Tag Archives: Hollywood Division

Newly Obtained Emails From CD13 Reveal Existence Of Hitherto-Unknown-To-Me LAPD Unit Called Coordinated Outreach Resource Enforcement — AKA CORE — Dedicated To “identifying wanted suspects of active investigations living within the homeless population of Hollywood” — And Potentially Other Divisions As Well — In 2018 There Were 8 Cops On This Job In Hollywood And A Supervising Sergeant — Shannon Geaney — They Seem To Go On Sweeps And Use Outreach As A Pretext For Warrant Searches — Thus Obviously Exacerbating And Increasing Distrust Of Their Motives — Which Legit Are Not Pure — Yet Another Reason To Remove Cops From Encampment Actions Of All Types — And Actually Institute The Demands Of The Services Not Sweeps Coalition — Not To Mention Some Idiotic Victim Blaming By Geaney — Who Proposes To Stop LAPD & LA Sanitation From Throwing Away Homeless People’s Property By Giving Them More Plastic Bags — And ” educat[ing] them on the importance of their role in safe guarding their property”

I have been spending a lot of time looking into how the City of Los Angeles organizes sweeps of homeless encampments on the most micro-level possible. The picture painted by the evidence is of an essentially complaint-driven process, with sweeps being called in mainly by Council offices, for the most part in response to constituent complaints or even to facilitate the illegal installation of hostile architecture. It’s possible, even likely, that there are other mechanisms, but I don’t yet have a clear idea of what they are.

Ideas aren’t guiding City policy, but personalities are, raw animal desire, hatred, anger, so it’s not likely that ideas, morality talk, and so on, could change the policy. It’s extremely important therefore to understand the processes at this personal level not least to learn what is motivating City policy, what kinds of pressures City officials feel that guide their choices, and so on. Whose anger counts.

And it’s surprising whose anger does count. Like see the crazed emails from Hollywood landlord and Kanye West operative Anthony Kilhoffer and the City’s reaction to them or these genocidal freaks who want to starve homeless human beings away from their properties. And yet City officials, police included, are deferential throughout their interactions. Without understanding how this happens, why it happens, it will be harder than it already is to change the way the City deals with the homeless, and it’s already impossibly hard.

The best tool I know for understanding City politics is, of course, the California Public Records Act.1 So I spend a lot of time collecting and reading rage-filled hateful screeds, written by self-righteous privileged housedwellers. And to collect these, well, the CPRA requires that a request “reasonably [describe] an identifiable record or records”.2 Which makes it a little tricky in that probably “all rage-filled hate screeds emailed by psychopathic housedwellers” is not a reasonable description of an identifiable record. It’s too subjective, not least because one person’s psychopathic housedweller is another person’s most honored campaign donor.

So to obtain emails, then, it’s best to provide search terms. These can be domain names, email addresses, words, phrases, anything. The presence or absence of a term in an email is objective, and therefore provides a reasonable description of an identifiable record. There’s still the problem, and it’s not trivial, of coming up with appropriate search terms for this particular genre of public records.

But recently I have come pretty close to what seems to be an ideal solution. At least the phrase I’ve been using turns up a lot of interesting stuff. My current best search term is “quality of life.” Indeed, this was probably3 made up by a bunch of broken windows theorists as a way to explain why their theories lead them to think it’s actually OK, actually desirable, to lock people up for an entire freaking year for pissing in an alley when sane people actually don’t know why pissing in alleys is even illegal.4

And this abhorrent circumlocution evidently serves its conscience-soothing function well, based on its popularity among that segment of psychopathic homeless-hating housedwellers who so desperately need their consciences soothed, or would if they had any. It’s freaking everywhere in precisely the emails I’m looking for. And just the other day I got a big stack of these quality of life emails from Mitch O’Farrell’s staff at CD13.5 And you can read all of them here on Archive.Org.6

And there is some good stuff in here, both interesting and important.7 I will be writing about it from time to time, and today I’m looking at this March 30, 2018 email from LAPD officer Shannon Geaney to a panoply of what passes for community leaders in Hollywood asking for their help in coordinating a distribution “one-thousand, high density, clear, zip-closure bags that will be printed “ESSENTIAL PERSONAL PROPERTY” with a box to write the owner’s name.” There’s a transcription of this entire essential email below.

