Category Archives: CD13

CD13, Los Angeles City Government, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Confidential Attorney Client Conversation Between Deputy City Attorneys Mike Dundas and Strefan Fauble And CD13 Staffer Dan Halden Reveal That The City Denies Requests As Burdensome Even Though They Know A Judge Wouldn’t Buy Such An Exemption Claim — That They Consider Whether A Requester Will Actually Sue Them When Deciding Whether Or Not To Deny As Burdensome — Which Is Intrinsically A Violation Of The CPRA — And That Mike Dundas Understands The CPRA Far Better Than Strefan Fauble

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This post is about a confidential email conversation between Deputy City Attorneys Mike Dundas and Strefan Fauble and CD13 staffer Dan Halden about a CPRA request of mine. If you’d like to read the email without reading my nonsensical rantings about it you can find it here on Archive.Org.

If you spend any time at all asking the City of Los Angeles for copies of public records you’ll have realized that compliance with the Public Records Act is not a high priority of theirs. They violate it constantly, in small ways and large, intentionally and out of sheer careless indifference. They violate it because they can afford to pay out any number of settlements and most people won’t sue them. They violate it even though compliance with the CPRA is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution of California.1

And now, although I’ve long suspected it to be true, I have proof that the City Attorney’s office actually advises them to decide whether to violate it based on whether or not they think the requester will sue them which, as Strefan Fauble so succinctly puts it in a top-secret confidential April 2019 email conversation, “would involve a lot more work.”

But it takes resources to sue them, so effectively this policy favors rich requesters and corporate requesters, even though the Constitution2 guarantees access to every person, which clearly means equal access. It’s surely no coincidence that rich people and corporations are much, much less likely to be critical of the City. This story begins with a request I sent to Dan Halden on March 12, 2019. I asked Halden for:
Continue reading Confidential Attorney Client Conversation Between Deputy City Attorneys Mike Dundas and Strefan Fauble And CD13 Staffer Dan Halden Reveal That The City Denies Requests As Burdensome Even Though They Know A Judge Wouldn’t Buy Such An Exemption Claim — That They Consider Whether A Requester Will Actually Sue Them When Deciding Whether Or Not To Deny As Burdensome — Which Is Intrinsically A Violation Of The CPRA — And That Mike Dundas Understands The CPRA Far Better Than Strefan Fauble →

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CD13, Homeless Issues

Mitch O’Farrell Introduced A Motion To Put A Homeless Shelter In The Hollywood Recreation Center At Lexington And Cole — Heroic Activist Org KTown For All Rightly Wonders If This Will Lead To Intensified Enforcement Of Anti-Homeless Laws Around The Park — Which Seems Likely To Me Given CD13’s Appalling Deference To The Well-Organized Unhinged Local NIMBY Psychopaths — Who Would Have To Have Been Placated Before The Motion — This Klown Kar Krew Includes Kanye Producer Anthony Kilhoffer — Who Threatened Sean Starkey With Vigilante Action If The City Didn’t Get Rid Of The Unhoused Human Beings — “If it’s not handled in a week I’ll go through [throw] them out myself”

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The Los Angeles City Council Homelessness and Poverty Committee met today, October 8, 2020 and considered, among other things, a Mitch O’Farrell motion to use the Hollywood Recreation Center as interim housing for the homeless. The incomparable Ktown for All livetweeted the meeting and raised the possibility that O’Farrell would use such housing as an excuse for enhanced enforcement of anti-homeless laws in the vicinity.

This is not a baseless fear. Councilmembers universally try to gain the approval of unhinged anti-shelter housedwellers by promising intensified criminalization of homelessness. O’Farrell did precisely that in 2018 with the Hollywood Bridge Housing project, for instance.

Also, the Hollywood Rec center is gang turf, claimed by a particularly violent crew of absolutely genocidal NIMBYs who continually threaten to attack homeless encampments near the park. This deranged mob is led by weirdo Kanye West producer Anthony Kilhoffer, who owns a rental property at 1149 Cole Avenue, directly across the street from the Rec Center.
Continue reading Mitch O’Farrell Introduced A Motion To Put A Homeless Shelter In The Hollywood Recreation Center At Lexington And Cole — Heroic Activist Org KTown For All Rightly Wonders If This Will Lead To Intensified Enforcement Of Anti-Homeless Laws Around The Park — Which Seems Likely To Me Given CD13’s Appalling Deference To The Well-Organized Unhinged Local NIMBY Psychopaths — Who Would Have To Have Been Placated Before The Motion — This Klown Kar Krew Includes Kanye Producer Anthony Kilhoffer — Who Threatened Sean Starkey With Vigilante Action If The City Didn’t Get Rid Of The Unhoused Human Beings — “If it’s not handled in a week I’ll go through [throw] them out myself” →

