Tag Archives: Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Announcing Our New LAMC 49.5.5(A) Project: Peter Zarcone And The HPOA Music Festival Fiasco Provide Raw Material For Our First Experimental Attempt At Seeing What This Law Actually Prohibits

October 12, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

LAMC 49.5.5(A) states, rather succinctly, that:

City officials, agency employees, appointees awaiting confirmation by the City Council, and candidates for elected City office shall not misuse or attempt to misuse their positions or prospective positions to create or attempt to create a private advantage or disadvantage, financial or otherwise, for any person.

Here’s what seems to be required of a City official or employee to violate this law:¹

That they misuse their position, where I’m thinking “misuse” means:
- They do something that requires the powers granted to them by virtue of their position and
- their powers were not granted for the purpose of doing that thing.
The misuse creates a private advantage or disadvantage for someone, where I’m thinking “private” means:
- The advantage or disadvantage created does not further public policy goals. E.g. getting arrested creates a disadvantage for the arrestee, but the disadvantage furthers a public goal. Winning a contract through the City’s bidding process advantages the successful bidder, but the advantage furthers a public goal.

The law is enforced by the City Ethics Commission, although it doesn’t seem to have been used much. There is, e.g., this case from 2010 involving a Fire Inspector who charged money for successful inspections. This is the kind of thing one would expect to fall under this statute. However, there is also one high profile case pending right now which doesn’t seem ordinary at all. It seems quite unexpected. In 2014 LAPD Officer Jim Parker was among those who responded to a sex-in-a-car call involving Daniele Watts and her boyfriend. She accused the police of racism and brutality, and Parker anonymously leaked an audio recording of the incident, which exonerated the police. Subsequently, the Ethics Commission issued a public accusation against Parker for violating LAMC 49.5.5(A) on the theory that leaking the confidential audio recording, which he only had access to by virtue of his position, constituted a misuse which created a private advantage for himself.²

This is very encouraging. It seems that perhaps the Ethics Commission is willing to at least think about a broad application of this seemingly very broad law. And it’s an interesting thing about laws that no one can actually be sure what they mean, what the range of application is, until they’re repeatedly tested in the courts. Well, that’s not exactly right. If a court decides that people of average intelligence can’t be sure at all what the law actually prohibits or requires, they’re likely to toss it out as unconstitutionally vague. But, I guess, if people don’t know exactly what the law prohibits or requires, but average people could have realized that it potentially prohibits what they’re doing or requires what they’re not doing, then it’s not too vague, even if no one actually did realize those things.³ That’s the space I’m interested in exploring with respect to LAMC 49.5.5(A). And because I’m not interested in philosophical explorations any more I’m going to explore this issue by actually turning people in to the CEC to find out what happens, beginning with our old friend, Peter Zarcone. You can read some details after the break, and even get your very own copy of the complaint I sent the Ethics Commission the other day.
Continue reading Announcing Our New LAMC 49.5.5(A) Project: Peter Zarcone And The HPOA Music Festival Fiasco Provide Raw Material For Our First Experimental Attempt At Seeing What This Law Actually Prohibits →

Announcements, Featured, Hollywood BID Patrol, Los Angeles City Government

VICTORY!! All Los Angeles BID Security Patrols To Register With Police Commission Per City Attorney, BID Patrol Excessive Force Complaint Under Investigation By LAPD; Direct Result of MK.Org Reporting!

October 5, 2016 Mike 2 Comments

Earlier this afternoon I spoke with Ernesto Vicencio, who is an LAPD investigator assigned to the Police Commission. He told me that the City Attorney either has sent or will soon send a letter to all Los Angeles Business Improvement Districts informing them that their security patrols are required to register with the Los Angeles Police Commission per LAMC 52.34.

This incredibly welcome development is a direct result of my discovery in the Summer of 2016 that it was likely that BID security registration had inadvertently ceased in 2000 due to an oversight. I don’t believe I mentioned it at the time, but in addition to writing a number of posts on the subject, I also sent a petition to the Police Commission asking them to look into the matter and to conclude that BID security ought in fact to register with them.

According to Officer Vicencio the City Attorney has decided to implement this request.⁴ This development is hugely important, not least because LAMC 52.34 requires private patrol services to have a procedure for investigating citizen complaints. It also grants the Police Commission a great deal of regulatory power over the activities of security patrols who are required to register.

