Tag Archives: Facebook

LAPD

LAPD Disciplinary Procedures Are Notoriously Secretive — But I Recently Obtained Records About An Officer — Nicholas Owens — Accused Of Using A Monkey Emoji To Comment On A Video About Mike Tyson And Subsequently Exonerated By A Board Of Rights — Which Reveal Unprecedented Information — Including The Board’s Detailed Rationale For Its Findings — Which Doesn’t Create Much Confidence In The Validity Of The Process — Like E.g. One Reason They Exonerated The Guy Is That None Of His Extensive Sensitivity Training Specifically Covered Emoji-Based Racism — It Sure Looks Like LAPD’s Disciplinary System Is Performance Rather Than Substantial Process — Remember This Whenever Politicians Or Cops Pass Off Disciplinary Procedures As Some Kind Of Police Reform — The Police Run The Process — And Can Make It Look Genuine As Long As The Proceedings Are Secret — So Let’s Open Them Up!

December 7, 2020 Mike Leave a comment

Summary: LAPD officers accused of rule violations often appear before a Board of Rights in an adversarial proceeding with the Department playing prosecutor. Most end in exoneration. All records of these proceedings are top secret so no one can tell if the process is corrupt or not. I recently obtained records about a disciplinary case against Officer Nicholas Owens, accused of posting a monkey emoji as a comment on a Mike Tyson video, which include the Board’s detailed Rationale for Findings. This includes an explanation of the reasoning behind the Board’s exoneration of Owens. The explanation doesn’t provide much confidence in the integrity of Board of Rights hearings in general. The other document records the Departmental discipline process, which precedes the Board of Rights hearing.

Police discipline records are notoriously top secret in California. Since forever until 2019, when Senator Nancy Skinner‘s monumental SB1421 took effect, they were uniformly exempt from the California Public Records Act. Even now, though, only records relating to the most egregious misconduct can be released, and only when the officer is found guilty.¹

But the huge majority of complained-against officers, at least in Los Angeles,² are exonerated and most police misconduct isn’t covered by SB1421, which leaves most police disciplinary records completely off limits, and even the release of these very limited SB1421 records was and is highly contested. The

In 2019 police statewide fought SB1421 implementation in court, they fought to stop its retroactive application, and are still slow-walking and otherwise obstructing access to the newly available records.³ Releasing records of disciplinary procedures that end in exoneration isn’t even being discussed. But it certainly ought to be, not least because such secrecy really reinforces mistrust of the police.

The most obvious reason for police to be so vehemently against release is that proceedings ending in exoneration are empty performances with predetermined outcomes. If they’re not scripted, the thinking goes, then why not release the records? If privacy is the issue then why not release public versions, as LAPD does for use of force cases? As Peter Bibring of the ACLU says, “That lack of transparency prevents the public from having any faith that the process is working.”

What Bibring doesn’t say is that if the process isn’t working but the public still has faith in it, transparency is likely to destroy even that. Let’s find out! I recently obtained copies of confidential LAPD disciplinary records from a case where the subject was ultimately exonerated. Even though the offense was relatively minor, involving the officer’s use of a monkey emoji in a Facebook post about Mike Tyson, these records provide unprecedented insight into LAPD’s complaint handling procedures.

It started with a July 2018 complaint, called in to LAPD by a citizen, about the contents of Officer Nicholas Owens’s⁴ Facebook page.⁵ These two records reveal an unprecedented⁶ level of detail about LAPD disciplinary proceedings in much, much more ordinary cases than are covered by SB1421. I have never seen anything like them. Here they are:
Continue reading LAPD Disciplinary Procedures Are Notoriously Secretive — But I Recently Obtained Records About An Officer — Nicholas Owens — Accused Of Using A Monkey Emoji To Comment On A Video About Mike Tyson And Subsequently Exonerated By A Board Of Rights — Which Reveal Unprecedented Information — Including The Board’s Detailed Rationale For Its Findings — Which Doesn’t Create Much Confidence In The Validity Of The Process — Like E.g. One Reason They Exonerated The Guy Is That None Of His Extensive Sensitivity Training Specifically Covered Emoji-Based Racism — It Sure Looks Like LAPD’s Disciplinary System Is Performance Rather Than Substantial Process — Remember This Whenever Politicians Or Cops Pass Off Disciplinary Procedures As Some Kind Of Police Reform — The Police Run The Process — And Can Make It Look Genuine As Long As The Proceedings Are Secret — So Let’s Open Them Up! →

