Los Angeles City Government

The Central City Association Held Secret Members-Only Meetings With Mike Feuer And Eric Garcetti In October And November — Attendees Included Tom Gilmore — Patti Berman — Sara Hernandez — And The Usual Gang Of Downtown BIDdies And Zillionaires Complaining About Homelessness — And Defunding The Police — And Regulations And Codes — They Really Really Hate Regulations And Codes — Featuring The Inimitable Blair Besten As Self-Proclaimed Expert On “Street Homelessness” — And Plenty Of Other Aggressive Lunacy

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You might want to meet with Eric Garcetti but Eric Garcetti doesn’t want to meet with you. John Motter told that story recently in the essential Knock LA. And it’s not Garcetti’s problem, honestly. It’s all you. There are plenty of folks he will very gladly meet with, like e.g. members of the Central City Association. And in secret no less, as he did on November 16, 2020. Mike Feuer did the same thing on October 8, 2020.

And what were these luminaries talking to CCALA about in these top secret meetings? I’m glad you asked! I recently obtained copies of CCALA supreme commander Jessica Lall’s confidential members-only briefing notes for these two meetings that reveal quite a bit about what went on.1 Here are links to the original Microsoft Word files and PDF versions2. HTML transcriptions and images appear below as well:

嬄   Feuer Meeting briefing notes — DOCX ◈ PDF ◈ JPG ◈ HTML

嬄   Garcetti Meeting briefing notes — DOCX ◈ PDF ◈ JPG ◈ HTML

You should read the originals, also. They have a lot more stuff in them than I discuss here. The notes include brief agendas and a list of goals. For instance, Garcetti:
Continue reading The Central City Association Held Secret Members-Only Meetings With Mike Feuer And Eric Garcetti In October And November — Attendees Included Tom Gilmore — Patti Berman — Sara Hernandez — And The Usual Gang Of Downtown BIDdies And Zillionaires Complaining About Homelessness — And Defunding The Police — And Regulations And Codes — They Really Really Hate Regulations And Codes — Featuring The Inimitable Blair Besten As Self-Proclaimed Expert On “Street Homelessness” — And Plenty Of Other Aggressive Lunacy →

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LAPD

Garcetti Aide Jeff Gorell And LAPD Inspector General Mark Smith Were All Set In July To Announce Plans To Open A Satellite Inspector General’s Office In South Los Angeles — To Be Staffed Two Days A Week — For Accepting Reports And As A Meeting Space — But When Gorell Checked In With His “Chief” About It A Couple Days Before The Announcement Garcetti Put The Nix On It — Wanted To Bundle It Up With “Other UOF Reforms” — And Now It’s December — With No Satellite Office Announcement And No UOF Reforms — Maybe None Of It Looked Pressing To Garcetti While Visions Of Cabinet-Level Appointments Danced In His Head?

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It appears that Mark Smith, Inspector General of the Los Angeles Police Department, and Mayor Eric Garcetti planned earlier this year to open a satellite Inspector General’s office in South Los Angeles “when COVID allows.” According to emails I obtained recently, Garcetti aide Jeff Gorell, Smith, and Police Commission President Eileen Decker were ready on July 9 to announce this publicly.

On July 7 Gorell emailed Garcetti to inform him of the plan, in which the satellite would have “some capacity for in-person report-taking and meetings [and] staffed 2 days per week.” Apparently Garcetti nixed the announcement, though, because it was never made.

According to Gorell’s later email to Decker they’d decided “to postpone the announcement of the satellite IG office until later when we can couple it with other UOF reforms.” The point being, I guess, that Garcetti intended the satellite office, like the use of force reforms, to placate people protesting daily to express their disgust for LAPD’s apparently unslakeable thirst for blood.

