Tag Archives: Monica Yamada

The Homeless Industrial Complex: How CIM Group, Monica Yamada, Kerry Morrison, Steve Seyler, And Their Assorted Minions And Cronies Eat What They Kill In Hollywood And Beyond

Monica Yamada, president of the HPOA and principal of the organized criminal conspiracy known as the CIM Group, plotting with unindicted co-conspirators late last week.
Monica Yamada, president of the HPOA and principal of the organized criminal conspiracy known as the CIM Group, plotting with unindicted co-conspirators late last week.
This morning’s L.A. Times features an excellent story about how CIM Group defrauds its tenants in poverty-stricken but gentrifying areas of the City, telling them that they’re about to be evicted and offering them small amounts of money to sign releases. Of course, in Los Angeles, most low-cost rental units are covered by rent control laws which give these tenants significant protections which they don’t know about. CIM Group takes significant and soon-to-be-illegal advantage of this ignorance.

CIM Group is famous for its criminal behavior, which has shown no sign of slowing down.1 This latest revelation won’t surprise anyone who’s paying attention. And remember that gentrification creates homelessness, and evictions create homelessness. In short, CIM Group creates homelessness. Monica Yamada creates homelessness. And they make a lot of money by making people homeless.

But these homeless people don’t go to waste, no. Some of them end up in Hollywood, where they generate a great deal of economic activity. They don’t share in the wealth they create, but that’s no surprise. First, they end up as the the subject of arrests and other interventions by Steve Seyler and his cheerful gang of good-will ambassadors. Those boys2 earn $1.5 million per year dealing with these homeless people. No homeless people, no $1.5 million.
Continue reading The Homeless Industrial Complex: How CIM Group, Monica Yamada, Kerry Morrison, Steve Seyler, And Their Assorted Minions And Cronies Eat What They Kill In Hollywood And Beyond

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LAPD Asks HPOA to Arrange for Late-Night BID Patrol Hours, HPOA Agrees to Pilot Program; Mitch O’Farrell Said to be Eager to Pay Costs. Also, Plans to Deputize BID Patrol May be in Works

Peter Zarcone at the February 18, 2016 meeting of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Board of Directors meeting.
Peter Zarcone at the February 18, 2016 meeting of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Board of Directors meeting.
On Thursday, February 18, 2016, the Board of Directors of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance met. The main topic of conversation was a request from LAPD Captain Peter Zarcone, commanding officer of Hollywood Station, to the BID to arrange for the BID Patrol to work until 4 a.m.1 The idea seems to be that this would relieve the LAPD somewhat. The HPOA has been in conversation with Mitch O’Farrell, who is said to be eager to pay for some or all of this project out of his discretionary funds. There was also a brief mention of plans to deputize the BID Patrol so that they would be able to issue citations. I will be writing much more about this, but I wanted to get it up here soonest, since it ended up taking far longer than I expected to transcribe the discussion, which went on for over forty minutes. You can see the first part beginning here, and it’s continued in the second part here. Transcription after the break.
Continue reading LAPD Asks HPOA to Arrange for Late-Night BID Patrol Hours, HPOA Agrees to Pilot Program; Mitch O’Farrell Said to be Eager to Pay Costs. Also, Plans to Deputize BID Patrol May be in Works

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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

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

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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”

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.
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”

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Rogue Real Estate Zillionaires CIM Group Continue Rampaging Hollywood Crime Spree and Hypocritical Support for Continued Incarceration of Homeless

First page of Order to Comply posted in the window of the CiM Group crime scene at Sunset and Gordon.  The second page is available here.
First page of Order to Comply posted in the window of the CiM Group crime scene at Sunset and Gordon describing their rabid outlawry, scofflaw shenanigans, and general contempt for the rule of law. The second page is available here.
We’ve written before about the rogue real estate zillionaires CIM Group and their scofflaw shenanigans, from infiltrating their Brown-Act-flouting minion Monica Yamada onto the BIDs’ Joint Security Committee to their bribery, permit-condition-ignoring, and general villainy. They are lately, of course, famous for having so egregiously ignored the terms of a deal with the City over their building at Sunset and Gordon that a judge voided their permits and told them to evict all their tenants.

