Category Archives: LAPD

LAPD

July 2020 — Utterly Corrupt And Incompetent Police Commissioner Steve Soboroff Organized A Scheme To Have Some Zillionaires Pay His Buddy Tom Penn Of The LA Football Club $100K For 250K Face Masks For LAPD To Hand Out For Free — Pretty Shady But Then In August — With The Masks Ordered, Delivered, And In LAPD Possession — Michel Moore Announced “I’m asking for us to hold any distribution on masks until Josh has fully organized messaging for our people as well as externally” — Which Took Two Weeks — Until September 4, 2020 — How Many People Caught COVID During Those 14 Days? — Who Would Not Have If They’d Had A Mask? —How Many Of Them Died? — Who Thinks Messaging Is More Important Than Public Health? — Psychopaths — That’s Who

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This post is about a series of emails involving Steve Soboroff and Michel Moore discussing the donation of 250K face masks in July 2020 for LAPD to hand out for publicity purposes. The whole collection is available here on Archive.Org. If you could use these in a usable format like MBOX or EML drop a line and I’ll work it out.

Zillionaire typewriter fetishist Steve Soboroff serves on the Los Angeles Police Commission. Officially his role consists of little besides acting as one of Michel Moore’s five voting proxy members and asking Jamie McBride how high whenever he’s instructed to jump. Unofficially, though, Soboroff seems to revel in the endless opportunities to fantasize that he and Moore are actual friends in real life and they’re hanging out like socially or something.1 Another of Soboroff’s favorite hobbies is sharing access to Moore with his zillionaire buddies, of course.

Not necessarily for social clout, although that’s not nothing, but often to arrange porkbarrel bucks for the ZBs. Like for instance on July 12, 2020 we find Soboroff emailing Michel Moore2 conveying an offer from Los Angeles Football Club supreme commander Tom Penn to sell a bunch of face masks to LAPD to hand out as a publicity stunt.3 Note that Soboroff doesn’t say word one about public health. It’s just not something that’s on his radar at all. But think how COOL it’s gonna be!!
Continue reading July 2020 — Utterly Corrupt And Incompetent Police Commissioner Steve Soboroff Organized A Scheme To Have Some Zillionaires Pay His Buddy Tom Penn Of The LA Football Club $100K For 250K Face Masks For LAPD To Hand Out For Free — Pretty Shady But Then In August — With The Masks Ordered, Delivered, And In LAPD Possession — Michel Moore Announced “I’m asking for us to hold any distribution on masks until Josh has fully organized messaging for our people as well as externally” — Which Took Two Weeks — Until September 4, 2020 — How Many People Caught COVID During Those 14 Days? — Who Would Not Have If They’d Had A Mask? —How Many Of Them Died? — Who Thinks Messaging Is More Important Than Public Health? — Psychopaths — That’s Who →

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LAPD

Are You Reimagining Public Safety? — Well The Cops Are Too — And They Have Some Very Active Imaginations! — Get Every City Employee A Concealed Carry Permit! — So Strefan Fauble Can Take A Shot At You If You Get Off Topic — Or Joey Buckets Plinking Out Lights In The John Ferraro Council Chambers — Developer Doesn’t Pay Bribes On Time? — Blammo!!! — And Cameras At Every Major Intersection! — And Hire Better Lawyers To Defend Killer Cops Because We Keep Losing! — And Stop Calling Us Killer Cops! — Cause It Hurts Us In The Feelz! — Let’s Stop Protecting The Mayor! — And So On!!

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Ever wonder how LAPD Officers might reimagine public safety? Well, wonder no longer. Behold the absolutely freaking bonkers results of a survey they did this Summer asking that very question! And right at the top it says that a bunch of suggestions they got were illegal, so they omitted them, leading Police Commissioner Dale Bonner asked his staff what those omitted illegal suggestions might have been.

