Tag Archives: LAPD

San Francisco Police Department Fulfills Experimental CPRA Request in 23 Days (!) and Provides Emails in an Actually Almost Usable Format

January 14, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

It's not just candy, but public records for everyone with the SFPD! — It’s not just candy, but public records for everyone with the SFPD!

As you may remember, in January 2015 I requested some emails from the LAPD under the CPRA. After 11 months of inaction, noodging, and stubbornness, last month they finally produced about 3% of the records I’d requested, with the (so far unfulfilled) promise of more to come. I am not the only one to have had this problem.

Anyway, on December 21, it occurred to me to make experimental requests for innocuous records to various police departments around the state and then, depending on the results, write to the Los Angeles Police Commission about how other cities around California are, somehow, able to abide by the law. I abandoned that aspect of the plan because, as fate would have it, the very next day a bunch of people sued the LAPD over their flouting of the Public Records Act, obviating the need for any letters from me. But the requests were still out there, so I let them ride.

Berkeley and Long Beach still have failed to acknowledge my requests, even though it’s been 24 days since I sent them. This is in spite of the fact that Berkeley has a city-wide guide to CPRA requests and a far-reaching open government ordinance. The difference between Berkeley PD’s nonresponsiveness and the LAPD’s is that Berkeley has an administrative procedure to encourage city departments to follow the law whereas Los Angeles has nothing of the sort. I’m not going to go that route because I don’t have time, but it’s nice to know it’s there. I don’t know exactly what’s up with Long Beach, but have no plans to press them.

However, the City and County of San Francisco, which also has a sunshine ordinance (the League of Women Voters thinks it was the first such municipal statute), followed the law scrupulously (with one minor lapse). I asked for the last 100 emails between the SFPD and the Union Square BID. And here is what they sent. They didn’t supply them in the native format I requested, which they’re required to do by law, but even here they did better than the LAPD. I’ll describe the interesting formatting compromise they (unilaterally) made after the break. Again, LAPD and the rest of the City of Los Angeles have a lesson they could learn from this.
Continue reading San Francisco Police Department Fulfills Experimental CPRA Request in 23 Days (!) and Provides Emails in an Actually Almost Usable Format →

Stop LAPD Spying Coalition

Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and National Lawyers Guild LA File Suit Against City of LA Over Egregious LAPD CPRA Violations–Court Papers Available Here

December 30, 2015 Mike Leave a comment

The logo of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition

On December 22, 2015, the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and the hyperactive-in-a-good-way National Lawyers Guild LA filed suit in LA Superior Court against the City of Los Angeles because of egregious violations of the California Public Records Act. According to Pete White of the LA Community Action Network, the LAPD needs to “…know they need to—at a minimum—follow the laws…they tell us we need to follow.” I got copies of everything that’s been filed to date and put it all in a directory here. There’s not so much, but the initial complaint is a monster, weighing in at 180 pages. Most of that is exhibits, including a lengthy U.S. Senate report on Homeland Security funding of and involvement in domestic police spying operations and a copy of a “Special Order” authorizing an ongoing LAPD spying program and a bunch of other documents. The LAPD stuff starts on page 125 of the PDF. I’ll separate and post the various documents individually when I have time. Anyway, the petition has an excellent introduction outlining the public’s interest in the records that the group is seeking and a very tidy summary of what I know from personal experience is the maddening stubborn inactivity of the LAPD in the face of the transcendently clear mandate of the CPRA to respond to requests within 10 days. My only quibble is that I wish they’d also mentioned the LAPD’s absolute and illegal refusal to provide copies of records that they hold in electronic formats, e.g. email, in those electronic formats rather than printing them out on paper and redacting them with a marker. But they know the law and its ways better than I, so I’ll hush up about it.
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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Kerry Morrison Evidently Solicited Some Favor in October 2014 from LAPD on Behalf of Outlaw Developer CIM Group, Peter Zarcone and Deputy Chief Terry Hara Concerned to Avoid “[Creating] a Perception of [LAPD] Being in the Pocket of a Private Developer”

December 27, 2015 Mike Leave a comment

Politically astute LAPD deputy chief Terry Hara in 2006.

