🐦 The LA Reporter, Issue 23: 'Why were we not allowed to speak to this decision-making body?'

Immigrant rights groups were set to present to the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners this past Tuesday, April 7, on policies to limit LAPD involvement in ICE activity. But those plans got pulled at the last minute, and presenters said they weren’t given a reason why. 

Representatives of the LA Sanctuary Coalition told The LA Reporter the proposal they planned to discuss with the Board of Police Commissioners had been laid out in a motion that the Los Angeles City Council had approved last July 1. In the nine months since, there has yet to be any visible movement on the motion, which calls for limiting LAPD’s response to 911 calls made by ICE and other federal immigration officials. Their presentation would have taken place amid concerns nationally that local police could be aiding federal officials as they attack, kill and kidnap immigrants and other community members.

At Tuesday’s meeting, members of the coalition questioned the decision to pull the presentation, and demanded better leadership from the board, which is comprised of five members appointed by the mayor.

“Why are we not allowed to speak to this decision-making body?” asked Nancy Meza, an organizer with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) and member of the LA Sanctuary Ordinance. “We know that the people of LA have spoken every day, right? Once the siege [on Los Angeles by federal immigration officials] started in June, protests began at the federal building, and they never stopped. Every day, every night, there are people there ... So we need leadership.”

Andrés Kwon, a lawyer with ACLU SoCal and a member of the LA Sanctuary Coalition, told The LA Reporter in an interview after the meeting that they had gotten word their presentation was pulled shortly before the agenda was posted on Friday, April 3. No reason was given, and there was no discussion of rescheduling, Kwon said.

“We’ve had this date in our calendars for a few weeks, two to three weeks,” Kwon said.

Kwon was set to present, along with representatives from two other LA Sanctuary Coalition groups, LA Voice and CARECEN.

The Board of Police Commissioners is supposed to be a key player in this process because unlike in other jurisdictions, such as San Diego where their City Council this week approved a law to address police response to federal agents calling 911, the Los Angeles City Council isn’t the ultimate authority setting LAPD policy. The 15-member elected body can only request that the Board of Police Commissioners — which is the body designated in the city charter to have policy-setting authority over the police department — to adopt such policies.

The Los Angeles City Council’s motion asks the police commission to set a policy “limiting and narrowing LAPD’s response to calls for support from federal agencies performing immigration enforcement beyond what is required under the existing Sanctuary City Ordinance.”

And the motion asked that the commission consider policies in which the LAPD would only respond to “calls for support from federal immigration operations only if, and only if, upon the receipt of a verified judicial warrant.” Other things the City Council wanted the board to consider adopting was restrictions on LAPD activity that would “directly or indirectly enable civil federal immigration enforcement to access public or private property for the purposes of carrying out immigration enforcement.” The motion also requested a policy that would call for the “verification of [the] identity of agents on site once LAPD has arrived on the scene, including their names, agency they work for, and badge numbers.”

Kwon said the proposed policies described in the motion would go further than existing policies in place at the city that are aimed at preventing collusion between the LAPD and federal immigration enforcement officials such as ICE. The city adopted its sanctuary ordinance in 2024, and Mayor Karen Bass signed Executive Directive 17 in early February. Kwon said the mayor’s executive directive “deals with certain processes and transparency for when they respond. But it does not limit the circumstances in which they can respond.“

At Tuesday’s meeting, Carlos Amador, an organizer with CLEAN Carwash Worker Center and member of the LA Sanctuary Coalition, told commissioners that they needed to ensure that the LAPD properly vets 911 calls from federal immigration officials such as ICE and Border Patrol agents, before “blindly” responding to them.

“We have witnessed that LAPD effectively has been helping mass immigration agents responding to so-called mutual aid,” Amador said. “LAPD has been seen establishing perimeters, conducting so-called crowd control during and following immigration raids, which the courts have found were based on racial and identity profiling.”

The LA Reporter reached out to the LAPD's public information office about the LA Sanctuary Coalition’s demands. They provided a statement saying that the department “is aware of the concerns and respects the right of community members to share their perspectives.”

“LAPD remains committed to serving all communities while adhering to applicable laws and City policies,” the statement continued. “We will continue working with the Police Commission and our community partners to ensure transparency, trust, and public safety.”

Many of those who spoke at public comment also called on Police Chief Jim McDonnell to “follow the law,” referencing the city’s sanctuary ordinance, which the City Council had passed back in December 2024, when Donald Trump was elected to his second and current term.