Well, I haven’t heard about this plan again, and I haven’t heard much of the ‘other UOF reforms” either. I guess none of it seemed so important while MEG thought he was on his way to Washington? Or something like that. Anyway, read on for a transcription.
Continue reading Garcetti Aide Jeff Gorell And LAPD Inspector General Mark Smith Were All Set In July To Announce Plans To Open A Satellite Inspector General’s Office In South Los Angeles — To Be Staffed Two Days A Week — For Accepting Reports And As A Meeting Space — But When Gorell Checked In With His “Chief” About It A Couple Days Before The Announcement Garcetti Put The Nix On It — Wanted To Bundle It Up With “Other UOF Reforms” — And Now It’s December — With No Satellite Office Announcement And No UOF Reforms — Maybe None Of It Looked Pressing To Garcetti While Visions Of Cabinet-Level Appointments Danced In His Head? →

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Los Angeles City Government

Practical Instructions On How To Obtain Everything You Need From Film Permits On The Day Of Shooting — Even Though FilmLA Chief Bossdude Paul Audley Doesn’t Put Them On The Website Until Two Days After — But There’s A Workaround! — For Instance — That Infamous December 1 Union Station Shoot That Shut Down The COVID Test Site? — The Permit Didn’t Hit The Website Until December 3 But This Method Would Have Let Us Learn — Just For Instance — The Name And Cell Phone Number Of The Location Manager Immediately On December 1

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This month Los Angeles activists were forced to think a lot about film permits. First the extraordinary Ktown For All broke what turned into an international story about the City shutting down a COVID test site at Union Station to accommodate a film shoot.

Then less than two weeks later Streetwatch LA member Ian Carr broke the story that an entirely different film company had somehow arranged for a large encampment in front of City Hall East to be swept away in advance of their shoot. Twitter user @publicownedbus also provided valuable info, and then ace Knock LA reporter Cerise Castle also wrote about this incident.1

On December 1, then, I started using the California Public Records Act to investigate. It turns out that FilmLA is a private corporation but their contract makes them subject to the CPRA, so I fired off a request and a couple of days later, after an inordinate amount of pushback from an inordinate number of City offices,2 I received the Union Station permit and wrote a post about it.

In the process of this investigation I ended up learning a lot of interesting things about film permits, how to get copies of them, and what can be learned from them,3 which I thought I’d share with you today!
Continue reading Practical Instructions On How To Obtain Everything You Need From Film Permits On The Day Of Shooting — Even Though FilmLA Chief Bossdude Paul Audley Doesn’t Put Them On The Website Until Two Days After — But There’s A Workaround! — For Instance — That Infamous December 1 Union Station Shoot That Shut Down The COVID Test Site? — The Permit Didn’t Hit The Website Until December 3 But This Method Would Have Let Us Learn — Just For Instance — The Name And Cell Phone Number Of The Location Manager Immediately On December 1 →

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LAPD

Inspector General Mark Smith Is Reviewing LAPD’s Disciplinary Process According To Kevin Rector Of The L.A. Times — The LAPPL Is Fighting Smith’s Plan To Observe Boards Of Rights Hearings But Doesn’t Seem Mad About His Plan To Audit Hearing Outcomes — Smith Needs Data For That And He Has It — And You And I Need Data Too — So We Can Audit The Auditors! — And Here Is The Data! — Six Spreadsheets With Detailed And Unprecedented Information On Hearing Outcomes Since 2016 — In Some Cases Including Case Numbers — Summarized Allegations — Names Of Officers, Advocates, Hearing Board Members, And So On — And Proof That Accused Officers Have Overwhelmingly Chosen All-Civilian Review Boards Since 2019 When The Option Became Available — Since June 2019 When The Option Became Available

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Kevin Rector has a story in today’s L.A. Times about LAPD Inspector General Mark Smith’s intention to review the police discipline process. Rector explains:

According to Inspector General Mark Smith, his office is developing plans to begin monitoring police Board of Rights proceedings to identify “inconsistencies” in board decisions, “inequities” in the process and other ways the system might be improved to ensure “just outcomes for all stakeholders.”

As I’m sure you can imagine, the Los Angeles Police Protective League is fighting Smith’s plan. Absolute secrecy of every possible aspect of the disciplinary process is one of the LAPPL’s main issues. And if the case of Nicholas Owens is a reasonable example, I can certainly see why they don’t want the process monitored when more serious offenses are involved. Also according to Rector, the monitoring plan is not all Smith is working on:

Smith said his office is already conducting a more limited audit of the outcome of disciplinary hearings since the City Council passed an ordinance last year allowing for all-civilian panels.

