Photo of RB from a BID Patrol report that seemingly set off the process of getting this man conserved to keep him out of Hollywood.On July 20, 2015, Steve Seyler sent Kerry Morrison an email containing a report on a homeless man whose initials are RB. Seyler stated that RB had not been seen by the BID Patrol for 18 months preceding July 15, 2015. Furthermore, there was an active court order forbidding RB from returning to the Hollywood Entertainment District, and thus the BID Patrol called the LAPD and had him arrested on that date. Four days later, on July 24, 2015, Kerry Morrison wrote to Seyler asking him to have the BID Patrol collect some information on RB because “[t]here is some effort underway to move RB towards a conservatorship.” Kerry doesn’t say whose effort it is, but she’s clearly involved in it and she certainly doesn’t say it’s not her making the effort. BID Patrol officer Mike Coogle
Flash forward to September 2015. On the 15th of that month Seyler emailed Morrison and former LAPD Hollywood Station captain Peter Zarcone discussing RB’s conservatorship hearing, scheduled for September 16, 2015:
Kerry any ideas on who else I can call? We only get one shot at this so I don’t want to waste this chance.
Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, dressed as Neville Chamberlain and performing for tips on Hollywood Blvd, holds up a copy of agreement with HPOA Executive Director Kerry Morrison announcing his willingness to cede control over the Sudetenland Hollywood and Highland to her in exchange for peace in our time.According to an article in today’s Times by Emily Alpert Reyes and Nina Agrawal, the Los Angeles City Council is set to act today1 on Council File 15-0798, opened last June by Mitch O’Farrell and Tom LaBonge, ordering Mike Feuer’s office to write a draft ordinance regulating street characters on Hollywood Boulevard between Highland and Orange.
An angry Hollywood seagull, condemned by Kerry Morrison to shoot blanks.Sometimes we just have to share the weirdness, even if we don’t have the first freaking clue what it means. And, as our faithful readers can attest, there seems to be no real limit to how weird the weirdness can get. Seagull eugenics right here in Hollywood, courtesy of Ms. Kerry Morrison? Why, yes! While grepping around in the Andrews International BID Patrol daily activity logs looking for evidence of another matter entirely,2 we were amazed to come across the following information from November 11, 2014:
IT IS OUR UNDERSTANDING THAT KERRY HAS TRIED TO ERADICATE THE SEAGULLS IN THE HOLLYWOOD AREA BY HIRING AN EXTERMINATOR THAT FED THE SEAGULLS A FORMULA THAT SUPPOSEDLY STERILIZED THE BIRDS.
(See the whole story after the break). There is more discussion of seagulls in a footbeat log from November 12, 2014, including a proposed attempt to fight seagull feeding in Hollywood via restraining orders. However, in the entire nine year span of A/I BID Patrol daily activity logs, these two items are the only mention of seagulls in any context whatsoever. What does it mean? We couldn’t begin to explain. But we will speculate that Kerry Morrison is highly but secretly disappointed that she can’t use the same kind of methods on the human objects of her disdain, such as the street characters at Hollywood and Highland.3 We will also note that forced sterilization of her avian targets is a laudably peaceable solution for the well-armed Ms. Morrison. Continue reading Kerry Morrison, Seagull Eugenicist to the Stars→
Bruce Gillman, LADOT Executive Officer for Communications.Last month we reported on a fascinating situation wherein Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Board member Evan Kaizer didn’t understand the parking laws of the City he purports to be a citizen of, got himself a ticket on Hollywood Boulevard, and instead of just sucking it up and trying, in the future, to follow the freaking parking laws like everyone else he got Kerry Morrison to email freaking Seleta Reynolds, top turtle over at the Los Angeles Department of Transportation4 hinting around that NO FAIR!!
Well, the ticket didn’t get fixed,5 but Kerry Morrison, being the politically adept Machiavellianess that she is, began the process of straw-into-gold spinning for which she’s (justly?) famous when she asked Bruce Gillman, LADOT Communications Boss, about why didn’t food trucks, which, for some reason that we’re sure is clear to her and her theraputic team, she hates with a hatred that surpasseth understanding, get bunches of tickets for parking in the same place all day cause that’s also NO FAIR!!6 That all went down in March, but in his inimitably dogged manner, our faithful correspondent has continued to investigate, and he’s turned up a couple more emails on the subject. In particular, on June 20, 2016, a mere five days ago, Bruce Gillman wrote to Kerry Morrison, saying:
FYI: Regarding the issue of citing food trucks more often, or `escalating fines’ for repeat offender, the LAMC and CA CVC would have to be amended, as they limit citations for vehicles to one ticket per offense, per day. Looping in our Chief and Deputy Chief of Parking Enforcement: Greg Savelli and Brian Hale respectively.
