‘It’s déjà vu all over again,’ but lawyers think latest order to stop LAPD from attacking journalists sticks
The Los Angeles Press Club and Status Coup, an investigative reporting network, scored a victory last week against the city of Los Angeles, when they secured a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Los Angeles Police Department from interfering with journalists’ ability to cover protests.
But what is the likelihood the LAPD will finally comply with the law — when their officers were just caught using force against journalists last month, hitting them with batons even though the reporters were holding up press badges, after plaintiffs had already secured a temporary restraining order against such behavior in July?
In an interview with The LA Reporter this week, Peter Bibring, the plaintiffs’ lawyer who made the argument on the injunction, said what happened last month was “not an accident.” He described it as part of “a culture of non-compliance” that he hopes will be corrected through the Wednesday, Sept. 10, court order.
That order includes provisions meant to increase the chances the LAPD complies. They include requiring that any officer who is assigned to protests be required to read and acknowledge a notice that summarizes the latest court order. The notice can be read here. They also must have reviewed, at least once in the last year, the LAPD’s own policies for policing protests.
The LAPD also must provide the LA Press Club and Status Coup with the names, emails and cell numbers of the officers, ranked lieutenant or higher, who must deploy to a protest to make sure LAPD complies with the injunction.
In a statement to The LA Reporter, LAPD officials said they will “continue to comply with the court order.” They also said they train officers to “identify and respect working journalists during protest and we remain committed to protecting the rights of the press.”
First Amendment Coalition Executive Director David Snyder said he is “optimistic” that — even though the LAPD has repeatedly violated laws protecting journalists — “the fifth or sixth time is the charm.”
“It's a good, strong order that has some very specific prohibitions,” Snyder said, pointing to page 30 of the order, where a federal judge last week laid out “all the specifics of what the LAPD cannot do.”
The federal judge, Hernán D. Vera, also touched on the repeated nature of the LAPD’s non-compliance with existing laws over many years, opening his Sept. 10 court order granting the preliminary injunction with the words, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”
Vera’s order includes three sections listing what LAPD is specifically prohibited from doing:
The first section covers instances when there is an order to disperse. The LAPD is prohibited from arresting, citing, or detaining journalists for not dispersing. Additionally, they cannot interfere with journalists doing their jobs, nor use force to retaliate against them for covering a protest.
The second section covers instances when there is police line or a rolling closure set up during a protest. The LAPD is prohibited from preventing journalists form entering or staying in a closed area. The LAPD also cannot assault, obstruct or interfere with a journalist who is newsgathering, which includes restricting them to an area where they can’t observe what’s happening. They also cannot arrest a journalist for failing to disperse, violating curfew or obstruction of a police officer. And if they are arrested or detained, the journalist should be allowed to contact a supervisory officer or an officer with the rank of captain or above to challenge the detention.
A third section covers prohibitions against the LAPD using less-lethal munitions, kinetic impact projectiles, chemical irritants, batons and flash bangs on journalist. They are also specifically order not to use kinetic impact projectiles and chemical agents solely in response to a verbal threat, non-compliance with a law enforcement directive and violation of an imposed curfew.
And finally the order provides a list of examples on who is considered a journalist. Bibring highlights that the order doesn’t limit journalists to just those with press passes, and says it is clear that the order applies to “anybody who bears the hallmarks of a journalist.”
Risky LA Convention Center project gets the go-ahead
LA city leaders on Friday, Sept. 19, took a big, and many say disastrous, gamble on a $2.6 billion plan to expand the Convention Center.
The City Council voted 11-2 to move forward against their own financial advisors’ predictions that the project will likely drain city finances amid an already dire budget crisis for the city. There are even concerns the project could be cutting it pretty close, and the work on the Convention Center, which is supposed to host judo, wrestling and other events, may not even be completed before the 2028 Olympics if there are any major complications during the construction process.
Read the Los Angeles Times’s report by David Zahniser and Noah Goldberg, and this column by Alissa Walker of Torched.
LA charter reform ‘an opportunity for change’ in the City Attorney’s Office
LA City Council members Nithya Raman and Tim McOsker have gone on record at recent Los Angeles Charter Reform Commission meetings saying that they hope the panel comes back with proposals to do away with the elected City Attorney’s Office, and replace it with an appointed lawyer whose duties would include defending the city against lawsuits, drafting ordinances and advising city departments.
