Tag Archives: Lizabeth Rhodes

Los Angeles Police Department Inspector General Mark Smith Is Supposed To Investigate LAPD To See That They Comply With The Law — Which Is Pretty Hypocritical Since His Office Intentionally And Egregiously Violates The California Public Records Act — Which Is A Violation Of Requesters’ Constitutional Rights — I Made A Request In September 2020 — His Staffer Julie Buchwald Had The Records Ready By October 2020 — She Messed Around And Didn’t Produce The Records Until April 16 2021 — If Smith Doesn’t Know That Buchwald Is A Liar And An Outlaw Then He’s Incompetent — If He Does Know He’s A Co-Conspirator — Either Way He Has No Business Whatsoever Overseeing Anything Related To Obeying The Law — Especially The Police — He Is A Hypocrite And Ought To Resign Immediately — He Probably Exonerates Every Cop He Investigates To Sooth His Conscience Over His Own Lawbreaking — Even Cops Ought To Refuse To Be Overseen By This Guy — Who At This Point Has Zero Credibility — Did I Mention He Ought To Resign?

May 4, 2021 Mike Leave a comment

On September 20, 2020, I sent a request for some old reports to Mark Smith, the Inspector General of the Los Angeles Police Department. On April 16, 2021 Smith produced the responsive records. This is the story of what happened in the seven months between the request and the production!¹

On September 22, 2020, just two days after receiving my request, Police Commission Executive Director Richard Tefank emailed Deputy City Attorney Soraya Kelly who, along with Carlos De La Guerra, staffs CPRA requests for the Commission and the OIG. He wanted legal advice, and he had some very … colorful … ideas about my work:²

Good Morning Again Soraya,
So now I receive this email from [Kohlhaas]. 
 From what he is doing to my office and the OIG I feel this guy is harassing us via CPRA requests.  Is there any action that can be taken.  Quite frankly I don’t have the time for these games.
Richard

It’s clear from this that Tefank and Mark Smith had been talking, and they weren’t happy with me! Their default attitude towards people who expect them to follow the law they voluntarily made themselves subject to is that they’re being harassed. Meanwhile, on September 29, 2020, precisely when required to do so by law, Smith sent me a letter claiming a 14 day extension to respond, in which he stated that he would in fact respond by October 13, 2020.³

And Tefank’s anxiety about my requests got worse! Just three days after Smith sent me that extension letter Tefank sent a heartbreakingly plaintive email to Smith,⁴ LAPD Constitutional Cop⁵ Lizabeth Rhodes, CPRA cops Bryan Lium and Marla Ciuffetelli, and a bunch of deputy city attorneys, including Soraya Kelly, Julie Raffish, Debra Gonzalez, and Carlos de la Guerra:
Continue reading Los Angeles Police Department Inspector General Mark Smith Is Supposed To Investigate LAPD To See That They Comply With The Law — Which Is Pretty Hypocritical Since His Office Intentionally And Egregiously Violates The California Public Records Act — Which Is A Violation Of Requesters’ Constitutional Rights — I Made A Request In September 2020 — His Staffer Julie Buchwald Had The Records Ready By October 2020 — She Messed Around And Didn’t Produce The Records Until April 16 2021 — If Smith Doesn’t Know That Buchwald Is A Liar And An Outlaw Then He’s Incompetent — If He Does Know He’s A Co-Conspirator — Either Way He Has No Business Whatsoever Overseeing Anything Related To Obeying The Law — Especially The Police — He Is A Hypocrite And Ought To Resign Immediately — He Probably Exonerates Every Cop He Investigates To Sooth His Conscience Over His Own Lawbreaking — Even Cops Ought To Refuse To Be Overseen By This Guy — Who At This Point Has Zero Credibility — Did I Mention He Ought To Resign? →

LAPD

Are You Reimagining Public Safety? — Well The Cops Are Too — And They Have Some Very Active Imaginations! — Get Every City Employee A Concealed Carry Permit! — So Strefan Fauble Can Take A Shot At You If You Get Off Topic — Or Joey Buckets Plinking Out Lights In The John Ferraro Council Chambers — Developer Doesn’t Pay Bribes On Time? — Blammo!!! — And Cameras At Every Major Intersection! — And Hire Better Lawyers To Defend Killer Cops Because We Keep Losing! — And Stop Calling Us Killer Cops! — Cause It Hurts Us In The Feelz! — Let’s Stop Protecting The Mayor! — And So On!!