In October 2014, a judge revoked real estate developer CIM Group’s permits for their controversial Sunset/Gordon apartment building because they had willfully ignored a number of legal requirements. Within days of that decision, HPOA Executive director Kerry Morrison was emailing Hollywood LAPD Honcho Peter Zarcone with some kind of ask about the situation. Zarcone conferred with now-retired Deputy Chief Terry Hara and told Kerry that, while he wasn’t (yet) saying “no” to whatever Kerry was asking, he and Hara needed more information because they were concerned that saying “yes” would “create a perception of [LAPD] being in the pocket of a private developer.” He was right to have worried. The Sunset/Gordon project would go on to be the locus of a great deal of outlawry, and CIM Group is essentially an ongoing criminal conspiracy. I certainly hope the LAPD had the sense to stay out of it.

I only have this little snippet of the email chain, so I don’t yet know the favor Kerry was asking nor the outcome of the ask. I have requests out for the rest, though, and I’ll provide new information as it comes in. I will say that I’d prefer that the LAPD would be concerned more with the reality of not being in the pocket of a private developer than the perception of it, but maybe that’s idealistic. And I’d say that the fact that Kerry Morrison even felt free to ask him for anything on behalf of CIM shows that probably the LAPD essentially is already “…in the pocket of a private developer.” Why did she think that asking him would yield results if similar requests in the past hadn’t already worked? My collection of BID/LAPD emails is presently too fragmentary to allow the drawing of many solid conclusions, but the amount of it that has to do with real estate is surprising.

Darrell Davis (right) with Bea Girmala and LaMont Jerrett in the parking lot of the Hollywood Police Station on Wilcox

For instance, here’s another email, this one from HPOA Assistant Boss Joseph Mariani to Hollywood cop Darrell Davis asking for info on Hollywood crime stats that a broker needs immediately to convince a client to buy in Hollywood. Again, I don’t yet know the full story, but I’m working on getting it. However, the level of familiarity that Joe displays suggests convincingly that LAPD assistance with Hollywood real estate transactions is the norm. Says Joe to Darrell: “Ideally he said he would need this today. Let me know if that’s possible. If not I’ll try and buy some time.”

So if Peter Zarcone is worried about creating a perception of LAPD being in the pocket of a private developer, maybe the best thing would be to have his subordinates stop acting like they’re in the pocket of the entire freaking real estate industry. Maybe the best thing to do when he receives what’s almost surely an improper request from Kerry Morrison is to tell her that it’s not the job of the police to facilitate the real estate industry’s criminality, or even its non-criminal daily business. Maybe that would be more effective. Read full transcripts after the break if you don’t like PDFs:
Continue reading Kerry Morrison Evidently Solicited Some Favor in October 2014 from LAPD on Behalf of Outlaw Developer CIM Group, Peter Zarcone and Deputy Chief Terry Hara Concerned to Avoid “[Creating] a Perception of [LAPD] Being in the Pocket of a Private Developer” →

Announcements

Lots of New Unsorted Emails Between HPOA, LAPD, the Media District BID, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, and CD13

December 24, 2015 Mike Leave a comment

Adam Schiff hovering over a full-mouthed Peter Zarcone at one of those rubber chicken extravaganzas.

I uploaded tons of emails today, some between the LAPD and the three Hollywood BIDs, some between CD13 and the Hollywood BIDs and/or the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. The LAPD emails are notable because I made the request that they were provided in response to on January 9, 2015. I have had to hassle them, complain to OIG about them, hassle them some more, bargain with them, plead with them, and finally, after more than 11 months, they actually handed over some emails. There seem to be about 16,000 pages to go, so at this rate I should have them all slightly less than 30 years from now.

Dan Halden in March 2015. One thing I learned from the emails presented here is that Kerry Morrison doesn't know and will not learn how to spell his name. — Dan Halden in March 2015. One thing I learned from the emails presented here is that Kerry Morrison does not know and will not learn how to spell his name.

