Tag Archives: Kerry Morrison

Yet Another Reason Kerry Morrison’s So Ooshly-Gooshly about the Commish, Bill Bratton

August 17, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

If only we were as clever as Randall Munroe we'd-a put something funny here... — Bill Bratton, AKA “the Commish,” seated with unindicted and evidently unhappy co-conspirator and co-author Zach Tumin in 2012, about 8 months before the world didn’t end that December

Long-time readers of this blog will be familiar with the HPOA’s crazed vendetta against street characters and, by extension, the very foundations of American government. If they could destroy the former by destroying the latter we have no doubt that they’d not only do it, they’d also destroy the latter just on the off chance it’d give the former a bad day. We’ve published evidence for this, but anyone who listens to any of their blather for any amount of time will hear their rage expressed in quite certain terms.

Imagine what would happen if lady street characters on Hollywood Boulevard started walking around naked like they do in Manhattan. Heads wouldn't just roll, they'd explode. What we need is a little free-the-nipple in Hollywood like they got at Venice Beach — Imagine what would happen if lady street characters on Hollywood Boulevard started walking around naked like they do in Manhattan. Heads wouldn’t just roll, they’d explode. What we need is a little free-the-nipple in Hollywood like they got at Venice Beach

And they don’t just conspire with LA locals like the city attorney, their conspiracies reach across the very continent to Manhattan, because that’s how bad street characters are, friends, they’re a transcontinental destructive force. Anyway, BID buddy Bill Bratton, affectionately known to Kerry Morrison and zillions of other fans as “the Commish,” is all in a lather over the desnudas of Times Square, who are evidently topless women in body paint (NSFW) who pose for tips with tourists. He’s frothing at the mouth. He was actually quoted in the frickin’ New York Times begging, nay, pleading for a chance to violate his oath of office:
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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy, Street Vending

Kerry Morrison in Van Nuys: Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison / Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden¹

August 7, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Tailgunner Kerry Morrison giving a performative demonstration of effective methods for keeping public meetings respectful, civil, and orderly.

As you probably know, the city of Los Angeles has been holding public hearings to gather input on possible frameworks for legalizing street vending. We’ve written before about the May 28 meeting in Boyle heights: once, twice, and thrice. Now, at last, we take up the June 11 meeting in Van Nuys. We’re starting things off with our old friend, Ms. Kerry Morrison. You can listen to her statement here or read a transcription after the break. We’ve also written about Kerry’s description of the meetings at the Joint Security Committee in July:

there were a series of four hearings that the chief administrative office staff held on the… the sidewalk vending ordinance. … It’s just this kind of amorphous set of hearings, which were completely dysfunctional, disrespectful, and almost, um, resembled a circus.

In the same meeting, Kerry explained that she wasn’t putting up with this, not for a second, and told everyone what she’d done about it:

So actually, Carol Schatz and I wrote a letter to Herb Wesson, the president of the city council after that meeting saying this is, this is really not being, you know, well-handled, there’s no security, it’s intimidating to people, there are people who did not want to testify. So the subsequent two hearings were, um, maybe a little bit more well-behaved.

As Ronald Reagan said in 1970, "If it takes a bloodbath to silence the demonstrators let's get it over with." The lyrics are cruder than Kerry Morrison's, but the tune's the same.1 — As Ronald Reagan said in 1970, “If it takes a bloodbath to silence the demonstrators let’s get it over with.”
The lyrics are cruder than Kerry Morrison’s, but the tune’s the same.²

Well, we put our fearless correspondent on the case and he went out and got us a copy of this letter. As is usual with Kerry when she’s writing in this genre, outraged-with-veneer-of-politesse-and-diplomacy white supremacism, the letter manages to combine utterly competent, even stylish, syntax with semantics that wouldn’t have been out of place in a 1970-era Ronald Reagan psychotic fever dream about students running wild in the streets of Berkeley. Read on for details and more!
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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Street Vending

The True Facts About the May 28, 2015, Community Sidewalk Vending Meeting at Boyle Heights City Hall Revealed Here (With Audio) for All to Hear and Judge and Opinionate Upon! Part 3: the Good Guys

