Tag Archives: BID Patrol Identification Project

Donald Trump’s Election Inspires City of Los Angeles To Finally Move Forward With Long-Delayed Street Vending Legalization Despite BIDs’ Irrational Opposition. Street Vendors To Pay BIDs An Operations Fee. BIDs To Get Effective Veto Power Over Vending Within Their Boundaries.

Aren't you glad I didn't put a picture of freaking Donald Trump here?!  Not that Joe Buscaino is less ethically challenged, but at least his hair is prettier...
Aren’t you glad I didn’t put a picture of freaking Donald Trump here?! Not that Joe Buscaino is less ethically challenged, but at least his hair is prettier…
I know the headline sounds like a joke, but it’s not. The L.A. Times reported on it this morning, although their article, as is their wont, did not mention business improvement districts at all, and, at least briefly, I thought they were kidding. But this is the Los Angeles City Council we’re talking about, and they were not. Huizar and Price first made a motion to legalize street vending in November 2013, three years ago, and, over the last three years we have been subjected to an endless stream of hysterical, mendacious, probably illegal, lobbying by the BIDs and their ideological allies against the very idea. They even managed to get the Times itself to accept their misbegotten point of view as somehow legitimate. In response to this outpouring of unregistered lobbying behavior,1 the City Council essentially responded by ignoring the issue,2 as you can see from the council file, which has no official City action since October 2015, until yesterday, when Curren Price and Joe Buscaino slapped this little number on the table. It’s a letter, which does indeed refer, albeit obliquely, to Darth Cheeto himself:3
Despite the undeniable division and polarization that exists in our country right now, there is one common characteristic that is shared by Americans of every gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, immigration status and political party: our entrepreneurial spirit. We value the notion that everyone deserves the opportunity to start a small business, on a level playing field, with failure or success determined by our own talent, hard work, and perseverance. At an early age. we teach our children concepts like overhead, profit, and loss by encouraging them to sell Girl Scout Cookies, candy bars, and lemonade. Yet, if they sell any of those on a public sidewalk in Los Angeles, they are committing a crime of the same seriousness as drunk driving.

They go on to urge the Council to go ahead and legalize street vending because otherwise Trump has already won, and I can’t say that I disagree:

Recent talks about changes to our nation’s immigration policy, including threats to deport millions of undocumented immigrants – starting with those with criminal records – has created significant fear amongst our immigrant communities. Continuing to impose criminal misdemeanor penalties for vending disproportionately affects, and unfairly punishes, undocumented immigrants, and could potentially put them at risk for deportation.

Furthermore, Buscaino and Price claim that:

The core question the Council must answer is whether sidewalk vending poses a threat so grave to public health, safety, and welfare that it is worth continuing to expend limited police and prosecutorial resources enforcing a citywide ban.

Which is also reasonable, but read a little deeper in the letter and you can see the fingerprints of the BIDs all over the damned thing. And, as usual, their input makes a lie of the whole thing. The BIDs’ version, which is the version that will be passed, is going to require the same amount if not more of our “limited police and prosecutorial resources” to enforce.
Continue reading Donald Trump’s Election Inspires City of Los Angeles To Finally Move Forward With Long-Delayed Street Vending Legalization Despite BIDs’ Irrational Opposition. Street Vendors To Pay BIDs An Operations Fee. BIDs To Get Effective Veto Power Over Vending Within Their Boundaries.

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Lots of Pictures of BID Patrol Officers Illegally Dressing Like Police Officers

BID Patrol officer M. Gomez (Badge #148) looking a lot like a police officer.
BID Patrol officer M. Gomez (Badge #148) looking a lot like a police officer.
One of the most important consequences of the Andrews International Hollywood BID Patrol’s failure to register with the Los Angeles Police Commission, as they’re almost surely required to do, is that they evade enforcement of LAMC 52.34(d)(1), which regulates uniforms and badges. It states:

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.

BID Patrol Officer Ki Nam (Badge #131, on right) looking a lot like a police officer.
BID Patrol Officer Ki Nam (Badge #131, on right) and an as-yet-unidentified BID Patrol officer, looking a lot like a police officer.
In this post I’m collecting and discussing a number of images of BID Patrol officers looking especially like police (all these images and many more can be found on this new Archive collection). The only differences between BID Patrol uniforms and LAPD uniforms seem to be that the LAPD doesn’t always wear shoulder patches and the LAPD does wear nameplates. However, the LAPD is not the only Los Angeles agency that employs law enforcement officers.
Los Angeles Airport Police Officers, wearing shoulder patches and looking an awful lot like BID Patrol officers.
Los Angeles Airport Police Officers, wearing shoulder patches and looking an awful lot like BID Patrol officers.
There are also the School Police and the Airport Police1 and both of those agencies have uniforms with shoulder patches, and to which BID Patrol uniforms are also essentially identical. It’s true that the uniforms of BID Patrol officers say “BID PATROL” in big letters across the back, but many police uniforms say stuff across the back. For this message to have the requisite effect, it’s necessary to already know that BID Patrol officers aren’t a kind of police. Also, the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance is famous for worrying about tourists who don’t know that they don’t have to tip street characters. Where’s the analogous worry about tourists who don’t know that the BID Patrol aren’t police officers? Turn the page for many more examples.
Continue reading Lots of Pictures of BID Patrol Officers Illegally Dressing Like Police Officers

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More Media District BID Documents Now Available

Captain John Irigoyen is watching you, so watch yourself!
Captain John Irigoyen is watching you, so watch yourself!
I have a few new documents from the Media District BID. First of all, the Board meeting minutes through August of 2015 are here. Minutes from various committee meetings in 2015 are here, and minutes from one very special executive committee meeting are here.

We’re also inaugurating a project to identify all the Media District security guards by name and image, parallel to the one we’re doing for the Andrews International BID Patrol. I’ve started a page for this project. There’s not much there now other than a list of all the current green shirts by name, but I hope to add more in the future.

Read on for a little bit of what passes for metadata analysis around here.
Continue reading More Media District BID Documents Now Available

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New Documents, including 2011, 2012 HPOA Federal Tax Returns and Beginning of BID Patrol Identification Project

Some of the BID Patrol's anonymous warriors.  We're taking on the project of identifying these people.
Some of the BID Patrol’s anonymous warriors. We’re taking on the project of identifying these people.
Today I’m pleased to announce a bunch of new documents. First of all there is a ton of new information on the HPOA’s sleazy sweetsy-heartsy lease of city property for a homebase-slash-mothership for its cleansy-upsy crew. So much that we started a whole subpage for the matter. What’s new are some emails between CD13 and the HPOA about the lease and the actual lease application filled out by the HPOA as part of the leasing process. This includes beaucoup info about the inner workings of the HPOA, including full federal tax returns for 2011 and 2012. Read it!

Next there’s the first set of documents in our new project to identify by name, photograph, and badge number, every BID patrol officer currently working the streets of Hollywood and as many of the past officers as possible. I’ve set up a new subpage dedicated to this endeavor, and the first two documents can be found there. They’re invoices from A/I to the HPOA for personnel, listed by name, for the week beginning August 14, 2015. Also get them here: HED BID and S-V BID.

One last little document, find out after the break!
Continue reading New Documents, including 2011, 2012 HPOA Federal Tax Returns and Beginning of BID Patrol Identification Project

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