Which brings us to the second stunning and absolutely unexpected thing that Officer Vicencio told me. You may recall that I recently reported on what seemed like a clear use of excessive force by members of the Andrews International Hollywood BID Patrol. Well, about three weeks ago I submitted a report on this matter to Kerry Morrison of the HPOA and also to the Police Commission, as instructed by the Commission’s executive director, Richard Tefank.

Today Vicencio told me that he is handling this matter. He has tried, without success so far, to locate the victim, and he is going to investigate further. Obviously there’s no guarantee that any of these officers will suffer any consequences,⁵ but again, the larger implications of the fact that they’re being investigated by the City are huge. This means that the Police Commission agrees that they have jurisdiction over citizen complaints against BID security. This changes everything.
Continue reading VICTORY!! All Los Angeles BID Security Patrols To Register With Police Commission Per City Attorney, BID Patrol Excessive Force Complaint Under Investigation By LAPD; Direct Result of MK.Org Reporting! →

Lawsuits

Save Valley Village Files Suit In Superior Court Against City of Los Angeles Alleging Corruption Via Vote Trading At City Council

September 12, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Last Thursday, September 8, a group called Save Valley Village filed a petition with the LA County Superior Court (hat tip to Scott Zwartz at Zwartz Talk for breaking the story) alleging that the members of the Los Angeles City Council are violating not only their oaths of office, but a State law, when they pay one another “deference” by never voting against anything that any of them propose within their districts.

The whole thing is worth reading and will be totally convincing to anyone who has ever watched our Council in action. The fact that there is some covert agreement among the Councilmembers is transparently clear. Here’s how SVV’s complaint describes it:

The Councilmembers of the Los Angeles City Council operate according to an agreement, i.e. The Vote Trading Pact, not to Vote No on any Council Project in another council district and said agreement by its very terms requires reciprocality, also called mutuality, whereby the agreement not to Vote No by one Councilmember is given in exchange for the other Councilmember’s not to vote No on a Council Project in his/her council district. Some have described the Vote Trading Pact as an agreement to Vote Yes for all Council Projects, and it has been described as taking the format of, “If you scratch my back on my Council Projects, I will scratch your back on your Council Projects.” Others refer to the agreement as one of deferring or respecting the decision of the Councilmember in whose district the Council Project is located. All the phrases describe the same Vote Trading Pact.

Councilmember David Ryu has described the Vote Trading Pact as one of “respect” for other Councilmember’s Council Projects and in return he expects the same “respect” for his Council Projects.

“For someone to come in at the tail end and to disagree with my recommendation after meetings with the community on dozens of occasions and with other city departments and after I have involved stakeholders,” doesn’t make sense, he said. “I might make a decision…and my colleagues respect it. Even if they might disagree with my decision, they abide by it because they were not there during those community meetings.” Los Feliz Ledger September 1, 2016

Continue reading Save Valley Village Files Suit In Superior Court Against City of Los Angeles Alleging Corruption Via Vote Trading At City Council →

Announcements, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

We Are Not Only Winning IRL, We Are Also Winning On The Internet!! MichaelKohlhaas.Org Surpasses Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Website In Popularity in U.S.!!!

September 4, 2016 Trina 2 Comments

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:21.

Greetings, friends on the internet!! I do a lot of work behind the scenes here at MK.org but this is my first post. I do not plan to make a habit of it.

I do not know if you know about Alexa.Com. They are the premier website ranking service, and if you care you can read all about it on Wikipedia. This week, for the first time, the Alexa ranking of your heroes, MichaelKohlhaas.org, surpassed the Alexa ranking of your zeroes, the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance at OnlyInHollywood.Org.⁶ We are number 657,525 in the U.S. and they are number 682,470. Here are live links and screenshots:⁷

Alexa rank for MichaelKohlhaas.Org. It is 657,525 in the U.S. at this writing. Here is a screenshot.
Alexa rank for OnlyInHollywood.Org. It is 682,470 in the U.S. at this writing. Here is a screenshot.

How clever we are! Oh, the cleverness of we!

To put this in some context, an internet random who can create a plausible appearance of competence⁸ once opined on Quora that there are about 378 million websites in the U.S. So the HPOA and we are both in the top 0.2%. Clearly, though, the American people are beginning to see business improvement districts for the politically corrupt criminal conspiracies that they are, and they are learning the details right here on this website! Also notice that we are going up up up and they are going down down down!!⁹ To paraphrase our hero, Peter Pan, How clever we are! Oh, the cleverness of we!