Downtown Center BID, LAPD

LAPD Transit Services Division Monitored Extinction Rebellion’s Social Media In April 2019 And Sent Out Reports To Allied Universal Security — A Private Security Firm Employed By Many Business Improvement Districts In Los Angeles — Subsequently AUS Distributed LAPD Intelligence Reports To Its Clients

November 2, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

As you may well know there is a group of activists here in Los Angeles, known as Stop LAPD Spying, which is dedicated to the goal of stopping LAPD from spying. Such a group is, sadly, really necessary because LAPD just will not stop spying. From the famous red squad to the present, they just will not cut it out. And one of the forms LAPD spying takes in the present day is the monitoring of social media accounts and the dissemination of so-called intelligence gathered there. For instance, in 2017 dedicated LAPD social media stalkers learned of an unpermitted demonstration planned by a group called Code Pink, and they emailed a bunch of security people and BIDs Downtown about it and possibly even sent cops to the event.

And just today I learned of another such incident, this time involving LAPD’s Transit Services Division. It seems that Extinction Rebellion Los Angeles was planning a protest for April 22, 2019 to take place on the Red Line train, although the location was not at first revealed. As folks will do these days they coordinated it via social media, and the TSD was watching. And screenshotting. And disseminating their work to various private security companies, who sent it along to their clients, which include business improvement districts.

I learned of this from an April 21, 2019 email sent by Brian Raboin of Allied Universal Security to his clients, including the Downtown Center Business Improvement District. Raboin quotes extensively from an LAPD email that I don’t yet have a copy of, in which it’s revealed that not only was TSD monitoring Extinction Rebellion’s social media, but that the Media Relations Division was as well. There is a transcription of this email below. And Raboin also sent an attachment consisting of thirteen pages of screenshots from various Extinction Rebellion social media pages. Selected images from this document appear below as well.

On April 22, 2019 Extinction Rebellion announced via Facebook that the protest would take place, or at least start out, at Universal City Station. And, even more ominously in the jaundiced view of these cops and their henchies in private security, recommended that participants wear “clothes that can get stained.” The police sent out an update immediately and Raboin forwarded it along to his clients. That’s the story. I’ll leave the moral for you to formulate.

But it’s essential to continue to piece together evidence about what LAPD can monitor, what they do monitor, and with whom they share the fruits of their monitoring. Just yesterday it seems like the whole human population of New York City rose up against violent overpolicing on their subways. And the whole human population of Los Angeles can see that we have the same problem and that it might well lead to the same kind of reaction. So it’s worth remembering while we’re organizing, friends and fellow humans, that the cops are reading our Twitters.
Continue reading LAPD Transit Services Division Monitored Extinction Rebellion’s Social Media In April 2019 And Sent Out Reports To Allied Universal Security — A Private Security Firm Employed By Many Business Improvement Districts In Los Angeles — Subsequently AUS Distributed LAPD Intelligence Reports To Its Clients →

LAUSD

Emails Reveal Scholarship Prep Charter School PR Flack Jarryd Gonzales Facebook Stalking Harbor Area Defenders Of Public Education — Trying To Prevent Bad Publicity Based On Board Member Charles Friedrichs’ Xenophobic Anti-Immigrant Retweets — Whose Twitter Account Is Now Protected By The Way — Very Likely On The Advice Of Gonzales — Yet Another Example Of How Charters Squander Public Funds — Paying Idiots An Actual Salary To “Monitor” Adverse Twitter Accounts — I’m Guessing The Meteoric Flameout Of GANAS Academy Has These Piratical Privatizers Quite Worried!

