Tag Archives: Cory Palka

LAPD

Hollywood LAPD Captain-To-The-Freaking-Stars Cory Palka Uses A Personal Email Address For Official Department Business — cpalka@me.com — Here Are A Bunch Of Emails From That Account — How He Got A Blue Check For His Twitter — Police Protective League Collective Bargaining Demands — His Notes From A Workshop By Cop Cult Leader Dave Anderson — FBI Security Notes On 2018 Oscars — Which Comes With A Freaking “Intelligence Products Customer Satisfaction Survey” — I Swear I Am Not Making That Up — Notes On How To Spin Drop In Hollywood Hills Burglary Arrests — Blame Homeless Encampments Of Course — Oh! — And A Cory Palka Trivia Quiz! — Twenty-Two Pages Of It!

June 23, 2019 Mike 1 Comment

One of my long-running projects is identifying Los Angeles City officials who’re using private email accounts to conduct public business and, per the transcendentally monumental 2017 opinion in City of San Jose v. Superior Court, obtaining copies via the California Public Records Act. So far I’ve learned that Mitch O’Farrell does this, as do both David Ryu and Gil Cedillo as well. I also have some suggestive but not conclusory evidence that Eric Garcetti uses ericgarcetti@gmail.com for public business, and I am continuing to investigate.

And today I have another account to reveal, along with a set of emails. The account is cpalka@me.com, belonging to LAPD Hollywood Division Captain Cory Palka, famous for, among other things, following any number of white nationalists and Trumpistas with his blue-checked LAPD Twitter as well as sharing a warped racist sense of humor with a bunch of white supremacist BIDdies. You can browse and download the release on Archive.Org and read on for some selected gems!
Continue reading Hollywood LAPD Captain-To-The-Freaking-Stars Cory Palka Uses A Personal Email Address For Official Department Business — cpalka@me.com — Here Are A Bunch Of Emails From That Account — How He Got A Blue Check For His Twitter — Police Protective League Collective Bargaining Demands — His Notes From A Workshop By Cop Cult Leader Dave Anderson — FBI Security Notes On 2018 Oscars — Which Comes With A Freaking “Intelligence Products Customer Satisfaction Survey” — I Swear I Am Not Making That Up — Notes On How To Spin Drop In Hollywood Hills Burglary Arrests — Blame Homeless Encampments Of Course — Oh! — And A Cory Palka Trivia Quiz! — Twenty-Two Pages Of It! →

Business Improvement Districts, LAPD, Municipal Ethics

Eddie Guerra Update Finally! — He’s The Cop Who Took A Personal Check In 2016 For $400 From The Media District BID Ostensibly For Some Charity — And Then I Wrote About It In January 2017 — And Filed A Complaint With The Ethics Commission — Who Didn’t Do Anything As Usual — But Cory Palka Read That Blog Post! — And Told Now-Chief Michel Moore! — And Guerra Was Moderately Busted! — And I Just Found This Out Because It Took The LAPD Two Freaking Years To Fulfill My CPRA Request — And A Special Surprise! — Cory Palka Uses A Private Email Address To Conduct City Business!

January 7, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

In the Fall of 2016 LAPD officer Eddie Guerra asked the Hollywood Media District BID to give him $400 ostensibly for some charity. He asked by return email right after they thanked him for getting rid of some homeless people at their express request. Context matters, and this struck me as particularly shady, so I did three things. First, I turned Officer Guerra into the Ethics Commission for violating LAMC 49.5.5(a), which forbids misusing public power for private gain. Second, I wrote a blog post about the incident. And third, I made a request to the LAPD for more records.

And because the LAPD is slow as paint when it comes to filling CPRA requests they didn’t get back to me until two years later on December 31, 2018,¹ when they sent me this little spool of puckey in response. And, as is often the case with released records, most of them are completely worthless or else I already had them. But, as is also often the case with released records, some of this material was really essential!