The point, as you may well have guessed immediately, is that Geany has “heard the frequent complaint that important paperwork, documents, identification cards, birth certificates, citations, or medications are frequently lost during clean-ups or incident to arrest.” Note, by the way, the absolutely stunning level of deflection here as Geaney refuses to acknowledge that the property isn’t “lost” but is rather illegally confiscated by police or other City officials and illegally destroyed or thrown away.

And it gets worse. Why is Geaney concerned about police and sanitation workers confiscating and destroying people’s medicine and paperwork? Well, she says she “understand[s] how this can cause significant delay in a client’s case management and enrollment in appropriate programs.”8 Maybe it’s too much even in these latter days to expect a police to be concerned about violations of people’s constitutional rights because they’re violations of constitutional rights rather than for such absolutely demeaning reasons.9

And why is Geaney writing to these Hollywood thought leaders, providers of services, and, for some reason, the Hollywood Entertainment District BID? Well, because “It is [her] hope that each of you will want to distribute these bags to your clients and educate them on the importance of their role in safe guarding their property.” In short, because it helps her make the point that even though the LAPD and City Sanitation workers are the ones throwing away the property in question, and even though they’re doing it illegally, nevertheless the fact that it gets thrown away is the fault of the property owners. Because they don’t live in houses. Got it?

Good, because now finally we’re going to discuss the reason why this email is really important.10 It reveals an anti-homeless unit of the LAPD that I don’t know anything about yet. It’s called the Coordinated Outreach Resource Enforcement Unit, which because the City’s cute-names-for-tools-of-oppression policy seems to require it, is known as CORE. Tangentially, please read the whole email, transcribed below. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in there, very revealing of cop attitudes towards human beings forced to live on sidewalks, and I do not have time11 to discuss it all.
Continue reading Newly Obtained Emails From CD13 Reveal Existence Of Hitherto-Unknown-To-Me LAPD Unit Called Coordinated Outreach Resource Enforcement — AKA CORE — Dedicated To “identifying wanted suspects of active investigations living within the homeless population of Hollywood” — And Potentially Other Divisions As Well — In 2018 There Were 8 Cops On This Job In Hollywood And A Supervising Sergeant — Shannon Geaney — They Seem To Go On Sweeps And Use Outreach As A Pretext For Warrant Searches — Thus Obviously Exacerbating And Increasing Distrust Of Their Motives — Which Legit Are Not Pure — Yet Another Reason To Remove Cops From Encampment Actions Of All Types — And Actually Institute The Demands Of The Services Not Sweeps Coalition — Not To Mention Some Idiotic Victim Blaming By Geaney — Who Proposes To Stop LAPD & LA Sanitation From Throwing Away Homeless People’s Property By Giving Them More Plastic Bags — And ” educat[ing] them on the importance of their role in safe guarding their property”

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In 2018 LAPD Hollywood Division Senior Lead Officer Paul Jordan Threatened A Homeless Man — Intimidated Him Into Moving To Another Neighborhood — To Please A Mob Of Angry Delusional Homeowners — Who Along With The LAPD Characteristically Think That A Bunch Of Crap They Just Made Up Is More Important Than People’s Actual Lives — And Dan Halden — Mitch O’Farrell’s Hollywood Field Flunky — And David Ryu Flunkies Catherine Landers And Rachel Fox — And Deputy City Attorney Steve Houchin — And Hollywood Division Chief Boss Cory Palka — All Of Them Read Jordan’s Account Of This Threat — And Were Silent

I just received a reasonably large set of emails from the LAPD involving Hollywood zillionaire, racist police-caller, and Hollywood Media District BIDdie Ferris Wehbe1 and LAPD Hollywood Division Senior Lead Officer Paul Jordan. I was looking for material involving the Hollywood Forever Cemetery fiasco but ended up with a bunch more evidence about what the LAPD motto means with respect to our homeless brothers and sisters when the cops think no one is watching but the hateful homedwellers to the whims of whom they’re paid to pander.

You’ll find a lot of interesting stuff in there, but the text for today’s sermon is this conversation from February and March 2018. The participants are the usual rageball gang of housedwellers, possessed with the usual heaping dose of what passes for righteous wrath among the propertied classes, Hollywood cop Jordan, and various City staffers, including Mitch O’Farrell flunky Dan Halden, a couple of jokers from CD4, deputy city attorney and, at that time, Hollywood neighborhood prosecutor Steve Houchin, and Hollywood Division Commander Cory Palka.

