Category Archives: LAPD

Homeless Issues, Hypocrisy, LAPD, Los Angeles City Council, Venice

Remember Last Year When We Learned That LAPD Was Helping Psychopathic NIMBY Housedwellers To Install Illegal Anti-Encampment Planters — And I Filed A Complaint Against A Bunch Of Them From Pacific Division — Well In June 2020 LAPD Informed Me That They Had Completed Their Investigation And Declared My Complaint “Unfounded” — And Invited Me To Ask Them Questions If I Had Any — Which I Did — Namely Would They Release The Results Of The Investigation — And The Investigator — A Dude Known As Sergeant Paul Aeschliman — Told Me He Wasn’t Allowed To Release The Info — But He Didn’t Know Why He Wasn’t Allowed — And The Laws He Cited In Support Of His Position Actually Didn’t Forbid The Release Of The Documents — So That Discussion Is Ongoing Even If The Officers Aren’t Busted For Their Illegal Planter Placing — Or Not Yet Anyway!

July 9, 2020 Mike Leave a comment

It’s strange in these apocalyptic times to remember that just last year anti-encampment planters, illegally placed on sidewalks in utter antisocial defiance of the law, were such a huge part of the City’s discussions about the rights of the unhoused. The planters were set up by psychopathic NIMBYs like Mark Ryavec, assisted by the LAPD, the Venice Neighborhood Council, and CD11 rep Mike Bonin, who lied about his office’s involvement until emails revealed the deep complicity of his former Venice field deputy Taylor Bazley.¹

I ended up reporting Bazley to the Los Angeles Ethics Commission and a bunch of LAPD officers to Internal Affairs. I haven’t heard back about Bazley yet² but last month I did hear back from LAPD about the officers I’d complained about. Here’s their response, also transcribed below. Can you imagine?! LAPD investigated themselves and discovered that they were innocent! We knew it would happen, and it did. What turns out to be slightly more interesting is my subsequent conversation with Paul Aeschliman, the officer who conducted the investigation,
Continue reading Remember Last Year When We Learned That LAPD Was Helping Psychopathic NIMBY Housedwellers To Install Illegal Anti-Encampment Planters — And I Filed A Complaint Against A Bunch Of Them From Pacific Division — Well In June 2020 LAPD Informed Me That They Had Completed Their Investigation And Declared My Complaint “Unfounded” — And Invited Me To Ask Them Questions If I Had Any — Which I Did — Namely Would They Release The Results Of The Investigation — And The Investigator — A Dude Known As Sergeant Paul Aeschliman — Told Me He Wasn’t Allowed To Release The Info — But He Didn’t Know Why He Wasn’t Allowed — And The Laws He Cited In Support Of His Position Actually Didn’t Forbid The Release Of The Documents — So That Discussion Is Ongoing Even If The Officers Aren’t Busted For Their Illegal Planter Placing — Or Not Yet Anyway! →

LAPD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

It Took Me Two Months To Get Even A Minimal Amount Of The Story Behind A May 7 Copaganda Tweet From LAPD Central Division Supreme Commander Timothy Scott Harrelson — With A Public Records Act Request That I Filed Pretending To Be A Reporter At Blue Line News — Which I Made Up And Bought A Domain For To Use For Email — And — Even Though Obvious — The Ploy Worked Briefly In That Commander Harrelson Apparently Told LAPD Discovery Staff That He Was Going To Call Me — Me Being The Made Up Reporter Rose Olsen From Blue Line News — But Then He Didn’t Call — And LAPD Apparently Caught On To The Ruse — But I Did At Least Learn The Names Of The Arrested People — And The Location Of The Arrests — All Of Which Turns Out To Be Less Interesting Than The Process — Which Is Just How It Goes Sometimes

July 2, 2020 Mike Leave a comment

About two months ago, on May 7, 2020, the incomparable Lexis-Olivier Ray alerted me to the fact that, from his putatively safe haven in Simi Valley,¹ Los Angeles Police Department Commander Timothy Scott Harrelson had just tweeted triumphantly about an LAPD raid on a “luxury apartment” Downtown due to “illegal cannabis sales.”² But maybe you heard that cannabis is now legal in California? So this is essentially an arrest for tax evasion. Which is not something that ought to be at the top of any law enforcement priority list in the middle of a pandemic, right?³

So I thought I’d look into the circumstances, and how better to do that than using the California Public Records Act?! There’s a problem, though, and that is the sad but true fact that the Los Angeles Police Department has completely stopped responding to my requests.⁴ When they first stopped I invented a few pseudonyms to make requests under, and this worked for a while.⁵ But then I started to file lawsuits over some of my pseudonymous requests so they caught on. Soon, I believe, they started tracking my pseudonyms as they identified them⁶ and then refusing to respond to those requests.