A heavily armed Kerry Morrison: HPOA gun worship personified.With recent events in this country7reinvigorating the national debate over gun control, we thought it was an opportune time to present this singularly weird email from Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Executive Director Kerry Morrison to the members of the Joint Security Committee inviting them to join her out at the Andrews International Training Center in Burbank to try out the Firearms Training Simulator, pop off a few rounds at the shooting range, and eat some sandwiches provided by Andrews International catering director and senior vice president Bill Farrar. Bill Farrar at the February 18, 2016 meeting of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, contemplating sandwich recipes. As another height-challenged militaristic delusional psychopath once said, “an army marches on its stomach.”According to Kerry Morrison, she’s gone out there to shoot multiple times, and evidently wants to share this “very humbling” experience with her compatriots on the Joint Security Committee.8 We know it sounds made up, but the text does not lie, friends:
For some time we’ve promised you an opportunity to visit the Andrews International training facility in Burbank where they have a shooting range and a FATS simulator. FATS stands for Fire Arms Training Simulator, and it presents a realistic training experience. I’ve tried this a couple times and it is very humbling and helps us all appreciate the split second judgements that must be made by law enforcement.
If any of you would like to participate, we are going to venture up to their facility next Wednesday, February 19 at 11 a.m. Bill Farrar will bring in sandwiches and everyone will have an opportunity to experience both FATS and the shooting range, if you would like. We should be ready to return to Hollywood by 1:30-2 pm.
Please RSVP to me by Monday afternoon so we can plan for food. I will also send out address and parking instructions next week.
Selma Park was the scene of the BID Patrol’s greatest crimes, or at least the greatest which have come to light. What else is there that they’re trying so very hard to keep secret?You can watch here as the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance at its June 16, 2016 Board meeting, approves a completely rewritten contract with Andrews International, its security subcontractor, which runs the BID Patrol in Hollywood. I’m not going to bother to transcribe it, but you should take a look. It features John Tronson talking for approximately 90 seconds about changes in the HPOA’s contract with A/I. He mentions logos on cars, logos on uniforms, and if you blinked, you’d miss the ten seconds where he talks about ownership of work product, but that’s the key thing.
Joseph Gunn, executive director of the Los Angeles Police Commission in 1999.In the City of Los Angeles, private security patrols that operate on the public streets or sidewalks are required by LAMC 52.34 to register with the Police Commission and to satisfy a number of other requirements. I discovered a couple weeks ago that no BID Patrols are registered (and they routinely violate a number of the other requirements). In that same post I traced the issue back to Council File 99-0355. Part of the approved motion that initiated that file was this:
FURTHER MOVE that the City Ccl request the Police Commission to cease their enforcement against the City’s Downtown Center BID and its private patrol service, and any other BIDs until this matter has been reviewed by the City Ccl.
This at least seems to explain a temporary pause in enforcement, although not a policy-based reason never to enforce the registration requirement and the other regulations.
Furthermore, even a trip to the City Archives to copy the whole file left me lacking a definitive answer to the question of why no BID security provider was registered with the Police Commission. Also, I reported last week that no one in the City, either at the Police Commission or elsewhere, seemed to have a firm idea about why this was. 100 W. First Street. And isn’t this a lovely visual metaphor for the City government of Los Angeles?
Well, last week the incredibly helpful Richard Tefank pulled a bunch of old Police Commission minutes out of storage for me and last Thursday I went over to 100 W. First Street to take a look at them. Most of the material was also in the Council file, but there were a couple new items that, while they don’t explain dispositively what happened, they suggest a likely hypothesis. Also, if this hypothesis is correct, it’s pretty clear that BID Patrols really ought to be registered and, furthermore, that the Police Commission has the right to investigate and regulate them. Continue reading Newly Obtained Documents Suggest A Tentative Hypothesis on Why BID Patrols Aren’t Registered with the Los Angeles Police Commission and Why They Ought to Be→
This man, who is not Kerry Morrison’s buddy and who’s not starring in her documentary and who never took luncheon with her, was arrested 10 times and warned twice by the BID Patrol in 2008.You may have seen the news elsewhere that Kerry Morrison was granted a Stanton Fellowship by the Los-Angeles-based Durfee Foundation. I’ve refrained from writing about it here because it struck me as more of a private matter. However, in February Kerry Morrison sent an email to Dan Halden of CD13 with her application attached. This put it on the public record and made comments on it of public interest, and it turns out to shed a great deal of light on otherwise mysterious goings-on at the BID Patrol.
So here is a copy of Kerry Morrison’s Stanton Fellowship application. This is an exceedingly rich document, and you’re reading the first of what I expect to be many, many posts about it. It’s well worth the time it’ll take you to read the whole thing, though, because it’s even weirder than you’re thinking it might be. This man, who is Kerry Morrison’s buddy and who is starring in her documentary and who did take luncheon with her, was arrested 4 times and warned innumerable times by the BID Patrol in 2008.Anyway, in her application, as part of her plan to fix what she sees as flaws in the mental health care system vis-a-vis homelessness, she plans to:
Tell the story. I have been collecting photos, videos, notes from interviews and observations now dating back to 2008. With the permission of my three friends, and possibly other [sic], I see the potential to create a documentary that will weave the human story around the policy, systems and community cultural change necessary to embrace the needs of these individuals. Create a documentary to tell their story and show the before and after.
