Tag Archives: Pretextual Arrests

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

Kerry Morrison’s Homeless “Buddy” and Star of her Upcoming “Documentary” Apparently Received Special Treatment at Hands of BID Patrol in 2008

June 18, 2016 Mike 2 Comments

This man, who is not Kerry Morrison's buddy and who's not starring in her documentary and who never took luncheon with her, was arrested 10 times and warned twice by the BID Patrol in 2008. — This man, who is not Kerry Morrison’s buddy and who’s not starring in her documentary and who never took luncheon with her, was arrested 10 times and warned twice by the BID Patrol in 2008.

You may have seen the news elsewhere that Kerry Morrison was granted a Stanton Fellowship by the Los-Angeles-based Durfee Foundation. I’ve refrained from writing about it here because it struck me as more of a private matter. However, in February Kerry Morrison sent an email to Dan Halden of CD13 with her application attached. This put it on the public record and made comments on it of public interest, and it turns out to shed a great deal of light on otherwise mysterious goings-on at the BID Patrol.

So here is a copy of Kerry Morrison’s Stanton Fellowship application. This is an exceedingly rich document, and you’re reading the first of what I expect to be many, many posts about it. It’s well worth the time it’ll take you to read the whole thing, though, because it’s even weirder than you’re thinking it might be.

This man, who is Kerry Morrison’s buddy and who is starring in her documentary and who did take luncheon with her, was arrested 4 times and warned innumerable times by the BID Patrol in 2008.

Anyway, in her application, as part of her plan to fix what she sees as flaws in the mental health care system vis-a-vis homelessness, she plans to:

Tell the story. I have been collecting photos, videos, notes from interviews and observations now dating back to 2008. With the permission of my three friends, and possibly other [sic], I see the potential to create a documentary that will weave the human story around the policy, systems and community cultural change necessary to embrace the needs of these individuals. Create a documentary to tell their story and show the before and after.

Her “three friends” are homeless men that she and her friends in business-oriented astroturf homeless services front group Hollywood 4WRD helped in various ways.¹ A careful analysis of the Andrews International BID Patrol 2008 arrest reports and the 2008 daily activity logs that at least one of these three, whom Kerry Morrison calls “my buddy,” was accorded a free pass by the BID Patrol, being given innumerable warnings for violations for which his peers who weren’t the object of Kerry Morrison’s special interest were routinely arrested.
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Hollywood BID Patrol

Hollywood BID Patrol Arrest Rate Continues to Plummet in 2016: by Week 12 there were 23% Fewer Arrests than in 2015 and more than 50% Fewer than in 2014

May 22, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Steve Seyler in 2014, one day before he told Kerry Morrison that he was going to "have the Officers slow down a little more..." The effects of that statement continue to be felt in Hollywood. — Steve Seyler in 2014, one day before he told Kerry Morrison that he was going to “have the Officers slow down a little more…” The effects of that statement continue to be felt in Hollywood.

Recall that the Andrews International Hollywood BID Patrol arrested more than 40% fewer people in 2015 than they did in 2014, and that this precipitous drop was almost certainly due to our scrutiny. Well, newly obtained figures show that as of Week 12 of 2016¹ the BID Patrol had arrested only 130 people. This is an annualized rate of

$\frac{130}{12}\frac{arrests}{week}\times 52\frac{weeks}{year}=564\frac{arrests}{year}$

Recall that in 2015 the BID Patrol arrested 606 people, so this projected figure represents a projected 7% decrease from last year’s already strikingly attenuated figures.

Furthermore, by week 12 of 2015 the BID Patrol had arrested 169 people, compared to only 130 this year. This represents a stunning 23% reduction from 2015’s level. For the sake of comparison, note that by week 12 of 2014 the BID Patrol had already arrested 261 people. Thus 2016’s week 12 total is less than half of the 2014 figure from the same week.

Read on for a little bit of editorial speculation.
Continue reading Hollywood BID Patrol Arrest Rate Continues to Plummet in 2016: by Week 12 there were 23% Fewer Arrests than in 2015 and more than 50% Fewer than in 2014 →

Announcements, Hollywood BID Patrol

Final Figures for 2015 Show that Arrest Rate Reduction Even Higher than Estimated: 42.7% Drop From 2014 Total, Which is 4.18 Standard Deviations from the 2009-2014 Mean

March 19, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

BID Patrol arrests per year 2007--2015 — BID Patrol arrests per year 2007–2015

Last month I reported that BID Patrol arrests had dropped off precipitously between 2014 and 2015. At that time I didn’t have the final arrest total for 2015, so annualized the figure from November to 666. Yesterday I received the actual figures, and the total number of arrests turns out to be even lower than suspected. The BID Patrol arrested only 606 people in 2015, compared to 1057 in 2015 (and a running average of 1183 between 2009 and 2014.¹ As I said before, it’s hard not to attribute this massive drop-off to our scrutiny.² Note that the standard deviation for those years is 107.7, so that the absolute change of 451 arrests is 4.18 standard deviations, meaning that this result is exceedingly unlikely to be due to chance. I also really have to wonder, if they can arrest over 40% fewer people year over year,³ what were they even arresting them all for in the first place?
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Hollywood BID Patrol