Voters amended the City Charter in 2017 to allow for these all-civilian panels if the accused officer chooses to have one and the change took effect last year. Most observers expected civilian panels to be much more forgiving of officers’ misdeeds, and I assume that that’s what Smith is already looking into.

And you can look into it too, if you’re interested. I recently obtained an unprecedented set of six spreadsheets filling with information about pending and complete boards of rights, administrative appeals, civil service hearings,1 and maybe other LAPD disciplinary processes.

The data includes outcomes of both all-civilian panels and traditional panels for comparison, and just an incredible amount of other information including names of officers and civilian staff with pending hearings, the names of their representatives and the board members, and so on.

A proper analysis of this material is far beyond my personal capabilities, but its importance is indisputable. I’m publishing it today to make it available to people who have the capacity to understand and use it. All the files can be found here on Archive.org, and there are individual links to the files below, both in the original Excel format and also as PDFs for ease of reading:
Continue reading Inspector General Mark Smith Is Reviewing LAPD’s Disciplinary Process According To Kevin Rector Of The L.A. Times — The LAPPL Is Fighting Smith’s Plan To Observe Boards Of Rights Hearings But Doesn’t Seem Mad About His Plan To Audit Hearing Outcomes — Smith Needs Data For That And He Has It — And You And I Need Data Too — So We Can Audit The Auditors! — And Here Is The Data! — Six Spreadsheets With Detailed And Unprecedented Information On Hearing Outcomes Since 2016 — In Some Cases Including Case Numbers — Summarized Allegations — Names Of Officers, Advocates, Hearing Board Members, And So On — And Proof That Accused Officers Have Overwhelmingly Chosen All-Civilian Review Boards Since 2019 When The Option Became Available — Since June 2019 When The Option Became Available →

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LAPD

The Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation — Which Represents African-American LAPD Officers and Civilian Staff — Surveyed Its Members On Workplace Racism Regarding The George Floyd Protests — Sixty Percent Of Respondents Witnessed Or Were Aware Of Racist Statements Made By LAPD Employees — Foundation President Jody Stiger Met With Chief Michel Moore To Discuss — Here’s A Copy Of The Foundation’s Newsletter With Stiger’s Report — And A Lot Of Other Interesting Material

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The Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation “represents African American officers and civilian employees who proudly serve the Los Angeles Police Department and other municipal agencies throughout the county.” The Foundation publishes a quarterly newsletter known as Pursuit. In the Second Quarter 2020 issue Foundation president Jody Stiger wrote that soon after this Spring’s protests over the killing of George Floyd began, he …

… began to receive numerous calls and texts from members and non-members regarding the harsh and callous comments being made about the Black Lives Matter movement, officers that decided to kneel with protesters, and countless other comments that were, quite frankly, racist and incongruent with the Department’s Core Values.

The Foundation’s board of directors surveyed the members, asking simply “were you witness to, or aware of, any concerning statements made by LAPD employees in regards to the recent protests and calls for police reform?”

Sixty percent of the respondents answered “yes,” and Stiger told Foundation members that the board had met with LAPD Chief Michel Moore “and expressed your concerns to him. I personally read some of the responses to him, and he was very disappointed with what you all witnessed in the workplace.”1
Stiger goes on to describe other actions the board planned to take to protect the safety and well-being of their members while on the job. Stiger’s entire statement is transcribed below. The Foundation’s members have a unique perspective on the question of what should be done about the LAPD. I haven’t heard as much about it as I have some others, and it makes the whole newsletter, which I was lucky to obtain a copy of, definitely worth reading.
Continue reading The Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation — Which Represents African-American LAPD Officers and Civilian Staff — Surveyed Its Members On Workplace Racism Regarding The George Floyd Protests — Sixty Percent Of Respondents Witnessed Or Were Aware Of Racist Statements Made By LAPD Employees — Foundation President Jody Stiger Met With Chief Michel Moore To Discuss — Here’s A Copy Of The Foundation’s Newsletter With Stiger’s Report — And A Lot Of Other Interesting Material →

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Business Improvement Districts