October 15, 2019 Mike 1 Comment

Scholarship Prep is a chain of charter schools in Southern California recently expanded into the Los Angeles Unified School District with a school in Lomita. Charter minion and former state legislator Gloria Romero is one of the founders of the school, locally famous for having conspired with Sakshi Jain to accept the students left without a Fall 2019 school to attend by the spectacular implosion of Jain’s weirdo vanity charter project, GANAS Academy.

And, as you know if you followed that Jain/GANAS thing at all, those Harbor Area public education supporters are fierce. They’re tough as nails and they don’t like charter schools. And having shut down Jain, well, it’s not a surprise that they might be, to understate matters somewhat, not a hundred percent thrilled by Romero’s imperialistic designs on LAUSD kids and money.

And like many of us do these days, they have some presence on social media. For instance, there’s Harbor Area Defenders of Public Education on the Facebook and various Twitter accounts that take an interest, maybe most prominently LA County Leaks. This last account recently, just for instance, tweeted some info about Scholarship Prep’s board of directors and their lack of experience in education.

And the Harbor Area Defenders have also shared some important info about the Board, like for instance this post about Board member and music professor Charles Friedrichs who, despite being in control of a multimillion dollar publicly funded school that serves predominantly Latino populations, probably not entirely documented, will nevertheless gleefully retweet some incredibly xenophobic remarks about immigrants.

You might think, by the way, that Scholarship Prep wouldn’t worry about this kind of talk. They’re a multi-zillion dollar organization, well-funded, thoroughly lawyered up, on the right side of the powerful, and so on. Why would anyone think they might be worried about a little ragtag band of partisans sniping at them from the most obscure of the obscure little backwaters of Twitter.⁷ Continue reading Emails Reveal Scholarship Prep Charter School PR Flack Jarryd Gonzales Facebook Stalking Harbor Area Defenders Of Public Education — Trying To Prevent Bad Publicity Based On Board Member Charles Friedrichs’ Xenophobic Anti-Immigrant Retweets — Whose Twitter Account Is Now Protected By The Way — Very Likely On The Advice Of Gonzales — Yet Another Example Of How Charters Squander Public Funds — Paying Idiots An Actual Salary To “Monitor” Adverse Twitter Accounts — I’m Guessing The Meteoric Flameout Of GANAS Academy Has These Piratical Privatizers Quite Worried! →

LAPD

After Valley News Group Ran An Article Exposing Fern Peskin-White’s Secret Homeless-Hating Vigilante Facebook Pages Her Homeless-Hating Vigilante Buddies Targeted And Harassed Publisher Kathleen Sterling And — Like The Book-Burning Nazis That They Are — Openly Conspired On Freaking Facebook To Destroy Copies Of The Newspaper Whose Truth So Offended Them — (I Have Screenshots By The Way!!) — And Then Galaxy-Brained Genius Valley Cop Karen Rayner Said It Wasn’t A Crime Because She Said It Wasn’t A Crime — But In Three Seconds On Google I Discovered That It Is A Crime — So Now For The Sake Of What’s Left Of Their Credibility LAPD Must Arrest And The City Must Prosecute These Cop-Loving Criminal Book Burners — Their Names Are — Sheila Johnson — Mike Pettit — Noni Kay — Donna Tamara Trent — Diana Bernard Katayama — Houman Salem

October 2, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

You will recall that after K-Town For All, Knock.LA, and LA Magazine broke the huge story in August about LAPD officers, most notably Sean Dinse, participating in private anti-homeless vigilante Facebook groups helmed by former LAPD volunteer Fern Peskin-White, a local advertising paper, the Valley News Group, ran their own version of the story on August 15.

