Tag Archives: Kerry Morrison

It Turns Out that LAHSA is Statistically Challenged When it Comes to Counting the Homeless, Not Just LAHSA Commissioner Kerry Morrison. Even Eric Garcetti, LA’s Technocrat, Can’t Count

Peter Lynn, ED of LAHSA: "Math is hard!!"
Peter Lynn, ED of LAHSA: “Math is hard!!”
We have written before about LAHSA Commissioner and BID boss lady Kerry Morrison’s difficulties with statistical analysis, at least when it comes to counting the homeless population of the two BIDs she bosses. There was this little gem, where depending on how one looked at her chart the figure under discussion varied from about 25% to about 145%. And then just the other day she was seen waving about bar graphs and making wild claims about how many new homeless people would be attracted to her BID if Ted Landreth had his way with the Salvation Army. What these two incidents had in common was that they overcounted the homeless population of the BIDs. And this is not unexpected, since Kerry Morrison uses statistics for propaganda purposes only, and it is in her interest, the interest of her zillionaire masters, to overcount whenever possible, as it amplifies the hysterical atmosphere in which these BIDdies thrive.
Although she was much maligned for saying so, Barbie was right!  Math class is, in fact, tough.
Although she was much maligned for saying so, Barbie was right! Math class is, in fact, tough.
But we had hitherto assumed that in her role as public servant she’d bring her best game to bear. If not out of a sense of service and public obligation, then at least out of caution given the level of scrutiny that attaches to LAHSA Commissioners over and above that to which BID bosses are subjected. But, according to a report in this morning’s LA Times, this is evidently not the case. It turns out that the Times and Eric Garcetti found some basic errors in LAHSA’s analysis of its 2016 homeless count. These led LAHSA to greatly overestimate the increase in the County’s homeless population. Of course, overestimates are good for LAHSA, just as they are for the BID. The more homeless people there are, the more money LAHSA gets.1 Continue reading It Turns Out that LAHSA is Statistically Challenged When it Comes to Counting the Homeless, Not Just LAHSA Commissioner Kerry Morrison. Even Eric Garcetti, LA’s Technocrat, Can’t Count

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Kerry Morrison Goes Straight to LADOT Boss in Attempt to Fix Parking Tickets for Board Members, Admits to Habitually Flouting City Parking Laws, Whines About Food Trucks Being Subject to the Same Laws as Everyone Else

Seleta Reynolds, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and the very first person you should email ( seleta.reynolds@lacity.org) if you get a parking ticket on Hollywood Boulevard.
Seleta Reynolds, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and the very first person you should email if you get a parking ticket on Hollywood Boulevard: seleta.reynolds@lacity.org
What would you do if you got a parking ticket for feeding the meter on Hollywood Boulevard? Pay it? Complain about it to your friends? Yell at the parking enforcement person? Not if you’re Evan Kaizer, President and CEO of the Sieroty Company! In that case you get your personal lobbyist and shill, Kerry Morrison, to email the freaking chief executive of LADOT, Seleta Reynolds, to complain on your behalf,2 hinting in her most inimitable manner that NO FAIR!!!!

Hi Seleta — it’s been awhile,
[sic] but I thought I’d go straight to the top to find out who I can talk to for some information I can share with our community.

We recently moved into the middle of Hollywood Blvd — into a retail storefront. I hope you can stop by and see us sometime! We call this the “mid-BID”3 — and it’s the section of the Boulevard that still suffers from the doldrums.4

That said, we have a lot of meetings in our office, and in the past several of weeks, [sic] we’ve had a couple of people get tickets for parking at a meter beyond the two hour timeframe. In these two cases, the person ran out to put a few more quarters in the meter to buy some time, and when they went out, there was a ticket for violating the two hour time. (So, it was not an expired meter.)5
Well, the big news here is not that zillionaires don’t know that meter feeding is illegal. Even a lot of non-zillionaires don’t know.6 The big news is not even that zillionaires are too cheap to park around back on Schrader or Cherokee for $10 like everyone else who’s going to hang around the Boulevard for more than two hours or that they’re too cheap to get their zillionaires’ club, the HPOA, to freaking validate parking for them. The big news is not even that Kerry Morrison somehow thinks it’s OK to involve the freaking General Manager of the freaking Los Angeles Freaking Department of Transportation in a freaking PARKING TICKET problem; zillionaires naturally think their problems are so sensitive and important that they can only be handled by the boss.