That is the fabulous news!! And you can read below the fold for a discussion of our world rankings and more jokes about Nazis and BIDs.
Continue reading We Are Not Only Winning IRL, We Are Also Winning On The Internet!! MichaelKohlhaas.Org Surpasses Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Website In Popularity in U.S.!!! →

Hypocrisy, Venice Beach BID

Somebody’s Lying To Somebody About Something: Mike Feuer? LA Times Editorial Board? All of the Above? BID Security Absolutely Does Not Have to Wait for the LAPD to Arrest Homeless People For Sitting On The Sidewalk

September 2, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

According to the L.A. Times the BID Patrol has to wait for the LAPD to arrest people for violating LAMC 41.18(d). Ask this man if that's true. — According to the L.A. Times the BID Patrol has to wait for the LAPD to arrest people for violating LAMC 41.18(d). Ask this man if that’s true.

In an editorial in this morning’s Times about the Venice Beach BID it is stated:

Even during the day, when the municipal code against sitting, lying or sleeping on a sidewalk or street is enforceable, the BID ambassadors would be required to call the police or city employees to enforce it, according to the city attorney’s office.

Of course, in the ordinary meaning of the word “enforce” this is demonstrably not true. In Hollywood, the BID Patrol, operated by Andrews International Security on behalf of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance which manages two local BIDs, arrests people for violating the despicable LAMC 41.18(d) on an exceedingly regular basis. They handcuff them and either forcibly transport them in a private vehicle to the police station or else wait on-scene for LAPD to arrive to complete the arrest process.

This might charitably be interpreted as waiting for the police to enforce the law in the sense that the LAPD has to issue citations. But the difference to the arrested person, who is handcuffed, forced into a private car or made to sit or lie shackled on the sidewalk until the cops show up to cite them out, is nonexistent. If that’s what Mike Feuer’s office meant by what they apparently said to the Times Editorial Board then shame on them for being so disingenuous. If they meant something else, it wasn’t true. And shame too on the Editorial Board for not investigating that easily refuted claim.

UPDATE: I just received this email, sent yesterday by Rob Wilcox at the City Attorney’s office to Carla Hall at the L.A. Times, stating explicitly that:

Only peace officers or authorized city employees could enforce that section of the ordinance [LAMC 41.18(d)]. BID employees would not be able to enforce.

He doesn’t give a reason, but his statement is demonstrably untrue. I wonder what he meant by it? State law requires police to accept custody of anyone who’s arrested by a private person, and allows private persons to make arrests for any violation of the criminal law.

After the break you will find links to actual BID Patrol arrest reports from 2015 for violations of LAMC 41.18(d).¹⁰ Also, here is a horrific video showing what one of these BID Patrol arrests looks like in reality rather than in the delusional fantasy world evidently inhabited by the City Attorney and the LA Times Editorial Board. Here’s a representative sample from one of the reports:

A short time later, we observed MARLOW place his belongings on the ground then lay on the sidewalk. We made contact with MARLOW and informed him he was in violation of 41.18 (d) LAMC- Sitting on public sidewalk. MARLOW refused to comply with our request to stand up and became verbally confrontational with BID officers. MARLOW proceeded to stand up and walk in and out of traffic on Hollywood Blvd. MARLOW also walked away and returned 3 times and was verbally confrontational towards BID Officers. We waited for additional units and FB2 and ED-30 arrived on scene. MARLOW was pulled to the ground by BID Officers in order to safely handcuff him.

And here’s another one:

We then contacted the subjects (one later identified S/ Mull) that were physically blocking the sidewalk with his property and bicycle sidewalk, a violation of 41.18 (d) LAMC- (Blocking, Sitting, Sleeping on the Sidewalk). The subjects admitted that they were not supposed to block the sidewalk per prior BID officers warnings from the past.
…
We advised S/ Mull that we were placing him under “Private Person’s Arrest”, per 837 Penal Code – (Private Person’s Arrest – Authority To Arrest / see attached form) for 41.18 (d) Los Angeles Municipal Code – (Sitting/lying/sleeping on sidewalk). Mull was immediately handcuffed (adjusted / doubled locked) for his safety and comfort, as per policy.
…
We then escorted Mull to our patrol vehicle and was seated on the rear passengers side. He was seat belted (adjusted / secured) for his safety and comfort, as per policy.

