Tag Archives: Kerry Morrison

Historical and Theoretical Perspectives, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Los Angeles City Government

A Trip to City Archives Yields Fascinating Historical Material Including 2003 HPOA Stakeholder Rebellion Over Shady and Neurotic Behavior by Tronson and Morrison During Security Provider Bidding Process

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The view from Ramirez Street. The entrance to the Archives is by the loading dock in the mid-right area of the image.
The view from Ramirez Street. The entrance to the Archives is by the loading dock in the mid-right area of the image.
A recent trip to the lovely City Archives on Ramirez Street, my absolute favorite of all city agencies,2 yielded up a bunch of really interesting stuff from 2001–2003. So much so that I started a new page for it. It took me three hours to look through two boxes of BID records (out of more than 400), so I’m sure there will be much more of this stuff to come. There’s a list of some highlights after the break, but check it!

In 2003 the BID’s expiring security contract with Burke Security, the predecessor of Andrews International, was put out for bids. Aaron Epstein, yes, the same one whose nuclear bomb of a lawsuit established the subjection of BIDs to both the Brown Act and the California Public Records Act, thereby making this blog possible, and a large group of his fellow Hollywood BID stakeholders3 sent a letter to then-mayor James Hahn complaining that they:

believe[d] that the District’s board of directors and executive director have not conducted a fully open and competitive process to ensure that property owners receive the finest security service for the lowest competitive price (the current two year contract exceeds $2 million). Moreover, we believe that the board and executive director have failed to be objective in the process and have allowed the contractor, Burke Security, to function in ways that do not provide the maximum benefits to the property owners and merchants.

Even in 2003 the BIDs had captured the regulatory function of the City Clerk's office to the point where they were warning Kerry Morrison that people were scrutinizing her sketchy behavior rather than using the power of the purse to make her be not so shady. The fox wasn't guarding the henhouse--the lunatics were (and are) running the asylum.
Even in 2003 the BIDs had captured the regulatory function of the City Clerk’s office to the point where they were warning Kerry Morrison that people were scrutinizing her sketchy behavior rather than using the power of the purse to make her be not so shady. The fox wasn’t guarding the henhouse–the lunatics were (and are) running the asylum.
If you read the letter you’ll see that they’re talking about practices that are still retained by the current BID Patrol: custodial arrests rather than observe-and-report, unseeming over-coziness with the staff of the HPOA, and so on.4 The copy I obtained came with a couple of handwritten notes5 from a Clerk’s office employee suggesting that they warn Kerry Morrison that people were watching so she should follow the rules. This, obviously, is not the kind of behavior one would expect from a regulatory agency. Why didn’t they tell Kerry Morrison to follow the rules because the law required her to?
Continue reading A Trip to City Archives Yields Fascinating Historical Material Including 2003 HPOA Stakeholder Rebellion Over Shady and Neurotic Behavior by Tronson and Morrison During Security Provider Bidding Process →

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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Central Hollywood Coalition Cleared by Franchise Tax Board of All Fiscal Wrongdoing, Tax Exempt Status Reinstated After Months of Struggle, and it Wasn’t an Audit After All!!

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Proof that the SVBID is all good once again with the Franchise Tax Board.
Proof that the SVBID is all good once again with the Franchise Tax Board.
Yesterday the gracious-seemingly-in-spite-of-herself Kerry Morrison sent me a bunch of documents pertaining to the months-long struggle between the HPOA and the Franchise Tax Board over the tax-exempt status of the Central Hollywood Coalition, the shell corporation which exists, seemingly, mostly to hire the HPOA to manage the Sunset & Vine BID. And there are two salient points. First, everything is finally all settled and the CHC is good to go on wreaking havoc in its little corner of Hollywood without having to pay any of those pesky taxes. Second, as Kerry informed me in the email missive that accompanied the documents, “Please also note this that was not an audit – even though I mistakenly used this label at the board meeting where you were present.”