The big news, friends, is that Seleta Reynolds actually did handle the complaint. She instructed her subordinate, Bruce Gillman, to write to Kerry and smooth the ruffled feathers and so on. The tickets didn’t get fixed, and we suppose that marks some progress for this formerly corrupt city of ours, but emails were exchanged for over a month on the subject. How many parking ticket complaints made by non-zillionaires get that kind of sustained attention, we wonder. From now on, we’re writing to Seleta with all our parking ticket woes, and we encourage you to do the same, fellow Angelenos. Here’s her contact information:

seleta.reynolds@lacity.org.

You can tell her we sent you. Meanwhile, read below the fold to find out what this has to do with zillionaire paranoiac delusions about food trucks and more hypocrisy about small businesses.
Continue reading Kerry Morrison Goes Straight to LADOT Boss in Attempt to Fix Parking Tickets for Board Members, Admits to Habitually Flouting City Parking Laws, Whines About Food Trucks Being Subject to the Same Laws as Everyone Else

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LAHSA Commissioner and BID Boss Kerry Morrison Conspires to Use Illegal Amplified Classical Music at Night to Repel Homeless Sleepers on Vine Street: “This is a Fairly Elegant Solution”

Kerry Morrison, LAHSA Commissioner and supporter of playing loud classical music to repel homeless people.
Kerry Morrison, LAHSA Commissioner and supporter of playing loud classical music to repel homeless people.
Kerry Morrison is a commissioner of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, an organization whose mission statement claims that their purpose is:

To support, create and sustain solutions to homelessness in Los Angeles County by providing leadership, advocacy, planning, and management of program funding.

One of these solutions, according to a newly obtained email from Morrison to LAPD Captains Cory Palka, bosom buddy of Hollywood white supremacists, and Peter Zarcone, is evidently to blast classical music at homeless people until they go away:

Hi Captains,

There is a big foyer in front of the Ricardo Montalban Theatre on Vine Street.

For quite some time, this have [sic] been a favorite sleeping place for homeless individuals in the BID.

About a year ago, we encouraged Gil Smith7 to try an experiment (had heard about this from another BID): play classical music all night long and see if that would drive away the sleepers. Sure enough, it had an immediate impact and cleared them out.

As anyone with sense could have foretold, this didn’t end well. The people who actually live in the neighborhood, unlike Kerry Morrison and her alien army of occupation, the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, couldn’t sleep either. They complained, and the music was shut down. But Kerry’s not giving up:

I am going to try to run some interference on this with the property manager over there…because this is a fairly elegant solution…

And what’s the property manager supposed to do here? It’s a violation of LAMC 116.01 to play music loudly enough to disturb sleeping people at night. The property manager can’t stop the residents from calling the cops. And why is Kerry Morrison, commissioner of LAHSA and zealous advocate for hyperenforcement of laws much, much more minor and picayune than this one as long as they’re to be enforced only against the homeless, conspiring with the Executive Producer of the Montalban to break the law by playing amplified music at night? Why is she conspiring to cover up these crimes by proposing to get the property manager of 1600 Vine Street to stop his tenants from reporting these violations to the police?
Continue reading LAHSA Commissioner and BID Boss Kerry Morrison Conspires to Use Illegal Amplified Classical Music at Night to Repel Homeless Sleepers on Vine Street: “This is a Fairly Elegant Solution”

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Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition Trials Relocation to Hollywood and Bronson, Kerry Morrison Initiates Covert Back-Channel Campaign to Subvert, Undermine, and Thwart Efforts

