Tag Archives: Announcements

A Bunch of New Documents: Street Characters Lawsuit, GWHFC Mediation, Greenshirt Daily Activity Reports

No one is safe when the BID Patrol is out rounding up street characters to satisfy Kerry Morrison's warped sense of propriety.  Even if you think Barney ought not just to be arrested but ought to be shot on sight, it's important to remember that if Barney's rights aren't respected, no one is respected.  If Barney's not safe from the depredations of the BID Patrol and their allies, the LAPD, then no one is safe.
No one is safe when the BID Patrol is out rounding up street characters to satisfy Kerry Morrison’s warped sense of propriety. Even if you think Barney ought not just to be arrested but ought to be shot on sight, it’s important to remember that if Barney’s rights aren’t respected, no one’s are respected. If Barney’s not safe from the depredations of the BID Patrol and their allies, the LAPD, then no one is safe. IF BARNEY AIN’T FREE, AIN’T NOBODY FREE!
Tonight I’m announcing the availability of three new sets of documents. First and least interesting we have a random selection of UPS Media District Greenshirt daily activity reports. You can find them either in our static storage or else via our local UPS page. I didn’t see anything particularly interesting here, but you’ve probably noticed that my colleagues can spin 600+ words of gold easily out of what seems to the casual onlooker to be nothing but straw, so maybe that’ll happen someday.

Next, and much, much more interesting, we have some records produced by the Media District between 2009 and 2011 when they were involved in some kind of mediation process with the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition. Again, these are available via via static storage or through a local page. And finally, read below the fold for the real kicker.
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Lots of Documents, and Not of the Usual Sort!

Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, 99 years ago in 1916.   Her truth, like that of John Brown, goes marching on in Los Angeles in 2015.
Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, 99 years ago in 1916. Her truth, like that of John Brown, goes marching on in Los Angeles in 2015.
Today I’m pleased to announce the availability of a bunch more documents, some of them really interesting, and none of them of the sort we’ve usually featured here. First of all we are adding the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to our list of scrutinizees, albeit in a fairly desultory manner. Documents we obtain will be available from the usual menus above, and here is a link to that page. We kick things off with a couple years worth of form 700s from the Commissioners and the Executive Director. For almost certainly nefarious reasons, the city of Los Angeles, unlike other more enlightened cities in California, does not require BID board members or high-level employees to file financial disclosures (although this may be changing soon, fingers crossed!), so obtaining these forms was the only way to get any insight into Kerry Morrison’s finances insofar as they relate to her work for the HPOA. And now, like Jesus Christ hisself, we have saved the best for last, so the good stuff is after the break!
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2010 BID Patrol Images Now Available on Archive

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I am pleased to announce the availability of about 1.3 GB of images, obtained from the HPOA under the California Public Records Act. The main archive page is here. You can see a listing of the files for individual download here. I rot13-ed the filenames to protect people’s privacy somewhat.1 You can get the whole batch via bittorrent which, as always, is most efficient if you want local copies of these pictures. I’ll be organizing these into thematic PDF flip-books and publishing them at the Archive and on Amazon over the next few weeks, but as it may be a while I thought I’d make the raw images available now.

  1. If you don’t know what rot13 is you need to get your internet user’s license renewed post haste!

Image of man explaining democracy to the BID Patrol is a public record.

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Document Dump: About 150 Miscellaneous Emails to/from Media District BID From October/November 2014

Brett Goldstone's lovely gate at the Los Feliz Blvd. entrance to the Los Angeles River, one of the few segments that it's legal to walk.  Of course this image has nothing whatsoever to do with this post, but we like it just the same.
Brett Goldstone’s lovely gate at the Los Feliz Blvd. entrance to the Los Angeles River, one of the few segments along which it’s legal to walk. Of course this image has nothing whatsoever to do with this post, but we like it just the same.
I am pleased-ish to announce the appearance of about 150 unsorted emails to and from the Media District BID in October and November 2014. These are available from our static storage either as individual PDFs or as a single zipped archive. I’m sorry the dates don’t match the numbering, but this is how they came to me and I have neither the time nor the heart to sort them. There’s some interesting stuff here and some chaff. I’m sure my colleagues will be analyzing some of the hidden gems in days to come, but I didn’t want our avid readers to have to wait until that happens to see the fruits of this public records request. Happy voyeurism!


Image of Brett Goldstone LA River gate is ©2015 MichaelKohlhaas.org.