August 3, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Previous installments of this series appear here: Part 1 and Part 2

Placeholder caption — 1990 picture of Cynthia Anderson-Barker, badass civil rights lawyer and board member of the badass civil rights organization the National Lawyers Guild Los Angeles. Their motto proclaims them to be ***“Dedicated to the Belief That Human Rights Are More Sacred Than Property Interests”***

We originally planned to write a full post making fun of Nicole Shahenian’s speech at the May 28, 2015 meeting at Boyle Heights City Hall on the subject of legalized street vending in Los Angeles. On listening to it again, though, we realized that it’s nothing more than the same old nonsense, probably ghost-written by Kerry Morrison, and that writing on it would be a waste of time, space, and electricity. So today we’re concluding our reportage on the May 28 meeting with a brief discussion of the good guys, the white hats, the rays of sunshine, the breaths of fresh air, the actual humans in the room, the supporters of legalized street vending in lovely Los Angeles. In particular we hear from an actual street vendor who supports his family and from badass civil rights lawyer Cynthia Anderson-Barker, who explains why it’s essential to repeal LAMC 42.00(b) because, not only is it not being enforced equitably, it is not actually possible to enforce it equitably.

Man arrested, shackled, and humiliated by BID Patrol for selling hot dogs on the streets of Hollywood.

First up we have a man, whose name we didn’t catch on the audio, who’s one of the street vendors that Kerry Morrison recently mocked in public for claiming that he practices street vending in order to support his family. Listen here or read a transcription after the break. She has complained vociferously in the past and will no doubt complain vociferously in the future about the tone and incivility of those who oppose her iron will, never taking into account that her minions, who are paid to go to these meetings to speak words that, even if she didn’t actually write them, are certainly consistent with every public statement she’s ever made on the issue, are directly attacking people like this speaker, who are trying in the face of massive harassment to feed their families.

She and her minions rank this man’s life and well-being below the putative, delusionally construed rights of their employers not only to own property in Hollywood, to make untold amounts of money in exchange for very little productive labor, and not only that, but to have an extraordinarily immoral amount of control over the social conditions of life in places and neighborhoods where they don’t even live. In the face of this, Kerry Morrison has the audacity to complain about the audience being “uncivil” to her minions? Quel chutzpah, n’est ce pas? Anyway, in his speech, this man makes it clear that he knows that they’re his enemy. And he’s not wrong. They are his enemy. They are our enemies.

Man arrested, shackled, and humiliated for selling ice cream on the streets of Hollywood — Man arrested, shackled, and humiliated by BID Patrol for selling ice cream on the streets of Hollywood

He says, plausibly directly in response to BID flacks Alyssa Van Breene and/or Devin Strecker:

By example, for myself, I make ninety dollars a day. And I support my family with that money. … Our life … is very different than yours. Our day is starting at 4 a.m., and we’ll finish at around 9 p.m. for just a few dollars, but it’s OK.

42.00(b)- LAMC- SALES OF GOODS W/OUT A LICENSE — Man arrested, shackled, and humiliated by BID Patrol for selling water on the streets of Hollywood

This is the kind of story Kerry Morrison dismisses as an example of speakers “being bused in” in order to all have “the same, the same, um, tune, like ‘I need to be able to sell on the street to support my family.'” We’re impressed in a theoretical way that she can live with herself thinking like that in the face of such testimony, although maybe we could live with ourselves too. Never having thought like that, how would we know? Does she think the guy’s lying? Making up stories to win the right to work 17 hours for 90 dollars? What is she thinking, if anything?
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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Street Vending

The True Facts About the May 28, 2015, Community Sidewalk Vending Meeting at Boyle Heights City Hall Revealed Here (With Audio) for All to Hear and Judge and Opinionate Upon! Part 2: Devin Strecker

July 31, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Devin Strecker, Director of Communications and Social Media of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance.

