Tag Archives: Inglewood Police Department

Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Government, Public Records Act Pragmatics

One Outcome Of The Unholy Alliance Between North Westwood Neighborhood Council Subdivision Advocate Michael Skiles And Icky-Skicky Biddy-Boy Andrew Thomas Was That Skiles Changed The Bylaws To Give Zillionaires Even More Representation Just Cause Thomas Asked Him To — Which Might Be The Kind Of Thing That Andrew Thomas Wants To Cover Up Via His Myriad Surreal CPRA Violations — Although That Relies On Dubious Assumption That The Guy Feels Shame

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Maybe you heard about the movement to subdivide the Westwood Neighborhood Council and form the North Westwood Neighborhood Council. This subdivision was led by UCLA students calling themselves Westwood Forward, with incipient philosopher Michael Skiles, whose academic specialty is, of all things, action theory, at the helm. The City held an election in May and the subdivision was approved.

However, unlike the heartrending pain created by the sinister schemings of zillionaires in Skid Row and environs last year, the local Westwood zillionaires were all eleventy jillion percent in favor of this particular subdivision. The reason seems to be a widely shared perception that students will be much more in favor of building more residential megaplexes and handing out more liquor licenses than the mostly über-füddy-düddy single family house dwellers on the regular Westwood NC have proved to be over the last few decades.1

Knowing all this, it occurred to me in March 2018 that the Westwood Village BID might be involved in this whole subdivision thing and, with that in mind, I fired off a CPRA request to them asking for the goodies. After many painful months of lawyers, recriminations, stupidity, frustration, and whatever,2 Andrew Thomas, the BID’s ickety-skickety executive director finally coughed up some small percentage of the records to which I’m entitled.

Check out the whole collection here on Archive.Org. In particular, though, for tonight’s sermon, take a look at this little gem (of which there is a transcription after the break), which reveals Andrew Thomas as the puppet master pulling the strings that make Michael Skiles dance. And the tune he’s dancing to is, you’ll not be surprised to learn, all about more seats for zillionaires on the new neighborhood council’s board of directors. And Michael Skiles not only dances to the tune, but he dances like he likes dancing! He’ll go far in academia, friends.
Continue reading One Outcome Of The Unholy Alliance Between North Westwood Neighborhood Council Subdivision Advocate Michael Skiles And Icky-Skicky Biddy-Boy Andrew Thomas Was That Skiles Changed The Bylaws To Give Zillionaires Even More Representation Just Cause Thomas Asked Him To — Which Might Be The Kind Of Thing That Andrew Thomas Wants To Cover Up Via His Myriad Surreal CPRA Violations — Although That Relies On Dubious Assumption That The Guy Feels Shame →

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Announcements, Fashion District BID, Los Angeles City Government

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

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Here’s a brief summary of the background: Late last year, on the basis of my complaint to the Police Commission, the City of LA resumed enforcement of LAMC 52.34 against BID security forces.3 Since then I’ve been tracking the progress of this massive project via various CPRA requests. In November 2016 the Police Commission informed all BIDs of the registration requirement. In December 2017 the Police Commission told the BIDs to quit whining and comply with the law.

Meanwhile, the latest piece of evidence in the ongoing saga of the registration of BID Patrols with the Police Commission comes from a huge release of emails by the Fashion District BID4 These span the time from July 1, 2016 through January 31, 2017 and are mostly between BID staff and the City of Los Angeles.5

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

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

In his email, Randall Tampa explicitly relates this opinion to his own experience as a police officer, proving yet again that people with experience in matters usually are much saner and have much more robust insights into how to regulate them. Most of the BIDs in our fair City are run by a bunch of cop-loving wannabes6 who are essentially see City governance as some kind of bizarre role-playing game, like Zillionaires versus Homeless, or whatever, rather than as an arena where wisdom and experience are far more essential than zillionaire-itude.

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

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Hollywood BID Patrol, Municipal Ethics

City of Inglewood Practice of Post-Retirement Rehiring, Like Steve Seyler was Rehired, Denounced by City Treasurer Wanda Brown in 2014: “Nothing on Their Desk But Their Telephone and Their Feet.”

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Wanda Brown, long-time treasurer for the City of Inglewood, in 2014.
Wanda Brown, long-time treasurer for the City of Inglewood, in 2014.
Long-time readers of this blog will recall our revelation of the fact that Steve Seyler, executive director of the BID Patrol, formerly a police officer with the City of Inglewood, continues to moonlight for the IPD on weekends doing whatever it is that he does over there. This, naturally, is in addition to the more than $66,000 in retirement he’s collecting. Well today, thanks to a tip and a clip from the incomparable Dehol Truth, we can demonstrate that this kind of thing not only seems shady to anyone with some perspective, but that even to Wanda Brown, long-time Inglewood City Treasurer, speaking at a Inglewood City Council meeting in 2014:

But again, I could say, back in the nineties, I’ve been here twenty seven years, we’ve always had too many employees here. ALWAYS. And I can recall, during the times in the nineties, when certain folks were allowed to retire and come back and work part time doing nothing. Because I went by their office and saw nothing on their desk but their telephone and their feet.

Continue reading City of Inglewood Practice of Post-Retirement Rehiring, Like Steve Seyler was Rehired, Denounced by City Treasurer Wanda Brown in 2014: “Nothing on Their Desk But Their Telephone and Their Feet.” →

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Hollywood BID Patrol

BID Patrol Boss Steve Seyler of Andrews International Security Moonlights at Inglewood Police Department Doing Background Checks and Cold Cases

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Steve Seyler scooting and commuting between Hollywood and Inglewood.
Steve Seyler scooting and commuting between Hollywood and Inglewood.
It turns out that vodka Nazi and Hollywood BID Patrol bossman Steve Seyler works part-time for his former employer, the Inglewood Police Department, as something called a “civilian investigative specialist” investigating cold cases and doing background checks. The IPD is famously incompetent and so is Steve, so perhaps it’s a good fit. According to Transparent California the City of Inglewood paid Seyler $15,180 in 2013 and $13,366 in 2014. This is in addition to his more than $66,000 pension. Many of the other Civilian Investigative Specialists are also former IPD officers, so perhaps this is some kind of informal retirement-payola scheme, which would certainly be consistent with Inglewood’s reputation for outrageous public corruption.

Seyler was still working for them in 2015 and 2016 but I haven’t been able to get his pay records for those years. According to7 Inglewood City Clerk Yvonne Horton,8 the city of Inglewood doesn’t have a contract with Seyler. Seyler famously destroys emails to cover his tracks, but nevertheless I managed, with the somewhat reluctant help of Assistant Inglewood City Attorney Derald Brenneman, to obtain a bunch of emails to and from Seyler’s IPD account,9 Continue reading BID Patrol Boss Steve Seyler of Andrews International Security Moonlights at Inglewood Police Department Doing Background Checks and Cold Cases →

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