February 25, 2021 Mike Leave a comment

Ever wonder how LAPD Officers might reimagine public safety? Well, wonder no longer. Behold the absolutely freaking bonkers results of a survey they did this Summer asking that very question! And right at the top it says that a bunch of suggestions they got were illegal, so they omitted them, leading Police Commissioner Dale Bonner asked his staff what those omitted illegal suggestions might have been.

This, in turn, led notorious criminal lawyer Lizabeth Rhodes to write to him a whole-ass memorandum explaining how criminal cops want to reimagine public safety by arming the City Council and other equally bonkers ideas. The most bonkers of a thoroughly bonkers bunch. This form of reimagining public safety is a stone cold bonkers paradigm shift.

Just for instance, your LAPD officers want to reenvision your public safety by Start with allowing City employees to apply for CCW permits. Can you even imagine? Public comment is hard enough in Los Angeles without having to worry about Joey Buckets shooting you because he doesn’t care for your attitude. Other stunners are:
Continue reading Are You Reimagining Public Safety? — Well The Cops Are Too — And They Have Some Very Active Imaginations! — Get Every City Employee A Concealed Carry Permit! — So Strefan Fauble Can Take A Shot At You If You Get Off Topic — Or Joey Buckets Plinking Out Lights In The John Ferraro Council Chambers — Developer Doesn’t Pay Bribes On Time? — Blammo!!! — And Cameras At Every Major Intersection! — And Hire Better Lawyers To Defend Killer Cops Because We Keep Losing! — And Stop Calling Us Killer Cops! — Cause It Hurts Us In The Feelz! — Let’s Stop Protecting The Mayor! — And So On!! →

LAPD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

November 2020 — LAPD Constitutional Policing Boss Lizabeth Rhodes Wrote A Top Secret Memo To Police Commission Boss Richard Tefank About Public Records Requests From Stop LAPD Spying — I Have A Copy Of The Top Secret Memo For You! — And Also It’s So Full Of Bullshit And Lies That It Amounts To A Violation Of LAMC 49.5.5 — Which Is Why This Morning I Reported Rhodes And Her Co-Conspirators Marla Ciuffetelli And Bryan Lium To The Ethics Commission — And Here Is A Copy Of The 118 Page Report For You Also!

February 4, 2021 Mike Leave a comment

This post is about a confidential memorandum from LAPD Constitutional Policing director Lizabeth Rhodes to Police Commission ED Richard Tefank about a request made by Hamid Khan of Stop LAPD Spying under the California Public Records Act. It’s also about a series of violations of LAMC 49.5.5 by Rhodes and LAPD officers Marla Ciuffetelli and Bryan Lium based on their biased handling of various requests for records and a complaint against all three of them that I filed this morning with the Los Angeles Ethics Commission. If you don’t want to read the whole thing here are the two main documents involved:

🙨 Lizabeth Rhodes’s confidential memorandum

🙨 Complaint against Rhodes, Ciuffetelli, and Lium

The Los Angeles Police Department has something called the Office of Constitutional Policing and Policy. It sounds like pernicious crapola and pernicious crapola is precisely what it is. Forced upon LAPD by the 2000 consent decree, over the years the cops have used their cop superpowers to thoroughly weaponize OCPP against the people of Los Angeles. Just for instance, let’s talk about about Hamid Khan of Stop LAPD Spying, about the California Public Records Act, about a letter Khan sent to the Police Commission in August 2020 about LAPD’s refusal to comply with the law, and about Lizabeth Rhodes, the hard-nosed criminal lawyer in charge of OCPP.⁶

In September 2019 Khan filed a CPRA request with LAPD. LAPD, of course, will not comply with the CPRA⁷ at all, and they especially won’t comply for the likes of Khan. Khan wrote to the Police Commission about it on August 31, 2020 and then complained in person during public comment on October 6, 2020. Khan’s remarks apparently prompted Commissioner Dale Bonner to wonder if maybe, just maybe, there might be some substance to his complaint. Consequently criminal lawyer Rhodes wrote a top-secret highly confidential memorandum, which I just happen to have an actual copy of, to Commission Executive Director Richard Tefank.

This remarkable document is packed with lies and bullshit to a degree hitherto unseen even from the LAPD, an organization which has been growing fat on lies and bullshit for well over a century. It is worth discussing in great detail. Before I do that, though, don’t forget about LAPD officer Marla Ciuffetelli, who runs the CPRA unit, and who violates LAMC 49.5.5 by prioritizing CPRA requests from some reporters and absolutely obstructing requests from other reporters. Also don’t forget about Bryan Lium, Ciuffetelli’s boss, who violates LAMC 49.5.5 in exactly the same way.

