If you have a problem, like being possessed of an evil spirit, this guy will pray for you. Now you have two problems.After tonight’s Sunset Vine BID Board Meeting Steve Seyler, Joe Salazar, and the angry guy pictured in this video, who is obviously a close personal friend if not a relative of Seyler’s, blocked the front door of HPOA headquarters so that our correspondent would have had to walk through them to leave. It wasn’t completely obvious that they were waiting there to hassle him, but pacifism über alles is everyone’s motto around here, so he asked Devin Strecker if he could go out the back door and the ever-courtly Strecker walked back there with him and let him out.
Kerry Morrison with her detective hat on.There is all kinds of interesting stuff in the BID Patrol daily log files, and some of it is too weird to even describe. This little story is from April 24, 2015, written by BID Patrol officers Mike Coogle and his frequent partner Mike Ayala:
OUTREACH- 1500 BLOCK OF GORDON AVENUE- E/ SIDE OF STREET
YESTERDAY WE RECEIVED A CALL FROM KERRY’S OFFICE REGARDING A VEHICLE SHE OBSERVED. THE VEHICLE, A GREY BUICK LIC#XXXXXXX, WAS UNOCCUPIED BUT CONTAINED A CHILD SEAT, FORMULA AND OTHER ITEMS POSSIBLY INDICATING THE OWNER OF THE VEHICLE IS HOMELESS WITH A CHILD. YESTERDAY WE LEFT A PATH CARD AND FLIER WITH LOCAL, FAMILY FRIENDLY HOMELESS SERVICES ON THE WINDSHIELD. THIS MORNING, THE CARD AND PAPER WERE GONE. THE VEHICLE WAS UNOCCUPIED AND SOME ITEMS APPEARED TO BE IN DIFFERENT SPOTS.
An angry Hollywood seagull, condemned by Kerry Morrison to shoot blanks.Sometimes we just have to share the weirdness, even if we don’t have the first freaking clue what it means. And, as our faithful readers can attest, there seems to be no real limit to how weird the weirdness can get. Seagull eugenics right here in Hollywood, courtesy of Ms. Kerry Morrison? Why, yes! While grepping around in the Andrews International BID Patrol daily activity logs looking for evidence of another matter entirely,1 we were amazed to come across the following information from November 11, 2014:
IT IS OUR UNDERSTANDING THAT KERRY HAS TRIED TO ERADICATE THE SEAGULLS IN THE HOLLYWOOD AREA BY HIRING AN EXTERMINATOR THAT FED THE SEAGULLS A FORMULA THAT SUPPOSEDLY STERILIZED THE BIRDS.
(See the whole story after the break). There is more discussion of seagulls in a footbeat log from November 12, 2014, including a proposed attempt to fight seagull feeding in Hollywood via restraining orders. However, in the entire nine year span of A/I BID Patrol daily activity logs, these two items are the only mention of seagulls in any context whatsoever. What does it mean? We couldn’t begin to explain. But we will speculate that Kerry Morrison is highly but secretly disappointed that she can’t use the same kind of methods on the human objects of her disdain, such as the street characters at Hollywood and Highland.2 We will also note that forced sterilization of her avian targets is a laudably peaceable solution for the well-armed Ms. Morrison. Continue reading Kerry Morrison, Seagull Eugenicist to the Stars→
A heavily armed Kerry Morrison: HPOA gun worship personified.With recent events in this country1reinvigorating the national debate over gun control, we thought it was an opportune time to present this singularly weird email from Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Executive Director Kerry Morrison to the members of the Joint Security Committee inviting them to join her out at the Andrews International Training Center in Burbank to try out the Firearms Training Simulator, pop off a few rounds at the shooting range, and eat some sandwiches provided by Andrews International catering director and senior vice president Bill Farrar. Bill Farrar at the February 18, 2016 meeting of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, contemplating sandwich recipes. As another height-challenged militaristic delusional psychopath once said, “an army marches on its stomach.”According to Kerry Morrison, she’s gone out there to shoot multiple times, and evidently wants to share this “very humbling” experience with her compatriots on the Joint Security Committee.2 We know it sounds made up, but the text does not lie, friends:
For some time we’ve promised you an opportunity to visit the Andrews International training facility in Burbank where they have a shooting range and a FATS simulator. FATS stands for Fire Arms Training Simulator, and it presents a realistic training experience. I’ve tried this a couple times and it is very humbling and helps us all appreciate the split second judgements that must be made by law enforcement.