Just, for instance, take a look at this series of emails between Hollywood mega-muckety Cory Palka, friend of white supremacists and of scientologists, and his superior officers, including now-chief Michel Moore, wherein Palka sends links and gives credit to this very blog (!) for breaking the story of Guerra’s misfeasance and they end up recommending a 1.28, which is evidently some kind of LAPD complaint form. Michel Moore, the current chief of police, agreed and then said that “corrective action/training/counseling is warranted.”

Oh, snap, amirite?! Now that I know he reads this blog and sends links to future chiefs of police, well, next goal, get @CoryPalka to follow me on Twitter! And amazingly enough, Cowboy Cory Palka is revealed by these emails to use the private email address cpalka@me.com to conduct City business, which puts him in the august company of Mitch O’Farrell, David Ryu, Gil Cedillo, and (spoiler alert) Paul Koretz!² You will definitely be hearing more about this, but not necessarily soon.

Anyway, turn the page for transcriptions of all the emails including, of course, Cory Palka’s suprisingly lucid summary of the situation and shout-out to your very own MK.Org!
Continue reading Eddie Guerra Update Finally! — He’s The Cop Who Took A Personal Check In 2016 For $400 From The Media District BID Ostensibly For Some Charity — And Then I Wrote About It In January 2017 — And Filed A Complaint With The Ethics Commission — Who Didn’t Do Anything As Usual — But Cory Palka Read That Blog Post! — And Told Now-Chief Michel Moore! — And Guerra Was Moderately Busted! — And I Just Found This Out Because It Took The LAPD Two Freaking Years To Fulfill My CPRA Request — And A Special Surprise! — Cory Palka Uses A Private Email Address To Conduct City Business! →

LAPD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Thousands Of Pages Of 2016 LAPD Emails Shed Light On Hollywood Nightclub Racism And Creepy Cop Tricks — Including Targeted Enforcement Against Minority-Serving Establishments — Sending People “To Jail Before They Commit Crimes” — Explicit Targeting Of Putatively Chronic Offenders — Not To Mention Bizarro-World Redaction Policies Which Shed Some Light On The LAPD’s Contempt For The Public Records Act

August 26, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

Friends, cast your minds back to the Spring of 2015! Kerry Morrison’s various BIDs were all in a psychotic tizzy about dark-skinned people coming to Hollywood on the weekends to drink and dance and have some damn fun. Kerry Morrison and her yes-mob started a campaign against the nightclubs on Hollywood Blvd whose patrons were insufficiently lacking in melanin.¹ This led, by the Fall of 2015, to Hollywood’s itchy skritchy little Council-snitchy, the one, the only, Mitch O’Freaking Farrell, starting a high-profile public campaign to shut down every nightspot that made Ms. Kerry Freaking Morrison wrinkle her freaking nose in disdain.

There was some pushback from the club owners in 2016, e.g. from the owner of the Rusty Mullet, whose lawyers played video from this blog at a Council hearing, and the organizers of the #blackhollywoodmatters campaign who, notably, convinced Marqueece Harris-Dawson to vote against the wishes of his smarmy little buddy from CD13 in a committee hearing, although naturally he reversed himself at the full Council vote. But in the usual way of things these minor victories didn’t have much of an effect,² and by the end of August 2016 Kerry Morrison was, like Grendel’s momma, sitting around her reeking lair counting her ill-gotten victories on her poisonous and twisted little talons.

Around this time, that is, in August 2016, I filed a public records act request with the LAPD asking for emails related to these matters. And because the LAPD is basically a criminal conspiracy with respect to CPRA and just will not comply with the freaking law, which is why they get sued under the CPRA all the freaking time, it took them two whole years to hand over the goods. But they finally did produce thousands of pages³ and I recently published the whole pile on Archive.Org for your pleasure and edification.