There’s really nothing atypical about the story. It begins, as so many of these episodes do, with an imaginary claim that things are getting worse, that the median melanin level in a previously placid caucasian paradise is rising, crime is exploding, turpitude is raining down like the mighty waters, and so on. The florid semiliteracy of this initial cri de coeur, though, is kind of unique and so is presented here with the weirdo capitalization, made-up words, and idiosyncratic spelling all intact, is not standard:

Seems Like there’s this sergeancy of Brazen Homeless youth and some older that are wondering around the De Longpre Park neighborhood looking for Crimes of Opportunity!

The fear and anger and hate escalate through familiar delusional stages albeit with uniquely weird particular details. Homeless people are shitting in the bushes! They’re naked in the driveway and showering with the hose! They’re having sex on the lawn! At eleven in the morning! The church attracts them by handing out free food! The 7-11 attracts them by selling hot food!

They’re drinking beer! They’re making people nervous! They’re setting up tents in permit parking neighborhoods, which everyone knows is not allowed!2 They don’t pay property taxes! And bills! Like normal people! We need to form armed vigilante gangs! Like we had in the good old days! Let’s have a neighborhood meeting!3

And eventually they focus their rage on one particular tent, although it’s certainly not clear that the person living there has had anything to do with the enumerated atrocities.4 And in one of the most explicitly articulate statements of official City policy towards the homeless we’re likely to see, Hollywood Division Senior Lead Officer Paul Jordan explains what happened next:

On Feb 21, 2018, at 3:46 PM, Paul P Jordan <32285@lapd.online> wrote:

Hi Judy,

I had a nice conversation with the young man inside the tent today. Needless to say, his tent is gone and he will not be returning to that location. I also went to the LGBT Center and spoke with Andrew, who is now aware of this individual, and will be spoken to by the LGBT staff. Please keep me posted if he decides to return.

PJ

And then? Well, Officer Jordan gets the immediate gush of goopy approval that such thuggie boys live for5 and the very next day David Ryu flunky Catherine Landers is back to discussing the terms of the upcoming neighborhood meeting. There’s no outrage from these City staffers, no note to Paul Jordan telling him that it’s against the law for police to go around threatening homeless people to get them to move, no nothing.

And no surprise from me, either, because I’ve just read too many emails exactly like these ones to be surprised anymore. But I’m still mad that this is the level our City government is at, that not only do they break the law and oppress the poor to placate the rich but they don’t even try to hide it. Turn the page for a transcription of the conversation.
Continue reading In 2018 LAPD Hollywood Division Senior Lead Officer Paul Jordan Threatened A Homeless Man — Intimidated Him Into Moving To Another Neighborhood — To Please A Mob Of Angry Delusional Homeowners — Who Along With The LAPD Characteristically Think That A Bunch Of Crap They Just Made Up Is More Important Than People’s Actual Lives — And Dan Halden — Mitch O’Farrell’s Hollywood Field Flunky — And David Ryu Flunkies Catherine Landers And Rachel Fox — And Deputy City Attorney Steve Houchin — And Hollywood Division Chief Boss Cory Palka — All Of Them Read Jordan’s Account Of This Threat — And Were Silent

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LAPD Officer Stuart Jaye, Accused Of Interfering With Photographer Shawn Nee, Will No Longer Be Represented By City Attorney, Hires Stacey Koon’s Old Lawyer, Thomas J. Feeley, Instead

Hollywood Division officer Stuart Jaye, blocking photographer Shawn Nee on July 5, 2015.
Recall, if you will, that in July 2016 Carol Sobel filed suit in federal court on behalf of Los Angeles photographer Shawn Nee against the City of LA, Charlie Beck, and various LAPD officers, including Hollywood Division stalwart Stuart Jaye, famously dubbed Officer A-Hole by the incomparable Jasmyne Cannick.

Jaye had been represented by Deputy City Attorney Surekha A. Pessis, but change is in the air. Last night this request for withdrawal and substitution of attorney was filed, notifying the court1 that Pessis would no longer represent Jaye, whose lawyering will be in the future handled by veteran cop defender Thomas J. Feeley. Feeley, of course, famously represented King-beater Stacey Koon in the civil case arising from that incident, causing some minor controversy in the process. According to Feeley’s website, he

… has particular expertise in police misconduct litigation defense as well as extensive experience in major municipal law, personal injury, civil rights, employment and contract disputes.

Continue reading LAPD Officer Stuart Jaye, Accused Of Interfering With Photographer Shawn Nee, Will No Longer Be Represented By City Attorney, Hires Stacey Koon’s Old Lawyer, Thomas J. Feeley, Instead

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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”

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”

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In 2015 Bonin Aide Debbie Dyner Harris Sought To Leverage “Extremely Unusual” Outsized City Assessment For Venice Beach BID Into Voting Seat On Board Of Directors But City Attorney Said No! Freaking! Way! Conflict! Of! Freaking! Interest!