If any of you would like to participate, we are going to venture up to their facility next Wednesday, February 19 at 11 a.m. Bill Farrar will bring in sandwiches and everyone will have an opportunity to experience both FATS and the shooting range, if you would like. We should be ready to return to Hollywood by 1:30-2 pm.
Please RSVP to me by Monday afternoon so we can plan for food. I will also send out address and parking instructions next week.
Selma Park was the scene of the BID Patrol’s greatest crimes, or at least the greatest which have come to light. What else is there that they’re trying so very hard to keep secret?You can watch here as the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance at its June 16, 2016 Board meeting, approves a completely rewritten contract with Andrews International, its security subcontractor, which runs the BID Patrol in Hollywood. I’m not going to bother to transcribe it, but you should take a look. It features John Tronson talking for approximately 90 seconds about changes in the HPOA’s contract with A/I. He mentions logos on cars, logos on uniforms, and if you blinked, you’d miss the ten seconds where he talks about ownership of work product, but that’s the key thing.
This man, who is not Kerry Morrison’s buddy and who’s not starring in her documentary and who never took luncheon with her, was arrested 10 times and warned twice by the BID Patrol in 2008.You may have seen the news elsewhere that Kerry Morrison was granted a Stanton Fellowship by the Los-Angeles-based Durfee Foundation. I’ve refrained from writing about it here because it struck me as more of a private matter. However, in February Kerry Morrison sent an email to Dan Halden of CD13 with her application attached. This put it on the public record and made comments on it of public interest, and it turns out to shed a great deal of light on otherwise mysterious goings-on at the BID Patrol.
So here is a copy of Kerry Morrison’s Stanton Fellowship application. This is an exceedingly rich document, and you’re reading the first of what I expect to be many, many posts about it. It’s well worth the time it’ll take you to read the whole thing, though, because it’s even weirder than you’re thinking it might be. This man, who is Kerry Morrison’s buddy and who is starring in her documentary and who did take luncheon with her, was arrested 4 times and warned innumerable times by the BID Patrol in 2008.Anyway, in her application, as part of her plan to fix what she sees as flaws in the mental health care system vis-a-vis homelessness, she plans to:
Tell the story. I have been collecting photos, videos, notes from interviews and observations now dating back to 2008. With the permission of my three friends, and possibly other [sic], I see the potential to create a documentary that will weave the human story around the policy, systems and community cultural change necessary to embrace the needs of these individuals. Create a documentary to tell their story and show the before and after.
Can you spot the evidence here that the law is being wantonly disregarded by a BID Patrol officer? If it’s not clear, try the whole video.Last year, apparently on August 7,1 the BID Patrol drove one of their BIDmobiles eastbound on the 6300 block of Homewood Avenue. The driver of the vehicle, holding a Kodak Playsport Video Camera, Zx5, filmed the north side of the street as he drove the vehicle. You can watch the whole video here.
One huge problem with this scenario is that, as you can see from the image of the camera, Kodak Playsports have a video monitor that shows what’s being recorded.2 Now, take a look at California Vehicle Code section 27602, which plainly states:
A person shall not drive a motor vehicle if a television receiver, a video monitor, or a television or video screen, or any other similar means of visually displaying a television broadcast or video signal that produces entertainment or business applications, is operating and is located in the motor vehicle at a point forward of the back of the driver’s seat, or is operating and the monitor, screen, or display is visible to the driver while driving the motor vehicle.
