Mayor Sam's Hotsheet for Monday

LA County Supervisors have raised taxes again.  Property owners will be required to cough up another $50 million per year to fund the County's beleaguered hospital system.  Supervisor Mike Antonovich cast the lone dissenting vote.

Media Alert: If you thought the City using law enforcement resources to hassle the Shaw Family August 17th at Leimert Park was an abuse of power by the City, check back here on the blog at about 9:00 a.m. for a story about how a City agency has threatened community activists with police action for speaking their minds.

The scandal around deposed union leader Tyrone Freeman has fired up the battle between the SEIU and the EAA which represents the City's engineers and architects.  EAA has begun running radio commercials calling on LA's elected leaders to begin an investigation of the controversial SEIU. With labor divided and potentially in hot water, does this open the door for a candidate with means to enter the race and challenge a wounded Mayor Villaraigosa?


A Mexican national who allegedly massacred 19 people in Tijuana ten years ago has been found living in East Los Angeles. Jesus Ruben Moncada was arrested while taking out his garbage by ICE agents and handed over to 500 Mexican federal agents at the border Friday.

We usually ignore local blog crank Don Quixote, however I had to note his comment on our post about potential John McCain running mate Bobby Jindal.  Quixote who often posts comments on other blogs calling me a racist posted a bigoted comment about Jindal's Indian heritage. Good to see Don being consistent.

If you didn't have a chance to visit the blog over the weekend, here are some stories you may want to catch up on:

• A Pick for McCain
• A "Q and A" with "Madam Mayor Jan Perry",....at least for next week
• Hillary reacts to Biden's selection as Obama's V.P.
• Just In - Griffith Arsonist Apprehended
• A Volunteer's Story of Today's Jaimiel's Law Rally at Leimert Park

And finally, apparently actress Denise Richards' Hidden Hills neighbors weren't big on her shooting a reality show at her home.  So now, the 5600 square foot, five bedroom home is listed for sale at $4.25 million, about $100,000 than she paid for it.

A Volunteer's Story of Today's Jaimiel's Law Rally at Leimert Park

Volunteer Chelene Nightingale sends the following report:

A completely successful event! Our mission was to collect Jamiel's Law petition signatures, raise awareness about Jamiel's Law, support the Shaws, register voters, and to let the city officials know that Jamiel's Law not only has mass support, but also brings unity in all our communities! Our mission was completed!!

116 signatures were gathered today. (And the Shaws were staying until 5pm, so I am sure they gathered a few more. Althea told me their average on Sundays is usually only 20-25 signatures.). In addition 10 completed petitions were turned in by supporters. The Shaws also brought a large stack of blank petitions which were all distributed out to supporters promising to collect signatures!! And two people registered to vote!!

ABC 7, our local friendly American media, showed up to interview us!! We really appreciate ABC 7!! And also a big thank you to William Gheen who had us on air live for his national Last American Standing Show! It was really nice that we had an entire listening audience supporting us!! Thank you.

Over 100 ralliers showed up today with Jamiel Shaw signs and American flags! Many new faces!!! And of course several old friends!! Heather, great to see you!! LAPhil, glad you decided to attend!!

Our ralliers were fortunately met with a VERY supportive community!! The honks of support were really amazing!! And many pulled over to sign the petition!! (Quite the contrast of last year's Leimert Park march.)

Today we broke in the new SOS bullhorn donated by the lovely Ohighglass!! (And thank you Blackfelines for picking our new bullhorn up and bringing it to the event!!) Many special guest speakers helped us break in the SOS bullhorn!! A special message of gratitude to radio talk show host Terry Anderson, the next mayor of LA - Walter Moore, and of course Jamiel Shaw, Sr. - always an impactful speech!!

Other great speakers included congressional candidate Ted Hayes, Board of Education candidate Rabbi Nachum Shifren, the always lovely Barbara Coe, the very passionate Frank Jorge (very powerful speech today), David Hernandez who constantly defends our community - this time with Prop R. Keith Hardine who announced today he will indeed run for LA City Council!!(Bravo), the very articulate Terrance Lang, and many other supporters of the Shaws and Save Our State. And although he did not speak, a special thank you to talk show radio host Kevin James for coming out to support our rally!!

Thank you everyone!! LA needs Jamiel's Law and today we came one step closer to achieving this goal!

We did not have any counterprotesters today! There were only a couple minor incidents. One was winding down as I showed up at 10:45, a local did not want us there apparently. Also there was a permitted event at the park today and the lady running the event was apparently not a Jamiel Shaw supporter. She tried to get the city services gestapo (fake police) to remove us. A rumor floated around after one of our ralliers overheard her tell someone that the police were going to come and remove us from the park. I am sure after last Sunday's raid this idea was quickly dismissed.

Mayor Sam's Hotsheet for Friday

The Shaw Family will return to Leimert Park this Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. to gather signatures for the petition to put Jamiel's Law on the ballot. Mayoral candidate Walter Moore will be there from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. passing out yard signs and bumper stickers. There's even a rumor that the old, dead Republican Mayor may be in attendance.  (Leimert Park is located at the intersection of Crenshaw Boulevard and W. Vernon Avenue.)

