and Halden had concerns about the plan that they took to their boss. We can’t say for sure (yet) what drove the dispositive stake through the heart of Bill Farrar’s vampire baby, but whatever it was, evidently no one explained the full extent of the deadness to John Tronson.
Carol Schatz’s duplicity laid bare by Venn diagrams!UPDATE (3/17 9:40 a.m.): Just now the City Clerk sent out the agenda for a special meeting of the City Council tomorrow morning, amended to include the very change described in this post, requested by Carol Schatz only yesterday. Now THAT is political juice. Disgusting.
Carol Schatz, she of the zillion dollars an hour paycheck, just this evening with respect to Council file 14-1656-S1, on homeless people’s property, had a letter to the Council appear, advocating a change in conjunction from “and” to “or” in the proposed statute. Here’s what Carol Schatz had to say about the current proposal:
The ordinance from the City Attorney transmitted to the PWGR committee4 only leads to a violation if a person refuses to remove a tent and obstructs removal.
And why is this bad, Carol? Pray, do tell:
This is unreasonable in light of limited city resources. It would require the continued involvement of the LAPD to have tents deconstructed on a daily basis, which is not practical or the best use of resources. It also does not meet the City’s goal of decriminalizing homelessness.
And not only that, but look:
This is unfair to homeless individuals, business owners, residents and other community stakeholders.
You read it here second, friends! Carol Schatz is concerned that some City law is unfair to homeless people.5 Carol Schatz, the homeless people’s friend! Well, anyway, that line about the proposed law not decriminalizing homelessness is true, at least. Arresting homeless people because they won’t remove their tent and obstruct its removal “…does not meet the City’s goal of decriminalizing homelessness.” After all, it provides a way to arrest people, and only homeless people are affected. So what’s her solution? We are glad you asked! Read on for details: Continue reading Shame, Shame on Carol Schatz: The Zillion Dollar Woman’s Duplicity is Revealed by Propositional Logic Even Though She Just Wants to be Fair to “Homeless Individuals”→
Bill Farrar at the February 18, 2016 meeting of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance.Emails sent to me this evening by CD13 staffer Dan Halden show that as early as February 22, 2016, he and fellow staffer Marisol Rodriguez “had concerns” about the now-defunct plan to have Mitch O’Farrell fund an expansion of BID Patrol hours in Hollywood at the request of the LAPD. A/I vice president Bill Farrar led a lengthy discussion on February 18 at the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Board of Directors meeting in which everyone showed an astonishing amount of enthusiasm for this questionable plan. The emails also show that on or before February 22, Farrar met with LAPD Deputy Chief Bea Girmala, evidently trying to gin up support from her for the plan. It also seems to be implicit in the emails, although not definitively established, that Peter Zarcone’s transfer from Hollywood to 77th Street was not a factor in the decision to kill the plan. You can find some background, a little analysis, and a really bitchin’ picture of Chief Girmala after the break. Continue reading O’Farrell Staff Members Rodriguez and Halden Had “Concerns” About Now-Defunct Plan to Fund Extended BID Patrol Hours, A/I VP Bill Farrar Also Lobbied Deputy Chief Girmala for Support for Plan→
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.
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-based6 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!→
Public urine in Hollywood belongs in a public restroom. But what counts as public?While poking around BID Patrol arrest reports recently obtained from the HPOA by our faithful correspondent, we noticed a weird, repetitive quirk in the ones relating to LAMC 41.47.2, which forbids public urination. The arresting security guards uniformly either ask their victim if he or she knew of the existence of public restrooms close by or else they note in their report that there were public restrooms close by. Now, whenever one finds this kind of textual consistency in police reports it’s possible to be sure of two things. First, there’s some element of the crime that they’re trying to make sure is definitely established. Second, that they’re probably lying. In this case, it was hard to see what element might be related to the proximity of public restrooms. The law doesn’t mention them, and is not subtle in the least:
No person shall urinate or defecate in or upon any public street, sidewalk, alley, plaza, beach, park, public building or other publicly maintained facility or place, or in any place open to the public or exposed to public view, except when using a urinal, toilet or commode located in a restroom, or when using a portable or temporary toilet or other facility designed for the sanitary disposal of human waste and which is enclosed from public view.
But a little googling revealed the explanation, among other interesting things. First, public urination wasn’t against the law in the city of Los Angeles until 2003. We’re guessing that there was no pressing need to make it so because vagrancy laws could be used against public urinators as desired until they were definitively destroyed in 1983.7 So maybe outlawing public urination wasn’t as urgent as, e.g., squashing drinking beer in the park (which was outlawed in LA only in 1983) and also, the LA Times suggested that previously public urinators were charged with littering, but that the City Attorney decided that that was bogus. In any case, the Council file on the matter shows, surprisingly, that it took more than four years to get the prohibition passed into law. There doesn’t seem to have been any public discussion of the matter before it passed, either, although it may be just that the online materials from that long ago are fragmentary.
Second, the LA Times article quoted the objections of members of the Los Angeles Community Action Network and other homeless advocates to a law which criminalized essential bodily functions of the homeless, and in response, after the law was passed, according to the Times, “Council members pledged that people would be prosecuted only in cases when there is a public toilet nearby that they failed to use.” So this is why, no doubt, the BID Patrol feels that it has to note the locations of nearby “public” restrooms in its arrest reports. Their weirdo interpretation of the meaning of “public” also shows why it’s necessary to put things like the “public restrooms available” pledge in the law itself. Actually, once the law is passed, it doesn’t matter what Councilmembers say they meant it to mean, it only matters what it says. This is how the rule of law works in a free society. Also, isn’t it very suspicious but unfortunately not surprising that they put the fuzzy-wuzzy warmsy-hugsy interpretation of the law in the paper but not in the statute books?
And that’s not the worst thing about this nonsense. Even if the City Council intended the law to be enforced this way, even if the freaking Mayor ordered the LAPD only to enforce the law this way, none of that would reign in the BID Patrol. They are essentially beyond the control of public policy and beholden only to the written letter of the law.8 As we’ve discussed before, according to LAPD Commander Andrew Smith, if a citizen’s arrest is made, the LAPD must accept custody of the arrestee even if the arrest was made contrary to public policy.
BID Patrol officer Robert E. Reyes (badge #117, on left) illegally arrested a man in Selma Park in 2008.
We’ve been writing for 6 months now about how the HPOA put up phony signs in Selma Park in Hollywood (illegally) declaring it off-limits to adults unaccompanied by children and how the BID Patrol spent the next eight years falsely arresting people and ejecting them from the park, until we got the signs taken down by the City in September 2015. Kerry Morrison told our faithful correspondent 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)…” Man arrested in 2008 for being in Selma Park without a child.
Well, we’ve been receiving the BID Patrol’s arrest reports and daily activity logs for a while now, and recently we obtained the complete 2008 set (arrests here and daily logs here). We’ve known that Kerry’s claim was wrong for a while now (e.g. see here) and the 2008 materials provide even more evidence that she was misled by Andrews International9regarding their course of conduct in illegally arresting multiple people in the park over the years.
