Tag Archives: Producers’ Center

Newly Obtained Media District Security Logs Show Anti-Food-Coalition Hysteria To Be Even More Utterly Unfounded Than Previously Suspected

A 2014 surveillance photo of the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition feeding at Sycamore and Romaine.
A 2014 surveillance photo of the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition feeding at Sycamore and Romaine.
I recently obtained about 140 hand-written daily logs prepared by the Hollywood Media District BID’s security guards. These are also available via Archive.Org, which has the advantage that the whole set can be downloaded using BitTorrent. The set is not complete, and it mostly comprises swing shift logs, but I didn’t select these at all. I just scanned them in the order in which they were provided to me.

It’s been known for a while now that Universal Protection Service has carried out a years-long surveillance operation against the Media District’s perennial bĂȘte noire, the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition, looking for any evidence whatsoever to use in the NIMBY neighbors, the City government, and the BID’s crazed campaign against them, their byzantine conspiracies with the LAPD and others in City Government, their allies’ unavailing 2011 lawsuit against the Food Coalition, and so on. These logs are interesting because they expose some contextually surprising results of this surveillance, namely that the intersection of Sycamore and Romaine seems to be the safest area in the entire Media District BID. Despite the intense, hours-long nightly surveillance, nothing illegal ever seems to happen there. Some samples follow. Note that these are also unselected. They comprise all swing shift logs from February 2016 that mention the Coalition’s food truck at all. They’re representative, too, in the sense that the pattern holds across all the logs I looked at:
Continue reading Newly Obtained Media District Security Logs Show Anti-Food-Coalition Hysteria To Be Even More Utterly Unfounded Than Previously Suspected

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Lots of Documents, and Not of the Usual Sort!

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.
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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Property Owner and Unwilling Media District BID Member Toni Werk Wonders Where Her $12,000 Went. We Have the Answer!

Media District BID property owner Toni Werk's parcel at 6065 Melrose Avenue. She's paid over $12,000 into the BID for this piece of land. Where has it all gone? (Image via Google Street View).
On October 7, 2014, Hollywood Media District BID property owner Toni Werk wrote to Jim Omahen, HMD operations director, about her parcel at 6065 Melrose Avenue. The gist of her complaint is this:

For the more than $12,000 that I have contributed to the BID, I, or my tenant, have not received one word of promotion in your newsletter. During business hours, my tenant says he has seen your bike patrol only a few times. And during after hours, there is no one staying on our property to phone your Security Patrol if there is an issue. As I originally did not want to participate in the bid [
sic], and I voted no against it again, I have been forced to pay a tax that has not been any benefit to me or my tenant.

Indefatigably feckless dudebro Steven Whiddon running over that long list of MBA jargon in his mind, because it WILL be on the test!
Indefatigably feckless dudebro Steven Whiddon running over that long list of MBA jargon in his mind, because it WILL be on the test!
Jim, rightfully, forwarded this complaint on to his boss, the jolly but rather knuckle-headed Steven Whiddon, who replied, in characteristically evasive1 fashion, replied:

I am happy to report that Captain John Iragoyan [
sic] and myself [sic] completed a site visit of your property 6065 Melrose Avenue. We spoke with your leasee, [sic] Tom Pena about the issues you stated in the email below. We made sure he understands we are here to serve and has all of our contact information. He understands that he can contact us at any time to assist with the issues below. …

Thank you again for reaching out to us.2

Notice how Steven doesn’t mention the money at all. Read on to see just where DID that $12,000 go…
Continue reading Property Owner and Unwilling Media District BID Member Toni Werk Wonders Where Her $12,000 Went. We Have the Answer!

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