At this late date, of course, and this was doubtless the City’s intention, the battle for the soul of Hollywood Blvd is pretty much over, with the reprehensible frightening whitening brightening of its nightlife essentially complete. However, history is interesting as well as political science, so I plan to write on these emails from time to time as there’s a lot of really disturbing and important material in there. The texts for today’s sermon come from this set here, and turn the page for the details!
Continue reading Thousands Of Pages Of 2016 LAPD Emails Shed Light On Hollywood Nightclub Racism And Creepy Cop Tricks — Including Targeted Enforcement Against Minority-Serving Establishments — Sending People “To Jail Before They Commit Crimes” — Explicit Targeting Of Putatively Chronic Offenders — Not To Mention Bizarro-World Redaction Policies Which Shed Some Light On The LAPD’s Contempt For The Public Records Act →

Los Angeles City Government

This Is What Domestic Surveillance Looks Like In Los Angeles In The 21st Century: Muslims Lawfully Distribute Pamphlets, Private Security Guards Call The Cops, Cops Read Pamphlets, Pronounce Them Reputable And Acceptably Anti-Terror, Make Report To So-Called Major Crimes Unit Anyway

April 2, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

The other day the LAPD provided me with a massive release of emails between various Hollywood Boss Cops and CIM Group and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. There’s a lot of stuff, and I haven’t read all of it carefully yet,¹ but a couple items stood out for sheer disconcertion.

In short, the story started with private security guards at a Rick Caruso hypermall in Glendale flipping out because someone was taking pictures and not shopping, escalated to an attempt to get the Glendale PD to stop the guy and identify him, and ended up in Hollywood with then Hollywood Station Boss Commander Peter Zarcone reading through legally distributed pamphlets, deciding that they were acceptably critical of bad Islamist stuff, and subsequently reporting the distributors, law-abiding Muslims from the Islamic Institute of Orange County, to the LAPD’s Major Crimes Division.

On the one hand, it’s absolutely ludicrous and surreally kooky that a few Muslims passing out literature on Hollywood Boulevard can lead the LAPD and a bunch of private security to generate dozens of emails at the highest levels, follow the Muslims around videotaping them and writing down their license plates, combing through their pamphlets, and so on. On the other hand, it’s absolutely chilling. That seems to be the world we’re living in, I guess. Surreally ludicrous, surreally chilling. As always, find details and documentation after the break.
Continue reading This Is What Domestic Surveillance Looks Like In Los Angeles In The 21st Century: Muslims Lawfully Distribute Pamphlets, Private Security Guards Call The Cops, Cops Read Pamphlets, Pronounce Them Reputable And Acceptably Anti-Terror, Make Report To So-Called Major Crimes Unit Anyway →

Hypocrisy, The Race Card, Venice

Mark Ryavec: the notion that police act as gentrification agents is “a bunch of radical bullshit.” LAPD Captain Cory Palka: “I showed [that developer], through public safety, that we can help him develop and prosper as he invests in Hollywood”

December 19, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Cory Palka giving a performative demonstration of the fact that Mark Ryavec is not only a slavering psychopath, he’s also either clueless or a liar or both.

A few weeks ago, Rory Carroll published an excellent article in The Guardian on how the City of Los Angeles has used gang injunctions as a tool of gentrification in Venice. Of course, this is not news to anyone who’s been paying attention since the injunction began in 2000. Even at the time it seemed clear that the injunction was a response to the wave of gentrification that began in Venice in the late 1980s and underwent unprecedented acceleration through the 1990s. Of course, everyone who’s smelting gold out of the housing stock of Oakwood in a blast furnace fueled by the burning bodies and lives of the poor people, the dark-skinned people, fed into the hopper by the LAPD, denies this every which way.

And these arguments have been repeated so often I have nightmares about them. “The cops would never ever do such a thing.” “There’s no conspiracy to chase out darkies.”¹ And so on and on and on. But Venice’s own muse of slavering psychopathy, the very king of the gentrifiers, the universally acknowledged whitest man in Venice, Mark Ryavec himself, has distilled all of them, every last threadbare tin-foil-hat characterization, into one bitter pithy little ball. As Rory Carroll puts it:

For Mark Ryavec, head of the Venice Stakeholders Association, the notion that police act as gentrification agents is “a bunch of radical bullshit”.