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CD13, Homeless Issues

Homeless Residents Of Echo Park And Their Supporters Tried And Tried And Tried To Meet With Mitch O’Farrell Earlier This Year — To Discuss Essential Human Needs — Like Bathrooms — And Not Being Killed By Police — And Hygiene Supplies — And Other Equally Important Matters — But Mitch O’Farrell Wouldn’t Meet With Them — Or Direct His Staff To Meet — Meanwhile Both He And His Staff Met Repeatedly With Psychopathic Echo Park Housedwellers — To Discuss Their Idiotic Concerns — Like How Unpleasant It Is To See Homeless People — And Property Values — And Freaking Cholera — And How They Could Fuck Up The Lives Of The Unhoused Even More Than Usual — And Sometimes Just To Drop Off Gifts — Like Care Packages — And This Led To The Damn Housedwellers Exposing O’Farrell — And His Appalling Field Deputy Juan Fregoso — To COVID-19 In April 2020 — Which — Given That Cholera Business — Is A Level Of Irony Rarely Seen In Actual Reality

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In January 2020 the unhoused residents of Echo Park came together to protest their displacement by an ongoing series of sweeps ordered by CD13 Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell. They wrote O’Farrell an exceedingly reasonable letter explaining their precarious situation, the dangers to which his sweeps exposed them, a number of proposals for assuaging the1 so-called concerns of the local housedwellers, and, for our purpose most crucially, a request to meet with him to discuss the burgeoning crisis.

This letter and the protests that inspired it turned out to be the beginning of an ongoing and still-active resistance movement in the Park, the story of which is ably told by Liam Fitzpatrick in Knock LA. This movement has merged seamlessly with the ongoing rebellion against police violence, as seen e.g. yesterday in a massive protest against LAPD and the City’s attacks on the unhoused residents, which culminated in a march to O’Farrell’s office, a series of really moving speeches calling out his weaponized incompetence, and an impressive display of art.

And over these six months of unrest, O’Farrell has repeatedly ignored the activists’ requests to meet, to discuss, to find solutions. According to Streetwatch LA, a group deeply involved in organizing the campaign, the only in-person contact O’Farrell’s office made with any of the activists consisted of O’Farrell’s absolutely despicable field deputy Juan Fregoso meeting with one resident of the Park and aggressively suggesting that the guy enter a shelter while continuing to ignore reasonable requests from these constituents for serious meetings to discuss policy.2

The City of Los Angeles is famous for using encampment sweeps and other violent tactics against unhoused residents in response to complaints, which are characteristically both deeply sociopathic and astonishingly trivial, from unhinged local housedwellers, and the Echo Park sweeps which catalyzed the protests are not an exception. I recently received a small but significant set of emails from CD13 on the subject which suggest that this particular round of violence was seeded by complaints in late 2019 from residents of Parkview Living, which is some kind of retirement home across the street from the Park.

The emails are heavily redacted, by the way, in accordance with a newly-adopted and highly illegal CD13 policy of hiding the identities of psychopathic anti-homeless constituents in order to encourage them to continue to freely express their psychopathic anti-homeless rage. Nevertheless it’s still possible to figure out what’s going on. The housedwellers are worried, as usual, about having to look at unhoused residents as well as the effect of a visible encampment on their property values. Not so much about the well-being, the health, or even the very lives of the unhoused residents.

Even more upsetting given his refusal to even talk to the actual unhoused residents is the fact that O’Farrell and his staff met repeatedly with these angry hypersensitive housedwellers to assuage their wounded sensibilities and to promise, accurately, to step up enforcement against the suffering residents of the Park. O’Farrell explicitly encouraged the Parkview housedwellers to bring their concerns to the media, presumably to bolster the appearance of public support for his violent encampment sweeps.

Fregoso, on the other hand, apparently validated their weird self-pity by telling them falsely that the City had in fact singled them out by specifically allowing encampments near Parkview, probably with the same goal.3 In addition to meetings O’Farrell and his staff apparently dropped by in person to give gifts to Parkview residents. Which foolishness, ironically, led to O’Farrell and Fregoso being exposed to COVID-19 in April 2020.
Continue reading Homeless Residents Of Echo Park And Their Supporters Tried And Tried And Tried To Meet With Mitch O’Farrell Earlier This Year — To Discuss Essential Human Needs — Like Bathrooms — And Not Being Killed By Police — And Hygiene Supplies — And Other Equally Important Matters — But Mitch O’Farrell Wouldn’t Meet With Them — Or Direct His Staff To Meet — Meanwhile Both He And His Staff Met Repeatedly With Psychopathic Echo Park Housedwellers — To Discuss Their Idiotic Concerns — Like How Unpleasant It Is To See Homeless People — And Property Values — And Freaking Cholera — And How They Could Fuck Up The Lives Of The Unhoused Even More Than Usual — And Sometimes Just To Drop Off Gifts — Like Care Packages — And This Led To The Damn Housedwellers Exposing O’Farrell — And His Appalling Field Deputy Juan Fregoso — To COVID-19 In April 2020 — Which — Given That Cholera Business — Is A Level Of Irony Rarely Seen In Actual Reality →

