Category Archives: Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Los Angeles City Council, Street Vending

Donald Trump’s Election Inspires City of Los Angeles To Finally Move Forward With Long-Delayed Street Vending Legalization Despite BIDs’ Irrational Opposition. Street Vendors To Pay BIDs An Operations Fee. BIDs To Get Effective Veto Power Over Vending Within Their Boundaries.

November 23, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Aren't you glad I didn't put a picture of freaking Donald Trump here?! Not that Joe Buscaino is less ethically challenged, but at least his hair is prettier... — Aren’t you glad I didn’t put a picture of freaking Donald Trump here?! Not that Joe Buscaino is less ethically challenged, but at least his hair is prettier…

I know the headline sounds like a joke, but it’s not. The L.A. Times reported on it this morning, although their article, as is their wont, did not mention business improvement districts at all, and, at least briefly, I thought they were kidding. But this is the Los Angeles City Council we’re talking about, and they were not. Huizar and Price first made a motion to legalize street vending in November 2013, three years ago, and, over the last three years we have been subjected to an endless stream of hysterical, mendacious, probably illegal, lobbying by the BIDs and their ideological allies against the very idea. They even managed to get the Times itself to accept their misbegotten point of view as somehow legitimate. In response to this outpouring of unregistered lobbying behavior,¹ the City Council essentially responded by ignoring the issue,² as you can see from the council file, which has no official City action since October 2015, until yesterday, when Curren Price and Joe Buscaino slapped this little number on the table. It’s a letter, which does indeed refer, albeit obliquely, to Darth Cheeto himself:³
Despite the undeniable division and polarization that exists in our country right now, there is one common characteristic that is shared by Americans of every gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, immigration status and political party: our entrepreneurial spirit. We value the notion that everyone deserves the opportunity to start a small business, on a level playing field, with failure or success determined by our own talent, hard work, and perseverance. At an early age. we teach our children concepts like overhead, profit, and loss by encouraging them to sell Girl Scout Cookies, candy bars, and lemonade. Yet, if they sell any of those on a public sidewalk in Los Angeles, they are committing a crime of the same seriousness as drunk driving.

They go on to urge the Council to go ahead and legalize street vending because otherwise Trump has already won, and I can’t say that I disagree:

Recent talks about changes to our nation’s immigration policy, including threats to deport millions of undocumented immigrants – starting with those with criminal records – has created significant fear amongst our immigrant communities. Continuing to impose criminal misdemeanor penalties for vending disproportionately affects, and unfairly punishes, undocumented immigrants, and could potentially put them at risk for deportation.

Furthermore, Buscaino and Price claim that:

The core question the Council must answer is whether sidewalk vending poses a threat so grave to public health, safety, and welfare that it is worth continuing to expend limited police and prosecutorial resources enforcing a citywide ban.

Which is also reasonable, but read a little deeper in the letter and you can see the fingerprints of the BIDs all over the damned thing. And, as usual, their input makes a lie of the whole thing. The BIDs’ version, which is the version that will be passed, is going to require the same amount if not more of our “limited police and prosecutorial resources” to enforce.
Continue reading →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Kerry Morrison’s Ruinously Expensive Obsessions With Homeless Outreach And Guns Cause Severe Cutbacks In BID Patrol Service Even As Expenditures Go Up, Up, Up — HPOA/CHC Books Cooked In 2015 To Obscure This Trend — Time For An Intervention!

November 17, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Kerry Morrison at the Central Hollywood Coalition board meeting on November 8, 2016.

Watch and listen here¹ to an interminable discussion at last Tuesday’s meeting of the Board of Directors of the Central Hollywood Coalition² about how to pay the increasing cost of the armed BID Patrol while, at the same time, maintaining or expanding dedicated “homeless outreach” services, also provided by Andrews International. In particular, staff is asking the board to approve a 5% increase in the A/I budget for next year to cover salary increases and so on.