They are pretty prompt when the LA Times makes a request, though, which is part of the reason I think they’re singling out my requests for inaction.⁷ But this matter seemed important. Not only important enough for a new pseudonym, but for an actual backstory! And given LAPD’s responsiveness to the Times I thought of being a reporter.⁸ And from a sympathetic-sounding news outlet. And for a more convincing, at least superficially so, email address than the usual randomname3442@gmail.com. So I bought bluelinenews.org, fired up the random name generator and, using its suggestion, Rose Olsen, on May 9, 2020 I filed a CPRA request⁹ at lacity.nextrequest.com:
Continue reading It Took Me Two Months To Get Even A Minimal Amount Of The Story Behind A May 7 Copaganda Tweet From LAPD Central Division Supreme Commander Timothy Scott Harrelson — With A Public Records Act Request That I Filed Pretending To Be A Reporter At Blue Line News — Which I Made Up And Bought A Domain For To Use For Email — And — Even Though Obvious — The Ploy Worked Briefly In That Commander Harrelson Apparently Told LAPD Discovery Staff That He Was Going To Call Me — Me Being The Made Up Reporter Rose Olsen From Blue Line News — But Then He Didn’t Call — And LAPD Apparently Caught On To The Ruse — But I Did At Least Learn The Names Of The Arrested People — And The Location Of The Arrests — All Of Which Turns Out To Be Less Interesting Than The Process — Which Is Just How It Goes Sometimes →

LAPD, Los Angeles City Government

In 2018 and 2019 The Los Angeles City Attorney Sent Out 479 Demand Letters In Nuisance Abatement Cases — And Filed 30 Cases In Court — According To Deputy City Attorney Bethelwel Wilson An LAPD Gang Officer’s Referral Is Sufficient To Open A Case File — Gang Officers Of Course Were Recently Revealed To Engage In Widespread Lying — And None Of The Demands And Almost None Of The Filed Complaints Get Litigated — So Almost None Of The City’s Allegations Ever Get Tested Adversarially — The City Is Already Reviewing Criminal Cases That The Lying Officers Were Involved In — But Who Will Review These Civil Nuisance Cases?

January 15, 2020 Mike Leave a comment

The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Citywide Nuisance Abatement Program ostensibly attacks gang crime by filing civil lawsuits against property owners whose properties are allegedly involved in ongoing criminal activity. And even though there are obviously people committing all kinds of crimes, dealing drugs, shooting guns, hanging out listening to music,¹ in houses and apartments all over the City, the vast majority of these suits are brought in South Los Angeles, a significant fraction in East and Northeast LA, and almost none in other areas.

These disparities support the widely held view that nuisance abatement suits are used as an aggressive gentrification tool. The neighborhoods targeted are gentrifying neighborhoods. The settlement conditions, and by far most of these cases settle, support gentrification and displacement by, among other things, forcing property owners to sell or to evict putatively undesirable tenants or to install surveillance equipment or otherwise function as LAPD informants. Most of the cases are brought against owners of single family homes or small multifamily or commercial properties, maybe because they’re less likely to have the resources to defend themselves.²

I’ve had some trouble learning how the City Attorney picks its targets, but recently, Deputy City Attorney Bethelwel Wilson, in an important series of emails, revealed that for the most part they’re chosen as a result of referrals from residents or law enforcement.³ According to Wilson, irrespective of the source of the referral, an LAPD “gang officer’s communication would be sufficient for the DCA⁴ to open a case on the property.” And the information supporting the case also comes from LAPD, according to Wilson: “The criminal activity at the property would have to be chronic and well-documented by LAPD before a DCA would even consider filling nuisance abatement action.”

And it turns out that for the City, filing a case essentially amounts to winning it. I recently obtained almost a hundred of these nuisance petitions, filed since 2015, from the CA via the California Public Records Act.⁵ and for the most part the targets don’t fight back. I checked all 67 of the cases opened between 2017 and 2019 and no more than ten involved any significant defense before settling essentially on the City’s terms.⁶ This means that the allegations in the petitions almost never get tested adversarially.