At this point, by way of contrast, let me just mention that the staff at CD13, Dan Halden especially, and also Marisol Rodriguez, are helpful, honest, reliable, patient with my endless requests, and just all-round wonderful. We can all be proud that they’re part of our city government. Enough sentimentality! Without further ado, look here for the CD13 emails or download the PDFs directly: one—two—three—four. You can find the LAPD ones here or download the PDF directly here.
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Hollywood BID Patrol, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Scope of BID Patrol Surveillance, Counterintelligence Far Broader than Previously Thought: Email to LAPD Demonstrates Long-Term Tracking, Unsupported Allegations of Sexual Misconduct, Drug Use Against BID Opponent

December 22, 2015 kohlhaas 3 Comments

The Andrews International BID Patrol and the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance surveilled this guy for at least 33 months, in part because of his videotaping of BID Patrol operations. The HPOA involved the LAPD in their surveillance program to some extent. What a mess. — The Andrews International BID Patrol and the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance surveilled this guy for at least 33 months, in part because of his videotaping of BID Patrol operations. According to Kerry Morrison, BID Patrol boss Steve Seyler kept a “history” of him for years. The HPOA involved the LAPD in their surveillance program to some extent. What a mess.

In October 2015 we wrote about a number of cases where the Andrews International Hollywood BID Patrol collected intelligence information on its perceived enemies, mostly residents of Hollywood who opposed them in some manner. Among these instances of BID Patrol spying there was a mysterious case involving a man named Eric, pictured to the right. Our faithful correspondent has recently obtained a number of emails from the LAPD, which he’s preparing for publication and plans to make available quite soon. We jumped the queue on this email,¹ though, because it explains a number of lacunae in our previous post.

It’s from Kerry Morrison to LAPD officer Mark Dibell about Eric, written in September 2014, 33 months after the January 2012 surveillance photographs of the man were taken by the BID Patrol. The subject line is “A matter for Vice.” TL;DR is that Eric “…had a routine of harassing and filming the BID patrol…” and so Kerry Morrison and A/I tracked his movements, photographed him, and almost three years later, wrote to the LAPD on behalf of his new landlord, Kelly Vickers of Eastown Apartments, reporting past, evidently unsupported, allegations of “sexual misconduct…and drug use” among other things. The subject line suggests that Kerry is trying to get this guy in trouble with the Vice squad as a service to one of the property owners in the BID.

How does anyone think this is OK? How does the BID carry on a three year vendetta against this guy for filming their security guards? Sure, Kerry claims it’s because of “sexual misconduct…and drug use,” but really, if the guy was provably up to those things why all the emails and subterfuge? Why not just call the actual cops and make an actual police report like actual non-creepy-zillionaires have to do in such circumstances? It’s pretty unlikely anyway that one can move into a fancy douchebag-serving apartment paradise like Eastown without a criminal background check, so the “allegations” remain only allegations. And even if he was or is guilty of “sexual misconduct…and drug use,” how is investigating that the business of the BID Patrol? They’re freaking security guards, not spies, not detectives.

The City of Los Angeles is famous for using BIDs to implement policies which it itself has been forced to eschew, but this kind of spying, which the contemporary LAPD has explicitly disavowed, reveals this dynamic to be playing out on an entirely unsuspected level. Read the whole thing here or after the break.
Continue reading Scope of BID Patrol Surveillance, Counterintelligence Far Broader than Previously Thought: Email to LAPD Demonstrates Long-Term Tracking, Unsupported Allegations of Sexual Misconduct, Drug Use Against BID Opponent →

Fashion District BID

Some Documents from Horlings Lawsuit against Fashion District BID Available, Illuminating Contradictions of Existence of BID Security

December 21, 2015 Mike Leave a comment

Today I have a minor piece of documention, which is the initial complaint and a bunch of miscellaneous paperwork, available here, in a lawsuit known as Horlings v. City of Los Angeles. I won’t summarize the alleged facts of the case, because I find it impossible to do so without seeming to mock the plaintiffs or to condemn some of the defendants, which I really don’t want to do. The suit is based on a horrific experience, and no one deserves to be mocked for their roles in it. In very general terms the Horlings family was the victim of a crime in Santee Alley and they sued, among other parties, the Fashion District BID based on the BID’s representation that their role and mission was to keep their district safe and clean. They also sued the City of LA, Universal Protection Service, and the LAPD.
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Lawsuits, Public Records Act Pragmatics

LAPD Senior Systems Analyst’s Declaration in LACW Lawsuit Provides Further Insight into LAPD’s Secretive and Cavalier Attitude Towards Public Records, Legal Obligations

December 13, 2015 Mike Leave a comment

A house of secrets: LAPD headquarters at night.