This inspired the thuggish vigilante Facebook warriors to launch a campaign of abuse, harassment, and threats against Kathleen Sterling, the head honcho of the VNG. And subsequently, when the LAPD banned its officers from participating in the vigilante groups and announced a public meeting in September to discuss the matter, Sterling gave them notice of the horrifying treatment she’d suffered at the hands of their Facebook fans and how, because of their terroristic tactics, she was frightened to attend the public meeting.

Her email to them is well worth your time to read, and is filled with despicable facts that showcase the appalling thuggery of Fern Peskin-White’s unhinged minions. Sadly I do not have time to write about all of this, but one episode is essential. Sterling told LAPD officers Al Mendoza, Sean Dinse, and Duc Dao, that:

… members of that group were harassing me, trying to put my home address on Facebook and threatening me – and I heard nothing from you. They are also dumping our papers from our distribution points – which is blatantly illegal.

And she attached four screenshots from the group, showing that these self-proclaimed law and order worshipping cop lovers were indeed conspiring to dump and actually dumping her papers. So for instance we have cop lover Donna Tamara Trent telling her partners in crime “EVERYWHERE YOU GO IF YOU SEE THEM GRAB ALL THE COPIES IF YOU CAN. I KNOW A FEW PLACES THAT HAVE THEM. TRASH THEM.” And we have cop lover Sheila Johnson sending her partners in crime a picture of a stack of these free papers and being told by cop lover Houman Salem to Trash it. Cop lover Sheila Johnson agreeably replies that “[she] will try to get what [she] can.”

Then we have cop lover Noni Kay telling her partners in crime that “I threw the one away inside Juicy Ladies.” To which cop lover Diana Bernard Katayama replied with a photograph of a bunch of copies of the paper inside a trash can and telling her partners in crime that she is “off to fined [sic] more.” The set closes with cop lover Mike Pettit telling his partners in crime that he “took care of all the trash at Albertson’s Calabasas” and providing an extensive list of distribution points for his co-conspirators to attack.
Continue reading After Valley News Group Ran An Article Exposing Fern Peskin-White’s Secret Homeless-Hating Vigilante Facebook Pages Her Homeless-Hating Vigilante Buddies Targeted And Harassed Publisher Kathleen Sterling And — Like The Book-Burning Nazis That They Are — Openly Conspired On Freaking Facebook To Destroy Copies Of The Newspaper Whose Truth So Offended Them — (I Have Screenshots By The Way!!) — And Then Galaxy-Brained Genius Valley Cop Karen Rayner Said It Wasn’t A Crime Because She Said It Wasn’t A Crime — But In Three Seconds On Google I Discovered That It Is A Crime — So Now For The Sake Of What’s Left Of Their Credibility LAPD Must Arrest And The City Must Prosecute These Cop-Loving Criminal Book Burners — Their Names Are — Sheila Johnson — Mike Pettit — Noni Kay — Donna Tamara Trent — Diana Bernard Katayama — Houman Salem →

LAPD

LAPD Chief Michel Moore’s 2018 Notice On LAPD Use Of Personal Social Media Accounts Does Not Bode Well For Officer Sean Dinse’s Renewed Participation In Former LAPD Volunteer Fern Peskin-White’s Private Anti-Homeless Vigilante Facebook Group — Not To Mention The Fact That He Rejoined Seemingly In Defiance Of A Direct Order

October 1, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

No doubt you recall the whole to-do out in the far west Valley having to do with former LAPD volunteer Fern Peskin-White and her various secret anti-homeless vigilante Facebook groups, highly problematic for having LAPD officers as members even as other members were cracking jokes about burning out the zombies and any number of other horrific forms of terrorism.

So Valley Chief Jorge Rodriguez convened a public meeting a few weeks ago and he and Chief Michel Moore announced that LAPD officers would no longer participate in these vigilante groups. But then, apparently in violation of a direct order from his superior officer, Sean Dinse rejoined the group on Friday, September 27, 2019.