There’s no cross-examination, no documentation, and, surprisingly, not even testimony under penalty of perjury. In California Civil Procedure⁷ a petition is called verified when the complainant asserts belief in the truth of the allegations under penalty of perjury. For whatever reason nuisance abatement petitions are unverified, so no one even gets in trouble if parts of the cases turn out to be made up.⁸ Continue reading In 2018 and 2019 The Los Angeles City Attorney Sent Out 479 Demand Letters In Nuisance Abatement Cases — And Filed 30 Cases In Court — According To Deputy City Attorney Bethelwel Wilson An LAPD Gang Officer’s Referral Is Sufficient To Open A Case File — Gang Officers Of Course Were Recently Revealed To Engage In Widespread Lying — And None Of The Demands And Almost None Of The Filed Complaints Get Litigated — So Almost None Of The City’s Allegations Ever Get Tested Adversarially — The City Is Already Reviewing Criminal Cases That The Lying Officers Were Involved In — But Who Will Review These Civil Nuisance Cases? →

LAPD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

LAPD Has Over A Million Historical Photos In Its Archives – Going Back Almost A Hundred Years – These Are Public Records So I Asked For Copies – And They Were All Like No Way! – But In 2001 They Shared These With Some Gallery Owners – Who Put Together An Exhibit – Which Is Still Touring The World After All These Years – And They Are Selling Prints For Hundreds Of Dollars – And The Law is Very Clear That Once The City Lets One Person See Them They Must Let All Other People See Them – So Today I Filed Yet Another Lawsuit Seeking To Compel The City To Hand Over The Damn Goods!

January 3, 2020 Mike 1 Comment

LAPD Archival photo of Black Panther Headquarters

Apparent LAPD arrest of a man for masquerading.

Late last year famous local historians and operators of Esotouric Tours Kim Cooper and Richard Schave drew my attention to a collection of more than a million historic crime photos held in the LAPD archives and dating back to the 1920s. In 2001 the LAPD allowed the owners of the Fototeka Gallery to access these photos, copy them, and exhibit and sell prints for outrageously high prices.

The gallery owners also published and sold a book of selected images.¹ Since then, though, the LAPD hadn’t let anyone else look at the pictures. Kim and Richard were lamenting the tragic fact that such important historical material had been cherry-picked by so few individuals, when there are many historians whose work would be enhanced by access – and by extension enhancing Angelenos’ understanding of our city.²

And that is really an understatement. Just look at the few examples scattered around this post, which I took from Fototeka’s site. There is an image from an LAPD men’s room spy camera, a picture of the Black Panther Party Headquarters after the shootout, a man apparently arrested for crossdressing, old buildings, many possibly unintentionally artistic closeups. An unimaginable variety.

These pictures could potentially give unprecedented insight into the LAPD’s past treatment of people of color, of LGBTQ people, gender noncomformists, and so on. Architecture, design, daily life. There is no limit to the public interest in seeing these images, in opening up this whole collection to the public. It is appalling that they’re not available to everyone.

Now, the California Public Records Act is very, very clear that photographs are public records.³ And it’s also very clear that once a public record has been released to one member of the public it can no longer be withheld from any member of the public.⁴ Clearly, then, I thought, we are going to get access to these photos! So I submitted a request through the City’s NextRequest platform.

Now, the LAPD is famous for its idiotic denials, and their first response was consistent with their reputation. They told me that I couldn’t have them because they are investigative materials and therefore exempt under §6254(f).⁵ So I told them about the fact that a release to anyone constitutes a waiver and asked them to change their mind.