Kerry Morrison at the May 18, 2016 meeting of the Board of Directors of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, describing to her zillionaire overlords how she will use every last drippy little droplet of her political juice to thwart the GWHFC in every possible way.
Kerry Morrison at the May 18, 2016 meeting of the Board of Directors of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, describing to her zillionaire overlords how she will use every last drippy little droplet of her political juice to thwart the GWHFC in every possible way.
At the HPOA Board Meeting on Thursday, May 18, 2016, Kerry Morrison had a lot to say about the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition. In particular, the Food Coalition, which reportedly had been considering a move from its long-time feeding site at the corner of Sycamore and Romaine in Southwest Hollywood, has been, according to Kerry, trying out feeding people at the Salvation Army facility at Hollywood and Bronson. If you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing efforts by the zillionaire elite of Los Angeles to torpedo the GWHFC by any means necessary it will come as no surprise to you that Kerry’s little speech about this was filled with misrepresentations and promises to stop this development if it’s at all possible to do so. We will run through her account one piece at a time, and you can watch and listen along here. As always, a complete transcription of Kerry’s remarks may be found at the end of the post.
Continue reading Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition Trials Relocation to Hollywood and Bronson, Kerry Morrison Initiates Covert Back-Channel Campaign to Subvert, Undermine, and Thwart Efforts

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Hollywood BID Patrol Arrest Rate Continues to Plummet in 2016: by Week 12 there were 23% Fewer Arrests than in 2015 and more than 50% Fewer than in 2014

Steve Seyler in 2014, one day before he told Kerry Morrison that he was going to "have the Officers slow down a little more..." The effects of that statement continue to be felt in Hollywood.
Steve Seyler in 2014, one day before he told Kerry Morrison that he was going to “have the Officers slow down a little more…” The effects of that statement continue to be felt in Hollywood.
Recall that the Andrews International Hollywood BID Patrol arrested more than 40% fewer people in 2015 than they did in 2014, and that this precipitous drop was almost certainly due to our scrutiny. Well, newly obtained figures show that as of Week 12 of 20168 the BID Patrol had arrested only 130 people. This is an annualized rate of

\frac{130}{12}\frac{arrests}{week}\times 52\frac{weeks}{year}=564\frac{arrests}{year}

Recall that in 2015 the BID Patrol arrested 606 people, so this projected figure represents a projected 7% decrease from last year’s already strikingly attenuated figures.

Furthermore, by week 12 of 2015 the BID Patrol had arrested 169 people, compared to only 130 this year. This represents a stunning 23% reduction from 2015’s level. For the sake of comparison, note that by week 12 of 2014 the BID Patrol had already arrested 261 people. Thus 2016’s week 12 total is less than half of the 2014 figure from the same week.

Read on for a little bit of editorial speculation.
Continue reading Hollywood BID Patrol Arrest Rate Continues to Plummet in 2016: by Week 12 there were 23% Fewer Arrests than in 2015 and more than 50% Fewer than in 2014

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That Time in 2014 When Kerry Morrison Helped John Tronson Cheat on his Homework and then Went and Spilled the Beans to the Cops that He Had Plagiarized his Work

John Tronson's body double posing for a headshot in 2014.
John Tronson’s body double posing for a headshot in 2014.
If you want to read it, here is the “President’s Message”, originally published over then-HPOA-president John Tronson’s name in the Summer 2014 issue of the HPOA’s quarterly newsletter, HEDLines.9Let’s examine some of the highlights! First about the street characters:

LAPD has been quite proactive in their efforts to address lawbreakers amongst the cast of characters and vendors that populate the sidewalks in front of the Dolby Theatre. There has been an improvement over last summer, possibly due to the commitment of two undercover task forces doing surprise enforcement every month. Though this represents a huge devotion of resources by the department to this effort, it helps to reinforce that laws must been
[sic] adhered to and weeds out the trouble-makers. We are very appreciative of this strategy.

Oh wait!!! That’s not actually from John Tronson’s essay. What he wrote was:

Zarcone and Palka heard loud and clear the community’s frustration with the bad behaviors of the cast of characters and vendors that populate the sidewalks in front of the Dolby Theatre. The summer of 2014 is shaping up to be much calmer likely due to the commitment of an undercover task force doing surprise enforcement twice a month. Though this represents a huge devotion of resources by the department to this effort, it helps to reinforce that laws must be adhered to and it weeds out the trouble-makers. We are very appreciative of this strategy.