Well, first of all, it’s not actually bullshit.² The arguments against the idea that the City uses the LAPD to promote gentrification are mostly based on the (probably) factual assertion that (a) the City never mentions gentrification as a purpose for the gang injunctions and (b) that the assertions they make in support of the injunctions have to do with very real problems of violent crime (real at the time when the injunctions are being sought, anyway). There are a number of problems with this line of reasoning.
Continue reading Mark Ryavec: the notion that police act as gentrification agents is “a bunch of radical bullshit.” LAPD Captain Cory Palka: “I showed [that developer], through public safety, that we can help him develop and prosper as he invests in Hollywood” →

CD13, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Homeless Issues

Kerry Morrison’s Fallibility Exposed Publicly By Park La Brea News As Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition Move To Hollywood Salvation Army Is Finalized But She (Almost) Keeps Stiff Upper Lip. Mitch O’Farrell, On The Other Hand, Still Doesn’t Get This Whole “Free Country” Thing…

November 25, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

At least since February 2016, the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition has been publicly discussing a move away from its long-time ground zero at Sycamore and Romaine. Of course, Ms. Kerry Morrison does not like this one bit and, in her rage,¹ in May, went off in a tizzy crying to Salvation Army Board member Hank Hilty, whose family owns the Northeast corner of Third and Fairfax,² and to the Salvation Army Southern California chief-directorate-for-something-or-another in Long Beach, saying something like “Hey fellow zillionaires! We don’t like this so can you please put a stop to it?”

And just watch her little speech on the matter from May. See how her affect just screams competence, omnipotence, every-kind-of-cence-but-common-sense? Well, according to the Park La Brea News, the Food Coalition’s move is a done deal and they will start serving meals there on January 1st. So much for Kerry Morrison’s back-channel-zillionaire-solidarity methodology. But does she just admit that she’s been trying to stop this development for almost a year now and has failed utterly? Nope! She’s quoted right in the article, speaking as if from her metaphorical dais, that imaginary place of calm, controlled, power. Also sprach die Königin von Hollywood:

“[The GWHFC and Salvation Army] don’t perceive it will be much of a net increase of people coming to Hollywood, but we will have to see. I don’t necessarily buy that,” Morrison said. “The concern is not about the meal program, it’s what happens before and afterwards. When you are embarking on a project like this that is not self-contained, it is going to have implications for the surrounding neighborhood. We definitely will be watching. We will be tracking to see if there is any increase [in homeless people coming to Hollywood]. If we are 60 days into it and there is no impact, then we are golden.”

The tacit assumption here is that anyone cares whether or not she is “golden.” In fact, if anyone at all cared, she would have been able to stop the whole thing in January, when she first started tracking it, or in May, when she first started whining about it in public. But she couldn’t, so why would she be able to now? She’s putting up a good front, but she’s putting up a front.

And that’s not all! Note how she says that ” We definitely will be watching. We will be tracking to see if there is any increase [in homeless people coming to Hollywood].” Well, she’s talking about the BID Patrol watching, obviously, and that presents an interesting legal problem for her. Also, recall that CD13 Councildude and Darth Four-Eyes Mitch O’Farrell has been trying to get the Food Coalition shut down since about 20 minutes after he took office in 2013. He has something silly to say about the whole thing too. Read on, friends, for details!
Continue reading Kerry Morrison’s Fallibility Exposed Publicly By Park La Brea News As Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition Move To Hollywood Salvation Army Is Finalized But She (Almost) Keeps Stiff Upper Lip. Mitch O’Farrell, On The Other Hand, Still Doesn’t Get This Whole “Free Country” Thing… →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

Scenes From The Cosmo Club’s Appeal Of The Revocation Of Its Conditional Use Permit At The PLUM Committee Part 1: Marqueece Harris-Dawson Is An American Hero, MK.Org Video Of Racist Sunset-Vine BID Rant Played In City Hall

August 17, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Marqueece Harris-Dawson is an American hero.

