Tag Archives: Rick Caruso

This Is What Domestic Surveillance Looks Like In Los Angeles In The 21st Century: Muslims Lawfully Distribute Pamphlets, Private Security Guards Call The Cops, Cops Read Pamphlets, Pronounce Them Reputable And Acceptably Anti-Terror, Make Report To So-Called Major Crimes Unit Anyway

April 2, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

The other day the LAPD provided me with a massive release of emails between various Hollywood Boss Cops and CIM Group and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. There’s a lot of stuff, and I haven’t read all of it carefully yet,¹ but a couple items stood out for sheer disconcertion.

In short, the story started with private security guards at a Rick Caruso hypermall in Glendale flipping out because someone was taking pictures and not shopping, escalated to an attempt to get the Glendale PD to stop the guy and identify him, and ended up in Hollywood with then Hollywood Station Boss Commander Peter Zarcone reading through legally distributed pamphlets, deciding that they were acceptably critical of bad Islamist stuff, and subsequently reporting the distributors, law-abiding Muslims from the Islamic Institute of Orange County, to the LAPD’s Major Crimes Division.

On the one hand, it’s absolutely ludicrous and surreally kooky that a few Muslims passing out literature on Hollywood Boulevard can lead the LAPD and a bunch of private security to generate dozens of emails at the highest levels, follow the Muslims around videotaping them and writing down their license plates, combing through their pamphlets, and so on. On the other hand, it’s absolutely chilling. That seems to be the world we’re living in, I guess. Surreally ludicrous, surreally chilling. As always, find details and documentation after the break.
Continue reading This Is What Domestic Surveillance Looks Like In Los Angeles In The 21st Century: Muslims Lawfully Distribute Pamphlets, Private Security Guards Call The Cops, Cops Read Pamphlets, Pronounce Them Reputable And Acceptably Anti-Terror, Make Report To So-Called Major Crimes Unit Anyway →

Business Improvement Districts, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Pacific Palisades BID Poised To Spend Almost 3% Of 2017 Assessments Fighting My CPRA Requests. Is This Really The Best Use Of Property Owner’s Money?? Also, Rick Lemmo’s Vow To Thwart Me By Proceeding “According To The Strictest Rules Of Law” May Reveal Hitherto Unsuspected Paradox In CPRA!!

March 13, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Another Rick in the wall, part 97: Rick Lemmo, who is Rick Caruso’s senior VP for some kind of nonsensical crap, explains the zillionaire’s view of law-abiding high finance.

For a brief moment this morning, I was worried that it’s a bad thing that my coverage of the Pacific Palisades BID, initiated mainly because of a confluence of my interest in CD11 and the fact that the criminal intransigence of Mike Bonin’s staff has made it essentially impossible for me to get records directly from them, is tending fairly unexpectedly towards the navel-gaze, self-reference, point-is-to-understand-the-world, nerdview rather than towards the outward-looking, the-point-is-to-change-it focus which is somewhat of an ideal around here. That anxiety took me about 35 seconds to get over, so we’re going meta again this morning sans apologia.²

In any case, whatever her manifold faults as a CPRA client may be, Laurie Sale, executive directrix of the Palisades BID, is at least a reliable source of minutes and agendas. You may recall that she was previously kind enough to send me the PPBID’s 2016 minutes and agendas, and this weekend she sent me the 2017 minutes and agendas through February. There’s some interesting stuff in there, primarily about street vending, which I will write on quite soon. The minutes also suggest that CD11 field deputy Sharon Shapiro³ is an actual member of the PPBID’s Board of Directors. I’ll be looking into this, not least because it’s reminiscent of Debbie Dyner Harris’s ill-fated attempt to nab a voting seat for CD11 on the Board of the Venice Beach Property Owners Association, which was slapped down ignominiously by City Attorney Mike Feuer as a conflict of interest.

But never mind that for now. The text for today’s sermon is this little slab of nonsense, found in the BID’s minutes for February 1, 2017:

BID received requests for public records – copies of meeting minutes, agenda, emails back and forth within the City, etc. from a gentleman who is requesting this from many BIDs. Elliot made a motion to retain attorney not to exceed $4,000. Rick seconded, all approved, motion carried. In the event that this person wants copies made, then we need to request payment. Rick motioned: “we don’t want to make it difficult for him, but to rather provide him every access to public records according to the strictest rules of law so that it doesn’t provide any financial detriment to the property owners of our business improvement district.” Susan seconded. Unanimously approved, motion carries.

Continue reading Pacific Palisades BID Poised To Spend Almost 3% Of 2017 Assessments Fighting My CPRA Requests. Is This Really The Best Use Of Property Owner’s Money?? Also, Rick Lemmo’s Vow To Thwart Me By Proceeding “According To The Strictest Rules Of Law” May Reveal Hitherto Unsuspected Paradox In CPRA!! →

Business Improvement Districts

Gang Members, Seeking Respite From The Seething Urban Hell That Is Present-Day Santa Monica, Pour Over Northern Border Into Pacific Palisades, Bringing Crime, Fear, Misery — LAPD Unleashes Helicopters Against Palisades Homeless — The Last Days Are At Hand! Build That Wall, Mr. Bonin!

January 25, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

You probably thought that this place was nothing more than a colony of self-satisfied zillionaires and their floofly little dogs, just strolling around on the bluffs in their $1,400 Jimmy Choos, but it turns out that it’s a seething urban hell, generating crime wave after crime wave in the Palisades. Build that wall, Mr. Bonin!

OK, remember after the Venice Beach BID was approved for the second time and Mike Bonin gave a meandering, semi-sensical, victory speech, pronouncing definitively that he

…acknowledge[d] that there have been issues and problems with BIDs in other areas. But there have also been BIDs that have been very successful and have been great partners in solving homelessness. In Pacific Palisades we have a BID that has actually worked with the Pacific Palisades Task Force on Homelessness and has helped get people housed.

Combine this statement, just begging to be fact-checked, with the fact that Mike Bonin’s weirdo staff is engaged in a criminal conspiracy to violate the California Public Records Act, thereby bringing the legally authorized investigations of brave citizen journalists into the shady shenanigans of CD11 to a grinding halt, and how could I resist asking Mike Bonin’s darling Pacific Palisades BID for a bunch of public records?

Well, last night, PPBID executive directrix Laurie Sale, in addition to coming at me all salty with a bunch of copypasta lawyerese about how she wasn’t handing over anything unless God and the FBI told her she had to,⁴ also provided me with a year’s worth of agendas and minutes from her according-to-Mike-Bonin-exemplary little BID out there to the northwest of reality in zillionaireville. Of course I put it up on Archive.Org immediately. And there’s some fine craziness in there, friends.

Greetings homeless neighbors! On behalf of the Palisades BID I would like to announce that we are from the LAPD and we are here to help the old amongst you, especially those whose health has deteriorated!

First of all, with respect to the homeless population of the Palisades, which according to Mike Bonin this BID’s handling of is a pattern of enlightened BIDolatry, take a look here at the Minutes from February 3, 2016, where we read, in the words of Laurie Sale her own self, that:

Older homeless are receptive to services as their health deteriorates. On the enforcement front, Michael Moore will be here soon to attest to the fact that they’ve gotten a lot more support from LAPD. Have provided more air support and foot support and they’ve mapped out all of the encampments. The signage has helped and allowed them to go in and get people off of the bluffs. Currently have a count of approximately eighty (80) homeless in the area but no market [sic] increase.

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