This, in turn, led notorious criminal lawyer Lizabeth Rhodes to write to him a whole-ass memorandum explaining how criminal cops want to reimagine public safety by arming the City Council and other equally bonkers ideas. The most bonkers of a thoroughly bonkers bunch. This form of reimagining public safety is a stone cold bonkers paradigm shift.

Just for instance, your LAPD officers want to reenvision your public safety by Start with allowing City employees to apply for CCW permits. Can you even imagine? Public comment is hard enough in Los Angeles without having to worry about Joey Buckets shooting you because he doesn’t care for your attitude. Other stunners are:
Continue reading Are You Reimagining Public Safety? — Well The Cops Are Too — And They Have Some Very Active Imaginations! — Get Every City Employee A Concealed Carry Permit! — So Strefan Fauble Can Take A Shot At You If You Get Off Topic — Or Joey Buckets Plinking Out Lights In The John Ferraro Council Chambers — Developer Doesn’t Pay Bribes On Time? — Blammo!!! — And Cameras At Every Major Intersection! — And Hire Better Lawyers To Defend Killer Cops Because We Keep Losing! — And Stop Calling Us Killer Cops! — Cause It Hurts Us In The Feelz! — Let’s Stop Protecting The Mayor! — And So On!! →

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LAPD

LAPD Announces Resumption Of Racist Random Car Stop/Searches In South Central Los Angeles — Touts Effectiveness As Measured By 50 Arrests And 38 Gun Confiscations In One Week — Meanwhile I Have A Copy Of A Confidential LAPD Major Crimes Briefing Report On Archie Duenas — Now-Arrested Former Manager Of The LAPD Revolver And Shooting Club In Elysian Park — Who Stole More Than 40 Pistols And Illegally Sold Them To Various Cops — None Of Whom Were Even Arrested At All — And The Report Shows That ATF And The LA County DA Agreed With LAPD About Not Arresting The Buyers — So Why Is The Number Of People They Arrest In South Central Relevant? — Does Arresting Illegal Gun Possessors Enhance Safety Or Not?

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This post is ultimately about this confidential Major Case Briefing report from LAPD detectives about LAPD Revolver and Athletic Club manager Archie Duenas stealing 40 guns and illegally selling them to various cops. If you don’t feel like reading my nonsense, just take a look at the damn report! It’s confidential! And has some info that’s not in the newspapers! And the fact that LAPD doesn’t want you to see it is enough of a reason to read it! Now!

In 2019 the Los Angeles Police Department severely curtailed its putatively proactive policing practice of stopping and searching random cars driven by black people in South Central Los Angeles after the Los Angeles Times published a story revealing, to no one’s surprise, that the whole program was deeply, irredeemably racist. And even the cops understand that the practice didn’t stop crime:

LAPD Chief Michel Moore told The Times that Metro’s vehicle stops have not proven effective, netting about one arrest for every 100 cars stopped, while coming at a tremendous cost to innocent drivers who felt they were being racially profiled.

Obviously Moore’s implication, that the effectiveness of the program is measured by the number of arrests, is a deliberate lie. Terrorism rather than arrests was and is the point, and by that measure the program was, is, and will continue to be extremely effective.1 And despite Moore’s statement at the time, well, just yesterday he reversed course and ordered the famously crime-doing2 Metro Division to resume random vehicle stops in South Central. And this time Moore seems to be pushing gun confiscation rates as an effectiveness metric:
Continue reading LAPD Announces Resumption Of Racist Random Car Stop/Searches In South Central Los Angeles — Touts Effectiveness As Measured By 50 Arrests And 38 Gun Confiscations In One Week — Meanwhile I Have A Copy Of A Confidential LAPD Major Crimes Briefing Report On Archie Duenas — Now-Arrested Former Manager Of The LAPD Revolver And Shooting Club In Elysian Park — Who Stole More Than 40 Pistols And Illegally Sold Them To Various Cops — None Of Whom Were Even Arrested At All — And The Report Shows That ATF And The LA County DA Agreed With LAPD About Not Arresting The Buyers — So Why Is The Number Of People They Arrest In South Central Relevant? — Does Arresting Illegal Gun Possessors Enhance Safety Or Not? →

