The Bad Fight

County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, speaking about the preposterous over-use of pepper spray in probation camps, said on February 6, 2019  “If you want change, turn the lights on.” 

Here, the Court played by the honorable Suzanne H. Segal addresses the attorneys for the plaintiff and the County.  

The Court: I'm troubled by your inability to represent your client at this moment. I'm very deeply troubled. You're representing some individual defendants with extremely serious charges against them and the county of Los Angeles. I am very deeply troubled by your inability to represent your client.Is there anyone else in your office who can assist you in this case?  

Ms. Etingoff: Yes, there is. There's going to be Mr. Becks. And we're going to get to the bottom of this because he is the lead trial counsel.

The Court: I'm on the verge, if there is another incident like this of ordering not only Mr. Becks and you to personally appear before me and explain what is going on, but to have your clients be present because I believe --  who is your client? The County of Los Angeles. 

You deal with the county counsel? 

Ms. Etingoff:  Yes, your honor.

The Court:  Have the county counsel be present because I believe she would be deeply disturbed if she understood what was going on in this case.

When I showed the transcript to Peter Eliasberg... we agreed that the public should definitely see the private firms' legal bills. 

Fresh Start:

Because the Sheriff is such a naughty bad actor, the Board of Supervisors trotted out a settlement of $185,000 for the case,The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School v. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.  

The proposed settlement amount was $185,000, to resolve a public records act case, but the county forgot to mention the nearly $60,000 it paid in fees and costs fighting prior to settlement.   

Also, it was nice to see Thomas R. Burke, Esq. of Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP finally get a win.  I had dragged that firm all the way up to the California Supreme Court with the ACLU of Southern California and in the end, despite my best efforts, Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP  didn't see a nickel from the county.   

We'd successfully alleged the county improperly withheld legal invoices from nasty private firms defending the sheriff's department in jail violence cases. 

Yes, it's the same Board of Supervisors. 

Incorrect: 

I perked up when I saw, "Tackling Misinformation and Disinformation in Los Angeles County" on the agenda.  

I perked right down when I saw the Aspen Institute was involved. The Aspen Institute provides 'engagement' within the limits of what, you, the client, like the LA City Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, want and desire.   

Gracie Liu, the former General Manager of DONE was attending a conference sponsored by the Institute in New York while I was writing the Outreach Bill of Rights over a willful failure to notify the public about a wicked awful Prop K fiasco.  Prop K does not stand for Krekorian. 

Sheila Kuehl boiled down the surprising, but not really, considering from whom, motion:  "What can the county do to get our information straight so the county can understand it.  Let's develop a way to get more, true accurate information out into the blogosphere... not a threat to free speech. None of those of us supporing it, obviously, would support a threat to free speech."  

Ahem.  Maybe the Board of Supervisors could take over the LA Times?  Or the rest of the LA Times...  

That'll be a closed session report back.   

No further questions.    

Out in the open the Board decided to tap Dean Logan the Registrar Recorder County Clerk  RR/CC to launch a pilot program on public education, trusted information 2022 edition. Including a five signature letter to various social media companies and others, urging them to promote county facts, and so increase awareness about online misinformation. 

Here's the latest on Dean Logan's Candidate Statement pilot program from last week: 

Once the candidate nomination/qualification period concludes and the list of candidates qualified to the ballot for County positions is established, we will contact each candidate/campaign with the guidelines and requirements for submitting an online candidate statement. For any candidate for County office who elected to pay for a printed statement in the Sample Ballot, that statement will also be used for the online statement content.   We will list information in the Sample Ballot, on our website, and in our public education campaign on how voters can access the online statements. 

I asked him, will there be any promotion about this site...like way in advance?  Will there be eblasts to county voters?  (of course not!)

No rush, once you get a headstart, on the county's official fact project, let us know. 

Caruso/Bass:

When Biden said on Fat Tuesday during his State of the Union address that we are cracking down finally on these damn oligarchs...and their superyachts, one had to imagine a slight shudder over at the Rick Caruso SOTU viewing party.  

But, if I may, why does everybody pick on these billionaires with big boats?   

They put a lot of boat-people to work... in Barcelona.  

Team Caruso, by contrast, was probably very enthused to see Karen Bass pushing to the front and then lingering in the background for maximal exposure to the big man.  

Any serious candidate for the job of Mayor of Los Angeles has to have mastery over sucking up to the big man. 

Deeply Troubled: 

The law firm representing the county poorly (above) was Harold G. Becks, one of the same attorneys who helped call back Herb Wesson's CD10 touchdown pass from Nury Martinez.   

Oddly, Wesson was still sworn in, so there are two council members from CD10 and neither of them can vote.   

Mr. Becks and MRT go way back.  

The case of Blake Earl Dupree was a  horrific tasing that resulted in the county paying out a $4.5 million dollar settlement and a giant Rancho hospital bill.  