Here are some numbers. A/I pays its BID Patrol officers $31.50 an hour.³ Almost certainly the BID is paying A/I significantly more than that. Also note that base pay for A/I unarmed officers is $13 per hour. In other words, armed officers cost about 2.5 times as much as unarmed officers. If A/I’s markup to the BID is a percentage of its HR costs then this ratio will hold constant regardless of what the BID is actually paying.⁴ Now, most BIDs in the City of Los Angeles do not have armed security. In fact, as far as I can tell, the two HPOA BIDs run by Kerry Morrison are the only BIDs that do.⁵ We have written before about Kerry Morrison’s disturbing and utterly disproportionate love of guns, and that’s probably enough to explain her insistence on armed security despite the high cost.⁶ And the cost is very high. According to the Sunset & Vine BID’s 2015 independent audit, the BID paid $805,608 for security out of total annual expenditures of $1,542,735.⁷

And what do they get for that? It’s explained in this exchange from last week‘s meeting.⁸ It’s essentially four dedicated officers per fourteen hour day, backed up by officers from the Hollywood Entertainment District, with slightly less on Sundays. Assuming 8 hour days, and not adjusting for Sundays, this is 11,648 hours per year.⁹ Dividing this into the 2015 security expenditure yields a rate of $69.16. The 2013 contract between A/I and the HPOA gives the markup rate as 82% for BID patrol officers and 55% for supervisors, so this is roughly consistent with a base hourly rate of $31.50.¹⁰ Continue reading Kerry Morrison’s Ruinously Expensive Obsessions With Homeless Outreach And Guns Cause Severe Cutbacks In BID Patrol Service Even As Expenditures Go Up, Up, Up — HPOA/CHC Books Cooked In 2015 To Obscure This Trend — Time For An Intervention! →

Announcements, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

The Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Domain Has Expired And Is Parked At Godaddy And We Are Gaining Even More Internet Credibilities Over The Poor Sad Little BID Peoples Of The Hollywood Property Owners Alliance!

November 6, 2016 Trina Leave a comment

Screenshots or it did not happen!! Friends, this is what it looks like to be a loser on the Internets! It is bad enough that you even register your domain with Godaddy, but if you let it expire and get parked for all the world to see?! Losers! Losers squared!! Losers to the power of n, friends!!!

Good morning, friends!! It has been almost exactly two months since last I wrote to you with technical-geek-news about the successes and winnerousness of your heroes here at MK.org relative to the failures and loserosity of your zeroes over there at the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance. Well, things are going from bad for them to worse for them and from better for us to really really exceedingly better for us!

First of all, they have let their domain expire! See it parked at Godaddy in the screenshot above. Now, this is probably not a permanent situation. Indeed, their whois record from this morning shows that the domain was renewed yesterday, and I suppose it will once again point at their website as soon as the DNS records propagate. However, things must be all falling to pieces over there for this even to have happened. Kerry Morrison has long been the kind of leader about whom even her detractors will concede that she will keep the metaphorical trains running on time, and keeping a domain name registered is one of the simplest trains of all. Is there not autorenewal at Godaddy? Did someone let their credit card expire? Enquiring minds wanna to know!¹ Of course, even without evidence we are happy to take credit for this lapse and any other chaos they may be experiencing over there at their secret headquarters. They are like those little bugs that scurry all about when their subterranean antics are exposed to public view by having their rock lifted up by curious students of slimy undergrounditude!

And as long as I am writing about this domain name expiry drama, I thought I would take another look at their Alexa rankings in relation to our Alexa rankings. You may recall that two months ago they were doing badly and we were doing betterly. In particular, they were at 682,470 in the U.S. and we were at 657,525. Furthermore, we were at 4,630,498 in the world.² Well, now check it out!
Continue reading The Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Domain Has Expired And Is Parked At Godaddy And We Are Gaining Even More Internet Credibilities Over The Poor Sad Little BID Peoples Of The Hollywood Property Owners Alliance! →

Announcements, Featured, Hollywood BID Patrol, Los Angeles City Government

VICTORY!! All Los Angeles BID Security Patrols To Register With Police Commission Per City Attorney, BID Patrol Excessive Force Complaint Under Investigation By LAPD; Direct Result of MK.Org Reporting!