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Announcements, Selma Park

Andrews International Arrest Reports and Daily Logs from 2009 Available, Another Victim of False Arrest at Selma Park Uncovered

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George Islas (Badge #128) falsely arrested a man in Selma Park on September 17, 2009.
George Islas (Badge #128) falsely arrested a man in Selma Park on September 17, 2009.
If you haven’t kept up with our investigations into Selma Park, here is good starting place. The short version is that in 2007 the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance illegally placed signs in the park stating that it was for children and caregivers only and proceeded to arrest some people and eject others from the park for the next 8 years until I got the signs removed by Recreation and Parks. When I first asked her for records on the matter, Kerry Morrison told me that

“A/I says that after looking into this, it is unlikely that any arrests ever were made by A/I in Selma Park with specific regard to the signs and penal code section you recite (as opposed to public urination, drinking, and other reasons)…”

Another victim of Andrews International Security, falsely arrested in Selma Park on September 17, 2009.
Another victim of Andrews International Security, falsely arrested in Selma Park on September 17, 2009.
Well, I then requested copies of all arrest reports and daily activity logs, and they’ve been trickling in at the glacial pace that Kerry seems to find acceptable for meeting her legal obligations under the California Public Records Act. Every new batch has revealed that, even if Andrews did tell Kerry that they didn’t arrest people for merely being in the park, they were not telling the truth. The same is true for the 2009 material, which is on Archive.org. In particular I found another case of a man arrested in Selma Park, accused of nothing more than being there without children:
Continue reading Andrews International Arrest Reports and Daily Logs from 2009 Available, Another Victim of False Arrest at Selma Park Uncovered →

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Featured, Hollywood BID Patrol

In 2013 The Andrews International BID Patrol Arrested Homeless People at More than 57 Times the Rate that the LAPD Did and were Responsible for 1 in 14 Homeless Arrests in Entire City of Los Angeles

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The BID Patrol can't make its numbers just arresting one homeless person at a time.
The BID Patrol can’t make its numbers just arresting one homeless person at a time.
(I apologize in advance for this necessarily data-heavy post, but it’s essential information).

In 20136 the BID Patrol arrested homeless people at more than 57 times the rate that the LAPD did. Furthermore, they were responsible for more than 1% of all arrests made in the entire City of Los Angeles that year even while working only 0.13% of the hours that the LAPD did. Approximately one in fourteen arrests of homeless people in the entire city of Los Angeles that year was made by the BID Patrol.

Here’s how I calculated these figures: That year the LAPD made 14,838 arrests of homeless people7 whereas the Andrews International BID Patrol made 1,096 arrests.8 Reading through A/I’s 2013 arrest reports and examining A/I’s 2013 arrest photos I see no reason to believe that the BID Patrol arrested non-homeless people in 2013 in any significant number.9 Continue reading In 2013 The Andrews International BID Patrol Arrested Homeless People at More than 57 Times the Rate that the LAPD Did and were Responsible for 1 in 14 Homeless Arrests in Entire City of Los Angeles →

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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Formalizes Ongoing Document Destruction Policy Involving Thousands Upon Thousands of Public Records, Seemingly just to Thwart Our Investigations

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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance staff members implementing their new document retention policy. What have you got to hide, friends?!
Hollywood Property Owners Alliance staff members implementing their new document retention policy. What have you got to hide, friends?!
Longtime readers of this blog will recall that one of my very first successful CPRA requests of the HPOA yielded a bunch of emails between AI and the HPOA from October 1, 2014 through November 12, 2014. In fact there were 69 of them during this 43 day period, or more than 1.5 per day. There’s no reason that this period wouldn’t be representative, so we might expect over 500 emails total for 2014. However, I didn’t get around to asking for the rest of the 2014 emails until November of last year and didn’t receive them until January of this year. They are available here, all (only) 90 pages of them. Incredibly, HPOA supplied more distinct emails from October 1, 2014 through November 12, 2014 than they did for all the rest of 2014 when asked a year later. Statistically, therefore, it’s almost certain that they deleted a bunch of stuff. They handed over significantly more emails from 2015, almost 9 MB of them. In all cases there’s demonstrably material missing, e.g. only a small fraction of the weekly reports from AI are present. It wasn’t clear at all what was going on, although I certainly had my suspicions, until a few things happened:
Continue reading Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Formalizes Ongoing Document Destruction Policy Involving Thousands Upon Thousands of Public Records, Seemingly just to Thwart Our Investigations →