He was tased right off the bunk of a Lakewood jail and broke his back. Paralyzed for life.  Anyway, I was surprised to see that after all our carrying on, we wrote articles, the LA Times published a story about Englander taking Taser donations in Arizona...    

Huntsman wrote up Taser Use in Custody, in September 2021, as part of his Civilian Oversight report.  

There were over 150 usages of a Taser in jail.  Yikes.  

You'd have thought we'd learned our lesson after Dupree and so many others.  Unfortunately, not hardly. 

Nestled on the agenda at item 52 was a Purchase order Tuesday for one hundred and fifty, Taser-7s at $4,000 a pop. 

$600,000.  

Thank you to the Max:

After last month's embarrassing Probation inquiry it was Huntsman's turn. He revealed that bottled water was being used in the women's jail at CRDF because of a fly infestation in the faucets. Yuck. 

 Thanks to Huntsman's enormous team, who are overpaid and well situated in lovely offices, downtown as they continue their unproductive efforts to wrangle the Sheriff.  

The oversight commission and inspector general fighting for public records and spending more taxpayer money suing and blocking access is the best reason to dissolve the civilian oversight commission and office of OIG and start anew.   

First action plan, would be to allow the public to address the items of importance that come before the Board for a vote.  

At least 72 hours before a regular meeting, the legislative body of the local agency, or its designee, shall post an agenda containing a brief general description of each item of business to be transacted or discussed at the meeting  

A major change to the County Oak Ordinance/permitting allowing removals of certain oaks administratively without general public notice (except to immediate neighbors), was included in what was described as a "tune up" on February 15th.  

The alterations to this ordinance, item 41,  also changed the replacement requirement and oak protection requirements. These requirements were changed from a firm requirement, indicted by the word “shall”, to “may require”, indicating that replacement and fencing or other protections, may or may not be required. 

So... SHALL is different than 'may require' 

All local and state agencies worked to comply with the Brown Act and allow telephonic public attendance and public comment.  

Even the County’s own Regional Planning Department has had no problem accommodating public comment on each agenda item for its Planning Commission and other meetings and hearings. 

In spite of this fact, the County Board of Supervisors has purposefully and knowingly failed to allow public comment on each agenda item at its previous meetings during the last two years and did so again on February 15th. 

Another casualty of not allowing the public to speak on report backs is the public cannot be heard on report backs.

The ACLU of Southern California has no trouble putting their thumbs on the scales, but it was still surprising to hear Andres Kwon right out of the gate, praise them like queens.  

He provided a fast-talker grievance rundown of the Sheriff's department before handing it off to another ACLUer who was right on message. 

Get rid of that asshole. 

"We implore you to propose a charter amendment to provide more meaningful tools...(like firing.)  "We are afraid it might take months, the board will have to be on top of it."

It wasn't until much later in the meeting that the board trotted out Max Huntsman for his pathetic report. 

Supervisor Hahn, was quick to stress the importance of fresh fruits and vegetables in custody.   Especially for pregnant women and then corrected herself, but really... everybody!  

After Huntsman regaled the board with a riveting tale of heroism wherein, he and his large team uncovered, reported and then solved a shortage of bottled water for female inmates at CDRF. 

Sheila Kuehl and Holly Mitchell were disgusted, and patterned after last month's choreographed Youth probation fiasco, were advocating hard for the pregnant population. 

Hahn wanted to pivot to an even more serious subject.  A total of 55 county residents, approximately one per week, had died in custody in 2021.  Nine were suicides, Ten were overdoses.  And Hahn felt we needed to face the music as to the other causes of death.  

Hahn became outraged that any younger person could pass away from natural causes. "What?" she called for an investigation. 

Huntsman said the problem is we have an information blackout from the Sheriff's department.  He said  that Use of Force, which was going so well before Villanueva arrived,  had soared from 490 to 690 instances. 

Huntsman was trying hard not to say it, but eventually had to admit when asked what Sheriff Villanueva says when confronted about his unwillingness to provide access to OIG, "well, the Sheriff doesn't exactly talk to me. So much."

Nobody fans the flames of anger better than ole stuffy-nosed Huntsman, other than Rod 'is right' Castro-Silva.

Max reminded the board that they had paid for Axon bodycams (made by Taser) and now, the Sheriff is only releasing certain footage to his office.   Sheila's little red face became a little bit redder. 

"As opposed to logical," quipped, Holly J Mitchell. 

Huntsman said, he wasn't sure, and had no evidence but he thought the root cause of the increase in force was... the erosion of Vilanueva's discipline system.  

"No further questions, your honor." 

(Eric Preven is a longtime community activist and is a contributor to CityWatch. The opinions expressed by Eric Preven are solely his and not the opinions of CityWatch)