The City wants you to save water but it doesn't look much effort is being made by the City itself. Zuma Dogg has great video of broken City sprinklers doing a water show in Venice.

Just in time for election day in November Councilman Bernard Parks and rap artist and actor Snoop Dogg will be honored by the West Coast Regional Hip Hop Awards on October 25th.  The awards show will be held at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Los Angeles, will be hosted by actress and model Porsha Coleman, Westside Radio’s Julio G, and comic T.K Kirkland.

Santa Ana school board member Rosie Avila is challenging Orange County Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez.  Avila war born in Guatemala and has served on the school board for 17 years.  Avila is a strong advocate against illegal immigration and bilingual education and decided to bring her experience as an immigrant to the issue.

Leimert Park Raid Not LAPD? Oops!

WitnessLA.com is reporting that LAPD's presence near the Leimert Park raid on the Shaw Family was coincidental. So who are the officers in this pic? Who demanded social security numbers of the Shaws and threatened them if they didn't comply?

They're Office of Public Safety police, aka General Services police. OPS is the one-size-fits-all solution to all of the City's patrol needs that LAPD won't do. Devised as a way to increased efficiency and as a supposed cost-savings measure by Jim Hahn and Wendy Greuel, they're now a completely sacred cow in this City government, soaking up millions in Public Safety money, equipment, and Homeland Security grants while delivering often sub-par or non-existent services to other departments such as the Zoo, Library, Convention Center, and Rec and Parks who previously received these funds to safeguard their own facilities. In some cases OPS might not be doing much service for the public, but if there is a high profile press or government event, you'll magically see dozens of OPS officers instantly materialize around the cameras and politicos.

So how sacred is OPS in Los Angeles? Laura Chick absolutely refuses to audit them, even though their creation and very existence is supposedly one of efficiency. More sacred than Rocktard's office, then.

OPS looks an awful lot like LAPD on the outside. Their uniforms are almost identical so it's not a surprise that the Shaws may have thought that was who was asking them for their SSNs. This common misidentification is probably one LAPD should back away from quickly, however, given the sensitive state of affairs with race relations and the Consent Decree. Why? OPS leadership, especially Chief Gary Newton and Captain Richard Musquiz, have backgrounds that would cause a lot of trouble for LAPD if they were actually LAPD.

Newton's forays into Nevada law enforcement activities between Los Angeles jobs are rife with rumors along with rumored racially offensive body tatoos and having been illegally promoted within this City.

Better documented is Musquiz, who is in charge of the OPS patrol officers. As such, his leadership sets the attitude for this group. Musquiz has been fired from the Huntington Park PD for beating a handcuffed suspect. Musquiz did appeal and lost. (read the case here). A little over a decade later while he was a Los Angeles Housing Authority officer, the Congress of Racial Equality sought to have him fired for the same incident in 2000. Musquiz is quoted in the Nevada Appeal News as claiming the actions of the civil rights group were a result of disgruntled officers at the Housing Authority. However, it was actually an FBI investigation into Huntington Beach PD issues that brought Musquiz's dismissal to light. One has to wonder what the real story is with Musquiz's time with the Los Angeles Housing Authority.

Regardless, officers with these kinds of backgrounds are not typically considered LAPD material, yet OPS has not one but two in major leadership roles. These two officers of questionable backgrounds have an entirely new police force at their disposal completely unfettered by any kind of consent decree or any real oversight. An entire force that is easily mistaken for LAPD by the public. So what's a little social security number between friends, eh?

An audit by Ms. Chick may be just the thing to bring some much-needed transparency and accountability to OPS. In the meantime, there is a rubber-stamp Office of Public Safety Oversight Committee that meets once a quarter out of formality in what usually amounts to a multi-agency gladhanding session. Anyone who has issues or comments related to OPS and their performance may want to visit this committee, especially the Shaws. The Office of Public Safety Oversight Committee next meets on September 16, 2008.

In the end, it'll be interesting to find out if LAPD really was or wasn't involved -- this remains to be discovered for certain. But we definitely know OPS was, and the biggest question of all still begs to be answered: who ordered this?

Mayor Sam's Free "Free Market" Lessons

Free "Free Market" lesson for all the lovely readers of Mayor Sam: In America, you can work hard and earn the money for the home you want to live in. If you want something with lots of space and you're willing to pay for it, it's yours. Unfortunately some of your neighbors may not agree and are throwing around terms like "mansionization" and "McMansions." Now you might just do something really dumb and spend your hard earned money on a really ugly big house, but hey, it's your money.

Free "Free Market" lesson number two for the pueblos: Big bogeymen coming to Los Feliz and Leimert Park upgrading properties and raising rents. In primarily African-American Leimert Park, racism rears it's ugly head because - gasp - upwardly mobile Caucasians and Hispanics are taking the place of middle class blacks who moved to the suburbs. Over in Los Feliz Satanic, I mean "corporate" interests are raising rents on the ever successful businesses there, well, uh, because they can. Why can they? More people are interested in starting businesses in Los Feliz than space is available for.

In the old days, these were good things.