Last Week At LAPD Is Why Young People Increasingly Say ACAB

By Daniel Guss

@TheGussReport on Twitter - Stylish merch and insular, politicized law enforcement is how the Los Angeles Police Department loses the youth branding war, its officers and the future.

There's little doubt that the LAPD's passive-aggressive non-response to a media inquiry I made last week is due to its embarrassment, and perhaps feeling cornered, by my two latest columns.  They detailed how it and the LAFD covered up disturbing recordings of 2021 domestic violence and murder/suicide threats by LAFD Deputy Chief Kristina "Kady" Kepner against her then-live-in-love-interest and, in a separate alleged incident, against current squeeze, LAPD Detective Scarlett Martinez, all three of whom are women.

That's why today's column at my free Substack also explores why current anti-LAPD sentiment is as easy as 1312, or in the parlance of today's youth culture, ACAB, which means All Cops Are Bastards or All  Cops Are Bad.

And then there's the ill-conceived Twitter poll that the LAPD ran and subsequently deleted, but not before a critic captured and questioned.

Go check it out and sign-up for a free subscription, where I'll soon have updates and tinker with new features.  And don't forget to follow me on The Twitters @TheGussReport.

One LA Politician's Request

By Daniel Guss

@TheGussReport - Last week, I had productive dialogues with several Los Angeles politicians.  My rule for engaging is simple: conversation or respond directly to emailed questions.  I don't accept prepared statements from their media personnel because they are a dodge that answers questions that aren't posed rather than those that are.

One of those dialogues took place as I made my way to the scene of yet another random sidewalk death, this one in still-un-represented Van Nuys, thanks to the resignation of Nury Martinez, LA's irrefutably racist former City Council president.

Except the politician didn't address any of the questions I emailed.

Instead, while offering validation for my recent columns, the politician expressed a wish that I would also, "recognize in your writing some of our work and efforts in the district."

Easier said than done.

To find out why, head on over to my Substack and sign-up for the free newsletter.  And don't forget to follow me on the Twitters @TheGussReport.

LA's Chance to Punch Back: Kenneth Mejia for LA City Controller

By Daniel Guss

@TheGussReport - This is your chance, Los Angeles.   

If you're fed up with what you see, experience and expect from LA City Hall, now is your chance to punch-back good and hard, or forever stop complaining about it.

In my new Substack column, I outline the roots of corruption that demand LA's next City Controller be as independent from City Hall as possible.  The only candidate who fits that bill is CPA Kenneth Mejia.

It is a rare instance where this column concurs with the LA Times Editorial Board.

On top of that good news, Mejia is also the only candidate with actual auditing experience and published plans for using data to improve the City.  In fact, he even volunteers at the deeply troubled LA Animal Services.

While you're at my Substack, please sign up for the free newsletter and don't forget to follow me on The Twitters @TheGussReport.

City Hall's Past Abuses, Censorship, Lack Of Leadership Are Centerstage During Current Crisis

By Daniel Guss

@TheGussReport - Anyone who has ever been censored by an abusive politician at LA City Hall, or anywhere else really, is loving its City Council meetings these days.

Suddenly, the same politicians who dropped the ball in the immediate moments after the Nury Martinez - Gil Cedillo - Kevin de Leon racism scandal that erupted two weeks ago have suddenly been rendered impotent by boisterous groups, including The People's City Council.

Of course, there's more to the story than just that.

Including this bizarre tweet from the LA Times' David Zahniser.

To get the rest of the story, swing on by my Substack and sign up for the free newsletter.  Please be sure to follow me on The Twitters @TheGussReport.

LA Times Whines Its Owners' Biases Interfere w/Newspaper's Biases

By Daniel Guss

@TheGussReport - That's no fake headline from satire outlets The Onion and The Babylon Bee.  It's the highly predictable, real-life drama playing out at the Los Angeles Times and it is delicious a/f, as explained this week by Politico.

Talk about a bad LA marriage!

In 2018, when Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong pursued the portion of the Times that he didn't already own, he and its staff deluded themselves about life with more of one another in it.

To read the rest of my take on this brouhaha, break out the Jiffy Pop and head on over to my Substack and sign up for the free newsletter. Also, please follow me on The Twitters @TheGussReport.