Ellen Riotto — Executive Director Of The South Park BID — Contacted Kevin de León’s Office In July 2020 To Set Up A Meeting With All The Downtown LA BIDdies — She Worked It Out With Sarah Flaherty — Now A CD14 Field Deputy — And The Meeting Happened On September 24 — Riotto And Her Fellow BIDdies Had A Secret Agenda Though — Like Literally A Secret Agenda — That They Didn’t Share With de León — But I Have A Copy — And It Is Very Asky — And Demandy — One Big Thing With Them Is “How Often Do We Have Facetime With The CM? Monthly?” — Listed Twice On The Hidden Agenda — And They Want To Base Their Relationship With The CM On “Trust, Accountability, and Shared Vision” — Accountability?! Facetime?! Monthly?! — These BIDdies Live In A Different World

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On September 24, 2020 the directors of six Downtown Los Angeles business improvement districts met with incoming City Councilmember Kevin de León. The BIDs involved were South Park, Historic Core, Downtown Center, Downtown Industrial District, Arts District, and Little Tokyo and the meeting was arranged by South Park BID director Ellen Riotto.

Riotto got in touch with de León’s office on July 27 asking to meet, and by September was working with de León staffer Sarah Flaherty1 to schedule it. On September 23, the night before the meeting, Riotto sent an agenda to Flaherty along with a note about how darn thrilled they all were.2 The agenda was fairly bland:

DTLA BIDs & Councilmember-elect Kevin de León
September 24, 2020
Zoom Meeting Agenda

I. Welcome and introductions
II. Downtown BIDs
• Who we are
• What we do
• Key stats
III. Our priorities
• Economic recovery
• Long-term planning
IV. Council District 14’s priorities
V. Working together and lessons learned
VI. Next steps

But you know and I know that these BIDdies are sneaky as sneaky can be. Very sneaky. Of course they had a hidden agenda as well as a public one. No, like an actual hidden agenda. Literally a hidden agenda. An agenda, but they hid it from de León.3 And here is a copy of it! They had a lot more planned for that meeting than they told their incoming CM! Their purpose:
Continue reading Ellen Riotto — Executive Director Of The South Park BID — Contacted Kevin de León’s Office In July 2020 To Set Up A Meeting With All The Downtown LA BIDdies — She Worked It Out With Sarah Flaherty — Now A CD14 Field Deputy — And The Meeting Happened On September 24 — Riotto And Her Fellow BIDdies Had A Secret Agenda Though — Like Literally A Secret Agenda — That They Didn’t Share With de León — But I Have A Copy — And It Is Very Asky — And Demandy — One Big Thing With Them Is “How Often Do We Have Facetime With The CM? Monthly?” — Listed Twice On The Hidden Agenda — And They Want To Base Their Relationship With The CM On “Trust, Accountability, and Shared Vision” — Accountability?! Facetime?! Monthly?! — These BIDdies Live In A Different World →

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LAPD

LAPD Disciplinary Procedures Are Notoriously Secretive — But I Recently Obtained Records About An Officer — Nicholas Owens — Accused Of Using A Monkey Emoji To Comment On A Video About Mike Tyson And Subsequently Exonerated By A Board Of Rights — Which Reveal Unprecedented Information — Including The Board’s Detailed Rationale For Its Findings — Which Doesn’t Create Much Confidence In The Validity Of The Process — Like E.g. One Reason They Exonerated The Guy Is That None Of His Extensive Sensitivity Training Specifically Covered Emoji-Based Racism — It Sure Looks Like LAPD’s Disciplinary System Is Performance Rather Than Substantial Process — Remember This Whenever Politicians Or Cops Pass Off Disciplinary Procedures As Some Kind Of Police Reform — The Police Run The Process — And Can Make It Look Genuine As Long As The Proceedings Are Secret — So Let’s Open Them Up!