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CD13, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Mitch O’Farrell And The California Public Records Act — Second Part Of A Series On His Outrageous Violations — He Has Instructed His Flunky — Dan Halden — To Redact The Names Of Constituents Who Send Him Insane Rage Rants Against Homeless Human Beings — Advocating Starvation — Forced Relocation — And Similar Genocidal Measures — And The Reason He Thinks He Can Hide Their Identities? — Because — Halden Says — Publicity Would “Chill” Their Willingness To Ask Mitch O’Farrell For “Help” — What He Means Is They Don’t Like Being Exposed And Mocked On The Internet For Their Sociopathy — At O’Farrell’s Bidding Halden Also Redacts The Names Of Actual Public Officials — Like Jittery Little Peruvian-Hating Psychopath Carol Massie — Of The Hollywood Property Owners’ Alliance — And Refuses To Explain Why — Although The Real Reason Is Obvious — O’Farrell Hates The Constitution — And He Hates The Law — And He’s Really Got To Go

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Here’s another installment in my ongoing series of posts about the City of Los Angeles and the interesting ways in which its various departments violate the California Public Records Act.1 Today I’m looking once again at Los Angeles City Council District 13, repped by the fecklessly idiotic troll doll Mitch O’Farrell, and some of O’Farrell’s illegal email redaction policies.2 The story actually begins last March.

At that time I received some emails from CD13 containing conversations between staffers, LAPD officers, and local owners of commercial properties about homelessness. The discussions were filled with dehumanizing stereotypes and calls to starve the homeless, to use pressure-washing and illegal planter placement and other hostile measures to displace them, and so on. All of this not just uncriticized, not just accepted, but actively encouraged and facilitated by City staff and LAPD officers.

I found the whole scene appalling and wrote a number of posts exposing these privilege-addled sociopaths, the main one of which is here but this other one about Kanye West flunky Anthony Kilhoffer is also good. Some of them flipped out and threatened me and apparently others complained to CD13 that I had exposed their sociopathy to the world or that I was mean to them on the internet or whatever. Since then, clearly in response, CD13 has redacted email addresses of basically every correspondent who’s not using a government email address.3

Dan Halden, who’s responsible for handling some of my CD13 CPRA requests,4 has told me that such redactions are legally justified because exposing constituents to personal mockery for advocating genocide against the homeless would create a chilling effect on their willingness to contact their elected officials. Here’s one instance of Halden’s articulation of this novel5 legal theory:
Continue reading Mitch O’Farrell And The California Public Records Act — Second Part Of A Series On His Outrageous Violations — He Has Instructed His Flunky — Dan Halden — To Redact The Names Of Constituents Who Send Him Insane Rage Rants Against Homeless Human Beings — Advocating Starvation — Forced Relocation — And Similar Genocidal Measures — And The Reason He Thinks He Can Hide Their Identities? — Because — Halden Says — Publicity Would “Chill” Their Willingness To Ask Mitch O’Farrell For “Help” — What He Means Is They Don’t Like Being Exposed And Mocked On The Internet For Their Sociopathy — At O’Farrell’s Bidding Halden Also Redacts The Names Of Actual Public Officials — Like Jittery Little Peruvian-Hating Psychopath Carol Massie — Of The Hollywood Property Owners’ Alliance — And Refuses To Explain Why — Although The Real Reason Is Obvious — O’Farrell Hates The Constitution — And He Hates The Law — And He’s Really Got To Go →

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CD13, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Mitch O’Farrell And The California Public Records Act — His Office Violates It So Egregiously That — Comparisons Fail Me — Here’s The Story Of One Request — From May 2019 — That It Took Loyal O’Farrell Flunky Dan Halden Eleven Months To Complete — Along The Way He Lied And Lied And Lied — Obviously At O’Farrell’s Bidding — For Instance In June 2019 He Said It Would Take Six Months Of Work To Finish — And When He Finally Got Around To It He Did The Whole Damn Job In Essentially One Week — Which Would Have Been Great If That Week Hadn’t Started On April 14, 2020 — This Is The Same O’Farrell Who Voted Against An Eviction Moratorium Because He Said It Would Be Illegal For The City Council To Pass It — He Called It A “Pretend Measure Which We Could Never Enforce” — Which Is Apparently How He Sees The Public Records Act As Well — This Is Part One In An Endless Series By The Way — The Next Installment Is About O’Farrell’s Redaction Policies — Which Are More Illegal — And More Weird — Than You Can Probably Imagine — Hinted At Briefly In The Cartoon!

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Public records, you may have noticed, are essential to the work I do here on MK.Org. Without them it’s hard for me to find subjects without turning to unsubstantiated mouth-off-shooting.1 And local agencies including pretty much every department of the City of Los Angeles have always been very bad about producing records. They stall, they temporize, they lie, they go silent, and use a tediously unvaried set of ridiculous excuses to explain their noncompliance with the law.