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LAPD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

November 2020 — LAPD Constitutional Policing Boss Lizabeth Rhodes Wrote A Top Secret Memo To Police Commission Boss Richard Tefank About Public Records Requests From Stop LAPD Spying — I Have A Copy Of The Top Secret Memo For You! — And Also It’s So Full Of Bullshit And Lies That It Amounts To A Violation Of LAMC 49.5.5 — Which Is Why This Morning I Reported Rhodes And Her Co-Conspirators Marla Ciuffetelli And Bryan Lium To The Ethics Commission — And Here Is A Copy Of The 118 Page Report For You Also!

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This post is about a confidential memorandum from LAPD Constitutional Policing director Lizabeth Rhodes to Police Commission ED Richard Tefank about a request made by Hamid Khan of Stop LAPD Spying under the California Public Records Act. It’s also about a series of violations of LAMC 49.5.5 by Rhodes and LAPD officers Marla Ciuffetelli and Bryan Lium based on their biased handling of various requests for records and a complaint against all three of them that I filed this morning with the Los Angeles Ethics Commission. If you don’t want to read the whole thing here are the two main documents involved:

🙨 Lizabeth Rhodes’s confidential memorandum

🙨 Complaint against Rhodes, Ciuffetelli, and Lium

The Los Angeles Police Department has something called the Office of Constitutional Policing and Policy. It sounds like pernicious crapola and pernicious crapola is precisely what it is. Forced upon LAPD by the 2000 consent decree, over the years the cops have used their cop superpowers to thoroughly weaponize OCPP against the people of Los Angeles. Just for instance, let’s talk about about Hamid Khan of Stop LAPD Spying, about the California Public Records Act, about a letter Khan sent to the Police Commission in August 2020 about LAPD’s refusal to comply with the law, and about Lizabeth Rhodes, the hard-nosed criminal lawyer in charge of OCPP.1

In September 2019 Khan filed a CPRA request with LAPD. LAPD, of course, will not comply with the CPRA2 at all, and they especially won’t comply for the likes of Khan. Khan wrote to the Police Commission about it on August 31, 2020 and then complained in person during public comment on October 6, 2020. Khan’s remarks apparently prompted Commissioner Dale Bonner to wonder if maybe, just maybe, there might be some substance to his complaint. Consequently criminal lawyer Rhodes wrote a top-secret highly confidential memorandum, which I just happen to have an actual copy of, to Commission Executive Director Richard Tefank.

This remarkable document is packed with lies and bullshit to a degree hitherto unseen even from the LAPD, an organization which has been growing fat on lies and bullshit for well over a century. It is worth discussing in great detail. Before I do that, though, don’t forget about LAPD officer Marla Ciuffetelli, who runs the CPRA unit, and who violates LAMC 49.5.5 by prioritizing CPRA requests from some reporters and absolutely obstructing requests from other reporters. Also don’t forget about Bryan Lium, Ciuffetelli’s boss, who violates LAMC 49.5.5 in exactly the same way.

Rhodes’s memorandum also violates LAMC 49.5.5, so this morning I filed a complaint against all three of these thuggish scofflaws with the City Ethics Commission, and if anything comes of it I will certainly let you know! Meanwhile, read on for a detailed discussion of Rhodes’s dishonest nonsense! Presented as a dramatic dialogue no less!!
Continue reading November 2020 — LAPD Constitutional Policing Boss Lizabeth Rhodes Wrote A Top Secret Memo To Police Commission Boss Richard Tefank About Public Records Requests From Stop LAPD Spying — I Have A Copy Of The Top Secret Memo For You! — And Also It’s So Full Of Bullshit And Lies That It Amounts To A Violation Of LAMC 49.5.5 — Which Is Why This Morning I Reported Rhodes And Her Co-Conspirators Marla Ciuffetelli And Bryan Lium To The Ethics Commission — And Here Is A Copy Of The 118 Page Report For You Also! →