They ignored me, as they are wont to do, so I wrote to the City Attorney and asked again. And they also ignored me. So I contacted the incomparable attorney Anna von Herrmann and asked her what she thought. And what she thought was that we should file a petition to force the City to release the photos. And that’s what we did, and here is a copy for you! Read on for some selections.
Continue reading LAPD Has Over A Million Historical Photos In Its Archives – Going Back Almost A Hundred Years – These Are Public Records So I Asked For Copies – And They Were All Like No Way! – But In 2001 They Shared These With Some Gallery Owners – Who Put Together An Exhibit – Which Is Still Touring The World After All These Years – And They Are Selling Prints For Hundreds Of Dollars – And The Law is Very Clear That Once The City Lets One Person See Them They Must Let All Other People See Them – So Today I Filed Yet Another Lawsuit Seeking To Compel The City To Hand Over The Damn Goods! →

LAPD

The Los Angeles Police Department Risk Management Division Runs A Course To Prepare Officers Who Are Being Sued Civilly For Their On-The-Job Actions If They Choose To Be Defended By The City Attorney — The Course Is Called “Professional Resources for Officers in Civil Trials” — Or PROACT — Here Is A Copy Of The Course Outline Showing Exactly How They Prep These Respondents For Depositions — Testimony — And So On — With Advice On How To Dress — How To Answer Questions — How To Deal With The Anxiety Of Not Being In Charge Of The Situation — Apparently How To Hide Their Assets From Judgments

November 9, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

The Risk Management Division of the Los Angeles Police Department runs a course called Professional Resources for Officers in Civil Trials, or PROACT. The City Attorney defends officers who are sued civilly for work-related matters, and this course prepares the officers for the process. I recently obtained a copy of a detailed syllabus for the course, which you can download here in the original rich text format and also here exported to PDF if that’s useful. I also converted it to html and you’ll find that version at the end of the post.

This document might be useful for plaintiff’s attorneys suing LAPD officers seeking to understand the advice and/or the preparation that their respondents have undergone. There’s also some found humor here, as in the recommendation for trial attire forbidding “western wear”. The document is only an outline, which leaves some intriguing ambiguities unresolved.

For instance, there’s a section on “Asset Protection” which includes a section on “Fraudulent Transfers.” This doesn’t appear to be telling officers not to do fraudulent transfers, but rather to transfer assets as early as possible so they don’t look fraudulent. Which would be disconcerting if true but, as I said, the outline form makes it hard to be sure:

Timely implement is necessary, when officers hesitate to act they loose sight of their most valuable resource – time.
a.
Officers have found that neglecting to act necessitates the option, Fraudulent Transfers. (Core Value)
b.
A transfer found to be fraudulent is avoidable by the creditor.

And the whole thing is really worth reading. It’s transcribed into HTML below. Oh, but before you go there, take a look at this little section on how married cops should “protect” their assets from civil judgments:

1.
In Transmutation of community property to separate property to protect 50%, beware it has ramifications for subsequent divorce.
2.
Marital Agreements that are made in advance of problem, are better for long-term protection than undocumented outright gifts.
3.
A divorce is usually too extreme, and you lose all tax benefits associated with marriage.

Continue reading The Los Angeles Police Department Risk Management Division Runs A Course To Prepare Officers Who Are Being Sued Civilly For Their On-The-Job Actions If They Choose To Be Defended By The City Attorney — The Course Is Called “Professional Resources for Officers in Civil Trials” — Or PROACT — Here Is A Copy Of The Course Outline Showing Exactly How They Prep These Respondents For Depositions — Testimony — And So On — With Advice On How To Dress — How To Answer Questions — How To Deal With The Anxiety Of Not Being In Charge Of The Situation — Apparently How To Hide Their Assets From Judgments →

Downtown Center BID, LAPD

LAPD Transit Services Division Monitored Extinction Rebellion’s Social Media In April 2019 And Sent Out Reports To Allied Universal Security — A Private Security Firm Employed By Many Business Improvement Districts In Los Angeles — Subsequently AUS Distributed LAPD Intelligence Reports To Its Clients

November 2, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

As you may well know there is a group of activists here in Los Angeles, known as Stop LAPD Spying, which is dedicated to the goal of stopping LAPD from spying. Such a group is, sadly, really necessary because LAPD just will not stop spying. From the famous red squad to the present, they just will not cut it out. And one of the forms LAPD spying takes in the present day is the monitoring of social media accounts and the dissemination of so-called intelligence gathered there. For instance, in 2017 dedicated LAPD social media stalkers learned of an unpermitted demonstration planned by a group called Code Pink, and they emailed a bunch of security people and BIDs Downtown about it and possibly even sent cops to the event.