If you’re keeping score at home, you’ll recall that earlier we wrote on the May 28, 2015, meeting at Boyle Heights City Hall about street vending, focusing on Hollywood Entertainment District BID board member Alyssa Van Breene’s comments. You will also recall HPOA Executive Directrix Kerry Morrison’s description of the proceedings:

Now listen, O citizens of Hollywood, to HPOA staffie Devin Strecker speaking before the same meeting:

Also sprach Devin Strecher:

There’s a transcription after the break if you care to read rather than to listen, and after the break’s where we’re going to separate the wheat from the chaff, which is a valid if cliched metaphor even if, as in this case, there’s no wheat atall.
Continue reading The True Facts About the May 28, 2015, Community Sidewalk Vending Meeting at Boyle Heights City Hall Revealed Here (With Audio) for All to Hear and Judge and Opinionate Upon! Part 2: Devin Strecker →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Street Vending

The True Facts About the May 28, 2015, Community Sidewalk Vending Meeting at Boyle Heights City Hall Revealed Here (With Audio) for All to Hear and Judge and Opinionate Upon! Part 1: Alyssa Van Breene

July 31, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

The Boyle Hotel at 101 N. Boyle Avenue, appearing here because we don't have a picture of the Boyle Heights City Hall, which is about half a mile west on First Street from the corner of First and Boyle. — The Boyle Hotel at 101 N. Boyle Avenue, appearing here because we don’t have a picture of the Boyle Heights City Hall, which is about half a mile west on First Street from the corner of First and Boyle, that being the location of this building.

We recently wrote about Kerry Morrison’s description of the series of public meetings sponsored by the Chief Legislative Analyst of the city of Los Angeles regarding the framework for legalizing street vending that’s being studied by the City Council. Well, interestingly enough, it turns out that the Council’s Economic Development committee has a website set up devoted to the issue and found thereupon are audio recordings of three of the four meetings held to-date.¹ Astute readers will no doubt recall Kerry’s description of these meetings:
there were a series of four hearings that the chief administrative office staff held on the… the sidewalk vending ordinance. … It’s just this kind of amorphous set of hearings, which were completely dysfunctional, disrespectful, and almost, um, resembled a circus.

Wanna know what "frabjous" means? You gotta ask Mr. Humpty Dumpty, or look it up in the Dictionary, for God's sake. — Wanna know what “frabjous” means? You gotta ask Mr. Humpty Dumpty, or look it up in the Dictionary, for God’s sake.

Well, frabjous day, friends! We have listened to the first of these, held at the Boyle Heights City Hall on May 28, 2015, and clipped out some representative bits for your audiosthetic pleasure and we’re sharing them with you here. First listen to HPOA Board Member Alyssa Van Breene (transcriptions after the break if, like us, you’d rather read than hear):

Listened up? Good! Let’s take this nonsense one lie at a time, shall we?
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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

Ever-Delusional BID’s Targeting of Homeless Alcohol Use, Impunitizing Scofflaw Liquor Dealers, Denial of Laws of Nature, Continues, with Complicity, Connivance of City Attorney’s Office, Apace

July 30, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Pla-Boy Liquors at the corner of Yucca Street and Wilcox Avenue, as it appeared on July 30, 2015. On that date, 200 ml bottles of Crystal Palace vodka were on sale for $2.43, which is 22¢ cheaper than in 2014 according to Kerry Morrison.

Today’s post concerns a series of emails between Kerry Morrison and two Hollywood Neighborhood Prosecutors in 2014. These are part of a larger set of emails which we published some time ago. The BID, of course, is paranoiacally hyperphobic about drinking in public by the homeless, even as they celebrate, revel in, and sing hosanna in the highest to the use, misuse, abuse, of alcohol, even in public, when done by the non-homeless population of Hollywood. That’s not news. What is news is the weirdly obsessive length that newly-appointed-in-2014 Hollywood Neighborhood Prosecutor Jackie Lawson turned out to be willing to go to to accomodate Kerry Morrison’s paranoid hyperphobias. There’s a lot of background here, so please bear with us.

Andre Quintero, who preceded Jackie Lawson as the Hollywood Neighborhood Prosecutor and is now, amongst other things, the mayor of El Monte. Either he's not so prone to BID-bootlicking as his successor or he has the sense not to do it in writing. — Andre Quintero, who preceded Jackie Lawson as the Hollywood Neighborhood Prosecutor and is now, amongst other things, the mayor of El Monte. Either he’s not so prone to BID-bootlicking and dereliction of duty as is his successor or else he has the sense not to do it in writing. He’s that’s-for-damn-sure not popular with his city council out there in the Far East, though.