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LAPD, Lawsuits, Los Angeles City Government

In 2016 An LAPD Police Dog Attacked Heller Castillo — When He Opened His Front Door Because He Thought The Police Wanted Him To — Although He Was Not A Suspect In Any Way — The Law Imposes Strict Liability For Non-Suspect Police Dog Attacks — A Top Secret Confidential Report Obtained By MK.Org Reveals That In January 2020 Deputy City Attorney Lisa Lee Recommended A $75K Settlement Offer Because “a jury would almost certainly find in favor of the Plaintiff” — Which Is A Good Reason To Settle — But Lee Thought The Plaintiff Would Refuse — He Was Asking For $800K And His Lawyers Surely Know About Los Angeles Juries — However Ending The Case Was Not Lee’s Purpose — Which Is Apparent Since She Recommended A So-Called 998 Offer — Which Is An Aggressive Litigation Tactic — That Is Absolutely Not Reasonable For Cities To Use Against Citizens — Cities Ought To Seek Justice — Not Petty Revenge — The Case Is Ongoing By The Way — Trial Setting Conference In April 2021

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In April 2016 LAPD was out hunting suspects with police dogs. One of the dogs scratched on the door of Heller Castillo’s house. He thought the police wanted him to open the door and did so, at which time he was attacked by one of their dogs. Castillo filed a suit. In January 2020 he City Attorney’s office recommended in January 2020 that City Council authorize an aggressive settlement offer of $75K that Lisa Lee, the Deputy handling the case, thought wouldn’t be accepted but wanted to make anyway for strategic reasons, even though she knew the City was at fault and was convinced they’d lose badly if the case went to a jury. Here’s a copy of the confidential report that Lee sent to City Council in January 2020 in advance of the closed session called to discuss the issue.

According to the Los Angeles City Charter the City Attorney represents the City of Los Angeles in lawsuits.1 Which means that from time to time the City Attorney has to consult with the City Council to ask for direction from their client, the City of Los Angeles.2 On such occasions the Brown Act allows3 such meetings to take place in secret, which they always do.

But prior to such meetings the City Attorney’s office sends a confidential report to the City Council so that they can be ready to discuss. These reports are generally exempt from release4 under the California Public Records Act, but from time to time I manage to lay my hands on a copy of one. This last happened with the employment practices case brought by LAPD officer Ray Garvin against the City of Los Angeles.

And today I have another such confidential report for you. This is from January 2020 and has to do with the case Castillo v. City of LA,5 in which a police dog bit plaintiff Heller Castillo during an LAPD operation in which he was in no way a suspect. Lisa W. Lee, the Deputy City Attorney handling the case, recommends in this report to City Council that she be allowed to make a 998 offer of $75K to settle, even though, as Lee says:

it is anticipated that Plaintiff will not accept an offer of $75,000, [but] we believe that we should make the offer as a tool to encourage settlement.

Lee doesn’t think Castillo would accept $75K because he is asking for $800K, because the state of California imposes strict liability for police dogs biting non-suspects, and the facts are horrific, so that a jury is unlikely to find in the City’s favor:
Continue reading In 2016 An LAPD Police Dog Attacked Heller Castillo — When He Opened His Front Door Because He Thought The Police Wanted Him To — Although He Was Not A Suspect In Any Way — The Law Imposes Strict Liability For Non-Suspect Police Dog Attacks — A Top Secret Confidential Report Obtained By MK.Org Reveals That In January 2020 Deputy City Attorney Lisa Lee Recommended A $75K Settlement Offer Because “a jury would almost certainly find in favor of the Plaintiff” — Which Is A Good Reason To Settle — But Lee Thought The Plaintiff Would Refuse — He Was Asking For $800K And His Lawyers Surely Know About Los Angeles Juries — However Ending The Case Was Not Lee’s Purpose — Which Is Apparent Since She Recommended A So-Called 998 Offer — Which Is An Aggressive Litigation Tactic — That Is Absolutely Not Reasonable For Cities To Use Against Citizens — Cities Ought To Seek Justice — Not Petty Revenge — The Case Is Ongoing By The Way — Trial Setting Conference In April 2021 →