Any badge, insignia, patch or uniform used or worn by any employee, officer, member or associate of a private patrol service, while on duty for said patrol service, shall be in compliance with State law. Any such badge, insignia, patch or uniform shall not be of such a design as to be mistaken for an official badge, insignia or uniform worn by a law enforcement officer of the City of Los Angeles or any other law enforcement agency with jurisdiction in the City. LAMC 52.34(d)(1)Recently I was reading the Los Angeles Municipal Code1 and came across LAMC 52.34, which discusses “private patrol services” and their employees, “street patrol officers.” The gist of it seems to be2 that private patrol service operators must register with the Police Commission, and also prove that their employees’ uniforms and badges don’t look too much like real police uniforms and badges. They’re also required to have a complaint process and submit lists of employees and some other things too.
Well, as you can see from the photo above, and from innumerable other photos and videos I’ve obtained from the Hollywood BID Patrol, there is a real problem with BID Patrol officers looking like LAPD. Their uniforms are the same color, their badges are the same shape and color, and so on. Also, they’re famous for not having a complaint process, or at least not one that anyone can discover easily. The Andrews International BID Patrol isn’t the only one with this problem, either. The Media District‘s security vendor, Universal Protection Service, doesn’t seem to have one either. In fact, it was UPS Captain John Irigoyen‘s refusal to accept a complaint about two of his officers that inspired the establishment of this blog. The A/I BID Patrol is as guilty of this lapse as anyone. Richard Tefank, Executive Director of the LA Police Commission.
The fact that private patrol operators were required to file actual documents with a city agency means that copies would be available! So I fired off some public records requests to Richard Tefank, Executive Director of the Police Commission. He answered right away and told me they’d get right on it. What a relief to discover that Police Commission CPRA requests don’t have to go through the LAPD Discovery Section, which is so notoriously slow to respond that the City of LA has had to pay tens of thousands of dollars in court-imposed fines due to their tardiness. Mr. Tefank handed me off to an officer in the permits section, and he told me that none of the three BID security contractors I asked about; Andrews International, Universal Protection, and Streetplus3 were registered. How could this be, I wondered, given what seems like the plain language of the statute? The story turns out to be immensely complicated, and with lots of new documents. Continue reading Why Aren’t BID Security Patrols Registered with the Los Angeles Police Commission?→
The BID Patrol orders a woman on Hollywood Blvd to perform for the camera as a condition of not being arrested.“Hold your beer up. HOLD YOUR BEER UP. And smile, if you want to.” These are the words of an anonymous1 BID Patrol officer caught on video confronting a homeless woman on Hollywood Boulevard about the fact that she’s drinking in public. However, this is more than a particularly lurid demonstration of the BID Patrol’s almost ludicrously unprofessional reign of misrule in Hollywood. It also helps shed some light on a long-standing mystery about just how many people the BID Patrol arrested in 2015.
The phrase “Al Ref” almost certainly refers to “alcohol referrals.” These were discussed by Steve Seyler at the March 2015 Joint Security Committee meeting, where he stated:
We are starting to see some early trends. Arrests are down by 56 compared to this time last year. This is largely due to a strategy change in our enforcement of drinking in public. These arrests have accounted for about 60% of our arrest year after year. That number is holding true for this year as well. We still believe that it is important to curtail public drinking as this has a direct effect on assaults and other crimes.
Our new approach involves more warnings and more importantly referrals. We have
made 56 such referrals so far. If the person is agreeable, we give them a warning and
information about local Alcoholic Anonymous meetings and other resources. We will
attempt to gather data to see if this will bring positive results.
I’m pleased to announce a huge amount of records, mostly from the Andrews International BID Patrol. These include arrest reports and daily logs, which bring our coverage up to the end of 2015. I put these on the Archive because the amount of material would overwhelm our hosting plan. There are individual links after the break and also here.
Note that there’s something fishy about the 2015 arrest reports. There are fewer than 350 of them, when the 2015 totals spreadsheet claims 606. This may have something to do with a new category for 2015 called “alcohol referral.” If these turn out to not be genuine custodial arrests we will have reduced the BID Patrol arrest rate by far, far more than I previously thought.
And some more emails from the Fashion District BID. These are prepared in the inimitably complete manner of Rena Leddy and cover the time from January 2015 through March 2016. They have to do with street vending and such topics:
Finally, there are over 6 GB of 2015 BID Patrol videos. I will be putting the videos on our YouTube channel soon, but that takes a lot of time, so I thought I’d make them available here first.
