Tag Archives: Elizabeth Ortega

Business Improvement Districts, Homeless Issues, LAPD

Tia Strozier Continues To Act As George Yu’s Catspaw To Further His Vendetta Against Theo Henderson — Amplifying George Yu’s Weirdo Unsupported Defamatory Insinuations — Apparently Setting Henderson Up To Be Killed By Police — Just Because Yu Hates The Guy — Oh And Also Because Gil Cedillo Wanted To Have An Event In Alpine Rec Center — And Someone At CD1 — Probably Ricardo Flores — Perceived Henderson’s Presence As An Impediment — Also LAPD Senior Lead Officer Elizabeth Ortega Expresses Her Dismay At Being Unable To Arrest Henderson Just For Existing — “Unfortunately” — Says Ortega — “unless he commits a crime he is allowed to be at the park during park hours”

August 18, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Here’s the latest episode in the continuing story of the unholy obsession of psychopathic rageball George Yu, commander in chief of the Krazy Kriminal Konspiracy known as the Chinatown Business Improvement District, Los Angeles neighborhood prosecutor Tia Strozier, and LAPD senior lead officer Elizabeth Ortega, with the very existence of Chinatown resident Theo Henderson. You can read a report on this through May 2019 here.

The short version is that at Yu’s behest, Strozier and Ortega, with the cooperation of other City officials from CD1 and Rec and Parks have been trying unsuccessfully for months to arrest Henderson or at least find a way to ban him from Alpine Recreation Center. They have subjected him to police hyperscrutiny in the hope of finding actionable violations and aggressively try to impose “services” on him as a way to forcibly relocate him. Today’s post will bring the story up through July.¹

One of the favored tactics George Yu and his minions at the City of Los Angeles² use against the homeless people they’re targeting is involuntary mental health commitments. So it’s no surprise to see Ortega reassuring Yu via email on June 3, 2019 that she’s arranged for the County Department of Mental Health to “speak to Theo” What’s slightly surprising, though, is to see the putatively professional Ortega telling ostensibly private citizen Yu what seems like private medical information about Henderson. This ethical lapse certainly highlights the fact that the point of the intervention Ortega has arranged has little to do with Henderson’s well-being and lots to do with Yu’s vendetta.

Not that it needs to be highlighted. The fact that anyone with any training whatsoever, or even with any common sense, could sincerely think that Theo Henderson has any mental health problems at all, is completely implausible. It’s ridiculous. There is no legitimate reason for any competent person to call DMH about Henderson, who is among the sanest people I know. If you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him, and want to judge for yourself³ you can watch him speaking some truth to Yu at a recent BID meeting.

On June 27, 2019 Henderson and other homeless rights activists held a press conference at City Hall to promote the Services Not Sweeps Coalition, which stoked Yu’s always-smoldering rage at Henderson into an unhinged thermonuclear frenzy. On June 28 Yu sent an email to Ortega and Strozier, the subject line of which read “Theo’s Press Conference”, accusing Henderson of being a pedophile based on the exceedingly thin evidence of some pictures Henderson had taken of children at Alpine Rec Center and posted on Instagram.
Continue reading Tia Strozier Continues To Act As George Yu’s Catspaw To Further His Vendetta Against Theo Henderson — Amplifying George Yu’s Weirdo Unsupported Defamatory Insinuations — Apparently Setting Henderson Up To Be Killed By Police — Just Because Yu Hates The Guy — Oh And Also Because Gil Cedillo Wanted To Have An Event In Alpine Rec Center — And Someone At CD1 — Probably Ricardo Flores — Perceived Henderson’s Presence As An Impediment — Also LAPD Senior Lead Officer Elizabeth Ortega Expresses Her Dismay At Being Unable To Arrest Henderson Just For Existing — “Unfortunately” — Says Ortega — “unless he commits a crime he is allowed to be at the park during park hours” →

Business Improvement Districts, Homeless Issues, Los Angeles City Government

How Downtown Neighborhood Prosecutor Tia Strozier — And LAPD Officer Elizabeth Ortega — And CD1 Council Staffer Ricardo Flores — And Albert Torres of Rec And Parks Police — And A Bunch Of Other Housedwelling City Officials — Used The Full Force Of The Municipal Power Entrusted To Them For Legitimate Purposes To Target Unhoused Chinatown Resident Theo Henderson — Just Because Unhinged Racist Psychopathic Rageball — And Director Of The Chinatown Business Improvement District — George Yu — Asked Them To

July 24, 2019 Mike 2 Comments

So yesterday I went all over the damn City fetching public records from various agencies and told the story in this Twitter thread. And one of my stops was at the City Attorney’s office in City Hall East where I was menaced by a cop and subjected to extensive elevator therapy and then no one knew where the records were so I had to leave and then come back and finally I got them! And now you can get them too, right here on Archive.Org!