Yesterday the Planning and Land Use Management Committee heard the Cosmo Club’s appeal of the Zoning Administrator’s revocation of their conditional use permit. See the whole thing here, with a very short second part here. Also, the Council file is here. This is the second in the ongoing series of Hollywood clubs that cater to minorities being targeted for elimination by Kerry Morrison, the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, the LAPD, and CD13 rep Mitch O’Farrell. The racist nature of this anti-nightclub campaign is revealing itself to the public, as dirty secrets will do, so this hearing drew some protesters who stated clearly, articulately, just exactly what is going on in Hollywood. Also, although L.A. Times reporting on this issue to date has been sporadic and radically incomplete, I spotted the incomparable Emily Alpert-Reyes exchanging contact information with Cosmo Club attorney Mike Ayaz after the hearing, so maybe something interesting is forthcoming.

There are links to a number of highlights at the end of this post, but the hearing was particularly rich, and I’m going to have to cover it in increments, starting at the end. If you’re not familiar with the situation, you can read up about it here and also here.¹ But here is the short version of how we got to this point: Kerry Morrison, her BIDs, and Peter Zarcone decided to destroy a bunch of nightclubs in Hollywood. Mitch O’Farrell told City Planning to get on it. They did, and the City Council will vote in favor of Mitch no matter how bogus the evidence is because they also want to exercise unilateral control over every aspect of everything in their districts, which they can only do with the connivance of their colleagues. Marqueece Harris-Dawson didn’t play along at yesterday’s hearing, which, although he was merely doing his job as a Councilmember, is very brave, since if he does it too often the zillionaire elite will certainly take away his seat in 2019.

In any case, after interminable testimony by Zoning Administrator Aleta James which listed every traffic ticket and open container violation within 100 yards of the business as is evidently the practice in these cases, after LAPD Hollywood Division Captain Cory Palka shilling for real estate developers, after greasy little liar and LAPD Hollywood undercover vice cop Benjamin Thompson told his greasy little lies, after many cogent comments by actual human beings opposing the City’s raw destructive power, after Sean Rafael from the Cosmo played OUR VIDEO from 2015, after all that, a small miracle occurred. Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson of CD8 questioned the Zoning Administrator extremely closely, ultimately a round of applause from the audience, who were amazed to witness that rarest of phenomena in Los Angeles: truth spoken from behind a desk in a Council hearing. Read on for details.
Continue reading Scenes From The Cosmo Club’s Appeal Of The Revocation Of Its Conditional Use Permit At The PLUM Committee Part 1: Marqueece Harris-Dawson Is An American Hero, MK.Org Video Of Racist Sunset-Vine BID Rant Played In City Hall →

Announcements, CD13, Downtown Center BID, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Dan Halden and Mitch O’Farrell’s Staff are Among the Readers of this Blog and Other News from a Batch of Highly Assorted Emails from CD13

July 17, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Dan Halden of CD13 forwards links to MK.org around to his colleagues and tells them not to reply. What's up with THAT, we wonder, although we could certainly make a guess! — Dan Halden of CD13 forwards links to MK.org around to his colleagues and tells them not to reply. What’s up with THAT, we wonder, although we could certainly make a guess!

Last Wednesday our faithful correspondent and a small contingent of other MK.org staffers hit the 704 Eastbound on SMB to the Echo Park Office of Hollywood’s own Mitch O’Farrell, where he had an appointment with Hollywood Field Deputy Daniel Halden to look at both oodles and scads of very highly miscellaneous emails and other goodies.

It was our intention to follow our traditional course of conduct after such missions and hit up the loveliest Brite Spot at the corner of Sunset and Park, but ’twas not to be. For some reason known only to them and their accountant they’re closing at 4 pm throughout the Summer. One can only hope and pray that they’ll get back to normal hours later. But we digress.

The Brite Spot in May 2016. This is your brain on diners.