Debbie Dyner Harris, uncaptioned.
I’ve written before on how the City of Los Angeles arranges for itself to be lobbied by BIDs for various reasons. Now it appears that even this usual arrangement wasn’t enough for Mike Bonin and Debbie Dyner Harris at CD11 with respect to the Venice Beach BID. In particular, during the formation process, in December 2015, Dyner Harris emailed Miranda Paster asking if she could have a voting seat on the BID Board of Directors:

Hi Miranda, how are you? I hope all is well. I am checking on something we had discussed a while ago, but I can’t find in my notes. I wanted to confirm whether or not the City, as 1/3 paying member of the BID,1 is allowed to be a voting member on the BID board.

Miranda Paster replied a few days later, stating:

We opt out of sitting on the Board because it may appear to be a conflict of interest. We can sign the petition for a BID and we cast a ballot for the Prop 218 balloting. However, we do not sit on the boards and vote.

Debbie Dyner Harris doesn’t like this at all. She evidently really wants to be on this board!2 Continue reading In 2015 Bonin Aide Debbie Dyner Harris Sought To Leverage “Extremely Unusual” Outsized City Assessment For Venice Beach BID Into Voting Seat On Board Of Directors But City Attorney Said No! Freaking! Way! Conflict! Of! Freaking! Interest!

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Kerry Morrison on Rusty Mullet CUP Revocation Hearing: We’re Down To Less Than Five Nightclubs In Hollywood. It’s Really Completely Changed. John Tronson: Great! Random Cop: Rusty Mullet … Got Looked At A Lot. [We] Check All The Time.

Kerry Morrison at the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Joint Security Meeting counting nightclubs in Hollywood that she and her coconspirators haven't destroyed yet.
Kerry Morrison at the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Joint Security Meeting counting nightclubs in Hollywood that she and her coconspirators haven’t destroyed yet.
Maybe you remember our semi-recent post about the July 28 meeting of the Joint Security Committee, in which some genius of a Sheriff’s deputy poured forth a never-ending stream of genius-level similes, including a comparison of sidewalk vendors at MacArthur Park with “too many animals in one cage.” Well, with all the furor over Hollywood nightclub totalitarianism, we’ve been too busy to get back to that video until this morning. Take a look here as our friends on the committee and some random cop discuss the Rusty Mullet. As always, a complete transcription may be found at the end of this post, but here is essentially what was discussed in this metaphorically smoke-filled back room.

Fred Rosenthal, of friendly neighborhood electronics retailer Ametron, who’s evidently the chair of this committee, noted that there was no one there from the City Attorney’s office to make a report. Kerry Morrison, who’s keeping track of the progress of the BID’s ongoing conspiracy against Hollywood bars and nightclubs whose patrons don’t match her favored color scheme, announced that they were busy downtown at the Rusty Mullet CUP revocation hearing.

Some random cop from the Hollywood Division then proceeded to ramble on about how the LAPD is targeting the Rusty Mullet, complete with can-I-get-a-witness hallelujah-interjections in four part harmony by John Tronson. After that, Kerry Morrison, as pictured above, actually giggled and counted down the remaining Hollywood nightclubs on her fingers. Of course, those aren’t all targeted for destruction by her and her cronies. Some, after all, cater to white people and are owned by former HPOA Board Member John Lyons, so those can stay. Read on for details!
Continue reading Kerry Morrison on Rusty Mullet CUP Revocation Hearing: We’re Down To Less Than Five Nightclubs In Hollywood. It’s Really Completely Changed. John Tronson: Great! Random Cop: Rusty Mullet … Got Looked At A Lot. [We] Check All The Time.

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LAPD Captain Cory Palka and Hollywood White Supremacists Have A Good Laugh Over Fucked-Up State of 77th Street Division Even as they Continue Decades-Long Tradition of Thriving on its Misery

Cory Palka, new boss of the Hollywood Division, speaks to an organized gang of exceptionally jolly white supremacists on St. Patrick's day.
Cory Palka, new boss of the Hollywood Division, speaks to an organized gang of exceptionally jolly white supremacists on St. Patrick’s day.
Watch and listen to LAPD Captain Cory Palka speaking at the most recent meeting of the Board of Directors of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance. Captain Cory recently replaced the now transferred Peter Zarcone as Hollywood honcho, and evidently a good-will-drop-in mission to the local zillionaire’s club is de rigueur in that situation.