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LAPD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Marla Ciuffetelli of LAPD’s California Public Records Act Unit Specially Facilitated A Request From Denise Chan Of KCET — Ciuffetelli Had It Labeled With A Distinct Label Not Used For Less Favored Media Representatives — And Repeatedly Emailed Richard Tefank Of The Police Commission Encouraging Him To Hurry Up And Finish Chan’s Request — Which He Did — It Was Completed In Less Than Two Months — She Also Went Out Of Her Way To Hinder Tefank’s Processing Of My Requests — She Has A Special Label For Me Too! — Which Apparently Discourages Anyone From Working On My Requests — She Is Going Down For Violating LAMC 49.5.5 By Creating A Private Advantage For Chan — And Probably For Violating The First Amendment — Which Specifically Forbids Government Agents From Granting More Access To Their Pet Reporters — And From Deciding Which Media Outlets Are More Legitimate

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I wrote recently about how LAPD Legal Affairs Boss Bryan Lium violated LAMC 49.5.5 by expediting a CPRA request for journalist Aura Bogado while at the same time hindering a request from Stop LAPD Spying. Today’s story, about how LAPD CPRA Unit Boss Marla Ciuffetelli did precisely the same thing for KCET journalist Denise Chan, shows that Lium’s antics with respect to Bogado’s request were not an anomaly.

Ciuffetelli has her subordinates tag requests from her favored media outlets, presumably to distinguish them for expedited handling. And, like Lium, she was willing to send Police Commission Executive Richard Tefank innumerable emails encouraging him to hurry along Chan’s request while repeatedly mentioning the fact that she works for KCET. And, like Lium’s beneficiary Aura Bogado, Denise Chan’s request got filled comparatively very quickly, in less than two months. As we’ve seen, other requests, from less favored requesters, can linger for years with no action at all.

Chan filed Request 20-3691 on June 11, 2020. That link leads to the actual NextRequest page as seen by a user not logged in as Chan or an administrator. But NextRequest request pages have a lot of material not visible to the general public. For instance, take a look at this PDF printout of the same request, but as seen by a logged-in user with staff privileges. In particular, make note of the tags added by the LAPD CPRA Analyst: LAPD: CAT-2, LAPD: CPRA (non-SB1421), LAPD: Media, LAPD: Other

Unfortunately I don’t yet have any way of figuring out what those tags actually mean. But there is still some useful information to be gained. For instance, I’m willing to guess that the LAPD: Media tag means that the requester is from a media organization that LAPD favors for as-yet-undertermined reasons. This may seem obvious, but it’s not for a number of reasons.

In particular, take a look at this request that I submitted to LAPD on July 9, 2020. The linked-to PDF is again the logged-in administrator view, showing the tags: LAPD: CPRA (non-SB1421), LAPD: High Priority , LAPD: High Profile, LAPD: Other Note that although I explicitly and truthfully identified myself as a member of the media the analyst did not add that LAPD: Media tag.