The push for the city to adopt that sanctuary ordinance was made not just with the incoming presidential administration in mind. It was also in reaction to the nomination of McDonnell by Mayor Karen Bass to be the city’s next police chief, a selection that stunned many Los Angeles immigrant rights advocates.

During his tenure as Sheriff, an elected position in Los Angeles County, McDonnell was a leading opponent of the state’s “sanctuary” legislation to protect immigrants. It was that stance that caused McDonnell to lose his re-election as Sheriff, the organizer from NDLON, Meza, told the commissioners. And in a letter signed by 88 community groups and sent to the City Council in November 2024, they pointed to McDonnell as someone who “actively lobbied against our efforts to pass the California Values Act (SB 54), ultimately weakening the bill that became law.”

“We're seeking leadership from this police commission,” Meza said during Tuesday’s Board of Police Commission meeting. “Hold Jim McDonnell … accountable to the people of Los Angeles, who again, rejected his re-election bid for Sheriff and want Los Angeles to be a place where every immigrant can feel safe.”

But some police commissioners on Tuesday also were awaiting answers as to why the LA Sanctuary Coalition’s presentation was abruptly pulled. One police commissioner, Jeffrey Skobin, told The LA Reporter, just before heading into closed session at Tuesday’s meeting, that he hadn’t yet been briefed on why the presentation was pulled. He said the agenda is put together by the executive director. The LA Reporter reached out to the Police Commission office, and its director, Django Sibley, but did not hear back.

The subject of the immigration raids, and LAPD’s role in it has been a touchy subject at the Police Commission, and that was on display at last month’s meeting on March 3, during which commissioners received their first monthly update on LAPD interactions with with federal immigration officials. The police commander who was presenting a series of such incidences was suddenly stopped by a department official sitting next to him who then whisper something into his ear. The presenter than halted his report on those incidents. Reporter Eric Leonard of NBC highlighted this moment in a story published last month.

At that March 3 meeting, Skobin had pressed the department officials a bit, asking how often the public would be getting such reports, and at what level of detail they could expect to get. Police department officials said they would be doing monthly reports, and that “anything that would risk the safety or future effectiveness of the officers, or of victims — anything like that — that shouldn’t be disclosed.” 

Skobin then pushed back on the department officials a bit more, saying that he thinks they should “push” themselves to get such reports out to the public more frequently “and we should hopefully get as much information, the public should get as much information as possible [as long as it’s] safe and legal, for the sake of transparency.”

The call for police commissioners to lead comes even as many over the years have questioned whether this body — whose members are appointed by the mayor — is able to effectively exercise its authorities as “head” of the LAPD. Meanwhile, some members of the City Council have raised concerns, especially in the wake of the federal immigration raids that began in Los Angeles last June, about their own inability as elected official to directly set LAPD policy as their constituents demand that they take action to protect them from ICE.

And the earlier 2024 decision by the mayor to appoint McDonnell, and the City Council’s decision to give that appointment their stamp of approval, is one that looms over the Board of Police Commissioners’ ability to lead the police department.

“Why our mayor appointed him [as police chief] is a struggle we're still working through with with her and her office,” Meza, who was among those who spoke out against Bass’s nomination of McDonnell told the commission.

Rob Quan, a City Hall watchdog and close observer of the city’s politics, says that out of the city’s elected officials, the mayor has more power than others in influencing what happens at the Los Angeles Police Department.

“In the context of the charter, the mayor appoints all five of the police commissioners and appoints the chief who are all subject to council confirmation,” Quan said. “It’s very much an entity that our electeds have limited authority and role in, and our mayor plays a dominant role in.”

As to why the LA Sanctuary Coalition’s presentation was pulled, Quan said the “powers that be,” whoever they may be, “tend to treat things like these as delicate matters.”

“They might not be trying to kill the conversation, but they do try to control the conversation,” he said. “And they may want to get their ducks in a row before that happens.”

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the influential police officers union, on Friday, April 10, announced that their board of directors had voted unanimously to revoke their endorsement of Feldstein Soto’s re-election as Los Angeles City Attorney.

It came as news broke widely in the Los Angeles Times earlier this week that a massive data leak had exposed sensitive legal material that were meant to be confidential. That leak, which the City Attorney’s Office says they learned of on March 20, included internal Los Angeles Police Department documents that were not meant for public release, which had prompted the union releasing an initial statement on April 8, saying that Feldstein Soto “should have picked up the phone and informed us about this egregious data breach … the City Attorney still has not provided the union with an honest assessment of the breach’s magnitude.”