What I asked for here were emails to and from Tia Strozier, who is a newly appointed neighborhood prosecutor in Downtown Los Angeles. In that role, despite the mendacious utopian rhetoric of her lying boss Mike Feuer, she mostly works as an abject minion to business improvement districts and other zillionaire-facing organizations, her main job being to direct the full majesty of the law against whoever the zillionares desire, mostly homeless human beings who happen to live within the effective range of the considerable legal weaponry at her disposal.

One such person is Theo Henderson, a resident of Chinatown who, for reasons best known to the imaginary psychiatrist of unhinged racist⁴ psychopathic rageball and Chinatown BID kingpin George Yu, found himself squarely in the crosshairs of Yu’s rage. So much so, in fact, that activist residents of Chinatown rallied around Henderson, among other things, starting a Facebook group to discuss his plight.

And the story that these newly-obtained emails tell about George Yu, Tia Strozier, and the toxic misuse of municipal power, is not a pretty story. It shows Strozier marshalling her resources, convening meetings with Yu, other BIDdies, LAPD officer Elizabeth Ortega and other cops, City officials from Recreation and Parks, Ricardo Flores from CD1 representative Gil Cedillo‘s office, and so on, to discuss how to persecute Henderson.

And perhaps the most offensive part of this offensive, possibly unlawful, series of events is Strozier’s weaponization of the language of compassion, so common and yet still so appalling, among anti-homeless forces in Los Angeles, evinced here in her repeated insistence that she’s arranging for “outreach” for Henderson when it’s clear from the context that what she means by “outreach” is ultimately forcible removal from Chinatown, his neighborhood, where he lives. Anyway, read on for links, transcriptions, and so on!
Continue reading How Downtown Neighborhood Prosecutor Tia Strozier — And LAPD Officer Elizabeth Ortega — And CD1 Council Staffer Ricardo Flores — And Albert Torres of Rec And Parks Police — And A Bunch Of Other Housedwelling City Officials — Used The Full Force Of The Municipal Power Entrusted To Them For Legitimate Purposes To Target Unhoused Chinatown Resident Theo Henderson — Just Because Unhinged Racist Psychopathic Rageball — And Director Of The Chinatown Business Improvement District — George Yu — Asked Them To →

Announcements, Fashion District BID, Los Angeles City Government

We Applaud Randall Tampa’s (Weirdly) Professional Reaction To Ongoing Police Commission Registration Of BID Patrol Officers — He Thinks It’s A Good Thing For All The Right Reasons! (And 500+ More Emails From The Fashion District BID Courtesy Of Also-Highly-Professional Exec Direc Rena Masten Leddy!)

April 14, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Here’s a brief summary of the background: Late last year, on the basis of my complaint to the Police Commission, the City of LA resumed enforcement of LAMC 52.34 against BID security forces.⁵ Since then I’ve been tracking the progress of this massive project via various CPRA requests. In November 2016 the Police Commission informed all BIDs of the registration requirement. In December 2017 the Police Commission told the BIDs to quit whining and comply with the law.

Meanwhile, the latest piece of evidence in the ongoing saga of the registration of BID Patrols with the Police Commission comes from a huge release of emails by the Fashion District BID⁶ These span the time from July 1, 2016 through January 31, 2017 and are mostly between BID staff and the City of Los Angeles.⁷

There is an awful lot to write about here, but today I just want to highlight this interesting December 2016 email from FDBID operations director Randall Tampa to Eugene Shin, who’s the Police Commission investigator who’s handling the registration project. Randall Tampa sees the bigger picture here. It’s not a loss for BIDs who want to be free of any kind of oversight by the City, but a win for higher quality governance for everyone in Los Angeles:

I totally agree and support the police commission (and you) in your efforts to assure that only qualified personnel are patrolling the streets of Los Angeles.

In his email, Randall Tampa explicitly relates this opinion to his own experience as a police officer, proving yet again that people with experience in matters usually are much saner and have much more robust insights into how to regulate them. Most of the BIDs in our fair City are run by a bunch of cop-loving wannabes⁸ who are essentially see City governance as some kind of bizarre role-playing game, like Zillionaires versus Homeless, or whatever, rather than as an arena where wisdom and experience are far more essential than zillionaire-itude.

True, the Fashion District BID is presently having the stuffing sued out of it in federal court for its malfeasance and illegal conspiracies with the LAPD, and rightly so. They will lose this suit if there’s justice in the world, and be forced to pay endless amounts of money, but while they’re losing that suit, while they’re criminally conspiring with the cops, at least they’re putting up a professional front. At least they’re not a fricking embarrassment to themselves and others. (Turn the page for a complete transcription of Randall Tampa’s email and some musings on the nature of evil and frontery.)
Continue reading We Applaud Randall Tampa’s (Weirdly) Professional Reaction To Ongoing Police Commission Registration Of BID Patrol Officers — He Thinks It’s A Good Thing For All The Right Reasons! (And 500+ More Emails From The Fashion District BID Courtesy Of Also-Highly-Professional Exec Direc Rena Masten Leddy!) →