Tag Archives: California Public Records Act

Guide to Public Records Act Requests in Los Angeles and New Method for Whistleblowers to Send Documents to Us

Meet me in the beautiful city, hallelujah!
Meet me in the beautiful city, hallelujah!
First of all, I’m pleased to announce the publication of A Practical Guide to Using the California Public Records Act in Los Angeles. Just prior to our recent Reddit apocalypse it was brought to my attention that people were interested in how I obtain the records we publish here. Thus this guide. As it says there, feel free to ask questions in the comments on that page if I’ve left something unanswered.
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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!
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Federal Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California Shows Up BIDs for the Mewling and Puking Liars they Are

The brave, the stalwart, the wise federal judge Michael W. Fitzgerald of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, kicking ass and taking names.
The brave, the stalwart, the wise federal judge Michael W. Fitzgerald of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, kicking ass and taking names.
Note that formerly Ukrainian first amendment maven and all-round mensch Eugene Volokh has already explained this better than we’re ever going to, so you may want to hop over to there for background. TL;DR is that the city of Inglewood sued Inglewood resident Joseph Teixeira in federal court, claiming that Teixeira’s reuse of their city-produced videos of city council meetings to create weaponized mockery of, among others, Inglewood mayor James Butts violated their copyright in said videos.

Well, Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (that’s federalese for “Los Angeles”) not only dismissed Inglewood’s case, he terminated it with extreme prejudice. You can read the order here if you wish, and it’s smoking hot. The salient bit for this blog is, according to Volokh, that:

The court held that, under California law (see, e.g., County of Santa Clara v. Superior Court (Cal. Ct. App. 2009)), cities can’t claim copyright in public records. And while the city claims that this provision is trumped by federal copyright law, the court rejected that argument — federal law treats local governments as political subdivisions of the state, and a state has the power to control what its subdivisions do (including which federal rights they claim).

Now, I can hear you all murmuring and wondering out there in internetlandia, saying “sure, Kohlhaas, we hear you, but what does this got to do with the BIDs??!” Well, friends, we’re glad you asked!
Continue reading Federal Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California Shows Up BIDs for the Mewling and Puking Liars they Are

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