The first passage was written by Kerry Morrison in an email exchange with LAPD-ites Mark Dibell, Cory Palka, and Richard Gabaldon. And there’s more after the break.
Continue reading That Time in 2014 When Kerry Morrison Helped John Tronson Cheat on his Homework and then Went and Spilled the Beans to the Cops that He Had Plagiarized his Work

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That Time in 2012 When Kerry Morrison’s OCD Street Character Rage Incited Rabid, Frothing-at-Mouth Angry White Property Owning “Bull[ies]” to Attack Jane Ellison Usher and Tamar Galatzan with “Repeated Kicks to the Head”

Kerry Morrison in 2012 explaining to Jane Ellison Usher why it's so important to get rid of street characters in Hollywood.
Kerry Morrison in 2012 explaining to Jane Ellison Usher why it’s so important to get rid of street characters in Hollywood.
Last month we broke the story of Kerry Morrison’s insistence that street characters on Hollywood Blvd. must be outlawed to curb terrorism while carving out a performative exception for the Ku Klux Klan’s Hancock Park operations. One of the incidents described there was a terse summary from HPOA Board minutes about how some meeting was tense because the City Attorney’s office had “…dropped the ball…” and they walked out of the meeting (due to shame or something).
Jane Ellison Usher in May 2009, three years before the HPOA's receiving repeated kicks to the head from Kerry Morrison and bullying friends
Jane Ellison Usher in May 2009, three years before receiving “repeated kicks to the head” from Kerry Morrison and “bully[ing]” friends.
Well, we recognize a whitewashing when presented with one, so we directed our faithful correspondent to investigate further, and, with the assistance of ever-helpful Mike Dundas of the City Attorney’s office, he came up with this little gem right here, which is an email from Special Assistant City Attorney Jane Ellison Usher10 to Kerry Morrison, Joe Mariani, and Leron Gubler, taking them to task for allowing their psychotic crazed white property owner constituents to berate Ms. Usher and her colleague Tamar Galatzan11 over a perceived, albeit delusionally so, inaction with respect to the TERRORISM street character problem at Hollywood and Highland. Ms. Usher’s description is far, far more plausible than that of the anonymous minutes-taker quoted above and far, far less flattering to the crazed HPOA-ites than is their own description. In particular:
Continue reading That Time in 2012 When Kerry Morrison’s OCD Street Character Rage Incited Rabid, Frothing-at-Mouth Angry White Property Owning “Bull[ies]” to Attack Jane Ellison Usher and Tamar Galatzan with “Repeated Kicks to the Head”

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Why is Kerry Morrison Willing to Lie and to Break the Law in Order to Keep BID Patrol Officers Anonymous?

BID Patrol officer Charles Mooney (Badge #124) pictured in a file originally named "mr. gooding ( actor ) and bid officer c. mooney.jpg".
BID Patrol officer Charles Mooney (Badge #124) pictured in a file originally named “mr. gooding ( actor ) and bid officer c. mooney.jpg”.
If you’re familiar with the BID Patrol situation in Hollywood you’ll have noticed that not only do BID Patrol officers dress like cops, but they do not wear name tags of any kind. No one seems to be willing to say why this is. Well, long-time readers of this blog will recall that in September 2015 I announced that I was taking on the task of identifying BID Patrol officers.
BID Patrol Officer Robert E. Reyes (badge #117) is on the left, according to Kerry Morrison.
BID Patrol Officer Robert E. Reyes (badge #117) is on the left, according to Kerry Morrison.
In October 2015 I made an exploratory request, asking Kerry Morrison for:

…sufficiently many photographs of Robert E. Reyes to allow me to identify him. If you have a picture of him alone that will do. If you have only pictures of him with other people, please send enough so that he’s the only one in the intersection of the sets of people pictured. If there is no set of photographs such that he’s the only one in the intersection of the sets of people pictured, please send enough so that he’s the only man in the intersection of the sets of men pictured.

I phrased it in this awkward manner because it’s a quirk of CPRA that agencies have to hand over records but they don’t have to answer questions about them. On November 10, 2015, Kerry Morrison responded with the photo shown here. She told me that Robert E. Reyes, badge #117, was the man on the left. So far, so good. At this point I actually thought I would be able to identify BID Patrol officers via CPRA. But, as you’ll see after the break, ’twas not to be.
Continue reading Why is Kerry Morrison Willing to Lie and to Break the Law in Order to Keep BID Patrol Officers Anonymous?

