More or less proving that he, Seyler, and Salazar had in fact been laying in wait for our correspondent, the guy pictured here ran out after him and accosted him in the parking lot. Our correspondent asked him “do I know you?” Mr. 5150 said “no.” He proceeded to accuse our correspondent of being possessed of an evil spirit (this is literally what he said). It took too long to turn on the camera, so all we captured was this clip of him following way too closely, asking “how did you let it in?” and then repeating “it’s true” over and over again. When our correspondent turned away the angry guy yelled “I’ll be praying for you!” So that happened.
Continue reading MK.org Correspondent Followed Out of BID Board Meeting By Crazed Associate of Steve Seyler, Accused of Being “Possessed of an Evil Spirit,” Told He Will Be Prayed For, Jury Still Out on Whether the Law-and-Order Loving Kerry Morrison Tacitly Approves of Menacing Tactics
Tag Archives: Carol Schatz
Audio Recordings of Three City Council Public Safety Committee Meetings from 1999 and 2000 May Shed Further Light on BID Patrol Police Commission Registration Issues
Continue reading Audio Recordings of Three City Council Public Safety Committee Meetings from 1999 and 2000 May Shed Further Light on BID Patrol Police Commission Registration Issues
Further Speculation on Why BID Patrols Aren’t Registered with the Los Angeles Police Commission
Continue reading Further Speculation on Why BID Patrols Aren’t Registered with the Los Angeles Police Commission
Newly Obtained Documents Suggest A Tentative Hypothesis on Why BID Patrols Aren’t Registered with the Los Angeles Police Commission and Why They Ought to Be
FURTHER MOVE that the City Ccl request the Police Commission to cease their enforcement against the City’s Downtown Center BID and its private patrol service, and any other BIDs until this matter has been reviewed by the City Ccl.
This at least seems to explain a temporary pause in enforcement, although not a policy-based reason never to enforce the registration requirement and the other regulations.
Furthermore, even a trip to the City Archives to copy the whole file left me lacking a definitive answer to the question of why no BID security provider was registered with the Police Commission. Also, I reported last week that no one in the City, either at the Police Commission or elsewhere, seemed to have a firm idea about why this was.
Well, last week the incredibly helpful Richard Tefank pulled a bunch of old Police Commission minutes out of storage for me and last Thursday I went over to 100 W. First Street to take a look at them. Most of the material was also in the Council file, but there were a couple new items that, while they don’t explain dispositively what happened, they suggest a likely hypothesis. Also, if this hypothesis is correct, it’s pretty clear that BID Patrols really ought to be registered and, furthermore, that the Police Commission has the right to investigate and regulate them.
Continue reading Newly Obtained Documents Suggest A Tentative Hypothesis on Why BID Patrols Aren’t Registered with the Los Angeles Police Commission and Why They Ought to Be
Why Aren’t BID Security Patrols Registered with the Los Angeles Police Commission?
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.
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?
In December 2015 Garcetti Held Invite-Only Meeting to be Sure Homelessness Policies were Acceptable to Business Leaders, Including Carol Schatz, Central Hollywood Coalition, Central City Association, Others
…an Intimate Round Table [sic] discussion… This meeting is invite-only and intentionally small to learn and discuss strategies for BIDS [sic] that are addressing homelessness in way one [sic] or another so that we can include the City’s plan is [sic] inclusive of this perspective.
This is bad enough, that Garcetti solicits the intimate opinions of these delusional BIDdies, who not only just make stuff up about the homeless but whose ultimate homeless policy is terrorism. It’s bad enough, as we said, but the reasons are even worse:
Mayor Garcetti is very committed to working with CCA and the other BIDS to develop homelessness policies and practices that address homelessness without unintentional harm to our business community. In the long run, we need businesses to provide pathways out of poverty through self-sustaining wages and pride in individual ability and skills.
Continue reading In December 2015 Garcetti Held Invite-Only Meeting to be Sure Homelessness Policies were Acceptable to Business Leaders, Including Carol Schatz, Central Hollywood Coalition, Central City Association, Others
Kerry Morrison in 2001: Investigating Complaints Against BIDs will Destroy the City of Los Angeles! Complainers Should be Forced to Settle Matters with Neighbors Through Discussion! Also HPOA May Take Official Action Against Complainers!!