Eric Garcetti Goes Down With His Ship

@TheGussReport - Had LA Mayor Eric Garcetti considered Dostoevsky's words, "above all, don't lie to yourself," he might already be in Bombay with the title US Ambassador preceding his name.

Instead, Garcetti refused to participate in US Senator Chuck Grassley's recent investigation, which concluded that it was "extremely unlikely" that the mayor was unaware of alleged sexual harassment and racist comments by his aide Rick Jacobs that made his office a hostile work environment. 

Garcetti had to stay silent during Grassley's investigation because he had already claimed under oath that he knew nothing, saw nothing and had said nothing when questioned about the allegations during his Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

If only Garcetti recognized that he had an escape hatch from this self-induced mess.

To read the rest of this column, head on over to my Substack and sign up for the free newsletter.

Testing Positive, Eric Garcetti Was Always The Wrong Messenger On COVID Safety

 By Daniel Guss

@TheGussReport - The news just broke that LA Mayor Eric Garcetti has tested positive for COVID causing lots of I told you so messages given the Mayor's hypocrisy and utterly unscientific claims about his following the science.

Garcetti told one particularly big, bold COVID lie on May 11, 2020, declaring that "the science" said we could walk on the wet sand of a shore, but not lay on the dry sand of its beach.

His quote from the LA Times was "Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Monday that he supports reopening the city's beaches for active recreation, with some restrictions. Sitting or tanning in the 'dry areas of sand' would not be a good idea right now, Garcetti said.  'But the wet sand area - if you need to get in there to swim, to surf...that is something I hope we can earn again.'"

The LA Times didn't bother to report, or apparently even ask, what was the source for that "science."

It wasn't the truth.  

It wasn't science then.  

It isn't science now.

Recently, I did ask Garcetti that question and he untruthfully responded "that was the science at the time," though he would still not identify his source.

A neurotic megalomaniac, as Tucker Carlson pegged him, Garcetti forced upon much of Southern California his ill-considered and restrictive daily mandates with televised lectures reflecting only his personal neuroses rather than actual science.

Most LA media didn't bother to question his veracity despite his long public track record of dishonesty.

Further, Garcetti's hypocrisy was evident early on as he ignored his own mandated mask-wearing, including in highly dense crowds, because his life-long goal is to be seen as Kennedy-esque and deep in thought, which are born solely of his fanciful imagination and delusions of grandeur.   

It eventually caught up with him.

Eric Garcetti 

Masking Rules For Thee, But Not For Me

Photo Credits: Unknown

Garcetti felt it was safe for him to go maskless, but his aides must not.

A Mask For Thee, But Not Eric G.

Then there's the irony of Garcetti testing positive while with Joe Biden at the global warming conference in Glasgow, Scotland.  Having restricted the movement of millions of people with his brand of "science," it is Garcetti who is now restricted from returning to the U.S. until he is deemed by both governments as safe for travel and re-entry.  Now that is ironic.

Eric Garcetti

COVID is serious and has the ability to cause severe and long-lasting illness and death.  While we do hope for Garcetti's recovery, his testing positive after not following his own rules that he inflicted on millions of people proves that he was all along the wrong messenger for all of the above, and most of everything else.  

Garcetti's office will not disclose whether he got a COVID vax booster, for which he has long been eligible.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, was runner-up for the 2020 Los Angeles Press Club journalism award for Best Online Political Commentary and was a runner-up in 2021 too. He has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star News, Los Angeles Downtown News, and The Los Angeles Times in its Sports, Opinion and Entertainment Sections and Sunday Magazine among other publishers. Tell your friends to follow him on The Twitters @TheGussReport, and DM him there to join his distribution list for early story notifications, tips and more.)

Dan's Big Book Of Small Grievances, Volume 1

By Daniel Guss

@TheGussReport - When I signed up to become City Editor for Mayor Sam, I promised a no-punches-pulled approach in easy, digestible bites with a healthy dose of snark where applicable 

To wit, there are a lot of Post-Its on the desk worth exploring, just not in a thousand words, at least not yet.  

As they say at the bakery, let's roll.....

Freebird Gets No Ink In LA Times

Disgraced LA City Councilmember Mitch Englander was released from federal prison in September, according to the LA Daily News, way ahead of his anticipated release in May 2022. He served no more than four months of a 14-month sentence. As I reported, the scheming ex-lawmaker made an array of curious corporate filings adding and deleting family as Board members before surrendering.  