However, they did add at least one tag not applied to Chan’s request, which is the LAPD: High Profile tag. I know for a fact that this tag refers to me personally. To see this, take a look at Marla Ciuffetelli’s weekly CPRA report for the week of August 15, 2020. You can see up at the top a headnote:
Continue reading Marla Ciuffetelli of LAPD’s California Public Records Act Unit Specially Facilitated A Request From Denise Chan Of KCET — Ciuffetelli Had It Labeled With A Distinct Label Not Used For Less Favored Media Representatives — And Repeatedly Emailed Richard Tefank Of The Police Commission Encouraging Him To Hurry Up And Finish Chan’s Request — Which He Did — It Was Completed In Less Than Two Months — She Also Went Out Of Her Way To Hinder Tefank’s Processing Of My Requests — She Has A Special Label For Me Too! — Which Apparently Discourages Anyone From Working On My Requests — She Is Going Down For Violating LAMC 49.5.5 By Creating A Private Advantage For Chan — And Probably For Violating The First Amendment — Which Specifically Forbids Government Agents From Granting More Access To Their Pet Reporters — And From Deciding Which Media Outlets Are More Legitimate →

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LAPD, Los Angeles City Government, Public Records Act Pragmatics

My Public Records Requests Have Apparently Caused Both LAPD And Deputy City Attorney Bethelwel Wilson To Embrace A Kind Of Self-Destructive Paranoid Madness — They Are Randomly Accusing Various Not-Me Requesters Of Being Me — LAPD Has Evidently Put Random People Other Than Me On My “Work Plan” — The Plan Amounts To Not Filling My Requests At All — So Basically LAPD Is Denying Requests From Random People In Order To Take Revenge On Me — Which Is Not Only Illegal — It’s Also Idiotic — And Unsustainable — Did I Ever Mention “The Caine Mutiny”? — It’s A Really Good Movie! — Very Timely! — Very Relevant!

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Have you ever seen The Caine Mutiny?1 Humphrey Bogart plays Captain Queeg, who at one point calls in all his ship’s officers at 1 am to interrogate them about some putatively missing strawberries. He forces them to investigate all night and give him a report at 8 am. They can’t find the culprit and tell him so, but he regales them with a long story of how, as a young ensign in 1937, he nabbed a cheese thief on his ship who’d made a duplicate pantry key. He told them that he was sure the same thing had happened with the strawberries on the Caine:2

Now, I’ve worked out a very simple plan. First, we collect every key on this ship and tag it with the name of the owner. Second, we strip all hands to make sure we got all the keys. Third, we test each key on the icebox padlock, and the one that fits will give us the name of the owner.

Humphrey Bogart won an Oscar for his role, and as far as I’m concerned he deserved it just for the way he’s fooling with his damn toast in this scene. Anyway, as you probably know, the Los Angeles Police Department is very, very upset with my use of the California Public Records Act. Their displeasure goes to the very top, as shown by this personal letter I received last Summer from supreme LAPD chieftain Michel Moore.

Despite his blah blah blah about a work plan and handling requests sequentially, what they’ve really done is to stop producing records at all. But they’re somewhat hindered in this project by the fact that Gmail is free and the law doesn’t allow them to inquire too deeply into the identities of requesters.

However, they try, they try, and one of the ways they try, it turns out, is by randomly and wrongly accusing various requesters of being me. Their raving paranoia matches and perhaps exceeds Queeg’s. Think I’m exaggerating? Take a look at this blog comment from the other day:
Continue reading My Public Records Requests Have Apparently Caused Both LAPD And Deputy City Attorney Bethelwel Wilson To Embrace A Kind Of Self-Destructive Paranoid Madness — They Are Randomly Accusing Various Not-Me Requesters Of Being Me — LAPD Has Evidently Put Random People Other Than Me On My “Work Plan” — The Plan Amounts To Not Filling My Requests At All — So Basically LAPD Is Denying Requests From Random People In Order To Take Revenge On Me — Which Is Not Only Illegal — It’s Also Idiotic — And Unsustainable — Did I Ever Mention “The Caine Mutiny”? — It’s A Really Good Movie! — Very Timely! — Very Relevant! →

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LAPD

Here’s A Copy Of A Record Which Provides A Useful Breakdown Of LAPD’s Completely Incomprehensible Budget — Broken Down By Program And Category — The Programs Are Like Field Forces — Or Custody Of Persons And Property — The Categories Are Like Salaries — Or Pensions — Or Current Benefits — Or Water And Electricity — Et Cetera — It’s Detailed But Not Too Detailed — And Very Informative!