Papers newly filed in federal court reveal an astonishing unwillingness on the part of the City of Los Angeles and the LAPD to release public records and other documents to the plaintiffs in the Los Angeles Catholic Worker and LA Community Action Network lawsuit. A few days ago I wrote about these filings in general and today I’m going to discuss some specific details about the City’s claims regarding the LAPD’s email system and how, they say, it’s preventing them from complying with the discovery process in the suit. This topic is, of necessity, mostly inside baseball both legally and technologically, and maybe you want to skip it if that bores you. If so, the TL;DR is that the LAPD contradicts itself constantly about the availability of its emails for legal discovery, and the LAPD only looks even more furtive when facts related to Public Records Act requests are considered. All four of the documents I discuss below were extracted from Part 2 of Catherine Sweetser’s declaration, filed with the court on December 8, 2015.
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Downtown Center BID

You Know those Millions of Pages of Frenzied-Zillionaire-Elite-Police-Industrial-Complex-Pearl-Clutching-Hysterical-Media-Manipulation over Prop 47? Watch Carol Schatz Distill it all into 15-ish Short, Cynical Words

November 25, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Carol Schatz in 2009 looking, as cynics habitually have done throughout the ages, down to the gutter rather than up to the stars.

Sixty percent of comatose Californians and virtually one hundred percent of the non-comatose are aware that last year’s Proposition 47 is causing massive freakouts amongst California’s cops, the zillionaire elite who rely on those cops to stave off the slavering locustoid hordes of marauding homeless people who inhabit their fevered imaginations, and the zillionaire elite’s hired flunkies, among whom are to be found the staffs of the Business Improvement Districts of Los Angeles. If you haven’t heard about this kerfluffle, the Los Angeles Times has helpfully run about nine zillion op-eds covering every sane point of view on the issue and most of the more popular less-than-sane ones. The gist of it is that in November 2014, about 20 minutes after the election results were in, the cops of California pitched a toys-out-of-pram tantrum and essentially stopped arresting anyone for anything and everyone, including all BID-associated people everywhere, started blaming the proposition for every crime committed anywhere in the state along with petty thefts and suspicious fires, broken windows, pissed-in gutters, aggressive panhandling, open bottles of cheap vodka, and probably the disappearance of freaking Amelia Earhart.

Amelia Earhart, mere moments before Proposition 47 reached back in time, grabbed her right out of her airplane, and made her vanish into thin air, never to be seen again, just like it's doing to our quality of life right here in sunny Los Angeles. Curse you, bleeding-hearted liberals! — Amelia Earhart, mere moments before Proposition 47 reached back in time, grabbed her right out of her airplane, and made her vanish into thin air, never to be seen again, just like it’s doing to our quality of life right here in sunny Los Angeles. Curse you, bleeding-hearted liberals!

We haven’t gone out of our way to report to any great extent on this BIDiabolical whining because there’s just so much of it, it’s so freaking repetitive, and, anyway, who has the time? However, our faithful correspondent assures us that nary an HPOA Joint Security Committee meeting he’s attended in 2015 has gone by without someone mentioning it, and the same goes for other HPOA/CHC meetings. Kerry Morrison even once admitted on camera that she’d voted for it but now she regretted it. In any case, Carol Schatz has unexpectedly provided us with such a distilled, such a quintessential, such a blatantly, screechingly, cynical example of the genre that we finally felt moved to address the subject. Everything we’re quoting here comes from this email chain, which is one of the many recently obtained for us via the California Public Records Act. And the details, as they will do, follow after the break.
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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Garcetti Aide Alisa Orduna at the SVBID Part 1, in which she Admits that Announced $100,000,000 for Homelessness Isn’t Real Money, State of Emergency Declaration will Ease Real-Estate Development for Zillionaires, Fund iPads for the BID Patrol

November 14, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Alisa Orduna free-associating unintelligibly on Tuesday, November 10, 2015, at the Sunset-Vine BID Board meeting.