The documented part of our story begins on January 28, 2014,¹ with an email from Kerry Morrison to then-Hollywood-Neighborhood-Prosecutor Andre Quintero, inviting him to a BID-sponsored summit meeting the purported motive for which was “[t]o reduce the incidence of daytime public drunkenness in the Hollywood Entertainment Disctrict and Sunset & Vine BID.” In particular, Kerry calls Andre’s attention to item 4, asking that he “maybe … could be prepared to share some background on” “…laws governing alcohol sales and alcohol use.” Note well that there’s no word out of Andre regarding any of this. And the rest of the agenda is worth reading, but there’s nothing there, really, beyond the usual paranoid ravings about panhandlers and public inebriation with which we’re so familiar.

Things began to take an interesting turn in March, though. That’s when Kerry Morrison, unconstrained by any Institutional Review Board, by any ethical guidelines for the use of human subjects, by any standards, professional or amateur, by any method, scientific or humane, by any laws, human or divine, written or unwritten, criminal or civil, announced yet another experiment in the social-laboratory-for-the-criminalization-of-homelessness gestalt-slash-weltanschauung that the HPOA has overlain upon our beloved Hollywood in its 20 years of madcap malcriado misrule.²
Continue reading Ever-Delusional BID’s Targeting of Homeless Alcohol Use, Impunitizing Scofflaw Liquor Dealers, Denial of Laws of Nature, Continues, with Complicity, Connivance of City Attorney’s Office, Apace →

Announcements

Lots of Documents, and Not of the Usual Sort!

July 21, 2015 Mike Leave a comment

Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, 99 years ago in 1916. Her truth, like that of John Brown, goes marching on in Los Angeles in 2015.

Today I’m pleased to announce the availability of a bunch more documents, some of them really interesting, and none of them of the sort we’ve usually featured here. First of all we are adding the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to our list of scrutinizees, albeit in a fairly desultory manner. Documents we obtain will be available from the usual menus above, and here is a link to that page. We kick things off with a couple years worth of form 700s from the Commissioners and the Executive Director. For almost certainly nefarious reasons, the city of Los Angeles, unlike other more enlightened cities in California, does not require BID board members or high-level employees to file financial disclosures (although this may be changing soon, fingers crossed!), so obtaining these forms was the only way to get any insight into Kerry Morrison’s finances insofar as they relate to her work for the HPOA. And now, like Jesus Christ hisself, we have saved the best for last, so the good stuff is after the break!
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Hypocrisy, Joint Security Committee, Street Vending

Kerry Morrison Accuses Street Vending Proponents Collectively of “Almost Resembl[ing] a Circus,” Being “Completely Dysfunctional [and] Disrespectful,” and “Being Bused in,” Elides True Nature of Putative Coalition

July 15, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Kerry Morrison at the July 9, 2015 meeting of the Joint Security Committee being the opposite of dysfunctional, disrespectful, and circus-like. — Kerry Morrison at the July 9, 2015 meeting of the Joint Security Committee looking mighty fed up with something while at the same time, of course, being nondysfunctional, nondisrespectful, and in no way resembling a circus.

We’ve written before about the HPOA’s crazed-and-at-the-mouth-foaming opposition to Councilmembers Huizar’s and Price’s proposed ordinance legalizing street vending in the city of Los Angeles. We’ve written about the HPOA’s scheme to send its agents to public meetings in the ill-concealed guise of concerned citizens opposing the ordinance. Today we report on Kerry Morrison’s recent discussion of her experience orchestrating that whole fiasco. We’ll analyze it line by line, and you can watch the whole thing here and/or read a transcription after the break.

This painting by Georges Seurat almost resembles a circus also, but, and this is a subtle point but sound, Cela ne veut pas un cirque. — This painting by Georges Seurat almost resembles a circus also, but, and this is a subtle point but sound, cela ne veut pas un cirque.