And just today I learned of another such incident, this time involving LAPD’s Transit Services Division. It seems that Extinction Rebellion Los Angeles was planning a protest for April 22, 2019 to take place on the Red Line train, although the location was not at first revealed. As folks will do these days they coordinated it via social media, and the TSD was watching. And screenshotting. And disseminating their work to various private security companies, who sent it along to their clients, which include business improvement districts.

I learned of this from an April 21, 2019 email sent by Brian Raboin of Allied Universal Security to his clients, including the Downtown Center Business Improvement District. Raboin quotes extensively from an LAPD email that I don’t yet have a copy of, in which it’s revealed that not only was TSD monitoring Extinction Rebellion’s social media, but that the Media Relations Division was as well. There is a transcription of this email below. And Raboin also sent an attachment consisting of thirteen pages of screenshots from various Extinction Rebellion social media pages. Selected images from this document appear below as well.

On April 22, 2019 Extinction Rebellion announced via Facebook that the protest would take place, or at least start out, at Universal City Station. And, even more ominously in the jaundiced view of these cops and their henchies in private security, recommended that participants wear “clothes that can get stained.” The police sent out an update immediately and Raboin forwarded it along to his clients. That’s the story. I’ll leave the moral for you to formulate.

But it’s essential to continue to piece together evidence about what LAPD can monitor, what they do monitor, and with whom they share the fruits of their monitoring. Just yesterday it seems like the whole human population of New York City rose up against violent overpolicing on their subways. And the whole human population of Los Angeles can see that we have the same problem and that it might well lead to the same kind of reaction. So it’s worth remembering while we’re organizing, friends and fellow humans, that the cops are reading our Twitters.
Continue reading LAPD Transit Services Division Monitored Extinction Rebellion’s Social Media In April 2019 And Sent Out Reports To Allied Universal Security — A Private Security Firm Employed By Many Business Improvement Districts In Los Angeles — Subsequently AUS Distributed LAPD Intelligence Reports To Its Clients →

LAPD

After Valley News Group Ran An Article Exposing Fern Peskin-White’s Secret Homeless-Hating Vigilante Facebook Pages Her Homeless-Hating Vigilante Buddies Targeted And Harassed Publisher Kathleen Sterling And — Like The Book-Burning Nazis That They Are — Openly Conspired On Freaking Facebook To Destroy Copies Of The Newspaper Whose Truth So Offended Them — (I Have Screenshots By The Way!!) — And Then Galaxy-Brained Genius Valley Cop Karen Rayner Said It Wasn’t A Crime Because She Said It Wasn’t A Crime — But In Three Seconds On Google I Discovered That It Is A Crime — So Now For The Sake Of What’s Left Of Their Credibility LAPD Must Arrest And The City Must Prosecute These Cop-Loving Criminal Book Burners — Their Names Are — Sheila Johnson — Mike Pettit — Noni Kay — Donna Tamara Trent — Diana Bernard Katayama — Houman Salem

October 2, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

You will recall that after K-Town For All, Knock.LA, and LA Magazine broke the huge story in August about LAPD officers, most notably Sean Dinse, participating in private anti-homeless vigilante Facebook groups helmed by former LAPD volunteer Fern Peskin-White, a local advertising paper, the Valley News Group, ran their own version of the story on August 15.

This inspired the thuggish vigilante Facebook warriors to launch a campaign of abuse, harassment, and threats against Kathleen Sterling, the head honcho of the VNG. And subsequently, when the LAPD banned its officers from participating in the vigilante groups and announced a public meeting in September to discuss the matter, Sterling gave them notice of the horrifying treatment she’d suffered at the hands of their Facebook fans and how, because of their terroristic tactics, she was frightened to attend the public meeting.

Her email to them is well worth your time to read, and is filled with despicable facts that showcase the appalling thuggery of Fern Peskin-White’s unhinged minions. Sadly I do not have time to write about all of this, but one episode is essential. Sterling told LAPD officers Al Mendoza, Sean Dinse, and Duc Dao, that:

… members of that group were harassing me, trying to put my home address on Facebook and threatening me – and I heard nothing from you. They are also dumping our papers from our distribution points – which is blatantly illegal.

And she attached four screenshots from the group, showing that these self-proclaimed law and order worshipping cop lovers were indeed conspiring to dump and actually dumping her papers. So for instance we have cop lover Donna Tamara Trent telling her partners in crime “EVERYWHERE YOU GO IF YOU SEE THEM GRAB ALL THE COPIES IF YOU CAN. I KNOW A FEW PLACES THAT HAVE THEM. TRASH THEM.” And we have cop lover Sheila Johnson sending her partners in crime a picture of a stack of these free papers and being told by cop lover Houman Salem to Trash it. Cop lover Sheila Johnson agreeably replies that “[she] will try to get what [she] can.”