And just now, on April 3, 2015, the LA Board of Building and Safety Commissioners slapped an “ORDER TO COMPLY” on the window of the Sunset/Gordon building which states:

An investigation of various complaints received by the Department has revealed that the subject apartment building is being used as a hotel without the required permits and Certificate of Occupancy.

Therefore, you are hereby ordered to stop the unapproved use and occupancy as a hotel on or before April 10, 2015.

So it’s illegal, but they’re still renting it out as a hotel. First we gotta wonder how would they be doing that? There’s no sign on the building. Find out after the break!
Continue reading Rogue Real Estate Zillionaires CIM Group Continue Rampaging Hollywood Crime Spree and Hypocritical Support for Continued Incarceration of Homeless

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Kerry Morrison’s Cogent Argument Against Legal Street Vending Supports Outlawing Hollywood Real Estate Super-Villians CIM Group, Employer of HPOA President Monica Yamada

As we’ve previously discussed at great length, the palefaced economic elites of Los Angeles are all abuzz at the possibility that the City Council might legalize street vending of various kinds, an activity whose practitioners are, for the most part, not that palefaced. As part of their abuzzitude, the palefaces have produced reams of frantic pearl-clutching hysteria regarding the threats posed to truth, justice, the American way, etc. that would, they say, certainly ensue as a result of such legalization.

These white-privilege rage-rants, while mostly grounded in delusion and mental illness, occasionally contain valid and useful arguments. It can sometimes happen, as Albert Einstein said, that “a blind pig has found an acorn.”1 A letter by Kerry Morrison, Executive Directrix of the HPOA, to Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, is an example of this. Kerry argues that, amongst other reasons, street vending should not be legalized, at least not in Hollywood, because it “raises numerous questions that must be taken into consideration. For example, how will taxes and permits be enforced, especially given that this is a cash-only business?2

Typical cash-only business in Los Angeles, beloved of the human residents but hated by the HPOA because of the difficulty of enforcing "taxes and permits."  This one's owned by an extraordinarily wealthy former mayor of Los Angeles, who evidently didn't get the memo about how his business practices are RUINING EVERYTHING!!
Typical cash-only business in Los Angeles, beloved of the human residents but hated by the HPOA because of the difficulty of enforcing “taxes and permits.” This one’s owned by an extraordinarily wealthy former mayor of Los Angeles, who evidently didn’t get the memo about how his business practices are RUINING EVERYTHING!!
As an aside, this argument can also be used against iconic Los Angeles restaurants The Pantry, Nick’s Cafe, and Philippe’s. Will the HPOA soon be asking the City Council to shut down these landmark establishments?

In any case, Kerry also lists a bunch of other undesirable consequences that, in her view, are likely to ensue from the legalization of street vending. These are not all illegal, e.g. the horrifying prospect of the potential placing of trash into appropriate public receptacles, but they’re all, says Kerry, “not something we are requesting in Hollywood.” We will refer to these en masse as “Kerry Morrison’s cogent argument.”

In our previous post on this subject we mentioned that the city of Los Angeles has had some problems with the enforcement of “taxes and permits” regarding CIM Group, a real-estate investment conspiracy run by rich white people. There we discussed the whole John Noguez scandal and hinted at the difficulty of enforcing building permit terms and conditions against CIM. Subsequently we decided to do some further research on the subject, the fruits of which are the subject of today’s post.
Continue reading Kerry Morrison’s Cogent Argument Against Legal Street Vending Supports Outlawing Hollywood Real Estate Super-Villians CIM Group, Employer of HPOA President Monica Yamada

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Kerry Morrison: Hollywood Businesses too Feeble to Survive Free Market Without Municipally Enforced Draconian Anticompetitive Pinko Racist Regulatory Capture

