Tag Archives: CIM Group

Kerry Morrison Evidently Solicited Some Favor in October 2014 from LAPD on Behalf of Outlaw Developer CIM Group, Peter Zarcone and Deputy Chief Terry Hara Concerned to Avoid “[Creating] a Perception of [LAPD] Being in the Pocket of a Private Developer”

December 27, 2015 Mike Leave a comment

Politically astute LAPD deputy chief Terry Hara in 2006.

In October 2014, a judge revoked real estate developer CIM Group’s permits for their controversial Sunset/Gordon apartment building because they had willfully ignored a number of legal requirements. Within days of that decision, HPOA Executive director Kerry Morrison was emailing Hollywood LAPD Honcho Peter Zarcone with some kind of ask about the situation. Zarcone conferred with now-retired Deputy Chief Terry Hara and told Kerry that, while he wasn’t (yet) saying “no” to whatever Kerry was asking, he and Hara needed more information because they were concerned that saying “yes” would “create a perception of [LAPD] being in the pocket of a private developer.” He was right to have worried. The Sunset/Gordon project would go on to be the locus of a great deal of outlawry, and CIM Group is essentially an ongoing criminal conspiracy. I certainly hope the LAPD had the sense to stay out of it.

I only have this little snippet of the email chain, so I don’t yet know the favor Kerry was asking nor the outcome of the ask. I have requests out for the rest, though, and I’ll provide new information as it comes in. I will say that I’d prefer that the LAPD would be concerned more with the reality of not being in the pocket of a private developer than the perception of it, but maybe that’s idealistic. And I’d say that the fact that Kerry Morrison even felt free to ask him for anything on behalf of CIM shows that probably the LAPD essentially is already “…in the pocket of a private developer.” Why did she think that asking him would yield results if similar requests in the past hadn’t already worked? My collection of BID/LAPD emails is presently too fragmentary to allow the drawing of many solid conclusions, but the amount of it that has to do with real estate is surprising.

Darrell Davis (right) with Bea Girmala and LaMont Jerrett in the parking lot of the Hollywood Police Station on Wilcox

For instance, here’s another email, this one from HPOA Assistant Boss Joseph Mariani to Hollywood cop Darrell Davis asking for info on Hollywood crime stats that a broker needs immediately to convince a client to buy in Hollywood. Again, I don’t yet know the full story, but I’m working on getting it. However, the level of familiarity that Joe displays suggests convincingly that LAPD assistance with Hollywood real estate transactions is the norm. Says Joe to Darrell: “Ideally he said he would need this today. Let me know if that’s possible. If not I’ll try and buy some time.”

So if Peter Zarcone is worried about creating a perception of LAPD being in the pocket of a private developer, maybe the best thing would be to have his subordinates stop acting like they’re in the pocket of the entire freaking real estate industry. Maybe the best thing to do when he receives what’s almost surely an improper request from Kerry Morrison is to tell her that it’s not the job of the police to facilitate the real estate industry’s criminality, or even its non-criminal daily business. Maybe that would be more effective. Read full transcripts after the break if you don’t like PDFs:
Continue reading Kerry Morrison Evidently Solicited Some Favor in October 2014 from LAPD on Behalf of Outlaw Developer CIM Group, Peter Zarcone and Deputy Chief Terry Hara Concerned to Avoid “[Creating] a Perception of [LAPD] Being in the Pocket of a Private Developer” →

Hypocrisy

Rogue Real Estate Zillionaires CIM Group Continue Rampaging Hollywood Crime Spree and Hypocritical Support for Continued Incarceration of Homeless

April 9, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

First page of Order to Comply posted in the window of the CiM Group crime scene at Sunset and Gordon. The second page is available here. — First page of Order to Comply posted in the window of the CiM Group crime scene at Sunset and Gordon describing their rabid outlawry, scofflaw shenanigans, and general contempt for the rule of law. The second page is available here.

We’ve written before about the rogue real estate zillionaires CIM Group and their scofflaw shenanigans, from infiltrating their Brown-Act-flouting minion Monica Yamada onto the BIDs’ Joint Security Committee to their bribery, permit-condition-ignoring, and general villainy. They are lately, of course, famous for having so egregiously ignored the terms of a deal with the City over their building at Sunset and Gordon that a judge voided their permits and told them to evict all their tenants.