And to that list of standardized and implausible excuses they’ve added the COVID-19 pandemic.2 About which they’re almost certainly mostly lying, but I still don’t feel right hassling actual individual City employees about my requests because who knows what unimaginable personal tragedies they might be dealing with? It occurred to me pretty recently that if the City’s going to fail to produce records for me to write about I could write about their failures to produce.

It’s an inexhaustible source of topics, and I’m kicking things off with a post about City Council District 13, an inexhaustible source all on its own.3 This ill-fated district is infamously repped by the widely despised Mitch O’Farrell, who along with his frontman and loyal minion Dan Halden, manages to violate the CPRA in any number of egregious but interesting ways, some of them unique in my experience to his office alone. Today we’re talking about just one of them, which is delay of production.4 Continue reading Mitch O’Farrell And The California Public Records Act — His Office Violates It So Egregiously That — Comparisons Fail Me — Here’s The Story Of One Request — From May 2019 — That It Took Loyal O’Farrell Flunky Dan Halden Eleven Months To Complete — Along The Way He Lied And Lied And Lied — Obviously At O’Farrell’s Bidding — For Instance In June 2019 He Said It Would Take Six Months Of Work To Finish — And When He Finally Got Around To It He Did The Whole Damn Job In Essentially One Week — Which Would Have Been Great If That Week Hadn’t Started On April 14, 2020 — This Is The Same O’Farrell Who Voted Against An Eviction Moratorium Because He Said It Would Be Illegal For The City Council To Pass It — He Called It A “Pretend Measure Which We Could Never Enforce” — Which Is Apparently How He Sees The Public Records Act As Well — This Is Part One In An Endless Series By The Way — The Next Installment Is About O’Farrell’s Redaction Policies — Which Are More Illegal — And More Weird — Than You Can Probably Imagine — Hinted At Briefly In The Cartoon! →

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CD13, Lawsuits

Whiny Baby Mitch O’Farrell Barred Activists Doug Haines And George Abrahams From One Of His Damn Planning Meetings In 2014 – In Fact His Then Planning Deputy – Self-Confessed Criminal Marie Rumsey – Physically Pushed Them Out Of The Room – All Because They Were Litigious And Had Criticized O’Farrell – They Sued And After A Circuitous Process Their Suit Was Dismissed – They Appealed And Last Week The Appellate Court Reversed The Dismissal – Which Among Other Things Seems To Mean That If All The Facts The Plaintiffs Allege Are True Then They Would Win – And This Might Mean Maybe Mitch At Some Point Could Have To Open The Damn Meetings? – Anyway Get A Copy Of The Ruling Here And See If You Can Figure It Out!

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Mitch O’Farrell, the crying-little-babiest Councilmember in the whole City of Los Angeles, was soundly rebuked in his whiny ways by the California Court of Appeals, which last week issued an opinion reversing Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Allen White‘s dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the Beachwood Canyon Neighborhood Association against the City.1

The dispute was over a planning meeting sponsored by CD13 in 2014, from which Hollywood activists George Abrahams and Doug Haines of the Association were physically barred by then-CD13 director of planning (and self-confessed criminal) Marie Rumsey. As the ruling summarized the story:

Petitioners alleged that on June 26, 2014, [a Hollywood Design Review Committee] meeting was held at the office of Lehrer Architects “to discuss various projects proposed for Hollywood.” Abrahams and other members of the public went to the meeting location, but “were denied entry to the building.” Haines was also denied access, but he entered the room anyway. When Haines picked up a copy of the meeting agenda from a table, Marie Rumsey, planning deputy for CD13, “pulled the agenda from his hand and physically shoved him toward the exit.” Meanwhile, “Abrahams observed groups of lobbyists entering the building at will.”

So the Association argued that the meeting was subject to the Brown Act and that their exclusion violated that law. Furthermore, they argued that O’Farrell had exluded them based on the fact that they disagreed with his positions on various issues, which violated the First Amendment:

Petitioners also alleged that on January 15, 2015, O’Farrell said that people who tried to “crash” HDRC meetings in the past would not be allowed to attend future meetings. Petitioners alleged that O’Farrell was “singling them out because of positions they have previously taken on matters of public concern, and because they have previously been involved in litigation against the City of Los Angeles.”