October 5, 2016 Mike 2 Comments

Earlier this afternoon I spoke with Ernesto Vicencio, who is an LAPD investigator assigned to the Police Commission. He told me that the City Attorney either has sent or will soon send a letter to all Los Angeles Business Improvement Districts informing them that their security patrols are required to register with the Los Angeles Police Commission per LAMC 52.34.

This incredibly welcome development is a direct result of my discovery in the Summer of 2016 that it was likely that BID security registration had inadvertently ceased in 2000 due to an oversight. I don’t believe I mentioned it at the time, but in addition to writing a number of posts on the subject, I also sent a petition to the Police Commission asking them to look into the matter and to conclude that BID security ought in fact to register with them.

According to Officer Vicencio the City Attorney has decided to implement this request.¹ This development is hugely important, not least because LAMC 52.34 requires private patrol services to have a procedure for investigating citizen complaints. It also grants the Police Commission a great deal of regulatory power over the activities of security patrols who are required to register.

Which brings us to the second stunning and absolutely unexpected thing that Officer Vicencio told me. You may recall that I recently reported on what seemed like a clear use of excessive force by members of the Andrews International Hollywood BID Patrol. Well, about three weeks ago I submitted a report on this matter to Kerry Morrison of the HPOA and also to the Police Commission, as instructed by the Commission’s executive director, Richard Tefank.

Today Vicencio told me that he is handling this matter. He has tried, without success so far, to locate the victim, and he is going to investigate further. Obviously there’s no guarantee that any of these officers will suffer any consequences,² but again, the larger implications of the fact that they’re being investigated by the City are huge. This means that the Police Commission agrees that they have jurisdiction over citizen complaints against BID security. This changes everything.
Continue reading VICTORY!! All Los Angeles BID Security Patrols To Register With Police Commission Per City Attorney, BID Patrol Excessive Force Complaint Under Investigation By LAPD; Direct Result of MK.Org Reporting! →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

Department Of Deja Voodoo! Tour Bus Wars Redux! Also, How Kerry Morrison Sowed Crazy Beans Which Fell On The Fertile Ground Of What Passes For The Mind Of Tony Hoover, Delusional Founder of Red Line Tours, And Grew Into A Mighty Sequoia Of Insanity!

September 25, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Crazy here, crazy there, sow some crazy everywhere! Kerry Morrison distributing anti-tour-bus crazy beans in 2012.

The text for this morning’s sermon, brothers and sisters, is from the Gospel of Thomas:¹
Listen! A sower went out to sow. He filled his hand and cast the seed. Some fell on the road; the birds came and ate the seed. Others fell on the rock, sprouted, and dried up. And others fell on the thorns, which choked them and insects ate them. And others fell on the fertile ground of freaking Tony Hoover, founder of freaking Red Line Tours, and multiplied a freaking zillionfold into a veritable magic freaking beanstalk of crazy.

Well, the disciples of Jesus also didn’t get what he was talking about, so I guess I shouldn’t feel bad about having to fill in some backstory.

See, last week, according to the Beverly Press, Councilmoppet Mitch O’Farrell announced that he and now-retired-from-his-position-as-clean-government-poster-boy-but-still-active-as-Councilmember-more’s-the-freaking-pity David Ryu of CD4 had introduced a motion in Council to put an end to what they claim to see as the desperate, wanton, willful, and ongoing destruction of what passes for the quality of life of people who actually live in Hollywood by tour bus operators on the Boulevard, mostly between Orange and Vine. It’s something about how they try to hand you flyers and ask you where you’re from even though you are obviously from Los Angeles.²

I'm just kind of tired of looking at Mitch and Kerry for now, so here's David. Isn't it sad that a mere fourteen months ago he took office with all kinds of promises of transparency and clean government and now he is being quoted in in actual lawsuits against the City of Los Angeles as evidence for the inherent corruption and amorality of City Council? — I’m just kind of tired of looking at Mitch and Kerry for now, so here’s David. Isn’t it sad that a mere fourteen months ago he took office with all kinds of promises of transparency and clean government and now he is being quoted in in actual lawsuits against the City of Los Angeles as evidence for the inherent corruption and amorality of City Council?