We then transported him to the Hollywood and Highland substation, per 847 PC. When then met with LAPD Officers Lawrence and Gonzalez (6FB1) for a citation release.

Continue reading Somebody’s Lying To Somebody About Something: Mike Feuer? LA Times Editorial Board? All of the Above? BID Security Absolutely Does Not Have to Wait for the LAPD to Arrest Homeless People For Sitting On The Sidewalk →

Featured, Historical and Theoretical Perspectives, The Race Card

Business Improvement Districts As A Force For White Supremacy in Twenty-First Century Los Angeles

August 8, 2016 Mike 2 Comments

This is the most obvious and least dangerous form in which white supremacy expresses itself.

My colleagues and I spill a lot of metaphorical ink referring to business improvement districts and their Boards of Directors as white supremacists, and we certainly stand by that position. However, it’s recently come to my attention that not everyone in our audience is familiar with the literal meaning of the phrase. Evidently it strikes some people as a generic, semantically empty insult, or else they’re confused by the fact that the phrase refers to at least two fairly distinct ideologies. Thus I thought it would be useful to explain in detail why BIDs are in a very literal sense white supremacist organizations.

First let’s get the definitions straight. As always, our friends at Wikipedia give us a good starting place. Their article on white supremacy tells us that the phrase has two principal meanings. The salient one for our purposes is that white supremacy is:

…a political ideology that perpetuates and maintains the social, political, historical and/or industrial domination by white people

It’s crucial to note that there’s nothing inherently racist about this kind of white supremacy.¹¹ Now, the history of the racial segregation of real estate in Los Angeles is well-known, and Hollywood was at the forefront of it from the early years of the last century. What’s not so well understood is how racially segregated the commercial real estate market was. In fact¹² it was certainly more segregated than residential real estate, since white people owned much of the commercial real estate even in areas of the City where nonwhites were allowed to own houses.¹³ Continue reading Business Improvement Districts As A Force For White Supremacy in Twenty-First Century Los Angeles →

Hollywood BID Patrol, The Race Card

BID Patrol Allegedly Uses the Word “Wetback,” Offending Everybody Except Possibly Anti-Peruvian Director Carol Massie and Graffiti-Art-Haters on Staff and Board

August 8, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

This is not exactly like the BID Patrol. They don't carry rifles, for one thing. — This is not exactly like the BID Patrol. They don’t carry rifles, for one thing.

We’ve been writing a lot recently on what strongly appears to be an anti-Latino attitude on the part of the two business improvement districts controlled by Kerry Morrison. The first indication of this was their freakout over the too-dark skin color of local nightclub patrons. After that it turned out that they think that official acknowledgement of Peruvian culture in Hollywood would be “amazingly inappropriate.” Also, both BIDs design their public art contests in such a way that the chance of a Latino artist being selected is significantly lowered, with both the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance and the Central Hollywood Coalition being guilty of this.

So against that background it wasn’t all too surprising to read this 2015 complaint to Kerry Morrison from an anonymous person:
Continue reading BID Patrol Allegedly Uses the Word “Wetback,” Offending Everybody Except Possibly Anti-Peruvian Director Carol Massie and Graffiti-Art-Haters on Staff and Board →

Hollywood BID Patrol, Hypocrisy

Kerry Morrison Goes Around Hollywood Peering into Cars to see if Homeless People are Living in them and then Sends the BID Patrol to Investigate

July 9, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Kerry Morrison with her detective hat on.

There is all kinds of interesting stuff in the BID Patrol daily log files, and some of it is too weird to even describe. This little story is from April 24, 2015, written by BID Patrol officers Mike Coogle and his frequent partner Mike Ayala:

OUTREACH- 1500 BLOCK OF GORDON AVENUE- E/ SIDE OF STREET
YESTERDAY WE RECEIVED A CALL FROM KERRY’S OFFICE REGARDING A VEHICLE SHE OBSERVED. THE VEHICLE, A GREY BUICK LIC#XXXXXXX, WAS UNOCCUPIED BUT CONTAINED A CHILD SEAT, FORMULA AND OTHER ITEMS POSSIBLY INDICATING THE OWNER OF THE VEHICLE IS HOMELESS WITH A CHILD. YESTERDAY WE LEFT A PATH CARD AND FLIER WITH LOCAL, FAMILY FRIENDLY HOMELESS SERVICES ON THE WINDSHIELD. THIS MORNING, THE CARD AND PAPER WERE GONE. THE VEHICLE WAS UNOCCUPIED AND SOME ITEMS APPEARED TO BE IN DIFFERENT SPOTS.