I have heard some speculation about the relevance of the fact that Dinse rejoined using his personal Facebook account rather than an official LAPD account, and I thought that it might be a good time to review a 2018 notice by Chief Michel Moore on LAPD use of social media which covers precisely this issue.

Note that I wrote about this item a few months ago in relation to a larger release of records having to do with LAPD and social media. The current episode with Dinse and the vigilante anti-homeless Facebook groups gives it a currency and a context that it did not have at that time, so I think it’s worth bringing up again. The key bit here is that, according to Moore,
Continue reading LAPD Chief Michel Moore’s 2018 Notice On LAPD Use Of Personal Social Media Accounts Does Not Bode Well For Officer Sean Dinse’s Renewed Participation In Former LAPD Volunteer Fern Peskin-White’s Private Anti-Homeless Vigilante Facebook Group — Not To Mention The Fact That He Rejoined Seemingly In Defiance Of A Direct Order →

Homeless Issues, LAPD

Anti-Homeless Vigilantism Proponent — Associate Of Heavily Armed Thugs — And Fascist Street-Fighting Beerhall Hooligan Cosplay Enthusiasts — Joel Glucksman — Who Jokes In Public About Tasing Human Beings Before The Police Show Up — See This Terrorist’s Buddies Strutting Around On His Company’s Own Damn Video — Menacing Homeless Human Beings On A Public Street — With Guns — And Other Tools Of War — This Is A Guy Who Has More Damn Nerve Than Most Of The Internet Lawyers Who Threaten Defamation Lawsuits Cause Their Sad Little Feelings Got Hurt

August 19, 2019 Mike 1 Comment

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post stated that Joel Glucksman appears in the video. Glucksman claims that he does not appear in the video and I have no reason to disbelieve him. They are employees of Iron Delta Security, and he’s part owner of that firm, so I’ve rewritten this post to reflect that information and I apologize for my error.

Maybe you’ve been following the story of anti-homeless vigilante activity in the San Fernando Valley, coordinated through private Facebook groups and condoned and assisted by active and retired LAPD officers. It was heavily covered last week, and here’s a list of some of the most notable reports:

★ West San Fernando Valley Residents Take to Facebook To Stalk, Harass and Terrorize the Homeless with Help From Current And Former LAPD Officers. — Knock-LA.com

★ LAPD Involved in Anti-Homeless Vigilante Facebook Groups — KTown For All

★ Two Anti-Homeless Facebook Groups Count L.A. Cops Among Their Members — LA Magazine

★ Exposés on “Crimebusters” Lead to Investigation of LAPD SLO’s — Valley News Group

And subsequent to this wave of exposure there was the predictable backlash from the homeless-hating vigilante housedwelling Facebook warriors who, like all of their ilk, cannot stand having the caustic contents of their seething ids exposed in public and then mocked. I’m sure you can imagine all the idiotic Internet lawyerisms about defamation and lawsuits and et-freaking-cetera. I won’t bore you with it here.
Continue reading Anti-Homeless Vigilantism Proponent — Associate Of Heavily Armed Thugs — And Fascist Street-Fighting Beerhall Hooligan Cosplay Enthusiasts — Joel Glucksman — Who Jokes In Public About Tasing Human Beings Before The Police Show Up — See This Terrorist’s Buddies Strutting Around On His Company’s Own Damn Video — Menacing Homeless Human Beings On A Public Street — With Guns — And Other Tools Of War — This Is A Guy Who Has More Damn Nerve Than Most Of The Internet Lawyers Who Threaten Defamation Lawsuits Cause Their Sad Little Feelings Got Hurt →

Homeless Issues, Venice

“Firebomb His Van. He’ll Move” — Just Some Psychopathic Venice Housedwellers Musing — In Public No Less — About Murdering A Homeless Human Being Living In A Van By Burning Him To Death — His Sins? — They Feel Scared — They Think He Steals Bikes — He Urinates — He Hangs Laundry On A Tree — Therefore He Must Die

June 11, 2019 Mike 2 Comments

It ought to be easy enough in this City at this moment to get just too used to the casual sadism, the genocidal urge, the unhinged anger, the antihuman racism, the unreasoning relentless violence, directed by sociopathic housedwellers towards our homeless neighbors, including the calls to use starvation as a policy tool. It ought to be easy enough because of the ubiquity of the hatred, the relentless ever-present angry self-pitying rhetoric, but it’s not, it never is, there’s no bottom to this pit and no getting used to its horrors. Just for instance see this post right here on the Venice (California) Facebook page, and here’s a screenshot in case something changes over there.