Well, if you’ve been paying attention to this blog at all, you will immediately suspect that (a) neither Mitch O’Farrell nor David Ryu give the first flying fuck about tour buses on Hollywood Boulevard and (b) they are channeling the concerns of that master covert lobbyist and famously blue-nosed Mrs. Grundy whose nom de Hollywood is Ms. Kerry Morrison.³ Kerry Morrison is, as is her wont, concerned about what she calls “civility on the public right of way” and the rest of us call “killing off or at least arresting everyone who scares her or doesn’t have a lot of money.”

I have not yet had time to track down records pertaining to the current incarnation of Kerry Morrison’s obsession with tour buses.⁴ But the story in the paper reminded me that I had a bunch of unprocessed material from the City Attorney from 2012 on this very subject. So I put that all together and put it up on the Archive (as well as locally if you prefer), where you can read it at will. It concerns a so-called “Tour Bus Working Group,” put together by Kerry Morrison and including the usual representatives of the City and the Hollywood zillionaire elite.

It’s mostly not that interesting, although there is evidence there that Kerry Morrison has been obsessed with tour buses for the entire twenty years that she’s been the Hollywood BID-boss.⁵ It culminated in November 2012 with a report to Eric Garcetti and Tom LaBonge about what should be done about tour buses⁶ and an ordinance addressing a tiny part of her concerns, written, of course, by LaBonge and Garcetti. However, there is one shining gem of craziness, written by Tony Hoover, self-proclaimed “founder” of Red Line Tours. That, I have to discuss in detail!
Continue reading Department Of Deja Voodoo! Tour Bus Wars Redux! Also, How Kerry Morrison Sowed Crazy Beans Which Fell On The Fertile Ground Of What Passes For The Mind Of Tony Hoover, Delusional Founder of Red Line Tours, And Grew Into A Mighty Sequoia Of Insanity! →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

The Homeless Industrial Complex: How CIM Group, Monica Yamada, Kerry Morrison, Steve Seyler, And Their Assorted Minions And Cronies Eat What They Kill In Hollywood And Beyond

September 23, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Monica Yamada, president of the HPOA and principal of the organized criminal conspiracy known as the CIM Group, plotting with unindicted co-conspirators late last week.

This morning’s L.A. Times features an excellent story about how CIM Group defrauds its tenants in poverty-stricken but gentrifying areas of the City, telling them that they’re about to be evicted and offering them small amounts of money to sign releases. Of course, in Los Angeles, most low-cost rental units are covered by rent control laws which give these tenants significant protections which they don’t know about. CIM Group takes significant and soon-to-be-illegal advantage of this ignorance.

CIM Group is famous for its criminal behavior, which has shown no sign of slowing down.¹ This latest revelation won’t surprise anyone who’s paying attention. And remember that gentrification creates homelessness, and evictions create homelessness. In short, CIM Group creates homelessness. Monica Yamada creates homelessness. And they make a lot of money by making people homeless.

But these homeless people don’t go to waste, no. Some of them end up in Hollywood, where they generate a great deal of economic activity. They don’t share in the wealth they create, but that’s no surprise. First, they end up as the the subject of arrests and other interventions by Steve Seyler and his cheerful gang of good-will ambassadors. Those boys² earn $1.5 million per year dealing with these homeless people. No homeless people, no $1.5 million.
Continue reading The Homeless Industrial Complex: How CIM Group, Monica Yamada, Kerry Morrison, Steve Seyler, And Their Assorted Minions And Cronies Eat What They Kill In Hollywood And Beyond →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

“We Save Lives Out Here, We Don’t Harass Lives!” The Heavily Armed Self-Proclaimed Mother Teresa of Hollywood, Ms. Kerry Morrison, Flips Out About “Concerning” LA Times Editorial, Proposes to Head Over To First And Spring And Teach That Editorial Board A Lesson!