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Summary: LAPD officers accused of rule violations often appear before a Board of Rights in an adversarial proceeding with the Department playing prosecutor. Most end in exoneration. All records of these proceedings are top secret so no one can tell if the process is corrupt or not. I recently obtained records about a disciplinary case against Officer Nicholas Owens, accused of posting a monkey emoji as a comment on a Mike Tyson video, which include the Board’s detailed Rationale for Findings. This includes an explanation of the reasoning behind the Board’s exoneration of Owens. The explanation doesn’t provide much confidence in the integrity of Board of Rights hearings in general. The other document records the Departmental discipline process, which precedes the Board of Rights hearing.

Police discipline records are notoriously top secret in California. Since forever until 2019, when Senator Nancy Skinner‘s monumental SB1421 took effect, they were uniformly exempt from the California Public Records Act. Even now, though, only records relating to the most egregious misconduct can be released, and only when the officer is found guilty.1

But the huge majority of complained-against officers, at least in Los Angeles,2 are exonerated and most police misconduct isn’t covered by SB1421, which leaves most police disciplinary records completely off limits, and even the release of these very limited SB1421 records was and is highly contested. The

In 2019 police statewide fought SB1421 implementation in court, they fought to stop its retroactive application, and are still slow-walking and otherwise obstructing access to the newly available records.3 Releasing records of disciplinary procedures that end in exoneration isn’t even being discussed. But it certainly ought to be, not least because such secrecy really reinforces mistrust of the police.

The most obvious reason for police to be so vehemently against release is that proceedings ending in exoneration are empty performances with predetermined outcomes. If they’re not scripted, the thinking goes, then why not release the records? If privacy is the issue then why not release public versions, as LAPD does for use of force cases? As Peter Bibring of the ACLU says, “That lack of transparency prevents the public from having any faith that the process is working.”

What Bibring doesn’t say is that if the process isn’t working but the public still has faith in it, transparency is likely to destroy even that. Let’s find out! I recently obtained copies of confidential LAPD disciplinary records from a case where the subject was ultimately exonerated. Even though the offense was relatively minor, involving the officer’s use of a monkey emoji in a Facebook post about Mike Tyson, these records provide unprecedented insight into LAPD’s complaint handling procedures.

It started with a July 2018 complaint, called in to LAPD by a citizen, about the contents of Officer Nicholas Owens’s4 Facebook page.5 These two records reveal an unprecedented6 level of detail about LAPD disciplinary proceedings in much, much more ordinary cases than are covered by SB1421. I have never seen anything like them. Here they are:
Continue reading LAPD Disciplinary Procedures Are Notoriously Secretive — But I Recently Obtained Records About An Officer — Nicholas Owens — Accused Of Using A Monkey Emoji To Comment On A Video About Mike Tyson And Subsequently Exonerated By A Board Of Rights — Which Reveal Unprecedented Information — Including The Board’s Detailed Rationale For Its Findings — Which Doesn’t Create Much Confidence In The Validity Of The Process — Like E.g. One Reason They Exonerated The Guy Is That None Of His Extensive Sensitivity Training Specifically Covered Emoji-Based Racism — It Sure Looks Like LAPD’s Disciplinary System Is Performance Rather Than Substantial Process — Remember This Whenever Politicians Or Cops Pass Off Disciplinary Procedures As Some Kind Of Police Reform — The Police Run The Process — And Can Make It Look Genuine As Long As The Proceedings Are Secret — So Let’s Open Them Up! →

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Los Angeles City Government

Here Is Your Copy Of The Absolutely Most Famous Film Permit Of 2020 — They Shut Down Union Station COVID Testing On December 1, 2020 For This Production — And When The Heroic KTown For All Found Out — They Leapt Into Action Like Superheros Will Do — And The New York Times Covered It — And The City Cancelled The Filming — And Reopened The Test Site — And It Was Too Freaking Late

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At 4:51 PM on November 30, 2020 the incomparable activist crew known as KTown for All tweeted out an announcement stating that the City was shutting down the Union Station COVID test site on December 1, 2020 because of a film shoot:

In the middle of a horrible and terrifying COVID spike, LA just cancelled all of its Dec 1 appointments at Union Station (one of the only transit-accessible facilities) with less than 24hrs notice because of A FILM SHOOT!! @MayorOfLA @metrolosangeles @lapublichealth WTF???!!???