And just now, on April 3, 2015, the LA Board of Building and Safety Commissioners slapped an “ORDER TO COMPLY” on the window of the Sunset/Gordon building which states:

An investigation of various complaints received by the Department has revealed that the subject apartment building is being used as a hotel without the required permits and Certificate of Occupancy.

Therefore, you are hereby ordered to stop the unapproved use and occupancy as a hotel on or before April 10, 2015.

So it’s illegal, but they’re still renting it out as a hotel. First we gotta wonder how would they be doing that? There’s no sign on the building. Find out after the break!
Continue reading Rogue Real Estate Zillionaires CIM Group Continue Rampaging Hollywood Crime Spree and Hypocritical Support for Continued Incarceration of Homeless →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

Kerry Morrison’s Cogent Argument Against Legal Street Vending Supports Outlawing Hollywood Real Estate Super-Villians CIM Group, Employer of HPOA President Monica Yamada

January 3, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Happy smiling white people at CIM Group plotting the destruction of Hollywood and raising the question of “how will taxes and permits be enforced, especially given that” CIM shenanigans are essentially “a symbol of the city’s failure to gain control over unpermitted outdoor signs”⁴? It’s almost certainly a coincidence that the woman on the left looks just like L. Ron Hubbard, right?

As we’ve previously discussed at great length, the palefaced economic elites of Los Angeles are all abuzz at the possibility that the City Council might legalize street vending of various kinds, an activity whose practitioners are, for the most part, not that palefaced. As part of their abuzzitude, the palefaces have produced reams of frantic pearl-clutching hysteria regarding the threats posed to truth, justice, the American way, etc. that would, they say, certainly ensue as a result of such legalization.

These white-privilege rage-rants, while mostly grounded in delusion and mental illness, occasionally contain valid and useful arguments. It can sometimes happen, as Albert Einstein said, that “a blind pig has found an acorn.”¹ A letter by Kerry Morrison, Executive Directrix of the HPOA, to Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, is an example of this. Kerry argues that, amongst other reasons, street vending should not be legalized, at least not in Hollywood, because it “raises numerous questions that must be taken into consideration. For example, how will taxes and permits be enforced, especially given that this is a cash-only business?“²

Typical cash-only business in Los Angeles, beloved of the human residents but hated by the HPOA because of the difficulty of enforcing "taxes and permits." This one's owned by an extraordinarily wealthy former mayor of Los Angeles, who evidently didn't get the memo about how his business practices are RUINING EVERYTHING!! — Typical cash-only business in Los Angeles, beloved of the human residents but hated by the HPOA because of the difficulty of enforcing “taxes and permits.” This one’s owned by an extraordinarily wealthy former mayor of Los Angeles, who evidently didn’t get the memo about how his business practices are RUINING EVERYTHING!!

As an aside, this argument can also be used against iconic Los Angeles restaurants The Pantry, Nick’s Cafe, and Philippe’s. Will the HPOA soon be asking the City Council to shut down these landmark establishments?

In any case, Kerry also lists a bunch of other undesirable consequences that, in her view, are likely to ensue from the legalization of street vending. These are not all illegal, e.g. the horrifying prospect of the potential placing of trash into appropriate public receptacles, but they’re all, says Kerry, “not something we are requesting in Hollywood.” We will refer to these en masse as “Kerry Morrison’s cogent argument.”

In our previous post on this subject we mentioned that the city of Los Angeles has had some problems with the enforcement of “taxes and permits” regarding CIM Group, a real-estate investment conspiracy run by rich white people. There we discussed the whole John Noguez scandal and hinted at the difficulty of enforcing building permit terms and conditions against CIM. Subsequently we decided to do some further research on the subject, the fruits of which are the subject of today’s post.
Continue reading Kerry Morrison’s Cogent Argument Against Legal Street Vending Supports Outlawing Hollywood Real Estate Super-Villians CIM Group, Employer of HPOA President Monica Yamada →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Street Vending

Kerry Morrison: Hollywood Businesses too Feeble to Survive Free Market Without Municipally Enforced Draconian Anticompetitive Pinko Racist Regulatory Capture

January 1, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Street vendor in Manhattan destroying the prosperity of the city, laying waste to the comfort and privilege of rich white people, and generally ruining EVERYTHING!! — Street vendor in Manhattan destroying the prosperity of the city, laying waste to the comfort and privilege of rich white people, and generally ruining EVERYTHING! And now the city of Los Angeles intends to forcibly convert Hollywood into a cultural and economic wasteland like New York City by allowing such miscreants to operate with impunity on our streets. “Not on our watch,” say BIDs.