You can read a transcript of the ongoings after the break, as always, but today we’re focusing just on a little bit of unplanned, unscripted joking around, for in such situations, according to Sigmund Freud (as our friends at Wikipedia put it), we can discern “…forbidden thoughts and feelings that the conscious mind usually suppresse[s] in deference to society.”

Har-de-fooking-har-har-har!
Har-de-fooking-har-har-har!
The fun began when Kerry Morrison, her inimitably sycophantic affect in full flower, told Cpt. Cory that she had a surprise for him! (This bit starts here).

KM: I have one fun thing to show you. When you were here, I remember you said “Ooooh! I really want one of those star placques!” So I made this up for you for 2013–2014 and then I kept texting, like I want to go down and tour 77th Division.

And Cowboy Cory Palka has a little joke about this:
CP: You don’t want to go to 77th…

Now, it’s hard to see what’s funny about that, right? We mean, really, what’s funny? But the HPOA thinks it’s fookin’ hilarious. Just watch.

We don't get the joke.  You don't get the joke.  But they get the joke.  It's a white supremacist thing, you wouldn't understand.
White people in Hollywood laughing it up about 77th Street Division.
So really, what’s so funny? There’s no clue in Cpt. Cory’s follow-up remarks, either, although we do get the sense that he almost talked about, just barely refrained from mentioning, the dreaded “those people”:

Totally different environment. My first year in 77th Street I had fifty murders and then last year I had thirty three. And I remember, I was telling my daughter we were doing some great things down there, and she was like “Great things? Man, pretty dangerous down there.” And I had ten when I left this year, so, Pete still has ten, I haven’t had any, I’ve been here, this is my second week, so, it’s just a different community and with a whole different set of challenges. Um, that’s a whole different discussion, so…

Very smart, very wise folks have been trying to decipher this kind of coded lingo forever now (as well as some very smart, not-so-very wise ones). There are whole academic departments in our finest universities filled with scholars who spend entire careers trying to explain what these people mean when they say stuff like this, not to mention why they laugh at it, so we’re probably not going to settle it here today. On the other hand, we do have a few comments, which you can find after the break.
Continue reading LAPD Captain Cory Palka and Hollywood White Supremacists Have A Good Laugh Over Fucked-Up State of 77th Street Division Even as they Continue Decades-Long Tradition of Thriving on its Misery

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O’Farrell Staff Members Rodriguez and Halden Had “Concerns” About Now-Defunct Plan to Fund Extended BID Patrol Hours, A/I VP Bill Farrar Also Lobbied Deputy Chief Girmala for Support for Plan

Bill Farrar at the February 18, 2016 meeting of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance.
Bill Farrar at the February 18, 2016 meeting of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance.
Emails sent to me this evening by CD13 staffer Dan Halden show that as early as February 22, 2016, he and fellow staffer Marisol Rodriguez “had concerns” about the now-defunct plan to have Mitch O’Farrell fund an expansion of BID Patrol hours in Hollywood at the request of the LAPD. A/I vice president Bill Farrar led a lengthy discussion on February 18 at the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Board of Directors meeting in which everyone showed an astonishing amount of enthusiasm for this questionable plan. The emails also show that on or before February 22, Farrar met with LAPD Deputy Chief Bea Girmala, evidently trying to gin up support from her for the plan. It also seems to be implicit in the emails, although not definitively established, that Peter Zarcone’s transfer from Hollywood to 77th Street was not a factor in the decision to kill the plan. You can find some background, a little analysis, and a really bitchin’ picture of Chief Girmala after the break.
Continue reading O’Farrell Staff Members Rodriguez and Halden Had “Concerns” About Now-Defunct Plan to Fund Extended BID Patrol Hours, A/I VP Bill Farrar Also Lobbied Deputy Chief Girmala for Support for Plan

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Analysis of Public Urination Arrest Reports Reveals BID Patrol Ignorance of Meaning of Word “Public,” Illuminates Importance of Rule of Law in a Free Society