It seems there’s a person living in a van at Venice and Louella. And the neighbors don’t like it. So Swedish canine-mold-detection specialist Yvonne Sjostrand⁸ posted a rambling cri de coeur about the vandweller and then, just like that, the usual conversation began yet again. Garcetti won’t do anything, cops won’t do anything, stolen bikes, human excrement, unaesthetic laundry, insert facile self-serving cynicism here, blah blah blah. Until things took a decidedly darker turn with the appearance in the conversation of one Joel De Gan, a housedwelling member of the same profession that built the infrastructure of genocide in Nazi Germany, employed by LinkedIn, with a simple plan. Firebomb his van, he’ll move.

And then all the other Facebook warriors were like ummm, Joel, we hate homeless people too but we don’t want to murder them, we just want them to move to Lancaster or Culver City or whatever. Just kidding, none of them said anything about Joel’s suggestion, and five of them took the trouble to click to like or smileyface it. Because not only does murder strike these housedwellers as an appropriate response to a human being living somewhere they don’t want him to live, but it’s an unremarkable response as well.
Continue reading “Firebomb His Van. He’ll Move” — Just Some Psychopathic Venice Housedwellers Musing — In Public No Less — About Murdering A Homeless Human Being Living In A Van By Burning Him To Death — His Sins? — They Feel Scared — They Think He Steals Bikes — He Urinates — He Hangs Laundry On A Tree — Therefore He Must Die →

LAPD

Presenting Copies Of LAPD Social Media Policies And Guidelines — Including Comprehensive Handbook Promulgated In 2015 By Charlie Beck — Explaining How To Use Social Media In Investigations — Fictitious Online Personas On Social Media — Community Relations — And So On — Also Info From LAPD Labor Relations Unit — On How Cops Comport Themselves At Labor Actions — Like They Evidently Videotape Them And Use A Decibel Meter To Prove Code Violations — But They Also Deny Videotaping Labor Actions — And More!

April 22, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

I’ve been looking into official City of LA uses of social media. In particular I have some interesting results on Twitter use, especially blocking behavior, by Council offices and the City Attorney and by Police Commission boss Steve Soboroff. I’m also trying to understand the City’s policies regarding social media, and I recently obtained a number of really interesting records about this from the LAPD. They are all available here on Archive.Org and there are links to the individual files below:

☆ 2012 Notice from Charlie Beck regarding LAPD use of social media — This is a very primitive first attempt at an LAPD social media policy. Beck says that they’re working on a comprehensive policy, but meanwhile he reminds everyone that “Department employees who choose to use social media sites for personal use or Department-related activities are reminded to adhere to Department policies and procedures, including but not limited to [policies on ] Conduct Unbecoming an Officer, Endorsement of Products and Services, Confidential Nature of Department Records, Reports, and Information, … and the Department’s Law Enforcement Code of Ethics.”

☆ 2015 LAPD Social Media User Guide — This is a really important item. It’s the LAPD’s comprehensive guide to social media use for official, personal, and investigative purposes. There’s a transcription of some parts of this fascinating item after the break, mostly the part on how LAPD uses fictitious online personas during investigations. This is a particularly timely issue right now as such profiles often violate terms of service, e.g. Facebook’s, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation has taken up the matter.

It also has a lot of bizarro-world examples of how cops can use social media to improve the world, e.g. “After an officer-involved shooting, the watch commander used social media to identify and dispel rumors. He/She clarified the facts by disseminating information from the press release, resulting in an increase of public support for the police department.”