Street food is one of the signature pleasures of the great cosmopolitan cities of the world. Practically alone amongst its peers, though, Los Angeles forbids vending on its public rights of way. This is because there are really no bounds to the willingness of the economic elites of this city to prohibit anything that normal human beings enjoy if by doing so they can stick a dagger in the neck of the poor. They will certainly destroy the village in order to save it.

Hollywood BIDs destroying the city of Los Angeles in order to save it from its own misguided sense of sanity — Representative of the Hollywood BIDs metaphorically destroying the city of Los Angeles in order to save it from perceived (albeit delusionally) unintended consequences of an all-too-rare outburst of sanity with regard to its street-vending policy.

Case in point: the City Council recently began to discuss legalizing street vending in Los Angeles. Sane people everywhere rejoice at this attempt to allow civilization to flourish and also bring an estimated half-billion dollars worth of economic activity out of the shadows and onto the bottom line. There’s a hot dog in the public manger, though.

The BIDs and their minions have leapt into coordinated action! They are in a cyclonic tizzy, explaining fast and loud how the unintended consequences of the sane and harmless choice to legalize street vending will ruin everything. It will e.g. impoverish small businesses, encourage crime, cause the unauthorized commercial use of public trash cans, cause the unauthorized non-use of public trash cans, provide increased funding to criminal street gangs, encourage armed robbery, cause diseases, and even more stuff too weird to list here. Think we’re exaggerating? Read on!
Continue reading Kerry Morrison: Hollywood Businesses too Feeble to Survive Free Market Without Municipally Enforced Draconian Anticompetitive Pinko Racist Regulatory Capture →

Announcements

CIM Group Supervillain Takes Break From Ruining Everything, Reads This Blog!

November 18, 2014 kohlhaas Leave a comment

CIM Group taking aim on Hollywood — CIM Group taking aim at Hollywood

While grepping around in our server logs, we noticed that someone from CIM Group is a regular reader of this blog! You can see the raw November logs here. Note that the whois record for 12.96.123.68 shows that it’s leased or owned by CIM Group. There seems to be but a single user agent involved, so we believe that a single person at CIM is making these visits.

We were going to use this post to make merciless fun of that person, but then we realized that maybe they’re sorry for what they done and we should be nice and invite them to repent by anonymously slipping us a bunch of documents or something. With that in mind, we are pleased to announce our new Invitation to Whistleblowers, which contains some hints on anonymous communications, encryption, and so on. Please have a look.

Image of Lex Luthor is ©DC Comics and first appeared in Action Comics Vol. 1, No. 23 (1940). It’s included here under the doctrine of fair use.

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy, Joint Security Committee

In Characteristically Cynical Move, Corporate Scofflaw CIM Group Infiltrates Minion Monica Yamada Onto BID Security Committee

November 18, 2014 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Monica Yamada, minion of corporate scofflaw CIM Group, reports to HPOA on continuing efforts to criminalize all aspects of lives of non-rich people — Monica Yamada, minion of corporate scofflaw CIM Group, reports to HPOA on continuing efforts to criminalize all aspects of the lives of non-rich people

CIM Group, widely known for sending out demolition teams in the dark of night to tear shit down in violation of their building permits,¹ leading a judge to invalidate those permits after tenants had already moved in to the building, deputes minion Monica Yamada to serve as its representative to the Joint Security Committee of the Hollywood Entertainment District BID and the Sunset-Vine BID.

The purpose of the Joint Security Committee is, we suppose, to oversee the operations of Andrews International Security, with whom the BIDs contract to provide patrol services. The mission the BIDs have given to A/I² is explained in the 2014-15-WORK-PLAN-FINAL-VERSION1-1:
Continue reading In Characteristically Cynical Move, Corporate Scofflaw CIM Group Infiltrates Minion Monica Yamada Onto BID Security Committee →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Monica Yamada and the Hollywood Vicinage

October 21, 2014 kohlhaas Leave a comment

The 6th amendment guarantees the right to “by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.” This was the result of a compromise away from a right to trial in “the vicinage” where the crime was committed, fought for by James Madison but ultimately compromised in order to allow the constitution to be ratified.
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