Public urine in Hollywood belongs in a public restroom.  But what counts as public?
Public urine in Hollywood belongs in a public restroom. But what counts as public?
While poking around BID Patrol arrest reports recently obtained from the HPOA by our faithful correspondent, we noticed a weird, repetitive quirk in the ones relating to LAMC 41.47.2, which forbids public urination. The arresting security guards uniformly either ask their victim if he or she knew of the existence of public restrooms close by or else they note in their report that there were public restrooms close by. Now, whenever one finds this kind of textual consistency in police reports it’s possible to be sure of two things. First, there’s some element of the crime that they’re trying to make sure is definitely established. Second, that they’re probably lying. In this case, it was hard to see what element might be related to the proximity of public restrooms. The law doesn’t mention them, and is not subtle in the least:

No person shall urinate or defecate in or upon any public street, sidewalk, alley, plaza, beach, park, public building or other publicly maintained facility or place, or in any place open to the public or exposed to public view, except when using a urinal, toilet or commode located in a restroom, or when using a portable or temporary toilet or other facility designed for the sanitary disposal of human waste and which is enclosed from public view.

But a little googling revealed the explanation, among other interesting things. First, public urination wasn’t against the law in the city of Los Angeles until 2003. We’re guessing that there was no pressing need to make it so because vagrancy laws could be used against public urinators as desired until they were definitively destroyed in 1983.1 So maybe outlawing public urination wasn’t as urgent as, e.g., squashing drinking beer in the park (which was outlawed in LA only in 1983) and also, the LA Times suggested that previously public urinators were charged with littering, but that the City Attorney decided that that was bogus. In any case, the Council file on the matter shows, surprisingly, that it took more than four years to get the prohibition passed into law. There doesn’t seem to have been any public discussion of the matter before it passed, either, although it may be just that the online materials from that long ago are fragmentary.

Second, the LA Times article quoted the objections of members of the Los Angeles Community Action Network and other homeless advocates to a law which criminalized essential bodily functions of the homeless, and in response, after the law was passed, according to the Times, “Council members pledged that people would be prosecuted only in cases when there is a public toilet nearby that they failed to use.” So this is why, no doubt, the BID Patrol feels that it has to note the locations of nearby “public” restrooms in its arrest reports. Their weirdo interpretation of the meaning of “public” also shows why it’s necessary to put things like the “public restrooms available” pledge in the law itself. Actually, once the law is passed, it doesn’t matter what Councilmembers say they meant it to mean, it only matters what it says. This is how the rule of law works in a free society. Also, isn’t it very suspicious but unfortunately not surprising that they put the fuzzy-wuzzy warmsy-hugsy interpretation of the law in the paper but not in the statute books?

And that’s not the worst thing about this nonsense. Even if the City Council intended the law to be enforced this way, even if the freaking Mayor ordered the LAPD only to enforce the law this way, none of that would reign in the BID Patrol. They are essentially beyond the control of public policy and beholden only to the written letter of the law.2 As we’ve discussed before, according to LAPD Commander Andrew Smith, if a citizen’s arrest is made, the LAPD must accept custody of the arrestee even if the arrest was made contrary to public policy.

We look at some specific examples after the break, and also provide links to all mentions of the words “public” and “restroom” in both the 2007 and the 2013 BID Patrol arrest reports so you can see for yourself what’s going on.
Continue reading Analysis of Public Urination Arrest Reports Reveals BID Patrol Ignorance of Meaning of Word “Public,” Illuminates Importance of Rule of Law in a Free Society

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Zarcone Transferred from Hollywood to 77th Street Division, Late-Night BID Patrol Hours Torpedoed. Steve Seyler: “It Sort of Took us Off Our Mission…”

Steve Seyler at the March 8, 2016 CHC Board meeting, announcing that there will be no late-night BID Patrol.
Steve Seyler at the March 8, 2016 CHC Board meeting, announcing that there will be no late-night BID Patrol.
Recall that, at its Board meeting on February 18, 2016, the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance spent over 40 minutes discussing LAPD’s request to have the BID Patrol work until 4 a.m. on weekends. Andrews International VP Bill Farrar recounted a meeting with CD13 representative Mitch O’Farrell, claiming that the CM was eager to cover the costs. This led me to write to O’Farrell opposing this plan. Now, at the Central Hollywood Coalition Board meeting that took place on Tuesday, March 8, Steve Seyler and Kerry Morrison announced that, not only are the plans to extend the BID Patrol’s hours cancelled, but Peter Zarcone, formerly CO of LAPD’s Hollywood Division, has been transferred to 77th Street.
Continue reading Zarcone Transferred from Hollywood to 77th Street Division, Late-Night BID Patrol Hours Torpedoed. Steve Seyler: “It Sort of Took us Off Our Mission…”

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