Kerry’s been on before about this issue, people not treating her agents provocateurs to what she delusorily imagines to be the duly appropriate level of forelock-tugging, although she hits a new high note¹ here. We mean, we weren’t at the hearings, but it’s hard to imagine that they were dysfunctional. It’s easier to imagine that perhaps Kerry’s mistaken the purpose. It’s hard to see how a public hearing can be disrespectful without being told towards what or whom it’s disrespectful. Does she mean the hearing was disrespectful towards her minions? What is it that they’ve done to earn anyone’s respect? Perhaps she means something else. And as for the hearings “almost…resembl[ing] a circus,” well, we imagine that’s nothing more than the reaction of someone who has done her illegal best to make sure that the public doesn’t feel welcome at the meetings she’s the boss of to finding out that she’s not the boss of every meeting in Los Angeles and, just possibly, maybe not so welcome at all of them her own self.
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Joint Security Committee

30 Year Police Veteran Longs for the Good Old Days of Beating, Killing, Perjury, Free Cocaine, Doing the Job Without Being Undermined by Governments, Second-Guessed by Whiny Baby Liberals

July 13, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

We didn't catch this guy's name, but we sure did catch his white privilege rage rant... — We didn’t catch this guy’s name, but we sure did catch his white privilege boo-hoo-hoo swelling violins rage rant pity party nostalgia speech…

We’ve written before about the cataclysmic flood of white privilege rage rants unleashed by Fabio Conti’s cri de coeur for the BID Patrol to stop coddling the homeless and start, we don’t know, killing them or whatever it takes to get them out of Hollywood, and the present post concerns yet another boulder in that avalanche of angst. We’re going to comment on the unnamed white privilege rage ranter’s rant (you can see the fellow’s picture somewhere in the vicinity of this sentence) one line at a time. You can read his whole speech after the break and watch it here if you’re so inclined.

…our effort to clean up the neighborhood is kinda like salmon swimming upstream.

No. First of all, salmon swimming upstream are beautiful, delicious, and nutritious. You people in the BID are none of these things. Second, you’re not trying to “clean up the neighborhood,” you’re trying to ethnically cleanse the neighborhood.

Salmon swimming upstream are beautiful, nutritious, and delicious. The BID Patrol is none of these things, izzit? — Salmon swimming upstream are beautiful, nutritious, and delicious. The BID Patrol is none of these things, innit?

One is at least plausibly laudable. The other is a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Also, your metaphor is deeply flawed. Salmon like swimming upstream. It’s what they’re born to do. It’s the crowning glory of their lives. They surely, if they could speak, wouldn’t be whining about it.

You know, we have the state and the city working against us by allowing people to sleep on the sidewalk, you know, all night long, because it’s the humane thing to do.

No. The state and the city are not allowing anyone to sleep on the sidewalk because it’s humane. The state doesn’t have the first thing to do with municipal laws and the city has been FORCED by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in its landmark decision Jones v. City of Los Angeles, where it found that the city’s law against sitting on the sidewalk, LAMC 41.18(d), violates the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. That is, it’s the Constitution of the United States that allows people to sleep on the sidewalk, Mr. Unnamed white privilege rage ranter. The city of Los Angeles fought this case every step of the way, and Charlie Beck and presumably other city officials can’t wait to start enforcing it again as soon as the terms of the settlement are met. By the way, your use of the word humane here is infelicitous; as Albert Einstein once said,¹ sarcasm is the language of the Devil. Note that we’re skipping some of the technicalities of the Jones case here, but the simplified outline is true enough.
Continue reading 30 Year Police Veteran Longs for the Good Old Days of Beating, Killing, Perjury, Free Cocaine, Doing the Job Without Being Undermined by Governments, Second-Guessed by Whiny Baby Liberals →

Joint Security Committee

Fabio Conti: The Donut Policy is Not Working! BID Patrol, “Toughen Up,” Stop Being Nice to Homeless Because they Have Knives and They Scare Me! Steve Seyler: “Ultimately We’re Gonna Put the Cuffs on”

July 12, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Fabio Conti, white privilege rage ranter of the month at the BID Joint Security Committee meeting of July 9, 2015: the Hollywood homeless are armed and dangerous!! Why is this allowed?! — Fabio Conti, white privilege rage ranter of the month at the BID Joint Security Committee meeting of July 9, 2015: the Hollywood homeless are armed and dangerous!! Why is this allowed even though they SCARE ME?!