Then we have cop lover Noni Kay telling her partners in crime that “I threw the one away inside Juicy Ladies.” To which cop lover Diana Bernard Katayama replied with a photograph of a bunch of copies of the paper inside a trash can and telling her partners in crime that she is “off to fined [sic] more.” The set closes with cop lover Mike Pettit telling his partners in crime that he “took care of all the trash at Albertson’s Calabasas” and providing an extensive list of distribution points for his co-conspirators to attack.
Continue reading After Valley News Group Ran An Article Exposing Fern Peskin-White’s Secret Homeless-Hating Vigilante Facebook Pages Her Homeless-Hating Vigilante Buddies Targeted And Harassed Publisher Kathleen Sterling And — Like The Book-Burning Nazis That They Are — Openly Conspired On Freaking Facebook To Destroy Copies Of The Newspaper Whose Truth So Offended Them — (I Have Screenshots By The Way!!) — And Then Galaxy-Brained Genius Valley Cop Karen Rayner Said It Wasn’t A Crime Because She Said It Wasn’t A Crime — But In Three Seconds On Google I Discovered That It Is A Crime — So Now For The Sake Of What’s Left Of Their Credibility LAPD Must Arrest And The City Must Prosecute These Cop-Loving Criminal Book Burners — Their Names Are — Sheila Johnson — Mike Pettit — Noni Kay — Donna Tamara Trent — Diana Bernard Katayama — Houman Salem →

LAPD

LAPD Chief Michel Moore’s 2018 Notice On LAPD Use Of Personal Social Media Accounts Does Not Bode Well For Officer Sean Dinse’s Renewed Participation In Former LAPD Volunteer Fern Peskin-White’s Private Anti-Homeless Vigilante Facebook Group — Not To Mention The Fact That He Rejoined Seemingly In Defiance Of A Direct Order

October 1, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

No doubt you recall the whole to-do out in the far west Valley having to do with former LAPD volunteer Fern Peskin-White and her various secret anti-homeless vigilante Facebook groups, highly problematic for having LAPD officers as members even as other members were cracking jokes about burning out the zombies and any number of other horrific forms of terrorism.

So Valley Chief Jorge Rodriguez convened a public meeting a few weeks ago and he and Chief Michel Moore announced that LAPD officers would no longer participate in these vigilante groups. But then, apparently in violation of a direct order from his superior officer, Sean Dinse rejoined the group on Friday, September 27, 2019.

I have heard some speculation about the relevance of the fact that Dinse rejoined using his personal Facebook account rather than an official LAPD account, and I thought that it might be a good time to review a 2018 notice by Chief Michel Moore on LAPD use of social media which covers precisely this issue.

Note that I wrote about this item a few months ago in relation to a larger release of records having to do with LAPD and social media. The current episode with Dinse and the vigilante anti-homeless Facebook groups gives it a currency and a context that it did not have at that time, so I think it’s worth bringing up again. The key bit here is that, according to Moore,
Continue reading LAPD Chief Michel Moore’s 2018 Notice On LAPD Use Of Personal Social Media Accounts Does Not Bode Well For Officer Sean Dinse’s Renewed Participation In Former LAPD Volunteer Fern Peskin-White’s Private Anti-Homeless Vigilante Facebook Group — Not To Mention The Fact That He Rejoined Seemingly In Defiance Of A Direct Order →

LAPD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

The Story Of A Request For Emails From LAPD — And All The Ridiculous Reasons They Propounded For Not Producing — And How They Then Produced!

September 17, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

On January 13, 2019 I asked the Los Angeles Police Department for emails between CD13 staffer Dan Halden and any LAPD employee from January 1, 2016 through December 31, 2018. Yesterday, eight months later, they produced emails from October and November 2018 with the promise of more to come. How we got to this point is the subject of today’s post.¹ Here’s what the request said exactly:

Per my rights under the California Public Records Act, please provide all correspondence between anyone who works in the Los Angeles Police Department AND daniel.halden@lacity.org, for the time period of January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2018. Correspondence is defined as all emails, texts or other communications.