So yeah, people of Hollywood. Don’t you feel safer knowing that Ms. Kerry Morrison is peering in your car to see if you look homeless and then sending her armed minions the BID Patrol to follow your car around to see if you’re parked in the same place and if you moved stuff in your car around? And for such a vocal advocate of law and civic order as is our Ms. Morrison, this kind of thing is surprisingly illegal. Read on for the details!
Continue reading →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Public Records Act Pragmatics

What Else Are They Hiding? Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Completely Rewrites BID Patrol Contract to Thwart Public Records Act Requests

June 20, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Selma Park was the scene of the BID Patrol's greatest crimes, or at least the greatest which have come to light. What else is there that they're trying so very hard to keep secret? — Selma Park was the scene of the BID Patrol’s greatest crimes, or at least the greatest which have come to light. What else is there that they’re trying so very hard to keep secret?

You can watch here as the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance at its June 16, 2016 Board meeting, approves a completely rewritten contract with Andrews International, its security subcontractor, which runs the BID Patrol in Hollywood. I’m not going to bother to transcribe it, but you should take a look. It features John Tronson talking for approximately 90 seconds about changes in the HPOA’s contract with A/I. He mentions logos on cars, logos on uniforms, and if you blinked, you’d miss the ten seconds where he talks about ownership of work product, but that’s the key thing.

The new contract gives A/I ownership of ALL of its BID Patrol work product. The old contract, superseded by this one, gave the HPOA ownership of every record that A/I produced. The point, clearly, is to keep the material away from public scrutiny. If you’ve been following this blog for a while you’ll know that we have used BID Patrol arrest reports, daily logs, and photographs to expose serial civil rights violations, to analyze BID Patrol arrest rates, to mock the moronic Steve Seyler, and for many other things as well. If the whole Selma Park thing is already out, I can’t help but wonder what else they’re trying to hide by trying to make all their future records unavailable.
Continue reading What Else Are They Hiding? Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Completely Rewrites BID Patrol Contract to Thwart Public Records Act Requests →

Hollywood BID Patrol

Newly Obtained Documents Suggest A Tentative Hypothesis on Why BID Patrols Aren’t Registered with the Los Angeles Police Commission and Why They Ought to Be

June 19, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Joseph Gunn, executive director of the Los Angeles Police Commission in 1999.

In the City of Los Angeles, private security patrols that operate on the public streets or sidewalks are required by LAMC 52.34 to register with the Police Commission and to satisfy a number of other requirements. I discovered a couple weeks ago that no BID Patrols are registered (and they routinely violate a number of the other requirements). In that same post I traced the issue back to Council File 99-0355. Part of the approved motion that initiated that file was this:

FURTHER MOVE that the City Ccl request the Police Commission to cease their enforcement against the City’s Downtown Center BID and its private patrol service, and any other BIDs until this matter has been reviewed by the City Ccl.

This at least seems to explain a temporary pause in enforcement, although not a policy-based reason never to enforce the registration requirement and the other regulations.

Furthermore, even a trip to the City Archives to copy the whole file left me lacking a definitive answer to the question of why no BID security provider was registered with the Police Commission. Also, I reported last week that no one in the City, either at the Police Commission or elsewhere, seemed to have a firm idea about why this was.

100 W. First Street. And isn't this a lovely visual metaphor for the City government of Los Angeles? — 100 W. First Street. And isn’t this a lovely visual metaphor for the City government of Los Angeles?

Well, last week the incredibly helpful Richard Tefank pulled a bunch of old Police Commission minutes out of storage for me and last Thursday I went over to 100 W. First Street to take a look at them. Most of the material was also in the Council file, but there were a couple new items that, while they don’t explain dispositively what happened, they suggest a likely hypothesis. Also, if this hypothesis is correct, it’s pretty clear that BID Patrols really ought to be registered and, furthermore, that the Police Commission has the right to investigate and regulate them.
Continue reading →