Continue reading Kerry Morrison in 2001: Investigating Complaints Against BIDs will Destroy the City of Los Angeles! Complainers Should be Forced to Settle Matters with Neighbors Through Discussion! Also HPOA May Take Official Action Against Complainers!!
A Trip to City Archives Yields Fascinating Historical Material Including 2003 HPOA Stakeholder Rebellion Over Shady and Neurotic Behavior by Tronson and Morrison During Security Provider Bidding Process
In 2003 the BID’s expiring security contract with Burke Security, the predecessor of Andrews International, was put out for bids. Aaron Epstein, yes, the same one whose nuclear bomb of a lawsuit established the subjection of BIDs to both the Brown Act and the California Public Records Act, thereby making this blog possible, and a large group of his fellow Hollywood BID stakeholders2 sent a letter to then-mayor James Hahn complaining that they:
believe[d] that the District’s board of directors and executive director have not conducted a fully open and competitive process to ensure that property owners receive the finest security service for the lowest competitive price (the current two year contract exceeds $2 million). Moreover, we believe that the board and executive director have failed to be objective in the process and have allowed the contractor, Burke Security, to function in ways that do not provide the maximum benefits to the property owners and merchants.
If you read the letter you’ll see that they’re talking about practices that are still retained by the current BID Patrol: custodial arrests rather than observe-and-report, unseeming over-coziness with the staff of the HPOA, and so on.3 The copy I obtained came with a couple of handwritten notes4 from a Clerk’s office employee suggesting that they warn Kerry Morrison that people were watching so she should follow the rules. This, obviously, is not the kind of behavior one would expect from a regulatory agency. Why didn’t they tell Kerry Morrison to follow the rules because the law required her to?
Continue reading A Trip to City Archives Yields Fascinating Historical Material Including 2003 HPOA Stakeholder Rebellion Over Shady and Neurotic Behavior by Tronson and Morrison During Security Provider Bidding Process
A Flurry of Filings in Mitchell et al. v. City of LA et al. Suggests that Homeless Advocates May be Trying to have City Enjoined from Enforcing Newly Amended LAMC 56.11
Mitchell v. Los Angeles, the latest in a series of suits filed by homeless people who’ve had their property illegally confiscated by the City (see Gale Holland’s recent article for an excellent summary) took an interesting turn today, when a flurry of filings hit PACER. First of all, the plaintiffs asked the court for a preliminary injunction and a temporary restraining order enjoining the City from confiscating their property while the case is on. They filed a huge number of declarations and other evidence in support of this application, many although not all of which can be found on our page dedicated to the case. The City asked for extra time to respond and the court granted them some.
Continue reading A Flurry of Filings in Mitchell et al. v. City of LA et al. Suggests that Homeless Advocates May be Trying to have City Enjoined from Enforcing Newly Amended LAMC 56.11
Documents: 2015 HPOA/AI Emails, Carol Schatz Emails from CD4, LAPD
Here are a bunch of documents that I published on The Archive this morning. There’s some interesting stuff in there as well as the usual boatloads of chaff:
- Emails between HPOA and Andrews International from 2015. This is supposed to be all of them. It may be all that the HPOA has on hand, but it’s certainly not all that were sent. I’ll be writing on this soon, I hope. I had to redact these lightly because they included a number of social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and a home address. Not cool!
- Emails between CD4 and the Central City Association. This is part of a project to document the Downtown Center BID’s shameless disregard of CPRA and, ultimately, to hold them to account for same. These are from July 1, 2015, when David Ryu took office, to roughly a few weeks ago.
- Emails between Carol Schatz and Mike Oreb of the LAPD. Part of the same project. This is supposedly everything from January 1, 2013 through December 31, 2015. I don’t see how that could be right, but I also don’t see how to prove it. There’s some moderately interesting stuff in here, but nothing momentous.
Continue reading Documents: 2015 HPOA/AI Emails, Carol Schatz Emails from CD4, LAPD