Tag Archives: LAPD Gang Enforcement Detail

In 2018 and 2019 The Los Angeles City Attorney Sent Out 479 Demand Letters In Nuisance Abatement Cases — And Filed 30 Cases In Court — According To Deputy City Attorney Bethelwel Wilson An LAPD Gang Officer’s Referral Is Sufficient To Open A Case File — Gang Officers Of Course Were Recently Revealed To Engage In Widespread Lying — And None Of The Demands And Almost None Of The Filed Complaints Get Litigated — So Almost None Of The City’s Allegations Ever Get Tested Adversarially — The City Is Already Reviewing Criminal Cases That The Lying Officers Were Involved In — But Who Will Review These Civil Nuisance Cases?

January 15, 2020 Mike Leave a comment

The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Citywide Nuisance Abatement Program ostensibly attacks gang crime by filing civil lawsuits against property owners whose properties are allegedly involved in ongoing criminal activity. And even though there are obviously people committing all kinds of crimes, dealing drugs, shooting guns, hanging out listening to music,¹ in houses and apartments all over the City, the vast majority of these suits are brought in South Los Angeles, a significant fraction in East and Northeast LA, and almost none in other areas.

These disparities support the widely held view that nuisance abatement suits are used as an aggressive gentrification tool. The neighborhoods targeted are gentrifying neighborhoods. The settlement conditions, and by far most of these cases settle, support gentrification and displacement by, among other things, forcing property owners to sell or to evict putatively undesirable tenants or to install surveillance equipment or otherwise function as LAPD informants. Most of the cases are brought against owners of single family homes or small multifamily or commercial properties, maybe because they’re less likely to have the resources to defend themselves.²

I’ve had some trouble learning how the City Attorney picks its targets, but recently, Deputy City Attorney Bethelwel Wilson, in an important series of emails, revealed that for the most part they’re chosen as a result of referrals from residents or law enforcement.³ According to Wilson, irrespective of the source of the referral, an LAPD “gang officer’s communication would be sufficient for the DCA⁴ to open a case on the property.” And the information supporting the case also comes from LAPD, according to Wilson: “The criminal activity at the property would have to be chronic and well-documented by LAPD before a DCA would even consider filling nuisance abatement action.”

And it turns out that for the City, filing a case essentially amounts to winning it. I recently obtained almost a hundred of these nuisance petitions, filed since 2015, from the CA via the California Public Records Act.⁵ and for the most part the targets don’t fight back. I checked all 67 of the cases opened between 2017 and 2019 and no more than ten involved any significant defense before settling essentially on the City’s terms.⁶ This means that the allegations in the petitions almost never get tested adversarially.

There’s no cross-examination, no documentation, and, surprisingly, not even testimony under penalty of perjury. In California Civil Procedure⁷ a petition is called verified when the complainant asserts belief in the truth of the allegations under penalty of perjury. For whatever reason nuisance abatement petitions are unverified, so no one even gets in trouble if parts of the cases turn out to be made up.⁸ Continue reading In 2018 and 2019 The Los Angeles City Attorney Sent Out 479 Demand Letters In Nuisance Abatement Cases — And Filed 30 Cases In Court — According To Deputy City Attorney Bethelwel Wilson An LAPD Gang Officer’s Referral Is Sufficient To Open A Case File — Gang Officers Of Course Were Recently Revealed To Engage In Widespread Lying — And None Of The Demands And Almost None Of The Filed Complaints Get Litigated — So Almost None Of The City’s Allegations Ever Get Tested Adversarially — The City Is Already Reviewing Criminal Cases That The Lying Officers Were Involved In — But Who Will Review These Civil Nuisance Cases? →

LAPD

Some Materials From A Los Angeles Police Department Gang Enforcement Training Course (Or Maybe Courses) Are Now Available — Undated But Possibly From 2005 — I Believe These Have Never Been Published Before — Including LAPD Pedagogy On How To Write Effective Police Reports To Support Gang Sentencing Enhancements — What Kind Of Facts Must Be Collected To Support The Issuance Of Gang Injunctions — Hints And Tips For Interrogation Of Gang Members — Surveillance Of Gang Members — Some Information About Gang Databases Used By LAPD — Including The Admonition To Never Cite CALGANG In Official Reports But Instead Call It Something Else — Which Seems To Me Like Lying — Along With A Bunch Of The Usual Idiotic But Already Well Known Stereotypes Both Racial And Cultural — I Am Not An Expert But I Believe That Criminal Defense Attorneys May Find This Material Useful In Planning Cross Examinations Of LAPD Officers — Although Maybe This Is All Already Known To Those Who Need To Know It

August 9, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

I recently discovered that the Los Angeles Police Department runs a number of training courses for officers working gang enforcement. Obviously as soon as I heard I submitted a request under the California Public Records Act for all the course materials. And the first batch came in just recently!