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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

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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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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Hollywood BID Patrol, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Evidently No One Told John Tronson that the Late-Night BID Patrol is “Not Happening”; At Yesterday’s HPOA Meeting He Fantasized About Funding Levels While Kerry Morrison Kept Schtum

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John Tronson and Kerry Morrison at the March 17, 2016 meeting of the HPOA Board of Directors. Despite appearances, Ms. Morrison evidently did not throw that pencil at anyone during this meeting.
John Tronson and Kerry Morrison at the March 17, 2016 meeting of the HPOA Board of Directors. Despite appearances, Ms. Morrison evidently did not throw that pencil at anyone during this meeting.
Recall that last month the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance spent a good 40 minutes yammering on about a misbegotten plan of Peter Zarcone’s and Bill Farrar’s to have their armed minions, the BID Patrol, stay out way past everyone’s bed-time in order to put the old kibosh on the herds of outta-control dark-skinned people who, at least in the BIDsies’ fantastically fretful obsessive delusional view of things, occupy the Boulevard on weekend nights. Well, Zarcone got transferred, Steve Seyler backed off the plan, and Kerry Morrison told the Central Hollywood Coalition on March 8: “Yeah…it’s not happening.” A good friend of this blog wrote to Mitch O’Farrell asking him not to pay for this nonsense, and we found out just a couple days ago that as early as February 22, O’Farrell staffers Rodriguez and Halden had concerns about the plan that they took to their boss. We can’t say for sure (yet) what drove the dispositive stake through the heart of Bill Farrar’s vampire baby, but whatever it was, evidently no one explained the full extent of the deadness to John Tronson.

Watch and listen here to his report at yesterday’s meeting of the HPOA Board of Directors, as, while telling the Board that the funding from O’Farrell doesn’t seem to be coming through, he slips into unhinged fantasies about how much money they might get and how many guns on the street it might pay for. Details after the break, friends!
Continue reading Evidently No One Told John Tronson that the Late-Night BID Patrol is “Not Happening”; At Yesterday’s HPOA Meeting He Fantasized About Funding Levels While Kerry Morrison Kept Schtum →

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Selma Park

2008 Selma Park Arrest Reports (and more) Now Available

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BID Patrol officer Robert E. Reyes (badge #117, on left) illegally arrested a man in Selma Park in 2008.
BID Patrol officer Robert E. Reyes (badge #117, on left) illegally arrested a man in Selma Park in 2008.
We’ve been writing for 6 months now about how the HPOA put up phony signs in Selma Park in Hollywood (illegally) declaring it off-limits to adults unaccompanied by children and how the BID Patrol spent the next eight years falsely arresting people and ejecting them from the park, until we got the signs taken down by the City in September 2015. Kerry Morrison told our faithful correspondent that “A/I says that after looking into this, it is unlikely that any arrests ever were made by A/I in Selma Park with specific regard to the signs and penal code section you recite (as opposed to public urination, drinking, and other reasons)…”
Man arrested in 2008 for being in Selma Park without a child.
Man arrested in 2008 for being in Selma Park without a child.
Well, we’ve been receiving the BID Patrol’s arrest reports and daily activity logs for a while now, and recently we obtained the complete 2008 set (arrests here and daily logs here). We’ve known that Kerry’s claim was wrong for a while now (e.g. see here) and the 2008 materials provide even more evidence that she was misled by Andrews International10regarding their course of conduct in illegally arresting multiple people in the park over the years.

Note that none, not one, of the following people appears on the list of cases originating at Selma Park that our correspondent obtained from the City Attorney’s office. Keep that in mind while you read the arrest reports. They didn’t even have enough of a case to be referred for prosecution. Read on for specifics.
Continue reading 2008 Selma Park Arrest Reports (and more) Now Available →

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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

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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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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