Rhodes’s memorandum also violates LAMC 49.5.5, so this morning I filed a complaint against all three of these thuggish scofflaws with the City Ethics Commission, and if anything comes of it I will certainly let you know! Meanwhile, read on for a detailed discussion of Rhodes’s dishonest nonsense! Presented as a dramatic dialogue no less!!
Continue reading November 2020 — LAPD Constitutional Policing Boss Lizabeth Rhodes Wrote A Top Secret Memo To Police Commission Boss Richard Tefank About Public Records Requests From Stop LAPD Spying — I Have A Copy Of The Top Secret Memo For You! — And Also It’s So Full Of Bullshit And Lies That It Amounts To A Violation Of LAMC 49.5.5 — Which Is Why This Morning I Reported Rhodes And Her Co-Conspirators Marla Ciuffetelli And Bryan Lium To The Ethics Commission — And Here Is A Copy Of The 118 Page Report For You Also! →

LAPD

The Los Angeles Police Commission Asked The National Police Foundation To Write An “After Action Report” On Police Responses To George Floyd Protests Between May 27 and June 10 — The NPF Asked LAPD For A Huge Amount Of Evidence — Including Surveillance And Bodycam Video — Training Records For Every Cop Involved — Training Curriculums For Relevant Courses — Mental Health Referrals (Of Police) And So On — In Fact I Have A Copy Of NPF’s Initial Requests — Four Pages Of Requests — And Inspector General Mark Smith Sent NPF A Long List Of Activist Social Posts About LAPD — And I Have Live Links To All Of Them As Well! — Including For Some Reason A Link To This Blog!

November 24, 2020 Mike Leave a comment

On May 25, 2020 Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd and the United States, including the City of Los Angeles, erupted in massive protests. And police around the country, including right here in the City of Los Angeles, responded with disproportionate aggression and overwhelming violence against the protesters. In the wake of that first wave of protests and nearly universal criticism of their response, the LAPD opened over 50 internal investigations against officers for brutality.⁸

And the Los Angeles Police Commission, nominally an independent oversight body,⁹ arranged for the National Police Foundation to conduct a putatively independent report on the matter. It’s doubtful that this report will do anything more than evoke the famous “Few Bad Apples” theory to justify maybe tossing a few cops under the bus while vigorously reaffirming the structural and institutional soundness of the LAPD. The NPF is far too compromised to expect much else.

So I’m predicting that the report, when it finally comes out, will be tedious and fundamentally dishonest. But none of that means that the report creation process isn’t interesting. In fact it’s very interesting, as I learned recently when I obtained a few records relating to the process. These documents have to do with evidence requested by the NPF from both LAPD and the Police Commission, and they’re interesting to me for at least two reasons.

First, the fact that Mark Smith, the Inspector General, gave the NPF a huge list of social media posts about the protests¹⁰ and told Richard Tefank, the Executive Director of the Police Commission, in an email that the OIG staff had collected them.¹¹ Wondering if the cops are reading your tweets? Not only are they, but they’re quite likely handing them over as evidence! Smith even sent the NPF a 2016 blog post of mine about Cory Palka.¹² Also I made an html version of Smith’s links for maximum clickability and it’s at the end of this post.

And second, there’s the sheer bulk of the material the NPF requested and the sheer promptness with which LAPD handed it over. See this August 27, 2020 memo from the NPF to LAPD and Tefank consisting of four pages of detailed requests for evidence. The version I obtained was marked up in red and blue by Lizabeth Rhodes, director of LAPD’s Office of Constitutional Policing, with the Bates Stamp numbers of all the material they’d already produced as of September 17, just three weeks after the request.
Continue reading The Los Angeles Police Commission Asked The National Police Foundation To Write An “After Action Report” On Police Responses To George Floyd Protests Between May 27 and June 10 — The NPF Asked LAPD For A Huge Amount Of Evidence — Including Surveillance And Bodycam Video — Training Records For Every Cop Involved — Training Curriculums For Relevant Courses — Mental Health Referrals (Of Police) And So On — In Fact I Have A Copy Of NPF’s Initial Requests — Four Pages Of Requests — And Inspector General Mark Smith Sent NPF A Long List Of Activist Social Posts About LAPD — And I Have Live Links To All Of Them As Well! — Including For Some Reason A Link To This Blog! →