To be honest, when I made this request in January 2019 I was expecting LAPD to refuse to produce the records on technical grounds,² And on January 18, 2019 they did exactly that. They gave two separate and mutually contradictory reasons for refusing to produce.

First they told me that “[y[our request does not describe the records sought clearly enough to permit my staff to determine whether any responsive documents exist.” This claim is based on the CPRA at §6253(b), which requires of requests that they “reasonably [describe] an identifiable record or records”. LAPD’s second reason for refusing to produce was that it would be too much work:

A search of email communications and correspondence for “anyone who works in the Department” would be unduly burdensome for the Department as interpreted in the “public interest” provision of section 6255 of the Act, and would require a separate search of each individual email account of approximately 14,400 Department email accounts.

Continue reading The Story Of A Request For Emails From LAPD — And All The Ridiculous Reasons They Propounded For Not Producing — And How They Then Produced! →

Homeless Issues, LAPD

LAPD Meeting About Cop Participation In Private Anti-Homeless Vigilante-Loving Facebook Pages Elicits Very Public Anti-Homeless Vigilante Outrage From Self-Proclaimed Good Citizen Valley Dwellers — Deputy Chief Jorge Rodriguez Commits To No Senior Lead Officers Allowed In Fern Peskin-White’s Creepy Secret Treehouse — And It’s A Matter Of Deep Import To LAPD — Because Chief Michel Moore Showed Up And Unequivocally Told Everyone That The Facebook Pages Were “Filled With Hate” — “We’ve Got To Stop This [Participation] Right Now” — And Valley Dwelling Vigilante Cosplay Terror-Addicted Freaks Very Upset That Bloggers Who Don’t Even Live In The Valley Dare To Criticize Them

September 11, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Monday evening, September 9, 2019, the Los Angeles Police Department held a meeting at Topanga Station to discuss the controversial-once-exposed participation of a bunch of its putatively estimable senior lead officers, notably Sean Dinse and Duc Dao, in a couple of creepy private anti-homeless vigilante-loving rage-filled Facebook groups, recently written about extensively by what the founder of these hate sites, Fern Peskin-White, or at least her dishonest hack of a lawyer has called, in a letter that’s practically a self-contained model bar exam question on California’s anti-SLAPP statute, “radical left-wing activists.”¹

These groups are filled with two not-necessarily distinct populations. There are angry Valley dwellers who think it’s salient or funny or just even acceptably normal to be kidding-not-kidding about poisoning homeless people or shooting them with bullets and so on, and then there are a bunch of LAPD officers. The point is ostensibly for the cops to share info with the Valley dwellers and respond quicker than 911 or whatever but in practice what it looks like to people free of participant bias is that the police are indifferent to if not supportive of the hate, the anger, and the threats of violence.

And that they facilitate vigilantism in theory or practice by supplying these Facebook warriors with very personal information about their targets, none of which is good PR for LAPD. In fact maybe it’s even conduct unbecoming an officer or something actionable, so Jorge Rodriguez, head supreme LAPD Valley chief boss, possibly at the direction of his boss Michel Moore, kicked all the cops off the page and fired Fern Peskin-White from her cushy job as unpaid cop volunteer.

This action even further enraged the already mouth-frothing Valley dwellers, and so this meeting was called. And I went to the meeting! And took video of the first two hours! And here it is on YouTube! And also you can watch or download the full resolution version here on Archive.org if that’s useful to you! And read on for a click-through guide to the highlights of the meeting!² Continue reading LAPD Meeting About Cop Participation In Private Anti-Homeless Vigilante-Loving Facebook Pages Elicits Very Public Anti-Homeless Vigilante Outrage From Self-Proclaimed Good Citizen Valley Dwellers — Deputy Chief Jorge Rodriguez Commits To No Senior Lead Officers Allowed In Fern Peskin-White’s Creepy Secret Treehouse — And It’s A Matter Of Deep Import To LAPD — Because Chief Michel Moore Showed Up And Unequivocally Told Everyone That The Facebook Pages Were “Filled With Hate” — “We’ve Got To Stop This [Participation] Right Now” — And Valley Dwelling Vigilante Cosplay Terror-Addicted Freaks Very Upset That Bloggers Who Don’t Even Live In The Valley Dare To Criticize Them →