☆ 2018 Chief of Detectives notice on preservation of social media accounts for investigative purposes — Exactly what it sounds like. Instructions on how to ask the service providers to preserve accounts that are evidence and, obviously, a warning that “Officers shall not login to any personal accounts to view content related to any investigation. This may inadvertently connect personal accounts to those of suspects, victims, or witnesses, or otherwise compromise sensitive investigations.”

☆ 2018 Guidance from Michel Moore on Official and Personal Social Media Accounts — Another really important item here. In particular Moore orders officers who want to create official accounts, even those personal official accounts, to get permission from the public information division (PID) first. Captains and above aren’t required to ask permission but they are required to inform the PID when they create an account and provide information about it.

Moore also gives some really thoughtful advice that, I believe, is widely ignored by his subordinates: “Employees using an official Department social media account generally should not block or mute users or followers unless failure to do so impacts public or officer safety. Absent exigent circumstances, personnel shall first consult with the PID for direction prior to blocking or muting a user participating in an official Department social media account.” There’s much more here than my summary can do justice to and you really ought to read the whole thing. There’s also a transcription of this after the break.

☆ LAPD Labor Relations Unit discussion of social media and photography policies — I didn’t even realize that the LAPD had a Labor Relations Unit until the responsive records came in. This is a hugely document in that the LRU evidently didn’t have any actual records to hand over but they responded to the various elements of my request in writing. Agencies certainly aren’t required to do this but it’s really nice when they do.

In particular they reveal that they do actively monitor social media accounts and websites of unions, which I find a little creepy, but I suppose that as long as they stick to monitoring rather than participating and also only look at public stuff there’s not much to be done about it. It’s internally contradictory, which invites detailed further study. E.g. they both admit to videotaping labor actions and at the same time deny that they do. Turn the page for transcribed selections from this and other records discussed above.
Continue reading Presenting Copies Of LAPD Social Media Policies And Guidelines — Including Comprehensive Handbook Promulgated In 2015 By Charlie Beck — Explaining How To Use Social Media In Investigations — Fictitious Online Personas On Social Media — Community Relations — And So On — Also Info From LAPD Labor Relations Unit — On How Cops Comport Themselves At Labor Actions — Like They Evidently Videotape Them And Use A Decibel Meter To Prove Code Violations — But They Also Deny Videotaping Labor Actions — And More! →

Lawsuits, Los Angeles City Council

Oh Man! — The LA Times Sure Left A Lotta Tea Unspilled On Mayra Alvarez’s Allegations Against Rapiest Councilboy Of ‘Em All — Her Former Boss, José Huizar — Facebook And Instagram Stalker — Notebook Thrower — Whiny-Baby Tea Drinker — Hypocritically Jealous Adulterer — Subordinate Intimidator With A Butt-Grabbing Brother — Read All About It Right Here Cause We Finally Got A Copy Of The Actual Complaint As Filed!

November 11, 2018 Mike 1 Comment

Everybody who’s reading this blog by now knows that Mayra Alvarez, who is José Huizar’s former scheduler, is suing him for harassment, retaliation, and various other important matters. David Zahniser had an excellent story about it in the Times a few weeks ago when the suit was filed. And David Zahniser covered some important allegations. For instance, Huizar ordered Alvarez to alter his calendars in front of public records act requests and when she objected he took away her responsible position as scheduler and made her into his receptionist. And to work on the 2020 election campaign of Mrs. José Huizar on City time. And so on.

But the Times, for whatever reason, journalistic integrity, admirable prudence, pure good sense, lack of space, an instinct for dignity, didn’t provide a copy of the complaint and also didn’t reveal many of the most lurid and yet entirely believable allegations against José Huizar who, it turns out, is even rapier than we thought, and that was already pretty damn rapey. Fortunately we here at MK.Org suffer from not one of those impediments! The purpose of tonight’s post is to fill both of the gaps left by David Zahniser’s reporting. The second comes first. Here’s the initial complaint filed by Mayra Alvarez in Los Angeles County Superior Court on October 22, 2018.

