Category Archives: Hypocrisy

Steve Seyler is “a Little Fuzzy on the Criteria for Laura’s Law,” Advocates for the Forcible Psychiatric Treatment of Homeless People Because it’d Be “Great for the Quality of Life” of the BID Patrol…Wait. What?

July 6, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Steve Seyler in 2014 looking a little fuzzy.

I reported yesterday that BID Patrol Director Steve Seyler had assisted Kerry Morrison in securing evidence to be used in conservatorship hearings against a Hollywood homeless man. However, the bulk of Seyler’s amateurish mental health investigations are related to Laura’s Law, which allows for forcible outpatient treatment of people with serious mental illness and a history of noncompliance with doctors’ orders. Not that he bothered to read or understand the law first. In August 2015, in an email accompanying yet another report to the LAPD about a Laura’s Law candidate, Seyler stated that he was “a little fuzzy on the criteria for Laura’s Law so please advise…”

In fact, Seyler is much more than “a little fuzzy.” In that same email, with reference to the person, RM, who he’s reporting, Seyler states:

It would also be great for the quality of life of all concerned to get him into a program as he causes a huge amount of disruption and many calls for service. He is a burden on BID Security, the LAPD, Paramedics, hospitals etc.

I know the criteria for Laura’s Law are a little hard to follow, Steve, but here’s a clue: There isn’t a law in this country that authorizes forcible involuntary medical treatment because it would be convenient for a bunch of security guards. It’s just never going to happen that a law would allow that. If the guy is a burden on BID Security, maybe BID Security should consider giving up the pretense that they’re some kind of a social service agency and go back to doing the kind of security guard stuff that the law allows them to do, which, by the way, is emphatically not doing psychiatric evaluations.¹

There isn’t a law in this country that authorizes forcible involuntary medical treatment for the convenience of the police either. We just don’t lock people up or force pills down their throats because it makes the lives of cops easier. The fact that this kind of nonsense even seems plausible to Seyler is yet another reason why he ought to stick to security-guarding and leave the social work to the licensed professionals.

And it’s not just in this one case that Seyler is confused. He’s confused throughout. Turn the page for a list of the actual criteria for using Laura’s Law to force psychiatric treatment on people and another example of how badly and how dangerously Steve Seyler and HPOA executive director Kerry Morrison misunderstand and seek to abuse this law.
Continue reading Steve Seyler is “a Little Fuzzy on the Criteria for Laura’s Law,” Advocates for the Forcible Psychiatric Treatment of Homeless People Because it’d Be “Great for the Quality of Life” of the BID Patrol…Wait. What? →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

It Appears that Kerry Morrison, HPOA, BID Patrol Instituted Conservatorship Proceedings Against Homeless Man Solely to Thwart his Return to Hollywood

July 5, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

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.

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.

According to a daily activity log filed on the 15th by BID Patrol officer Mike Coogle, he was asked by Steve Seyler to attend the hearing. According to Coogle’s log for the 16th he actually did attend the hearing, and RB was conserved. It’s worth reading his account of the hearing, which also appears after the break. And see how suspicious the timing is?
Continue reading It Appears that Kerry Morrison, HPOA, BID Patrol Instituted Conservatorship Proceedings Against Homeless Man Solely to Thwart his Return to Hollywood →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

New Chapter in Street Character Wars Begins Today as City Council Will, in Futile Attempt to Appease the Inappeasable Kerry Morrison, Set the Stage for More Huge Tax-Funded Payouts to Carol Sobel

June 29, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Councilmember Mitch O'Farrell holds up 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. — 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.

Of course, this is a direct response to Hollywood Property Owners Alliance ED Kerry Morrison, who’s been obsessing about this issue for decades now, even to the point of bullying City officials and entering into crazed cross-continental conspiracies. The City last cracked down on street performance at the behest of Ms. Kerry Morrison in 2010, leading to a federal lawsuit filed in August of that year by the incomparable Carol Sobel. The initial complaint was followed a mere two months later by a restraining order against the City of Los Angeles and, four months after that, a payout of $100,000 in damages and fees to the street characters and Carol Sobel, who has continued to make well-earned megabucks from the idiocy of the City of Los Angeles.
Continue reading New Chapter in Street Character Wars Begins Today as City Council Will, in Futile Attempt to Appease the Inappeasable Kerry Morrison, Set the Stage for More Huge Tax-Funded Payouts to Carol Sobel →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

HPOA Meter-Feeding Enforcement Tantrum Spirals Upwards to Conceptual Exploration of Rewriting Major Parts of Long-Settled City, State Law to Allow Kerry Morrison to Attack Food Trucks More Effectively

June 25, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

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 Transportation¹ hinting around that NO FAIR!!

Well, the ticket didn’t get fixed,² 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!!³ 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.

Continue reading HPOA Meter-Feeding Enforcement Tantrum Spirals Upwards to Conceptual Exploration of Rewriting Major Parts of Long-Settled City, State Law to Allow Kerry Morrison to Attack Food Trucks More Effectively →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

Kerry Morrison’s Homeless “Buddy” and Star of her Upcoming “Documentary” Apparently Received Special Treatment at Hands of BID Patrol in 2008

June 18, 2016 Mike 2 Comments

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. — 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.