In their April 10 letter revoking Feldstein Soto’s endorsement, the union’s board president, Ricky Mendoza, wrote that during a March 25 endorsement meeting with their political action committee, Feldstein Soto “willfully failed to disclose this this breach.” Mendoza said “that, quite frankly, is unforgiveable” and demanded Feldstein Soto take down their logo from her campaign website, “scrub any reference of the Los Angeles Police Protective League from any public campaign platform and that you do not use our revoked endorsement in any voter communication.”

An X.com post by Dominic Alvieri, who identified himself on his profile as a cybersecurity analyst, alerted many to the data breach on March 27. The City Attorney’s Office confirmed Alvieri’s post, in a response they sent to The LA Reporter the next morning, on March 28. There was a subsequent update from the City Attorney’s Office, including on April 8 that provided additional information, after the LA Times’s story. Statements have also now come out from Feldstein Soto’s opponents in the City Attorney’s race, Marissa Roy, Aida Ashouri and John McKinney.

As for sitting elected officials, the mayor’s office pointed to the City Attorney’s Office March 28 response as the city’s statement at the time. City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s office pointed to a history of City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto being uncooperative with their office’s investigations. And Council member Ysabel Jurado teased a motion she planned to introduce next week, demanding answers on the data leak, including “what information was exposed, who may be affected, whether proper notifications are being made, and what liability this creates for Los Angeles.”

Chief Assistant City Attorney John Heath sent the Los Angeles City Council a request late last month asking for $650,000 to cover a “shortfall” in a contract with a legal firm their office retained to fend off lawsuits that were filed after the Venice Dell affordable housing got stalled. Read the March 25 letter here. Excerpted here is the funding request:

REQUEST that the City Administrative Officer (CAO) identify funding in the amount of $650,000 to accommodate the shortfall needed to fund the legal services contract with Nossaman LLP (Nossaman), Contract No. C-146250, through June 30, 2026, and transfer this amount to the City Attorney Fund 100, Department No 12, Account No. 009301.

Activists and supporters of the Venice Dell project anticipate this funding request will go to the City Council soon and have been asking people to send in letters to the City Council to oppose this funding request.

According to a 2023 LA Times editorial, Heath had ghosted developers of the Venice Dell after a city department told them they were told to halt work on the project “based on direction from the city attorney’s office,” after the project had been approved through City Council decisions in December 2021 and June 2022. 

The project was approved in the last year of former City Council member Mike Bonin’s tenure on the council during which he was facing a recall campaign as he ran for re-election. Bonin, now executive director of the Pat Brown Institute, eventually called off his re-election campaign, soon after the recall attempt failed. Meanwhile, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto, opposed the project while campaigning for office, joining opposition by Traci Park, who supported the recalling Bonin, and ultimately won election to succeed him. 

There was some fanfare this week announcing $360 million in Measure ULA funds getting recommended to various projects and programs. Here’s the Los Angeles Housing Department report detailing what’s being recommended.

The Board of Public Works is taking up an application to remove a young Sycamore that was planted by the Arts District BID two years ago to commemorate the massive El Aliso tree that lived for 400 years, during which it had served as a prominent community gathering spot, landmark, shade, civic center, and it was a town square for Yaangna villagers. There appears to be a plan to relocate the commemorative tree, according to the application, which said this tree has significance to the Kizh Nation. Right now, this younger Sycamore is planted near where El Aliso once stood, near the 101 freeway onramp, not far from the Metropolitan Detention Center.

City Controller Kenneth Mejia is set to hold a budget town hall, on Monday, April 13, from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., ahead of Mayor Karen Bass releasing her office’s budget on April 20. Here’s the RSVP form to receive the Zoom link.

Mejia’s office this week also released a report on $80 million in special funds that have sat idle for at least two years. The process for using up the special funds can be a painstaking process, which has led to the past reluctance at City Hall to take it on, but such funds might prove important as city services are desperately hurting for extra cash. Skip to the end of the report if you want to see the detailed descriptions for what the funds are for and why they haven’t been used yet.

A reminder that those interested in what LA city departments are requesting that mayor include in her budget can take a deep dive into each department’s proposals. And due to the city’s ongoing fiscal crisis, the mayor’s office instructed the department’s to do a cost-cutting exercise, and most of the reports include a list of things to remove from the budget.

One of those proposed budget cuts would cancel elections for the city’s neighborhood councils, which offer a grassroots way for people to participate in their city government. But in a meeting of the Valley Alliance of Neighborhood Councils, said cutting such elections is a “bad look.”

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