September 17, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Brigadier General Kerry Morrison using her brand-new dry-erase map of Hollywood to plot further invasions, conquests, and occupations-by-force-of-arms.

Remember this editorial in the L.A. Times about the Venice Beach BID? I posted on it a couple weeks ago because whoever wrote it¹ took City Attorney spokesman Rob Wilcox at his unsupported and unsupportable word that BID security somehow wasn’t allowed to arrest people for sitting on the sidewalk in violation of the despicable LAMC 41.18(d). Well, anyway, evidently “Two-gun” Kerry Morrison of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance read an editorial with the same title but, perhaps because her copy of the paper comes from Bizarro World, radically different content. The one I read said, quite sensibly:

We’re glad that property owners around Venice Beach care about their community and that they’re willing to pay extra to improve the neighborhood. But when it comes to the homeless, they must decide whether they want to be part of the solution or part of the problem. If the ambassadors are going to constitute a de facto private security force, their job should not be to hassle the homeless in an effort to move them pointlessly from corner to corner or to push them out of the neighborhood so that they become another jurisdiction’s problem.

So watch and listen here to HPOA Executive Director Ms. Kerry Morrison’s cri de coeur about how UNFAIR this is to her and her heavily armed BID Patrol buddies!! Or if you prefer, as always, there’s a transcription after the break. And she said:

There was a very concerning editorial in the L.A. Times two weeks ago. … And what’s concerning about it is that it kind of suggests that when BIDs get involved in addressing homeless issues that it’s basically a harassment mindset.
Continue reading “We Save Lives Out Here, We Don’t Harass Lives!” The Heavily Armed Self-Proclaimed Mother Teresa of Hollywood, Ms. Kerry Morrison, Flips Out About “Concerning” LA Times Editorial, Proposes to Head Over To First And Spring And Teach That Editorial Board A Lesson! →

Announcements, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

We Are Not Only Winning IRL, We Are Also Winning On The Internet!! MichaelKohlhaas.Org Surpasses Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Website In Popularity in U.S.!!!

September 4, 2016 Trina 2 Comments

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:21.

Greetings, friends on the internet!! I do a lot of work behind the scenes here at MK.org but this is my first post. I do not plan to make a habit of it.

I do not know if you know about Alexa.Com. They are the premier website ranking service, and if you care you can read all about it on Wikipedia. This week, for the first time, the Alexa ranking of your heroes, MichaelKohlhaas.org, surpassed the Alexa ranking of your zeroes, the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance at OnlyInHollywood.Org.¹ We are number 657,525 in the U.S. and they are number 682,470. Here are live links and screenshots:²

Alexa rank for MichaelKohlhaas.Org. It is 657,525 in the U.S. at this writing. Here is a screenshot.
Alexa rank for OnlyInHollywood.Org. It is 682,470 in the U.S. at this writing. Here is a screenshot.

How clever we are! Oh, the cleverness of we!

To put this in some context, an internet random who can create a plausible appearance of competence³ once opined on Quora that there are about 378 million websites in the U.S. So the HPOA and we are both in the top 0.2%. Clearly, though, the American people are beginning to see business improvement districts for the politically corrupt criminal conspiracies that they are, and they are learning the details right here on this website! Also notice that we are going up up up and they are going down down down!!⁴ To paraphrase our hero, Peter Pan, How clever we are! Oh, the cleverness of we!

That is the fabulous news!! And you can read below the fold for a discussion of our world rankings and more jokes about Nazis and BIDs.
Continue reading We Are Not Only Winning IRL, We Are Also Winning On The Internet!! MichaelKohlhaas.Org Surpasses Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Website In Popularity in U.S.!!! →

Hollywood BID Patrol

Evidently CD11 Staff Is Telling Concerned Constituents That BID Patrol Security Guards Cannot Touch People At All. That They Cannot Do Anything That You Or I Could Not Do. The Second Claim Unfortunately Is True. The First Is False. We Have Proof.