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I don’t know about you but I find it incredibly hard to understand how much money this City spends on policing. Even leaving aside all the lesser-known1 police forces, like the Airport Police, and the School Police,2 and the Port Police, and probably a dozen other kinds of police none of us has ever even heard of, it’s even hard to understand how much money the City spends on just the familiar LAPD. One hears $3 billion, or $1.5 billion.

No one seems to know if pension spending should be included or not. And if you ever do figure it out it’s still impossible to understand where they’re spending the money. Public Records Requests would be ideal for this purpose but LAPD refuses to fulfill them, unless of course they have their own reasons for wanting to get information out there.

However, I just recently obtained this incredibly useful document from the City of LA that really lays out LAPD spending in just the right amount of detail. It divides the fiscal year 2020 money up into ten “programs”, which are: Field Forces, Specialized Investigation, Custody of Persons and Property, Traffic Control, Specialized Enforcement and Protection, Personnel Training and Support, Departmental Support, Technology Support, General Administration and Support, Internal Integrity and Standards Enforcement .

The spending for each program is broken down into detailed but not too detailed categories, like Salaries, Pensions, Benefits, Electricity, and so on. This document leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but it answers a lot of questions for me, and perhaps it will be as useful to you! Download the PDF here and read on to see images.
Continue reading Here’s A Copy Of A Record Which Provides A Useful Breakdown Of LAPD’s Completely Incomprehensible Budget — Broken Down By Program And Category — The Programs Are Like Field Forces — Or Custody Of Persons And Property — The Categories Are Like Salaries — Or Pensions — Or Current Benefits — Or Water And Electricity — Et Cetera — It’s Detailed But Not Too Detailed — And Very Informative! →

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LAPD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

In June 2020 LAPD Took Only 26 Days To Produce 60 Pages Of Michel Moore’s Text Messages In Response To A CPRA Request From Investigative Reporter Aura Bogado — Which Is So Fast It’s Unbelievable — Bogado Attributed Their Speedy And Complete Response To Her Litigious Reputation And Some Specific Phrases She Included In The Request — But We All Know From Experience LAPD Doesn’t Care About That At All — They Get Sued Successfully All The Time — And I’ve Seen No Evidence That They Care How Requests Are Written — It Turns Out That Bryan Lium — Commander Of LAPD’s Legal Affairs Division — Took A Special Interest In Bogado’s Request And Emailed Richard Tefank About Eleventy-Jillion Times To Hurry It Along — Which Is Actually Why It Got Filled Fast — Meanwhile Lium Tells Everyone That Stop LAPD Spying’s Requests Will Just Have To Wait Because They Have To “Balance” Them With Other Requests — Where “Balance” Apparently Means “Ignore Completely”

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On June 30, 2020, investigative reporter Aura Bogado tweeted a thread about text messages sent or received by LAPD Chief Michel Moore during the June 2, 2020 meeting of the Los Angeles Police Commission. Bogado obtained these on June 29, 2020 as a result of a June 3, 2020 NextRequest filing.1

As you may know, I’ve had some trouble getting the Los Angeles Police Department to even respond to my CPRA requests, let alone to actually produce significant records quickly enough to be useful. So I asked Bogado how she’d done it, but it turned out that she had no idea whatsoever, although she thought she understood. Here’s what she had to say:

I did a standard CPRA to police records; made sure to include why I thought the records existed (Soboroff lifted his phone to the camera at some point) and also included that the request was subject to litigation if I didn’t get a response. I sue, and win, but that’s usually with the federal gov (I cover im/migration nationally) so I think this was part of the motivation to take my request seriously.