O’Farrell’s position was that the meeting was private, was not subject to the Brown Act, and that therefore he could exclude anyone he wanted to. The case went through a number of highly technical twists and directions, very few of which I understand well enough even to summarize, and finally, in December 2017, Judge White declared a nonsuit, which I guess is essentially a dismissal of some kind, and it’s that declaration that was appealed here and reversed by the Appellate court.
Continue reading Whiny Baby Mitch O’Farrell Barred Activists Doug Haines And George Abrahams From One Of His Damn Planning Meetings In 2014 – In Fact His Then Planning Deputy – Self-Confessed Criminal Marie Rumsey – Physically Pushed Them Out Of The Room – All Because They Were Litigious And Had Criticized O’Farrell – They Sued And After A Circuitous Process Their Suit Was Dismissed – They Appealed And Last Week The Appellate Court Reversed The Dismissal – Which Among Other Things Seems To Mean That If All The Facts The Plaintiffs Allege Are True Then They Would Win – And This Might Mean Maybe Mitch At Some Point Could Have To Open The Damn Meetings? – Anyway Get A Copy Of The Ruling Here And See If You Can Figure It Out! →

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CD13, Homeless Issues, LAPD

Newly Obtained Emails From CD13 Reveal Existence Of Hitherto-Unknown-To-Me LAPD Unit Called Coordinated Outreach Resource Enforcement — AKA CORE — Dedicated To “identifying wanted suspects of active investigations living within the homeless population of Hollywood” — And Potentially Other Divisions As Well — In 2018 There Were 8 Cops On This Job In Hollywood And A Supervising Sergeant — Shannon Geaney — They Seem To Go On Sweeps And Use Outreach As A Pretext For Warrant Searches — Thus Obviously Exacerbating And Increasing Distrust Of Their Motives — Which Legit Are Not Pure — Yet Another Reason To Remove Cops From Encampment Actions Of All Types — And Actually Institute The Demands Of The Services Not Sweeps Coalition — Not To Mention Some Idiotic Victim Blaming By Geaney — Who Proposes To Stop LAPD & LA Sanitation From Throwing Away Homeless People’s Property By Giving Them More Plastic Bags — And ” educat[ing] them on the importance of their role in safe guarding their property”

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I have been spending a lot of time looking into how the City of Los Angeles organizes sweeps of homeless encampments on the most micro-level possible. The picture painted by the evidence is of an essentially complaint-driven process, with sweeps being called in mainly by Council offices, for the most part in response to constituent complaints or even to facilitate the illegal installation of hostile architecture. It’s possible, even likely, that there are other mechanisms, but I don’t yet have a clear idea of what they are.

Ideas aren’t guiding City policy, but personalities are, raw animal desire, hatred, anger, so it’s not likely that ideas, morality talk, and so on, could change the policy. It’s extremely important therefore to understand the processes at this personal level not least to learn what is motivating City policy, what kinds of pressures City officials feel that guide their choices, and so on. Whose anger counts.

And it’s surprising whose anger does count. Like see the crazed emails from Hollywood landlord and Kanye West operative Anthony Kilhoffer and the City’s reaction to them or these genocidal freaks who want to starve homeless human beings away from their properties. And yet City officials, police included, are deferential throughout their interactions. Without understanding how this happens, why it happens, it will be harder than it already is to change the way the City deals with the homeless, and it’s already impossibly hard.

The best tool I know for understanding City politics is, of course, the California Public Records Act.1 So I spend a lot of time collecting and reading rage-filled hateful screeds, written by self-righteous privileged housedwellers. And to collect these, well, the CPRA requires that a request “reasonably [describe] an identifiable record or records”.2 Which makes it a little tricky in that probably “all rage-filled hate screeds emailed by psychopathic housedwellers” is not a reasonable description of an identifiable record. It’s too subjective, not least because one person’s psychopathic housedweller is another person’s most honored campaign donor.

So to obtain emails, then, it’s best to provide search terms. These can be domain names, email addresses, words, phrases, anything. The presence or absence of a term in an email is objective, and therefore provides a reasonable description of an identifiable record. There’s still the problem, and it’s not trivial, of coming up with appropriate search terms for this particular genre of public records.

But recently I have come pretty close to what seems to be an ideal solution. At least the phrase I’ve been using turns up a lot of interesting stuff. My current best search term is “quality of life.” Indeed, this was probably3 made up by a bunch of broken windows theorists as a way to explain why their theories lead them to think it’s actually OK, actually desirable, to lock people up for an entire freaking year for pissing in an alley when sane people actually don’t know why pissing in alleys is even illegal.4

And this abhorrent circumlocution evidently serves its conscience-soothing function well, based on its popularity among that segment of psychopathic homeless-hating housedwellers who so desperately need their consciences soothed, or would if they had any. It’s freaking everywhere in precisely the emails I’m looking for. And just the other day I got a big stack of these quality of life emails from Mitch O’Farrell’s staff at CD13.5 And you can read all of them here on Archive.Org.6

And there is some good stuff in here, both interesting and important.7 I will be writing about it from time to time, and today I’m looking at this March 30, 2018 email from LAPD officer Shannon Geaney to a panoply of what passes for community leaders in Hollywood asking for their help in coordinating a distribution “one-thousand, high density, clear, zip-closure bags that will be printed “ESSENTIAL PERSONAL PROPERTY” with a box to write the owner’s name.” There’s a transcription of this entire essential email below.

The point, as you may well have guessed immediately, is that Geany has “heard the frequent complaint that important paperwork, documents, identification cards, birth certificates, citations, or medications are frequently lost during clean-ups or incident to arrest.” Note, by the way, the absolutely stunning level of deflection here as Geaney refuses to acknowledge that the property isn’t “lost” but is rather illegally confiscated by police or other City officials and illegally destroyed or thrown away.