Eric Garcetti and Mitch Englander

Photo Credit: OC Register

But you know what? He had great legal counsel. 

He faced decades in prison but only spent a summer in it, albeit a summer in Arizona.

The former LAPD volunteer can't vote, may have had to turn in his firearms and his crimes cost him a fortune in legal fees and fines.  But free is free, whether or not Englander wears a monitoring device at a halfway house in Long Beach or home in Santa Monica. That's how the system works. Take note Jose Huizar, Mark Ridley-Thomas and fellow indictees. 

But the grievance here is that the story does not come up in searches on the LA Times' website as of Thursday.

Restaurant Ripoff Results in Cancelation

At least in Los Angeles, it has become commonplace to find additional fees added to your local restaurant tab, presumably to offset higher minimum wages. While some restaurants fairly mention this on their menu, others bury it at the bottom of the tab.

And then there's what one of our favorite local eateries did.

In addition to raising prices, which is fair, due to inflation, they added vague fees to the tax line, so you can't tell how much is tax and how much is the "fee" without pulling up your calculator app. Moreover, there is no mention of it on the website for takeout.

But the grievance here is that on top of the increased prices and buried fees, they also try to guilt customers into a default 15% tip.....for takeout, part of which we otherwise would typically add in the COVID era.

They lost the tip, the fees, the order and the customer for good.

Why Nury's Vax Mandate Is A Load Of Hooey

The problem with vaccine mandates is that it could wind up costing big cities with defiant cops and firefighters more than it realizes.  

Consider how much time it takes and how much money it costs to locate, recruit and train a firefighter or cop just to get ready to serve the public. Then, multiply it by the hundreds or thousands of LA's first responders that LA City Council president Nury Martinez says "may" be fired if they dare to defy her order to get injected with a COVID vaccine by her further-extended deadline of mid-December. Note: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis actively recruits those quitting or retiring from the NYPD and NYFD with a $5,000 signing bonus. Don't be surprised if some of our best leave for the no-state-income-tax Sunshine State.

Florida's cost of living is a fraction of LA's, as well.

Nury Martinez

Photo Credit: Unknown

So here's the question.  

If Nury insists on a vax mandate for all City workers, not just LAFD and LAPD, to provide a safe workplace and safe interactions with the public, why does she still refuse to let the vaccinated public into City Council's meetings?

Is it because she is still too insecure being a leader who cannot articulate how she will fix LA's worst-in-the-nation homelessness and other things that rotted away during the Eric Garcetti era?  Is it because she is too thin-skinned to face critics, so she needs to lean on a hypocritical COVID policy that applies to some, but not all?

The grievance here is that keeping out of meetings even the vaccinated public strengthens City employees' defiant stance. Vaccines cannot be the solution for cops, firefighters and librarians but not be enough for critics who want back in to the meetings to let her and her City Council colleagues have it and good.

You won't find this hypocrisy reported in the LA Times, either.   

(Daniel Guss, MBA, was runner-up for the 2020 Los Angeles Press Club journalism award for Best Online Political Commentary (and came in Show in 2021 in another category) and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star News, Los Angeles Downtown News, and The Los Angeles Times in its Sports, Opinion and Entertainment Sections and Sunday Magazine among other publishers. Tell your friends to follow him on The Twitters @TheGussReport.)

 

LA Times Silent on Nury Martinez' COVID Hypocrisy, Censorship

By Daniel Guss

@TheGussReport - It was clear early on that when LA City Council chose Nury Martinez to succeed the perpetually self-dealing Herb Wesson as its president, she was disinclined to do the one thing that Wesson did well: Lead.  

(Photo: LA City Council President Nury Martinez pontificates about masking, but needs practice on proper usage, though she did have time to get her name printed on hers.)

While Wesson led through intimidation, it ultimately led to his getting trounced by Holly Mitchell in his subsequent run to become an LA County Supervisor. Martinez' brand of leadership was quickly identified as faulty, as well.