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Epic Fact-Finding Journey to Echo Park to Document What Will Be Lost if the Proposed BID is Established and Call to Political Action!

If the BID is established forget about food trucks.  BIDs freaking hate food trucks.  Especially if they're near a restaurant, like this one on Logan Street North of Sunset is.
If the BID is established forget about food trucks. BIDs freaking hate food trucks. Especially if they’re near a restaurant, like this one on Logan Street North of Sunset is.
If the Echo Park BID is established forget about little old ladies selling flowers, like this one on Sunset Blvd. just West of Echo Park Avenue.  BIDs freaking hate little old ladies!
If the Echo Park BID is established forget about little old ladies selling flowers, like this one on Sunset Blvd. just West of Echo Park Avenue. BIDs freaking hate little old ladies!
If the Echo Park BID is established forget about signs like this.  BIDs freaking hate signs on the sidewalk.
If the Echo Park BID is established forget about signs like this. BIDs freaking hate signs on the sidewalk.
If the BID is established in Echo Park say goodbye to RVs around the Park itself.  BIDs freaking hate RVs.
If the BID is established in Echo Park say goodbye to RVs around the Park itself. BIDs freaking hate RVs.
Due to some kind-hearted click bait12 bestowed by loyal FOMs Esotouric, my colleagues’ recent post on the resurgence of the long-dormant proposed Echo Park Business Improvement District has turned out to be one of our most popular posts of 2016. The colleagues left out some absolutely essential information and so I’m following up on their behalves. Also I used the whole situation as an excuse to ride the 704 Eastbound to Echo Park Avenue and Sunset Blvd. to check out the situation on the ground.

First the essential info: This thing is on the agenda for the Economic Development Committee meeting on Tuesday, May 10, in room 1010 in City Hall. You can go tell them what you think about it. Unfortunately I have other commitments, and I’m sure approval is a foregone conclusion, but there’s the info if you want it.

Second, as you can see from the images accompanying this post, if the BID’s approved a lot of stuff is going to change out there. They’re going to chase off taco trucks. BIDs hate taco trucks with a passion that’s hard to understand. They even, believe it or not, hate taco trucks parked on private property. Showing an astonishing ignorance of the rights of property owners in a free society, they’ve been known to express amazement that they’re not against the law.

If the BID is approved, sidewalk signs have got to go. BIDs freaking hate sidewalk signs. In fact, one of the very first things Kerry Morrison did in the 1990s after the Hollywood Entertainment District BID was established was to go after businesses with signs on the sidewalk. Why? Who the hell knows? It offended her sense of order or something. Why should Echo Park expect anything different.
Continue reading Epic Fact-Finding Journey to Echo Park to Document What Will Be Lost if the Proposed BID is Established and Call to Political Action!

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Kerry Morrison Declares that Hollywood Street Performers Must Be Unmasked Because of Terrorism While All the While Taking Financial Advantage of Masked KKK Terrorism In Hancock Park

Terrorism according to Kerry Morrison: This is acceptable.
Terrorism according to Kerry Morrison: This is acceptable (and very, very good for business).
We have written many a post about Kerry Morrison’s weirdly obsessive hatred of the street characters at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue and how she uses the power of her BID to attack them at every turn. Her surreality-based antipathy has at various times inspired her co-conspirators at the LAPD to crack down heavily on these performers, even to the point where Carol Sobel had to sue the cops in Federal Court to stop the neurotic vendetta.

She’s spent at least a decade railing against these characters and working with the City Attorney, the City Council, private attorneys, everyone in sight, without notable success, to ban their activities, to stop them wearing masks, to require them to wear identity badges, to conflate them with terrorists, and so on. Well, we’ve been looking into the matter a little more deeply, and today we’re here to tell you a story about street characters, the KKK, domestic terrorism, anti-mask laws, and property values in Hancock Park.13 First let’s take a little trip through 7 years worth of the minutes of the Board of Directors of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, concentrating on the street characters of Hollywood and Kerry Morrison’s efforts to thwart them by any means necessary:

Terrorism according to Kerry Morrison: This is unacceptable.
Terrorism according to Kerry Morrison: This is unacceptable.
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