And it gets worse. Why is Geaney concerned about police and sanitation workers confiscating and destroying people’s medicine and paperwork? Well, she says she “understand[s] how this can cause significant delay in a client’s case management and enrollment in appropriate programs.”8 Maybe it’s too much even in these latter days to expect a police to be concerned about violations of people’s constitutional rights because they’re violations of constitutional rights rather than for such absolutely demeaning reasons.9

And why is Geaney writing to these Hollywood thought leaders, providers of services, and, for some reason, the Hollywood Entertainment District BID? Well, because “It is [her] hope that each of you will want to distribute these bags to your clients and educate them on the importance of their role in safe guarding their property.” In short, because it helps her make the point that even though the LAPD and City Sanitation workers are the ones throwing away the property in question, and even though they’re doing it illegally, nevertheless the fact that it gets thrown away is the fault of the property owners. Because they don’t live in houses. Got it?

Good, because now finally we’re going to discuss the reason why this email is really important.10 It reveals an anti-homeless unit of the LAPD that I don’t know anything about yet. It’s called the Coordinated Outreach Resource Enforcement Unit, which because the City’s cute-names-for-tools-of-oppression policy seems to require it, is known as CORE. Tangentially, please read the whole email, transcribed below. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in there, very revealing of cop attitudes towards human beings forced to live on sidewalks, and I do not have time11 to discuss it all.
Continue reading Newly Obtained Emails From CD13 Reveal Existence Of Hitherto-Unknown-To-Me LAPD Unit Called Coordinated Outreach Resource Enforcement — AKA CORE — Dedicated To “identifying wanted suspects of active investigations living within the homeless population of Hollywood” — And Potentially Other Divisions As Well — In 2018 There Were 8 Cops On This Job In Hollywood And A Supervising Sergeant — Shannon Geaney — They Seem To Go On Sweeps And Use Outreach As A Pretext For Warrant Searches — Thus Obviously Exacerbating And Increasing Distrust Of Their Motives — Which Legit Are Not Pure — Yet Another Reason To Remove Cops From Encampment Actions Of All Types — And Actually Institute The Demands Of The Services Not Sweeps Coalition — Not To Mention Some Idiotic Victim Blaming By Geaney — Who Proposes To Stop LAPD & LA Sanitation From Throwing Away Homeless People’s Property By Giving Them More Plastic Bags — And ” educat[ing] them on the importance of their role in safe guarding their property” →

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CD13, LAUSD

In May 2018 Mitch O’Farrell Held Secret Invite-Only Meetings With So-Called “Key Community Stakeholders” To Build Buy-In For Hollywood Bridge Housing — Larchmont Charter School Supreme Commander-For-Life Amy Dresser Held Was Among Those Invited — She Then Helped Orchestrate Community Meetings With Dan Halden To “Clear Up Any Misconceptions” — And Listen To More Made-Up Anti-Homeless Housedweller Grievances — And Hear His Promises Of “Additional Enforcement Tools” Against Homeless Human Beings — In Exchange He Proceeded To Spend Months Doing Special Little Favors For These Whiny And Entitled LCS Privatizers

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Readers of this blog surely don’t need me to explain how Prop HHH money, meant to establish so-called bridge housing to help alleviate our crisis of homelessness, has at best been spent far too slowly and too ineffectively and at the worst corruptly and in secret. But despite all that, creepy little CD13 repster Mitch O’Farrell did manage to organize one of these projects in Hollywood.

And his flack Tony Arranaga’s inordinately superficial press release on the subject, touting the only-from-an-inordinately-superficial-perspective success of this project is well worth reading.1 And of particular interest in that slew/slough of whah-whah-whahwawawa, there is this little number right here:

The office of Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell has championed this project from the start: Councilmember O’Farrell originally introduced the motion which paved the way to build the project on the City-owned parking lot; his office led the community outreach before and during construction; and the office served as the liaison between City departments, partnering agencies, and local stakeholders.

This business about the community outreach and the liaison between City departments, partnering agencies, and local stakeholders is of the utmost interest. I’ve spent a little time looking into the processes by which Los Quince Jefes construct the appearance of community buy-in for their pet projects, most notably as orchestrated by Jose Huizar and by Gil Cedillo in the notorious case of the demolition of Parker Center.

And of course another interesting line of inquiry I’m presently working on is charter schools. I don’t know enough about them yet to narrow2 my inquiries, but I’m learning, mostly via my usual technique of reading3 their damn emails. I recently got gigantic set of goodies from Larchmont Charter School, in particular from their supreme commander Amy Dresser Held. These have so far yielded up a couple of really interesting stories.4

Like for instance the one about how Amy Dresser Held used her personal connections with high-powered senior staffies of LAUSD school boardie Icky Sticky Nicky Melvoin to get a luxe internship for a family friend or the one about how Amy Dresser Held and the Icky Sticky one had a mutually satisfying comfort sesh about how mean and crazy the charter-haters were being. And today, before your very eye, friends, these different lines of inquiry have merged into one!