Her “three friends” are homeless men that she and her friends in business-oriented astroturf homeless services front group Hollywood 4WRD helped in various ways.¹ A careful analysis of the Andrews International BID Patrol 2008 arrest reports and the 2008 daily activity logs that at least one of these three, whom Kerry Morrison calls “my buddy,” was accorded a free pass by the BID Patrol, being given innumerable warnings for violations for which his peers who weren’t the object of Kerry Morrison’s special interest were routinely arrested.
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Featured, Hypocrisy, Miscellaneous

How to Destroy a Business Improvement District in California: A Theory

June 14, 2016 Mike 3 Comments

This would be an effective, emotionally satisfying, and poetically just way to get rid of business improvement districts, but I'm hoping for something a little more environmentally friendly. — This would be an effective, emotionally satisfying, and poetically just way to get rid of business improvement districts, but I’m hoping for something a little more environmentally friendly.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not a lawyer. But I’m friends with some lawyers. More than zero of them did not laugh out loud at the idea you’re about to read. That’s all I got.

Business improvement districts in California are made possible by the Property & Business Improvement District Law of 1994.¹ It’s worth reading, or at least skimming through, because there’s gold in them thar hills! For instance, consider Section 36670(a)(1), which states:

36670.(a) Any district established or extended pursuant to the provisions of this part … may be disestablished by resolution by the city council in either of the following circumstances:

(1) If the city council finds there has been misappropriation of funds, malfeasance, or a violation of law in connection with the management of the district, it shall notice a hearing on disestablishment.

Do you see the potential in that statement? The fact that it’s a tool for laying waste the BIDs of Los Angeles like so many Philistines? It’s a little hard to understand statutes, but here’s a clue: when they say “shall” they mean “must,” not “can.” Now turn the page to find out why this little statute, if not more powerful than Doug Henning and his sparkly rainbow suspenders as pictured above, is possibly as effective a BID repellent but much, much more emotionally satisfying than mere poofsly-woofsly magical annihilation.
Continue reading How to Destroy a Business Improvement District in California: A Theory →

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 7,¹ 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.² 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 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 “…eschews¹ 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 Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

Kerry Morrison Goes Straight to LADOT Boss in Attempt to Fix Parking Tickets for Board Members, Admits to Habitually Flouting City Parking Laws, Whines About Food Trucks Being Subject to the Same Laws as Everyone Else

May 25, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Seleta Reynolds, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and the very first person you should email ( seleta.reynolds@lacity.org) if you get a parking ticket on Hollywood Boulevard. — Seleta Reynolds, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and the very first person you should email if you get a parking ticket on Hollywood Boulevard: `seleta.reynolds@lacity.org`

What would you do if you got a parking ticket for feeding the meter on Hollywood Boulevard? Pay it? Complain about it to your friends? Yell at the parking enforcement person? Not if you’re Evan Kaizer, President and CEO of the Sieroty Company! In that case you get your personal lobbyist and shill, Kerry Morrison, to email the freaking chief executive of LADOT, Seleta Reynolds, to complain on your behalf,¹ hinting in her most inimitable manner that NO FAIR!!!!

Hi Seleta — it’s been awhile, [sic] but I thought I’d go straight to the top to find out who I can talk to for some information I can share with our community.

We recently moved into the middle of Hollywood Blvd — into a retail storefront. I hope you can stop by and see us sometime! We call this the “mid-BID”² — and it’s the section of the Boulevard that still suffers from the doldrums.³

That said, we have a lot of meetings in our office, and in the past several of weeks, [sic] we’ve had a couple of people get tickets for parking at a meter beyond the two hour timeframe. In these two cases, the person ran out to put a few more quarters in the meter to buy some time, and when they went out, there was a ticket for violating the two hour time. (So, it was not an expired meter.)⁴
Well, the big news here is not that zillionaires don’t know that meter feeding is illegal. Even a lot of non-zillionaires don’t know.⁵ The big news is not even that zillionaires are too cheap to park around back on Schrader or Cherokee for $10 like everyone else who’s going to hang around the Boulevard for more than two hours or that they’re too cheap to get their zillionaires’ club, the HPOA, to freaking validate parking for them. The big news is not even that Kerry Morrison somehow thinks it’s OK to involve the freaking General Manager of the freaking Los Angeles Freaking Department of Transportation in a freaking PARKING TICKET problem; zillionaires naturally think their problems are so sensitive and important that they can only be handled by the boss.

The big news, friends, is that Seleta Reynolds actually did handle the complaint. She instructed her subordinate, Bruce Gillman, to write to Kerry and smooth the ruffled feathers and so on. The tickets didn’t get fixed, and we suppose that marks some progress for this formerly corrupt city of ours, but emails were exchanged for over a month on the subject. How many parking ticket complaints made by non-zillionaires get that kind of sustained attention, we wonder. From now on, we’re writing to Seleta with all our parking ticket woes, and we encourage you to do the same, fellow Angelenos. Here’s her contact information:

seleta.reynolds@lacity.org.

You can tell her we sent you. Meanwhile, read below the fold to find out what this has to do with zillionaire paranoiac delusions about food trucks and more hypocrisy about small businesses.
Continue reading Kerry Morrison Goes Straight to LADOT Boss in Attempt to Fix Parking Tickets for Board Members, Admits to Habitually Flouting City Parking Laws, Whines About Food Trucks Being Subject to the Same Laws as Everyone Else →