There is enough material here and it seems sufficiently important that I am publishing what I have now and will hit you up with the rest if and when it comes to me. LAPD produced three RTFs and one DOC. Here are links to the originals along with PDFs that I exported myself in case they’re useful.⁹

★ outline_23161.rtf — PDF — Instructional Goal: Cal-Gang students will acquire fundamental training in the techniques and skills necessary to use the system.

★ outline_23214.rtf — PDF — Instructional Goal: Prepare all Gang Impact Teams (GIT) members assigned to GED/CLEAR to gather gang-related intelligence and information, identify gang crime patterns, monitor gang activity and implement crime suppression strategies — This is much longer and contains much more information than the other three items.

★ outline_23216.docx — PDF — LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT GANG INTERVENTION AWARENESS TRAINING Expanded Course Outline

★ outline_26011.rtf — PDF — Course Goal: To develop law enforcement personnel capable of investigating and testifying in gang related criminal trials.

Read on for more detailed descriptions of the contents of these essential records, including some transcribed selections.
Continue reading Some Materials From A Los Angeles Police Department Gang Enforcement Training Course (Or Maybe Courses) Are Now Available — Undated But Possibly From 2005 — I Believe These Have Never Been Published Before — Including LAPD Pedagogy On How To Write Effective Police Reports To Support Gang Sentencing Enhancements — What Kind Of Facts Must Be Collected To Support The Issuance Of Gang Injunctions — Hints And Tips For Interrogation Of Gang Members — Surveillance Of Gang Members — Some Information About Gang Databases Used By LAPD — Including The Admonition To Never Cite CALGANG In Official Reports But Instead Call It Something Else — Which Seems To Me Like Lying — Along With A Bunch Of The Usual Idiotic But Already Well Known Stereotypes Both Racial And Cultural — I Am Not An Expert But I Believe That Criminal Defense Attorneys May Find This Material Useful In Planning Cross Examinations Of LAPD Officers — Although Maybe This Is All Already Known To Those Who Need To Know It →

LAPD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Thousands Of Pages Of 2016 LAPD Emails Shed Light On Hollywood Nightclub Racism And Creepy Cop Tricks — Including Targeted Enforcement Against Minority-Serving Establishments — Sending People “To Jail Before They Commit Crimes” — Explicit Targeting Of Putatively Chronic Offenders — Not To Mention Bizarro-World Redaction Policies Which Shed Some Light On The LAPD’s Contempt For The Public Records Act

August 26, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

Friends, cast your minds back to the Spring of 2015! Kerry Morrison’s various BIDs were all in a psychotic tizzy about dark-skinned people coming to Hollywood on the weekends to drink and dance and have some damn fun. Kerry Morrison and her yes-mob started a campaign against the nightclubs on Hollywood Blvd whose patrons were insufficiently lacking in melanin.¹⁰ This led, by the Fall of 2015, to Hollywood’s itchy skritchy little Council-snitchy, the one, the only, Mitch O’Freaking Farrell, starting a high-profile public campaign to shut down every nightspot that made Ms. Kerry Freaking Morrison wrinkle her freaking nose in disdain.

There was some pushback from the club owners in 2016, e.g. from the owner of the Rusty Mullet, whose lawyers played video from this blog at a Council hearing, and the organizers of the #blackhollywoodmatters campaign who, notably, convinced Marqueece Harris-Dawson to vote against the wishes of his smarmy little buddy from CD13 in a committee hearing, although naturally he reversed himself at the full Council vote. But in the usual way of things these minor victories didn’t have much of an effect,¹¹ and by the end of August 2016 Kerry Morrison was, like Grendel’s momma, sitting around her reeking lair counting her ill-gotten victories on her poisonous and twisted little talons.

Around this time, that is, in August 2016, I filed a public records act request with the LAPD asking for emails related to these matters. And because the LAPD is basically a criminal conspiracy with respect to CPRA and just will not comply with the freaking law, which is why they get sued under the CPRA all the freaking time, it took them two whole years to hand over the goods. But they finally did produce thousands of pages¹² and I recently published the whole pile on Archive.Org for your pleasure and edification.

At this late date, of course, and this was doubtless the City’s intention, the battle for the soul of Hollywood Blvd is pretty much over, with the reprehensible frightening whitening brightening of its nightlife essentially complete. However, history is interesting as well as political science, so I plan to write on these emails from time to time as there’s a lot of really disturbing and important material in there. The texts for today’s sermon come from this set here, and turn the page for the details!
Continue reading Thousands Of Pages Of 2016 LAPD Emails Shed Light On Hollywood Nightclub Racism And Creepy Cop Tricks — Including Targeted Enforcement Against Minority-Serving Establishments — Sending People “To Jail Before They Commit Crimes” — Explicit Targeting Of Putatively Chronic Offenders — Not To Mention Bizarro-World Redaction Policies Which Shed Some Light On The LAPD’s Contempt For The Public Records Act →