You see, among all those emails sent to me by LCS were well over a hundred between Most High Brigadier-in-charge Amy Dresser Held and Mitch O’Farrell’s chameleonic Hollywood button man, Dan X. Halden.5 You can browse through the whole subset here on Archive.Org, and turn the page for transcriptions and discussion, the better to relate the tale so adroitly summarized for you in the headline above!
Continue reading In May 2018 Mitch O’Farrell Held Secret Invite-Only Meetings With So-Called “Key Community Stakeholders” To Build Buy-In For Hollywood Bridge Housing — Larchmont Charter School Supreme Commander-For-Life Amy Dresser Held Was Among Those Invited — She Then Helped Orchestrate Community Meetings With Dan Halden To “Clear Up Any Misconceptions” — And Listen To More Made-Up Anti-Homeless Housedweller Grievances — And Hear His Promises Of “Additional Enforcement Tools” Against Homeless Human Beings — In Exchange He Proceeded To Spend Months Doing Special Little Favors For These Whiny And Entitled LCS Privatizers →

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CD13, Homeless Issues

In Which Demented Grammy-Winning Housedwelling Psychopath Anthony Kilhoffer Wants Us To Know That We Are “In Violation Of Defamation Of Character” For Calling Him A Psychopath — And Blah Blah Blah Lawyers Blah Blah Blah Demands Blah Blah Blah Shit Bags Blah Blah Blah — And We’re Used To That Kind Of Blustery Crapola From Our Friends And Subjects — Especially The Psychopathic Ones — But Dude Doesn’t Like Our Cartoons?!? — That Really Hurts!

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Oh Lord! Remember a few weeks ago when we published some demented rants by mouth-frother and crazed homeless-hating Hollywood capitalist Anthony Kilhoffer? The point of which was that it doesn’t matter how absolutely incoherently dementedly psychopathic are the rants of homeless-hating housedwellers, City officials will nevertheless treat them with the utmost consideration, greet them, meet them, respect them, call in sweeps and displace suffering homeless human beings merely to placate them in their unreasoning rage, and so on.

But homeless-hating housedwelling psychopaths are not generally very perceptive, thoughtful, aware of things outside their heads, and so on. And why should they be given that they can get whatever it is they want through blind rage? On the basis of this theoretical framework, then, it makes perfect sense that Kilhoffer, on discovering my publication of his publicly available rage rants, wouldn’t reflect on the fact that he chose to display his psychopathy in public, but would instead choose to call me a bunch of mean names and then threaten me with legal action?

And that’s just what he did! With A WHOLE LOT OF CAPITAL LETTERS!!! And you can read the two emails here and here, and of course, there are transcriptions below! Stay tuned for more news as we get it!
Continue reading In Which Demented Grammy-Winning Housedwelling Psychopath Anthony Kilhoffer Wants Us To Know That We Are “In Violation Of Defamation Of Character” For Calling Him A Psychopath — And Blah Blah Blah Lawyers Blah Blah Blah Demands Blah Blah Blah Shit Bags Blah Blah Blah — And We’re Used To That Kind Of Blustery Crapola From Our Friends And Subjects — Especially The Psychopathic Ones — But Dude Doesn’t Like Our Cartoons?!? — That Really Hurts! →

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CD13, Homeless Issues

Grammy Award Winning Housedwelling Kanye Album Producing Hollywood Landlord Anthony Kilhoffer And His Delusional Demented Psychopathic Anti-Homeless Rants — Addressed Mostly To Mitch O’Farrell’s Hollywood Minion Dan Halden — Who Listened Sympathetically — And Set Up Meetings For Kilhoffer With Himself — And Neighborhood Prosecutor Steve Houchin — And Supreme Hollywood Cop Commander Cory Palka — And Neighborhood Council People — And So On — Which Goes To Show That Being An Unhinged Lunatic Isn’t A Bar To Being Taken Seriously By The City Of Los Angeles About Homeless Policy — Not If You’re A Housedwelling Property Owner It’s Not — And Six Months Of Kilhoffer’s Screeching Produced A Sweep — And The Encampment Was Back In Less Than Three Months — And The Cycle Begins Again

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One of the perennially interesting unsolved questions in the theory of Los Angeles1 is who gets to meet with City officials to express their concerns and how and why they do. Why is it that some people have to rant and wave puppets during open public comment while councilmembers ignore them as they fool with their phones playing candy crush or swiping right on their staffies while others get all the face time they ask for, monthly breakfasts with the field staff, meetings, coffee dates, and so on? As with many such questions I certainly have my suspicions about the answer, but evidence has been hard to come by.