Well, our faithful correspondent hasn’t had time to attend a BID meeting in a while, but he made it to the SVBID Board Meeting on Tuesday, November 10, over at the Hollywood YMCA (right across the street from the famed Selma Park). And what a witches brew of craziness he witnessed over there! They had brand-new Eric Garcetti aide Alisa Orduna there to talk to them about the mayor’s declaration of a state of emergency about homelessness. And can she ever talk. Does she make sense? Some of the time.¹ But, as Sigmund Freud taught the world, even in incomprehensible free-associationalism, truth can be found by those who take the time to look. And it does take time. We were planning to cover Alisa’s entire 40-ish minute thing in one post, but after spending two days transcribing just the first 12 minutes, we found that our sanity requires us to lay it on you in increments. You can watch here and, as always, there’s a transcription of the whole thing after the break for context (for some reason these links to YouTube into the middle of videos don’t seem to work well in Firefox. If you get an error, try Chrome).

Thus spake Alisa Orduna: So with all of that said, on September 22nd, Mayor Garcetti along with City Council made an announcement declaring an emergency. And there was a commitment of a hundred million dollars in resources to finally address homelessness. And, looking at it since that time, what does that really mean?

And later she said: So the hundred million was an announcement, and that was just a commitment, so that was just kinda throwing a benchmark out there and saying how are we gonna rise to the occasion?

And then Fabio Conti proclaimed: Did anybody think, oh a hundred million! That’s [unintelligible]. There’s no hundred million.

And she replied: It’s kind of [unintelligible] is standing by that commitment, so everyone is looking for it.

No one had the hundred million, but don’t worry, it shows we take it seriously and also don’t worry, we’re all out looking for the money! So we guess this was known, kind of. We guess there’s not really a revelation here. The New York Times quoted Herb Wesson at the time of the declaration as saying “The $100 million figure was chosen in part for its symbolism, said Herb J. Wesson Jr., the City Council president, to show county, state and federal officials that the city was willing to make a significant contribution to an urgent problem.” Now we find out from Alisa that actually it was chosen not just in part for its symbolism, but it was entirely symbolic. We wondering if she’s talking out of school, being new and maybe not entirely broken to the plow. Time will tell, we suppose. Read on for the rest of the news. And iPads! When will the city learn that iPads are not only going to solve problems, they’re likely to lead to FBI raids on public buildings and speculation about indictments?
Continue reading Garcetti Aide Alisa Orduna at the SVBID Part 1, in which she Admits that Announced $100,000,000 for Homelessness Isn’t Real Money, State of Emergency Declaration will Ease Real-Estate Development for Zillionaires, Fund iPads for the BID Patrol →

Downtown Center BID

The Discreet Fascism of the Bourgeoisie, DTLA Edition: Featuring DCBID and CCA Führerin Carol Schatz and LAPD Kahuna Charlie Beck Sticking His Tongue Someplace Where, in a Free Society, it Don’t Belong

November 7, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Carol Schatz talking authoritatively at some point in time about some topic from some location for some reason, her pearls at the ready in case they need clutching.

Amongst the vast array of documents sent over yesterday by our faithful correspondent, we found a few revealing, upsetting, disgusting little servings of reprehensibility in the Board of Directors Minutes.

We’ll write about most of them later, but for today, consider the minutes of March 4, 2015. In fact, look on page 3, where we find some jive-ass nonsense labeled “President’s Report.” The President is DCBID and Central City Association Führerin Carol Schatz. The first section of her report is labeled “On the CCA Side.” CCA, of course, is the Central City Association, a private group which claims explicitly that the “work we do lobbying government and advancing policy is shaping the future of Los Angeles business.” That’s not something BIDs are allowed to be involved with, and yet, here they are, being involved with it. Fascism, as we’ve stated repeatedly, thrives on this kind of blurring-of-the-lines between private groups like the CCA and public city agencies¹ like the BIDs. BIDs aren’t allowed to lobby on matters that don’t affect stuff within their boundaries. But that’s an argument for another day. Let’s look at what Carol had to say:

Charlie Beck talking authoritatively at some point in time about some topic from some location for some reason, his sidearm at the ready in case it need brandishing.

Carol had a meeting with Chief Charlie Beck and other BIDS regarding street vending and increase in crime Downtown. The biggest concern is that legalizing street vending will result in streets becoming uncontrollable. The fashion district is a prime example of the effects of street vending. These street vendors are being referred to as micro-entrepreneurs.Chief Beck advised that he would speak to Councilmember Price and Wesson to make it clear that he does not have the resources to manage street vending and it will be very damaging to what has been accomplished in Downtown.

See the problem? Read on!
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