Here is a link to the raw scans, which we’ve barely had time to sift through. Some are renamed, but most are not. Extraneous blank pages have mostly not yet been stripped. If you’re interested in reading hundreds of pages of emails from her highness, Queen Laurie Goldman about random multi-use monstrosities in Hollywood and why Robert Silverstein is pretty much Satan incarnate we’ll hook you up! There’s even a letter from Silverstein to someone about something in there somewhere. We got a few emails about recent anti-nightclub conspiracies between Mitch O’Farrell and the cops (recall that we reported on this a lot last year). But the real gems (that’s sarcasm, of a sort) we’ll reveal below the fold!
Continue reading →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

LAHSA Commissioner and BID Boss Kerry Morrison Conspires to Use Illegal Amplified Classical Music at Night to Repel Homeless Sleepers on Vine Street: “This is a Fairly Elegant Solution”

May 23, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Kerry Morrison, LAHSA Commissioner and supporter of playing loud classical music to repel homeless people.

Kerry Morrison is a commissioner of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, an organization whose mission statement claims that their purpose is:

To support, create and sustain solutions to homelessness in Los Angeles County by providing leadership, advocacy, planning, and management of program funding.

One of these solutions, according to a newly obtained email from Morrison to LAPD Captains Cory Palka, bosom buddy of Hollywood white supremacists, and Peter Zarcone, is evidently to blast classical music at homeless people until they go away:

Hi Captains,

There is a big foyer in front of the Ricardo Montalban Theatre on Vine Street.

For quite some time, this have [sic] been a favorite sleeping place for homeless individuals in the BID.

About a year ago, we encouraged Gil Smith¹ to try an experiment (had heard about this from another BID): play classical music all night long and see if that would drive away the sleepers. Sure enough, it had an immediate impact and cleared them out.

As anyone with sense could have foretold, this didn’t end well. The people who actually live in the neighborhood, unlike Kerry Morrison and her alien army of occupation, the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, couldn’t sleep either. They complained, and the music was shut down. But Kerry’s not giving up:

I am going to try to run some interference on this with the property manager over there…because this is a fairly elegant solution…

And what’s the property manager supposed to do here? It’s a violation of LAMC 116.01 to play music loudly enough to disturb sleeping people at night. The property manager can’t stop the residents from calling the cops. And why is Kerry Morrison, commissioner of LAHSA and zealous advocate for hyperenforcement of laws much, much more minor and picayune than this one as long as they’re to be enforced only against the homeless, conspiring with the Executive Producer of the Montalban to break the law by playing amplified music at night? Why is she conspiring to cover up these crimes by proposing to get the property manager of 1600 Vine Street to stop his tenants from reporting these violations to the police?
Continue reading LAHSA Commissioner and BID Boss Kerry Morrison Conspires to Use Illegal Amplified Classical Music at Night to Repel Homeless Sleepers on Vine Street: “This is a Fairly Elegant Solution” →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

That Time in 2014 When Kerry Morrison Helped John Tronson Cheat on his Homework and then Went and Spilled the Beans to the Cops that He Had Plagiarized his Work

May 18, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

John Tronson’s body double posing for a headshot in 2014.

If you want to read it, here is the “President’s Message”, originally published over then-HPOA-president John Tronson’s name in the Summer 2014 issue of the HPOA’s quarterly newsletter, HEDLines.¹Let’s examine some of the highlights! First about the street characters:

LAPD has been quite proactive in their efforts to address lawbreakers amongst the cast of characters and vendors that populate the sidewalks in front of the Dolby Theatre. There has been an improvement over last summer, possibly due to the commitment of two undercover task forces doing surprise enforcement every month. Though this represents a huge devotion of resources by the department to this effort, it helps to reinforce that laws must been [sic] adhered to and weeds out the trouble-makers. We are very appreciative of this strategy.

Oh wait!!! That’s not actually from John Tronson’s essay. What he wrote was:

Zarcone and Palka heard loud and clear the community’s frustration with the bad behaviors of the cast of characters and vendors that populate the sidewalks in front of the Dolby Theatre. The summer of 2014 is shaping up to be much calmer likely due to the commitment of an undercover task force doing surprise enforcement twice a month. Though this represents a huge devotion of resources by the department to this effort, it helps to reinforce that laws must be adhered to and it weeds out the trouble-makers. We are very appreciative of this strategy.

The first passage was written by Kerry Morrison in an email exchange with LAPD-ites Mark Dibell, Cory Palka, and Richard Gabaldon. And there’s more after the break.
Continue reading →