Continue reading In June 2020 LAPD Took Only 26 Days To Produce 60 Pages Of Michel Moore’s Text Messages In Response To A CPRA Request From Investigative Reporter Aura Bogado — Which Is So Fast It’s Unbelievable — Bogado Attributed Their Speedy And Complete Response To Her Litigious Reputation And Some Specific Phrases She Included In The Request — But We All Know From Experience LAPD Doesn’t Care About That At All — They Get Sued Successfully All The Time — And I’ve Seen No Evidence That They Care How Requests Are Written — It Turns Out That Bryan Lium — Commander Of LAPD’s Legal Affairs Division — Took A Special Interest In Bogado’s Request And Emailed Richard Tefank About Eleventy-Jillion Times To Hurry It Along — Which Is Actually Why It Got Filled Fast — Meanwhile Lium Tells Everyone That Stop LAPD Spying’s Requests Will Just Have To Wait Because They Have To “Balance” Them With Other Requests — Where “Balance” Apparently Means “Ignore Completely” →

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LAPD, Los Angeles City Council

Anyone Who Watches The Los Angeles City Council Closely Suspects Them Of Colluding Behind The Scenes — In Blatant Violation Of The Brown Act — But Man It Is Hard To Find Proof! — Cause They Do It By Whispering In Both The Literal And — These Days — Figurative Corridors — But A June 2020 Email From LAPD City Council Liason Harry Eddo To Chief Michel Moore Reveals That Ad Hoc LAPD Reform Committee Chair Herb Wesson Had Exact Foreknowledge Of The Fate Of A Number Of Motions — His Staff Told Eddo Four Days Before A Committee Meeting That They Would Pass On Consent After Extensive Public Comment — Is There Any Legal Way He Could Be So Sure? — I Doubt It!

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You know how you go to a Los Angeles City Council meeting and all the action seems scripted and predetermined? That’s not an illusion. Obviously they decide everything in advance, or they did before everything changed last year. And this is completely illegal in California per the Brown Act1 but it is so freaking hard to catch them at it!

Not impossible, though. Scope this Sunday, June 21, 2020 email from LAPD City Council liason Harry Eddo to Chief Michel Moore discussing some of this summer’s flood of cop reform motions, these scheduled for the Wednesday, June 24, 2020 meeting of the Ad Hoc Police Reform Committee. Apparently it’s part of Eddo’s job to track such motions, ones that potentially affect LAPD, and help Moore plan responses.

Which by the way brings up an important question — why does LAPD have a person doing this job at all? If the idea is that the police are an instrument of civilian public policy, controlled by elected civilians to carry out the public’s purposes, then it’s hard to justify spending public money paying staff to monitor and influence the source of control. It almost looks like the LAPD is more concerned with institutional survival and control rather than with doing their jobs.2

So Eddo talks to Council staff, which I guess is what liasons do. And they talk back to him. And apparently, on June 21, 2020 or before, he talked to folks from the office of then-Chair Herb Wesson, who told him exactly what would happen with the motions: they would be approved “on consent after holding considerable public comment.” Wesson’s staff had it all figured out three freaking days before the meeting, and any of that “considerable public comment” that happened to oppose Wesson’s plans was wasted. It was all wasted, actually, even supporting comments:
Continue reading Anyone Who Watches The Los Angeles City Council Closely Suspects Them Of Colluding Behind The Scenes — In Blatant Violation Of The Brown Act — But Man It Is Hard To Find Proof! — Cause They Do It By Whispering In Both The Literal And — These Days — Figurative Corridors — But A June 2020 Email From LAPD City Council Liason Harry Eddo To Chief Michel Moore Reveals That Ad Hoc LAPD Reform Committee Chair Herb Wesson Had Exact Foreknowledge Of The Fate Of A Number Of Motions — His Staff Told Eddo Four Days Before A Committee Meeting That They Would Pass On Consent After Extensive Public Comment — Is There Any Legal Way He Could Be So Sure? — I Doubt It! →

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