And what kind of creepy crapola did José Huizar get up to? All kinds of stuff, from repeatedly texting the word “tea” to her from his office in response to her putatively slow tea service to obsessively stalking her Facebook and her Instagram and emailing her with extra work every time she posted a picture of her with her husband.

Huizar’s extramarital affairs have been widely reported, but this is the first time we learn that he, evidently out of wildly hypocritical jealousy, forbade some of his own male staffers from working closely with his paramours. And his brother, it seems, is a butt-grabber, and José Huizar in response is an intimidator of women whose butts are grabbed, cause it’s going to make him look bad if they complain. And, because why not, he also evidently threw stuff at Mayra Alvarez during his tea tantrums. All in all he’s bad news indeed. Turn the page for transcribed selections from the complaint.
Continue reading Oh Man! — The LA Times Sure Left A Lotta Tea Unspilled On Mayra Alvarez’s Allegations Against Rapiest Councilboy Of ‘Em All — Her Former Boss, José Huizar — Facebook And Instagram Stalker — Notebook Thrower — Whiny-Baby Tea Drinker — Hypocritically Jealous Adulterer — Subordinate Intimidator With A Butt-Grabbing Brother — Read All About It Right Here Cause We Finally Got A Copy Of The Actual Complaint As Filed! →

Business Improvement Districts, LAPD

Annals Of LAPD Spying — Sometimes Protesters Don’t Get Permission From The Cops For Their Protests — And Sometimes The Cops “Monitor” Social Media To Uncover Protesters’ Plans — And Sometimes The Cops Share This Information With The Department Of Homeland Security — Not To Mention With Business Improvement Districts — Who Are No Strangers To Creepy-Ass Social Media Spying Themselves — So Watch What You Say On Facebook, Friends, If You Don’t Want A Bunch Of Unanticipated Cops Showing Up!

June 1, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

This is just a short note to discuss this email chain, which I recently received from the Historic Core BID as part of the fruits of a public records act request.⁹ It seems that last year, some group called Code Pink was planning a protest in Pershing Square on April 29, 2017¹⁰ and they did not ask the permission of the LAPD. Even more interestingly it seems that the LAPD has officers dedicated to “monitoring social media” who track this kind of thing.

And one of them, James Baker, emailed a bunch of his fellow polices on April 22, 2017, to fill them in on the upcoming reign of anarchy Downtown. He mentioned explicitly that Code Pink was not cooperating with the LAPD, that there was no discussion of any civil disobedience, and that his officers would “continue to monitor social media for updates.”

Also interesting is the fact that four of the recipients were with the Department of Homeland Security.¹¹ Another was Senior Lead Officer Michael Flanagan, who turned around and emailed batty little fusspot Blair Besten of the Historic Core BID, Brian Raboin of the Downtown Center BID, and Banyon Hutter of Allied Universal Security.

The record doesn’t show what,if anything, the BIDs did with the information, but it’s worth keeping in mind that this is happening. If you’re an activist, if you use social media to coordinate your events, don’t forget that the cops are reading it too, the BIDs are reading it, BID security is reading it, and they’re all coordinating with each other. Plan accordingly. Turn the page for transcriptions of the whole email chain and some additional discussion.
Continue reading Annals Of LAPD Spying — Sometimes Protesters Don’t Get Permission From The Cops For Their Protests — And Sometimes The Cops “Monitor” Social Media To Uncover Protesters’ Plans — And Sometimes The Cops Share This Information With The Department Of Homeland Security — Not To Mention With Business Improvement Districts — Who Are No Strangers To Creepy-Ass Social Media Spying Themselves — So Watch What You Say On Facebook, Friends, If You Don’t Want A Bunch Of Unanticipated Cops Showing Up! →