BID Patrol Prosecution/Arrest Ratio Very Low as Shown by Top Arrestees 2007-2013: From 44 Frequently Arrested People with 1144 Arrests, 407 Brought to City Attorney, Only 185 Actually Prosecuted

March 10, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Mike Feuer's office evidently exercises more prosecutorial discretion than average, at least when it comes to the BID Patrol, which may not be saying much... — Mike Feuer’s office evidently exercises more prosecutorial discretion than average, at least when it comes to the BID Patrol, which may not be saying much…

I recently obtained a 2013 list of people most arrested by the BID Patrol beginning in 2007. Since Kerry Morrison has told me¹ that neither the HPOA nor Andrews International tracks outcomes of arrests made by the BID Patrol, I asked the City Attorney to run a report on all cases involving these people sent to them for prosecution.² I subsequently tallied up the arrests and the referrals for the time period by hand³ and it turns out that the vast majority of cases involving BID Patrol arrests are not even referred for prosecution, and among those that are, over half are rejected. The data is incomplete and subject to some interpretation, but it appears that less than 20% of these cases are actually prosecuted.⁴ In particular, there are 1144 arrests of these 44 people between 2007 and 2013. Of these, no more than 407 (35.6%) were referred for prosecution. Of those cases, 222 were rejected for various reasons and the rest seem to have been prosecuted.

This is an astonishingly low rate if one thinks that the purpose of arresting people is to stop them from breaking the law, and it’s harmful both to the people arrested and to society at large. The incomparable Alexandra Napatoff, writing about misdemeanor convictions (although her argument is as strong regarding the arrests themselves, and even more so if the conviction rate is so very low), puts it like this;

Because the misdemeanor world is so large, its cultural disregard for evidence and innocence has pervasive ripple effects, not the least of which is the cynical lesson in civics that it teaches millions of Americans every year. In these ways, the misdemeanor process has become an influential gateway, sweeping up innocent as well as guilty on a massive scale and fundamentally shaping not only the ways we produce criminal convictions but also who is likely to sustain them.
Continue reading BID Patrol Prosecution/Arrest Ratio Very Low as Shown by Top Arrestees 2007-2013: From 44 Frequently Arrested People with 1144 Arrests, 407 Brought to City Attorney, Only 185 Actually Prosecuted →

Announcements, Hollywood BID Patrol

37% Reduction in BID Patrol Arrests from 2014 to 2015 Almost Certainly Due to Our Scrutiny

February 17, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Following six years of essentially level arrest rates (1184 per year on average) between 2009 and 2014 inclusive, as of November 2015 the Andrews International BID Patrol was on track to make only 665 arrests in Hollywood last year.¹ This represents a 36.99% drop, which is exceedingly unlikely to be due to chance.² Long-time readers of this blog will recall that in December 2014 we discovered that on October 10, 2014, the very day after my first visit to a BID meeting of any kind, Steve Seyler wrote to Kerry Morrison, stating:
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Hollywood BID Patrol

BID Patrollies Mischarge Obviously Innocent Man, Display Habitual Arrogant Unprofessionalism, Disregard for Law, Decency

January 6, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

A man restrained in BID Patrol car and riding along with two BID Patrollies. He's clearly mentally ill. They're putatively trained professionals. So why are they the ones being delusional? — A man restrained in BID Patrol car and riding along with two BID Patrollies. He’s clearly mentally ill. They’re putatively trained professionals. Why are ***they*** being delusional?

Look here to see a man restrained in a BID patrol car after having been arrested for trespassing. But on the way to the station it turns into something else entirely.

Man: You let me go or you die.

BID employee: Why would I die?

Man: You let me go or I’ll get hurt.

BID employee: How are you gonna hurt us?

Man: [Unintelligible] … but you will let me go, it’s not valid.

BID employee: Well we can’t let you go, that would be you, uh, trying to subvert the legal process…by your…

Man (interrupting): Whaddaya mean you can’t let me go? OK [Unintelligible]

BID employee: We’re required by law to deliver you to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Man: For what?

BID employee: We, we tried to keep you out of that business. You kept disrupting the business…

Man: [Unintelligible] Why did you fucking put me in this car, you punks? What if I kick you in your head right now? What if I kick you right in your head, you little punk? What if I kick you right in your head? You let me out of this car, now. And you don’t bring me to jail or I will kick you somewhere.

BID employee: OK, we’ll take you to the office and get you out there.

Man: You better…you better not put me in no jail cell, punk.

BID employee: OK, we won’t…we won’t.

Man: I didn’t say nothing wrong to you or him. I’m arguing with him. I argued with that last one in the store. I did nothing illegal or wrong.

BID employee: OK.

Man: Now you’re fucking harassing me. Don’t you fucking take me to jail in this car. If you harass me at all I won’t forgive you. I never will. You’re gonna pay. You’re gonna pay with your life. Cause I’m gonna kill you with a knife. [Lengthy unintelligible part]

BID employee: You know, when you whisper, I can’t hear you. My hearing’s bad.

Man: [Continuing to be unintelligible]

BID employee: You’re gonna find me and burn me up? Is that what you said?

Man: [Continuing to be unintelligible]

BID employee: Ah, you realize you’re making terrorist threats, right?

Continue reading BID Patrollies Mischarge Obviously Innocent Man, Display Habitual Arrogant Unprofessionalism, Disregard for Law, Decency →