As you can imagine, Twitter was incensed, and rightly so. Deadline covered the story almost immediately. The Los Angeles Times published a story at 11:05 PM. It took the Mayor of Los Angeles 66 minutes after the Times published to announce, by Tweet at eleven minutes after midnight, that the test site would remain open. KTown for All knows its way around the media, and soon both the New York Times and the Washington Post had covered the story, the Times attributing the story to Ktown for All and including a quote from organizer Devon Manney.

It’s not yet clear what happened, but the official story has coalesced, and it’s that the company running the test site decided unilaterally to close it down for the film shoot. Whether this claim is true or not is not yet known. However, I did manage to obtain a copy of the actual permit itself.1 This despite the fact that FilmLA has not yet posted it on its website along with the others from December 1, 2020.2 There are also images of the permit at the end of this post.
Continue reading Here Is Your Copy Of The Absolutely Most Famous Film Permit Of 2020 — They Shut Down Union Station COVID Testing On December 1, 2020 For This Production — And When The Heroic KTown For All Found Out — They Leapt Into Action Like Superheros Will Do — And The New York Times Covered It — And The City Cancelled The Filming — And Reopened The Test Site — And It Was Too Freaking Late →

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LAPD

More Records From The Police Commission Committee On Building Trust And Equity — Including Eileen Decker’s 25 Page Discussion Of Reforms Recommended By The Christopher Commission In 1991 — With Her Thoughts On Current Compliance And Potential Improvements — And 74 Pages On The 2001 Consent Decree Reforms — And Much More — Demonstrating The Police Commission’s Compliance Check Methodology — Which Is To Count A Reform As Implemented If LAPD Adopts A Policy — Or Requires More Training — Or Introduces Another Level Of Review — Without Looking Independently At What The Police Are Actually Doing — This Won’t Change LAPD — As The Forty Years Of Reform History In These Documents Shows Very Clearly

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This post is based on records from the Police Commission’s Committee on Building Trust and Equity1 consisting of lists of police reform proposals dating as far back as the 1991 Christopher Commission. I’m linking to PDFs of the documents here in case you want to start with the actual evidence. Other formats are available at Archive.Org:

❀ Christopher Commission Recommendations — In a chart with current compliance evaluations and other comments (probably) by Commission President Eileen Decker. If you only look at one of these look at this one.
❀ LAPD Reform Report Recommendations from the 2001 Consent Decree — Very detailed 74 page report. Essential.
❀ Current Reforms Chart Data Tab — Comparison of four police departments’ implementation of various reform proposals with respect to data, including LAPD.
❀ Current Reforms Tracker Training — Like the previous item but focusing on training.
❀ Current Reforms Tracker Recruitment — Like the previous item but focusing on officer recruitment and retention.
❀ OIG 2017 Review of Best Practices — Inspector General Mark Smith’s 2017 report on LAPD reform efforts, with recommendations.
❀ OIG 2019 Review of Best Practices — Like the previous item but from 2019.

It’s been widely reported that the Los Angeles Police Commission contracted with the National Police Foundation to write a report on the Los Angeles Police Department‘s behavior during the recent May/June 2020 uprising in response to the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. The Commission and LAPD have been busy supplying the NPF with all the evidence they could ever desire.

Not quite so widely reported on is the Commission’s Advisory Committee on Building Trust and Equity. This group was convened in July 2020 to report back to the Commission with recommendations for reforming LAPD, Their report isn’t out yet, but recently I obtained a copy of a draft. It’s a very mainstream set of useless shopworn proposals that, in the words of renowned tweetist @banannaise, “mostly boils down to … tell[ing] the cops to be nice to people and … to stop breaking the law.”

Which was predictable given the Commission’s deferential attitude towards LAPD along with the unstated but obvious charge to the Committee to smooth things over as much as possible. But the fact that the Committee’s conclusions are predetermined doesn’t imply that they’re not committed to making the process look as valid as possible2 nor that much of their work, even if done in the service of appearing valid, is worthless.

As part of this work, then, the Committee is looking in detail at a huge range of existing police reform proposals, many of which LAPD has already tried, some voluntarily and some by court order. They’ve collected these proposals in a number of spreadsheets, also including LAPD-specific analyses, and I recently obtained copies of a number of these documents (and published them here on the Internet Archive).