Street vendor in Manhattan destroying the prosperity of the city, laying waste to the comfort and privilege of rich white people, and generally ruining EVERYTHING!!
Street vendor in Manhattan destroying the prosperity of the city, laying waste to the comfort and privilege of rich white people, and generally ruining EVERYTHING! And now the city of Los Angeles intends to forcibly convert Hollywood into a cultural and economic wasteland like New York City by allowing such miscreants to operate with impunity on our streets. “Not on our watch,” say BIDs.
Street food is one of the signature pleasures of the great cosmopolitan cities of the world. Practically alone amongst its peers, though, Los Angeles forbids vending on its public rights of way. This is because there are really no bounds to the willingness of the economic elites of this city to prohibit anything that normal human beings enjoy if by doing so they can stick a dagger in the neck of the poor. They will certainly destroy the village in order to save it.
Hollywood BIDs destroying the city of Los Angeles in order to save it from its own misguided sense of sanity
Representative of the Hollywood BIDs metaphorically destroying the city of Los Angeles in order to save it from perceived (albeit delusionally) unintended consequences of an all-too-rare outburst of sanity with regard to its street-vending policy.
Case in point: the City Council recently began to discuss legalizing street vending in Los Angeles. Sane people everywhere rejoice at this attempt to allow civilization to flourish and also bring an estimated half-billion dollars worth of economic activity out of the shadows and onto the bottom line. There’s a hot dog in the public manger, though.

The BIDs and their minions have leapt into coordinated action! They are in a cyclonic tizzy, explaining fast and loud how the unintended consequences of the sane and harmless choice to legalize street vending will ruin everything. It will e.g. impoverish small businesses, encourage crime, cause the unauthorized commercial use of public trash cans, cause the unauthorized non-use of public trash cans, provide increased funding to criminal street gangs, encourage armed robbery, cause diseases, and even more stuff too weird to list here. Think we’re exaggerating? Read on!
Continue reading Kerry Morrison: Hollywood Businesses too Feeble to Survive Free Market Without Municipally Enforced Draconian Anticompetitive Pinko Racist Regulatory Capture

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In Characteristically Cynical Move, Corporate Scofflaw CIM Group Infiltrates Minion Monica Yamada Onto BID Security Committee

Monica Yamada, minion of corporate scofflaw CIM Group, reports to HPOA on continuing efforts to criminalize all aspects of lives of non-rich people
Monica Yamada, minion of corporate scofflaw CIM Group, reports to HPOA on continuing efforts to criminalize all aspects of the lives of non-rich people
CIM Group, widely known for sending out demolition teams in the dark of night to tear shit down in violation of their building permits,1 leading a judge to invalidate those permits after tenants had already moved in to the building, deputes minion Monica Yamada to serve as its representative to the Joint Security Committee of the Hollywood Entertainment District BID and the Sunset-Vine BID.

The purpose of the Joint Security Committee is, we suppose, to oversee the operations of Andrews International Security, with whom the BIDs contract to provide patrol services. The mission the BIDs have given to A/I2 is explained in the 2014-15-WORK-PLAN-FINAL-VERSION1-1:
Continue reading In Characteristically Cynical Move, Corporate Scofflaw CIM Group Infiltrates Minion Monica Yamada Onto BID Security Committee

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Monica Yamada and the Hollywood Vicinage

We ♥ James Madison!
We James Madison!
The 6th amendment guarantees the right to “by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.” This was the result of a compromise away from a right to trial in “the vicinage” where the crime was committed, fought for by James Madison but ultimately compromised in order to allow the constitution to be ratified.
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Clips from the October 16, 2014 Meeting of the HPOA

Monica Yamada
Monica Yamada
The HPOA is the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance. It seems to be an umbrella organization which controls the Sunset-Vine BID and the Hollywood Entertainment District BID. Here is the full 56+ minute video of their October 16, 2014 meeting and here are a few clips of interest:
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