As I wrote in this column at that time:

"Gadfly Patricia McAllister had just about enough with Nury's failure to embrace responsibility, letting it rip with this take: 'I want to say that Ms. Martinez, you brought your mother and everybody here and we gave you a good welcome. You're not woman enough to be up on that podium? (Ryu) is not the president. . . If you want to be with the boys, you got to do your job, okay? You're supposed to be at that podium, ma'am. . . Now you be a woman and stand-up for women and do your job. . . Now you wanna run with the boys, you gotta be like the boys, okay. . . Now you wanna get that kind of respect, you be like the boys. Get that skirt off, put some pants on and do your job.'" 

McAllister made a valid if abrasively colorful point: Being LA City Council president means leadership, including running meetings, agenda management and drinking up criticism rather than being thin-skinned and just embracing the "historic!" title of the first Latina in that role.  Pat Russell was LA's first female Council president from 1983-87.  (Is it still okay for us to use the word "female?")

So let's look closer at Martinez' recent and ongoing heavy-handedness with censorship.

She is now armed with a COVID requirement for most indoor places in LA but continues to use the pandemic to silence the public, especially her critics, who want to attend Council meetings.

Over the past several weeks, Council's in-person meetings have resumed in LA City Hall's John Ferraro Chambers. But "in-person" in this instance means only maskless City Councilmembers and their staff.

Martinez continues to exclude the public from attending in-person, masked or not, even with proof of vaccination and has refused to respond to requests to explain her policy.

Why do you suppose that is?

Most Councilmembers have been maskless at their recent meetings, bellowing within feet of one another, and not just during their turn to speak. Why isn't the public allowed to attend those same meetings maskless, provided they have proof of vaccination?

Maskless Mike Bonin

Maskless Kevin DeLeon

Maskless Paul Koretz

Maskless Mitch O'Farrell

Maskless Mark Ridley-Thomas and Maskless Paul Krekorian

Maskless Gil Cedillo

Maskless Bob Blumenfield

It is because barring even the vaccinated public lets Martinez censor criticism by forcing everyone to attend via Zoom where she and those she assigns can exert control with the push of a button, even though she and her colleagues richly deserve the criticism which is an inherent part of a politician's life.  

In fact, criticizing politicians is an inherently American tradition.

Her unwillingness to face and absorb criticism is another example of Martinez' failed leadership. She and Deputy City Attorney Strefan Fauble pick and choose whose phone numbers get called to speak during Council meetings and at their smaller Committee meetings. 

Strefan Fauble

More importantly, either they or their designees choose which phone numbers do not get chosen to participate.

Further, Fauble, City Hall's School-Marm-in-Residence, feigns not knowing which item the chosen speaker is addressing and consistently talks over callers who are on-topic in order to eat away at their precious one minute to speak. He also randomly disconnects their calls rather than letting people who might not have his law school polish make their own points in their own ways.

That's what we call punching down at the little guy.  

Then there's the retaliation. 

Fauble, who has a forthcoming complaint to the State Bar of California for, among other things, threatening to have this columnist arrested for simply attempting to use his duly issued LAPD press pass at a Council meeting, also drags his feet on responding to public records requests endeavoring to determine which callers called-in first to meetings so they can be compared to callers he allowed to speak who did not call-in as early.

Perhaps Mr. Fauble forgot about a certain 1st Amendment lesson while at the University of Texas Law School. Or perhaps he didn't and feels he has free reign to violate others' rights.

What Fauble doesn't forget to do is continue to maliciously expose this columnist's personal data in public records requests for the umpteenth time. Cue the next claim and lawsuit.

That leads us to the question of the day: Why hasn't the LA Times pointed out Martinez' ongoing censorship by refusing to allow the public to attend Council meetings? That's what its news reporters like David Zahniser, Dakota Smith and Emily Alpert Reyes should have reported months ago.

And why hasn't the El Segundo Times Editorial Board called for Martinez' attendance ban to end so constituents and community stakeholders have the same direct access to the meetings enjoyed by Martinez, her 14 Council colleagues, Fauble and their minions?

That is, after all, the point of a news organization.  

Where are you on this, LA Times? Isn't that "the type of journalism" that you promise when pleading for the public to spend 99-cents for an introductory subscription?

If the Times doesn't give a rat's petard about the public, why should the public feel any better about subscribing to the Times? 

(Presently using mi amigo Scott's sign-in until our new Mayor Sam 2.0 tech matters are ironed out)