Regardless of the value of the Committee’s final report3 these records are very interesting. Two of them, this 25 page list of LAPD reforms recommended by the 1991 Christopher Commission and this 74 page list of all LAPD reforms required by the 2001 Rampart Scandal Consent Decree, are extremely interesting.4 You can also view these files as HTML in your web browser. Click here for the Christopher Commission reforms and here for the Consent Decree reforms.
Continue reading More Records From The Police Commission Committee On Building Trust And Equity — Including Eileen Decker’s 25 Page Discussion Of Reforms Recommended By The Christopher Commission In 1991 — With Her Thoughts On Current Compliance And Potential Improvements — And 74 Pages On The 2001 Consent Decree Reforms — And Much More — Demonstrating The Police Commission’s Compliance Check Methodology — Which Is To Count A Reform As Implemented If LAPD Adopts A Policy — Or Requires More Training — Or Introduces Another Level Of Review — Without Looking Independently At What The Police Are Actually Doing — This Won’t Change LAPD — As The Forty Years Of Reform History In These Documents Shows Very Clearly →

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Josh Rubenstein Apparently Calls Black LAPD Officers “Boys” — Right To Their Faces — And When His African-American Subordinate Raymond Brown Complained Repeatedly Rubenstein And His Media Relations Sidekick Patricia Sandoval Apparently Told Him He’d Never Get Promoted — And Then Apparently Didn’t Promote Him At Least Twice — So In May Brown Filed A Suit Against The City Of Los Angeles — It’s Worth Reading And There’s A Copy Right Here For You!

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On a date in or around late 2017, Director Josh Rubenstein greeted the officers in Media Relations Division’s open office space as “ladies, gents, and officers” and, immediately thereafter, approached the Online Unit office and stated, “How are you boys?” At the time, only Plaintiff and Police Officer III Lyle Knight were present in the Online Unit office. Both Plaintiff and Officer Knight are African-American. Within approximately one week, Rubenstein again asked Plaintiff and Officer Knight, “How are you boys?” Just days later, Rubenstein addressed Plaintiff and Officer Knight as “boys” for a third time. This time, however, Rubenstein did so in a snide and mocking tone of voice. Moreover, Rubenstein said “boys” so loudly that even Sgt. Preciado, who was sitting both outside of and a significant distance away from the Online Unit office, heard it.

—Raymond Brown v. City of Los Angeles

The Los Angeles Police Department gets sued. It gets sued a lot. And it’s not just their civilian victims suing them. It turns out that an organization dedicated to violence, secrecy, machismo, and the defense of capital is, who’d have thought, not a very nice place to work. Which is why their own employees sue the LAPD a lot also.

Like for instance just last year LAPD Media Relations Officer Frank Preciado sued, alleging that his supervisor Josh Rubenstein1 didn’t allow Preciado and others to speak Spanish in the office. Preciado also alleged that Rubenstein banned Media Relations employees from tuning in to Spanish Language TV on the Department’s monitors.

The situation is not only discriminatory according to Preciado but, given that his official duties include speaking to Spanish language media folks, it also prevents him from doing his job properly. Rubenstein is LAPD’s most visible Anglophone public information officer. The dude is everywhere and he’s always got time for the media. Unless, I guess, they’re working in Spanish.

Preciado’s suit got some media attention in 2019 when it was filed, but not much since. That little bit is more than Raymond Brown’s suit, filed in May 2020, received, though. And Brown’s suit also hinges on Rubenstein’s weirdo antics, in particular the fact that apparently Rubenstein thinks it’s acceptable to refer to Black LAPD officers as “boys”.
Continue reading Josh Rubenstein Apparently Calls Black LAPD Officers “Boys” — Right To Their Faces — And When His African-American Subordinate Raymond Brown Complained Repeatedly Rubenstein And His Media Relations Sidekick Patricia Sandoval Apparently Told Him He’d Never Get Promoted — And Then Apparently Didn’t Promote Him At Least Twice — So In May Brown Filed A Suit Against The City Of Los Angeles — It’s Worth Reading And There’s A Copy Right Here For You! →

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