At the July 9, 2015 Joint Security Committee meeting, BID Board member Fabio Conti, after Andrews International Security head BIDdie-boy Steve Seyler told a what-passes-for-heartwarming story about shipping some homeless lady out of state on a bus, flipped the fuck out about heavily armed and dangerous homeless people on the streets of Hollywood and how A/I ought to stop with the rapport-building, bus-ticket-buying, and donut/sandwich handing-out and start arresting all of them right now. Says Fabio: STOP BEING SO NICE TO THE HOMELESS!!! The “the purple guys” downtown “…keep the area pretty clean…” of homeless human garbage. The Hollywood BID Patrol must do the same!

Steve Seyler showing his good side to the camera at the July 9, 2015 meeting of the BID Joint Security Committee meeting.

Under ordinary circumstances a faux pas like Fabio’s would probably be politely overlooked but these are no ordinary times, it seems. Instead it triggered an avalanche of white-privilege-rage-ranting that derailed the meeting for what seemed like an eternity and was actually over 30 minutes of this approximately 70 minute long meeting. The asylum was so being-run-by-the-inmates that Hollywood Entertainment District BID Board President Monica Yamada, not habitually the most aware person in the room, had to shut it down. But not before the display of an unbearable montage/barrage of peel-the-face-off shots that had most of the attendees showing their true colors in a remarkably nauseating performative contradiction of Jesus’s usually on-target admonition about the truth. Mostly the truth will make you free but sometimes it just makes you sick.

Even the sense that God gave these good God-damned geese by the LA river just North of Los Feliz Blvd is enough to know that when Steve Seyler blithers on about rapport-building through donut distribution he really means ARREST EVERYBODY and haul them away — Even the sense that God gave these good God-damned geese by the LA river just North of Los Feliz Blvd. will suffice to understand that when Steve Seyler blithers on about rapport-building through donut distribution he really means ARREST EVERYBODY RIGHT NOW!!

For instance, usually, of course, at these meetings and in other venues, Steve rattles on about how cuddlesy-warmsy-fuzzly-wuzzly his officers are but everyone there knows that that’s just the velvet glove over the iron fucking fist and that he’s just spreading the goodwill-ambassador bullshit for the delectation and over-the-eyes-wool-pulling of the public. This much is obvious to anyone with a fraction of the sense that God gave a good God-damned goose. In this instance, though, under relentless pressure from Fabio, whose position is that “we’re to a point where, you know, we cannot be kind,” Steve was forced to admit his homeless-people-on-the-sidewalk policy out loud, in public, on camera:

“…we’re gonna start out with a nice approach, hey, please, time to get up, businesses are open, you gotta get off the sidewalk, we’re here to help you, you know, blah blah blah blah, please, please, pretty please, and then, you know, ultimately we’re going to put the cuffs on you…”

Steve’s not usually so open about the fact that all the donuts, all the sandwiches, all the heartwarming coziness, it’s all just a formality. “…ultimately we’re going to put the cuffs on you…”

The only people in the room who talked and didn’t seem insane¹ were two LAPD liaison officers (whose names, unfortunately, we didn’t catch), who patiently explained to everyone that “…the sky’s not falling…” However, as long-time readers of this blog are well aware, there is very little in this world that can get the attention of a white person who’s hell-bent on confusing comfort with safety. The LAPD guys were completely ignored. Sanity will not prevail, not in this room at this time.

Watch the whole thing or read on for a partial transcription (so much craziness here that we can only cover this teensy fraction. We’ll return to the subject soon enough, though).
Continue reading Fabio Conti: The Donut Policy is Not Working! BID Patrol, “Toughen Up,” Stop Being Nice to Homeless Because they Have Knives and They Scare Me! Steve Seyler: “Ultimately We’re Gonna Put the Cuffs on” →