Leaving aside the case of zillionaires, who obviously get to meet just because they’re zillionaires, there was this one interesting episode from 2016 where scumbag cat-kicking K-Town slumlord Bryan Kim offered to donate a lot of money to Mitch O’Farrell for having arranged an encampment sweep and then wanted to meet with El Mitch and El Mitch’s consigliere Marisol Rodriguez was all like is he respectful because if so maybe a meeting would be a good idea because it would create the impression that Mitch cares about his constituents.2

This gave me the feeling that in order to meet with these people, in order to have them take one’s concerns seriously, it was at least necessary to be willing to observe some social boundaries, willing to play along, to take a seat at the table, to have concerns the addressing of which would in some way create some direct or indirect political advantage for the council office. This would be disconcerting but, I guess, understandable given the incentives under which City electeds labor.

However, I just recently obtained a string of emails between O’Farrell flunky slash Hollywood button man Dan Halden and a couple of really angry, really unhinged housedwellers which pretty much shoots that theory all to hell. These housedwellers, who are, incidentally, famed Grammy-winning Kanye producer Anthony Kilhoffer and his wife Amy Taylor, want some homeless human beings scraped off the sidewalks on Cole Avenue between Lexington and Santa Monica Boulevard in order to increase the value of their rental property and to soothe their offended aesthetic sensibilities.

Interestingly, once Taylor hears that Dan Halden is going to deal with the matter, she’s very careful to reassure him that she’s a loving human being. This is a super-common trope in this genre. I love all mankind, but I’m scared, so morality no longer applies:

I want you to understand that I empathize with the issues regarding those who cannot afford homes/shelters in Los Angeles. We are not heartless nor.are we blind to the adversities facing low income individuals in these times. But when it becomes an issue of safety, our children’s play spaces, and sanitation -then we need to act quickly and aggressively.

Kilhoffer is not respectful, he’s not willing to play along, he’s not even freaking coherent. He rants about piss, shit, drugs, pimps, how the City encourages encampments in order to drive down property values so they can “redevelop” his property. He insults Mitch O’Farrell’s attention to eliminating Columbus Day in Los Angeles.3 He insists that the people who are upsetting him aren’t even “real” homeless people, whatever that means and they’re not “respectful” like homeless people used to be a few years ago.

But Halden doesn’t ignore Kilhoffer, he doesn’t make cracks about him to his colleagues,4 he doesn’t even tell the guy to calm down and stop making up stories about prostitution rings being run out of tents on the sidewalk. No, he doesn’t do any of that. Instead he talks to the guy on the phone, he introduces the guy to neighborhood prosecutor Steve Houchin and various luminaries from the local Neighborhood Council, he arranges phone calls between the guy and supreme Hollywood cop Commander Cory Palka, and so on.

Most upsetting of all, Halden treats Kilhoffer as if he’s sane. He validates his psychotic concerns as if his ranting makes any freaking sense whatsoever, has any connection, however remote, with actual objective reality. It does not. Kilhoffer’s unhinged anger has obviously driven him to a place almost beyond moral judgment. He’s not competent to stand trial.5 Shunning is almost the only adequate response.6 On the other hand, Halden’s behavior is despicable beyond words and most certainly not beyond moral judgment.

Halden is a professional, his job is ostensibly to serve the people of the City rather than to single out angry dangerous lunatics like Anthony Kilhoffer for special attention and care, to amplify their psychosis and use it to guide policy. We don’t entrust him and his boss and the rest of their damnable ilk with our vast municipal power so they can use it against helpless human beings at the direction of demented psychopaths like Anthony Kilhoffer. He ought to be ashamed of himself, although experience has shown that whether or not he is his behavior won’t be affected by it.

Finally, after six months of Kilhoffer’s abuse and lunatic ravings, Halden finally actually arranges for a sweep of the encampment. In case you were wondering, that’s how encampment sweeps get scheduled in Los Angeles. Oh, and two months later the encampment was back and, I guess, the whole cycle begins again. And what’s the point? I have no idea.7

And, as I said, this episode leaves me utterly without a theory as to who gets these people’s time, in whom they invest their resources, what constituent concerns catch their attention. Anyway, turn the page for a transcription of selections from this utterly off the chain email conversation.
Continue reading Grammy Award Winning Housedwelling Kanye Album Producing Hollywood Landlord Anthony Kilhoffer And His Delusional Demented Psychopathic Anti-Homeless Rants — Addressed Mostly To Mitch O’Farrell’s Hollywood Minion Dan Halden — Who Listened Sympathetically — And Set Up Meetings For Kilhoffer With Himself — And Neighborhood Prosecutor Steve Houchin — And Supreme Hollywood Cop Commander Cory Palka — And Neighborhood Council People — And So On — Which Goes To Show That Being An Unhinged Lunatic Isn’t A Bar To Being Taken Seriously By The City Of Los Angeles About Homeless Policy — Not If You’re A Housedwelling Property Owner It’s Not — And Six Months Of Kilhoffer’s Screeching Produced A Sweep — And The Encampment Was Back In Less Than Three Months — And The Cycle Begins Again →

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