August 27, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

One of over three hundred people arrested, shackled, and physically transported by the Hollywood BID Patrol in 2015.

According to a recent post on Facebook, Mike Bonin’s Venice Field Deputy Taylor Bazley is telling concerned constituents that¹ they [the BID Patrol] cannot touch people at all. He said “They can not do anything that you or I could not do. They just alert police. That’s all.”

The second claim, that BID security cannot do anything that any private person can’t do, is true, but it doesn’t make the point that Taylor Bazley wants it to make. California has one of the most weirdly expansive citizens’ arrest statutes (PC 837 et seq.) in the known universe. A lawyer of my acquaintance once said² that it essentially authorizes fricking Batman. So actually, you yourself can physically restrain people with handcuffs if they e.g. sit on the sidewalk in your presence.³

Sorry, Taylor. You're cute, but you're wrong. — Sorry, Taylor. You’re cute, but you’re wrong.

But Taylor Bazley’s attributed claim that BID security can’t arrest people is just wrong. The Hollywood BID Patrol, run by Andrews International Security, has made physical custodial arrests of far more than 10,000 people since they began their work here in 2007. In 2013 they made more than 1% of the arrests in the entire City of Los Angeles. You can watch videos of their arrests, read arrest reports and daily logs, and even look at photos of the people they’ve arrested:
Continue reading →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

Peter Zarcone and Kerry Morrison Conspire Not To Enforce CUP Conditions Against BID-Approved Venues for November 2015 BID-Sponsored Music Festival In Stark Hypocritical Contrast To Their Overzealous Hyperenforcement Against Minority-Serving Venues in Hollywood

August 24, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

A newly shaven Peter Zarcone in April 2015. — A newly shaven Peter Zarcone in April 2015 just as his joint vendetta with the BIDs against nightclubs in Hollywood took off.

Recall that in April 2015 the two HPOA BIDs, the LAPD, and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce revealed an ongoing conspiracy to shut down minority-serving entertainment venues in Hollywood. Their favored technique for doing this is hyperenforcement of Conditional Use Permits (CUPs). These documents contain numerous restrictions on the operations of bars, restaurants, and so on. Violating these conditions while operating is actually a crime, and owners and employees of venues can be arrested for doing so. This actually happens, e.g. in the shameful case of the Rusty Mullet. Keep that in mind. The LAPD can physically arrest restaurant employees for violations of the CUP. It can also shut the venue down immediately if the CUP is being violated.

Now, in November 2015, eight months after the BID and Zarcone began targeting nightclubs and bars that they didn’t like,¹ the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance sponsored a music festival centered around Cahuenga Boulevard between Hollywood and Selma, notably the most caucasian micro-neighborhood in Hollywood-nightlife-land. Thus, on September 9, 2015, Kerry Morrison wrote to LAPD and CD13:

This festival is intended to present a neighborhood “night-life” experience in Hollywood. We are trying to change the image of Hollywood by celebrating the authentic music and artistic options that are here. As such, the BID is “curating” over four days/nights dozens of different musical experiences, acts, pop-up art shows, comedy, etc — and inviting the public in to experience Hollywood as a walkable neighborhood. … The activity is largely going to be centered around Selma and Cahuenga — very little will happen on Hollywood Blvd.

By the way, this statement is full of dog whistles. Note the contrast between putatively authentic music and whatever kind of music they play on Hollywood Blvd. (hint: white:authentic :: ??:Hollywood Blvd. music) Note the scare quotes around “night-life,” and so on. But that’s not all:
Continue reading Peter Zarcone and Kerry Morrison Conspire Not To Enforce CUP Conditions Against BID-Approved Venues for November 2015 BID-Sponsored Music Festival In Stark Hypocritical Contrast To Their Overzealous Hyperenforcement Against Minority-Serving Venues in Hollywood →