This comes amid some public kerfuffles between City Council members and the elected City Attorney’s Office over the last couple of years. They include the most recent concerns raised over the handling of a major homeless lawsuit, in which City Council members said they weren’t quickly notified of ballooning attorney costs in that case. The current City Attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto, has described any effort to turn her position into an appointed one as a “poison pill” that she believes would jeopardize the charter reform process.
Read the full story by The LA Reporter here.
Mutual aid groups say LA city council member not a ‘champion,’ despite being honored as one at Sunday fundraiser
Several mutual aid groups circulated flyers outside a “garden party” fundraiser this past Sunday with the hope of raising awareness among the event’s attendees about the City Council member they were honoring that day.
They say that while they were honoring Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez and his staff, which includes a team that does work on homelessness, as “housing champions,” the office is not actually a champion for the unhoused constituents of his Eastside district, which includes Echo Park, East Hollywood and Silver Lake.
They say that Soto-Martinez had pledged to end sweeps in his district while campaigning to represent the district, but has since conducted harmful sweeps that displace his unhoused constituents and lead to their much needed personal belongings getting destroyed.
Read the full story by The LA Reporter here.
New eviction tracking tool unveiled for Los Angeles County
Downtown L.A., South Central, Palmdale and Long Beach are some of the areas where eviction filings in court have spiked. That’s data from a new eviction mapping tool just released by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project.
The tool aims to give people who set policy, along with organizers, a more robust sense of eviction trends throughout Los Angeles County than had been available. The map incorporates court filings that show when landlords follow-through with evictions, adding to the dataset collected when landlords notify the city of Los Angeles of their intent to evict tenants.
Kyle Nelson, SAJE’s research and policy director who is also a member of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, says the tool will help not only policymakers but also organizers “to see who is getting evicted right now” and track trends of what communities face the greatest displacement pressure.
LMU uses ‘religious exemption’ to get out of recognizing faculty union
The non-tenured faculty of Loyola Marymount University were told over a week ago they were not going to be recognized as a union, writes labor reporter Mel Buer, of Words About Work. LMU’s administration pointed to “unrealistic” economic proposals from the union, which is represented by SEIU Local 721, while union representatives told Buer that the university never came back with any counter proposals over eight months of being at the table. Now the union says they plan to file an unfair labor practice, or ULP, complaint.
Read the full story at Words about Work.
The LA Squawk Box: Some tidbits from LA City Hall.
Patrice Lattimore is the new LA City Clerk, after getting appointed by Mayor Karen Bass last week, and confirmed by the City Council this week.
Confirmations of some commission appointments are being redone because disclosures were not turned in ahead of time, according to Unrig LA, who has been tracking whether the city is following a change made in the charter under Charter Amendment HH that requires there be disclosures about an appointees’ financial interests before they are confirmed.
City Controller Kenneth Mejia gets a challenger in Isadore Hall, a former member of the state Senate.
Former FBI agent Erroll Southers’ re-appointment to the Los Angeles Police Commission has been pushed to next Friday’s Los Angeles City Council meeting, which will be held in Van Nuys.
And after juicing up anticipation by teasing that she is a run for something, possibly mayor, Monica Rodriguez finally files paperwork showing that she’s just running for re-election.
FOR THE RECORD: Much, much more than a ‘re-entry’ librarian — it’s all about transforming the library experience.
In the first issue of The LA Reporter, I wrote about a new librarian role at the LA Public Library that is in part all about helping to make patrons who are formerly incarcerated feel welcome and comfortable at the library. But library officials wrote back to The LA Reporter saying that the work of that librarian Anders Villalta is actually more expansive.
In a broader description of their role provided by Villalta, they wrote that they support initiatives in a division known as the Library Experience Office. They include “staff training, services for patrons who are justice-involved, reference-by -mail for incarcerated patrons, and accessibility.”
Villalta also conducts research, collects data and statistics and does “outreach to justice-impacted community members, create and distribute resources for library staff, and initiate and sustain community connections to better serve patrons who have experienced trauma and/or incarceration.” They also work to incorporate social workers into the library.
“The Library Experience Office was created about five years ago and, along with other colleagues, continues to transform what librarianship can look like to meet evolving needs in our community,” Villalta said. “On a personal note, I am really loving my role so far and feel grateful that others are interested!”
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