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Hollywood BID Patrol 2008-9 Images Now Available on the Archive

000_1157.700I am pleased to announce the availability of about 4GB of images, obtained from the HPOA under the California Public Records Act. The main archive page is here. You can see a listing of the files for individual download here. I rot13-ed the filenames to protect people’s privacy somewhat.1 You can get the whole batch via bittorrent which, as always, is most efficient if you want local copies of these pictures. I’ll be organizing these into thematic PDF flip-books and publishing them at the Archive and on Amazon over the next couple weeks, but as it may be a while I thought I’d make the raw images available now.

  1. If you don’t know what rot13 is you need to get your internet user’s license renewed post haste!

Image of beaten-up man is a public record.

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Second Volume of BID Patrol Reports Now Available on Amazon

2012.2014.BID.patrol.reports.front.coverWe are pleased to announce the availability on Amazon of the second volume of Hollywood BID Patrol reports. This volume covers the years 2012 through 2014. Free PDFs of this (and of all our other publications) are available via our “Publications” page. You can see the announcement of the previous volume for a more detailed description of the contents. The original documents reprinted are also available.

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First Volume of BID Patrol Reports Now Available on Amazon

The first volume of Hollywood BID Patrol Reports, comprising the years 2007-2011, is now available on Amazon.
The first volume of Hollywood BID Patrol Reports, comprising the years 2007-2011, is now available on Amazon.
The first volume of BID Patrol Reports, prepared by Andrews International Security, to the Joint Security Committee of the Hollywood Entertainment District BID and the Sunset-Vine BID is now available on Amazon.com here. Of course it’s available for free as a unified PDF or, if you prefer, individual documents. Most of these seem to be written by Steve Seyler, although the early ones clearly are not. I’ll have the second volume, comprising the years 2012 through 2014, available in a few days. You can see a complete list of our publications here.

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First Volume of our Series Hollywood Business Improvement District Documents is Now Available on Amazon!

The cover of the first volume in our series of Hollywood BID documents, now available on Amazon.com!
The cover of the first volume in our series of Hollywood BID documents, now available on Amazon.com!
I’m pleased to announce that the first volume of Hollywood BID documents published by MK.org is now available for purchase on amazon.com. This book is nothing more than a paper copy of the minutes of the HMD BID from 2007 through 2014, so of course you can get it for free here or by direct request from the BID. However, if you’re like me and need paper and ink to concentrate, this is a surprisingly cheap way to get a copy, e.g. it’s way cheaper than the 12¢ per page that Kinko’s wants. The minutes contain, among many other treasures, years worth of discussion about the BID’s mostly nefarious efforts to get Ted Landreth to relocate the GWHFC’s feeding program to somewhere, anywhere, other than the corner of Sycamore and Romaine. I set the price as low as I could, but it wasn’t possible to avoid revenues from all sales channels. We will, however, donate double our revenues from all our publishing to the GWHFC.

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Hollywood BID Patrol Sought in 2013 to Hire Off-Duty LAPD Officers for Video Monitoring

Here are a couple of documents regarding the Hollywood Entertainment District BID Patrol’s request to be allowed to hire off-duty LAPD officers to monitor live video feeds. I’m seeking more information regarding this matter and will make it available as it comes in. There’s something interesting going on here in that the BID patrols already represent an effort to privatize policing in Los Angeles, thereby making it more opaque to public scrutiny. If they hire actual LAPD officers for privately assigned work this really exacerbates the problem, doesn’t it? The documents are embedded after the break and can be downloaded here and here.
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First Batch of BID Patrol Videos Available

LAPD officer tases prone, unresisting man on Hollywood Blvd. on December 17, 2009.
LAPD officer tases prone, unresisting man on Hollywood Blvd. on December 17, 2009 while the crowd of onlookers, many of them also sworn officers, do and say nothing about it.
Today I uploaded 14 videos obtained from the HPOA under the California Public Records Act. You can see them here or via the drop-down menu structure or here. There are more videos to follow, although probably not immediately.

No one here has had time to watch these thoroughly yet. If you see something we should write about please drop a line. Meanwhile, in this video from December 2009, you can see an LAPD officer calmly and deliberately use his taser on a prone, unresisting man (at 6:40), contrary to both human decency and LAPD policy (see §573 Use of Non-Lethal Control Devices). The victim’s last words before he’s tased? “I ain’t doing nothing.” And he ain’t, either.

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