Jeffrey Katzenberg, a billionaire Hollywood mogul, has been pressuring City Council to increase criminaliation of unhoused people. Katzenberg has a long history of using his obscene wealth to fund criminalization and surveillance in LA.
In 2014, Katzenberg helped fund LAPD’s body cam surveillance program. @ladailynews reported that Katzenberg was a "rich friend" of Police Commission President @SteveSoboroff, who got him to make the donation “as a way to avoid bureaucratic red tape.” dailynews.com/2014/12/22/how…
After LAPD used Katzenberg’s donation to test out body cams, the city went on to pay over $36 million on the body cam program. This is a common pattern: rich people “donate” harmful new LAPD tools, which later become budget items.

From our upcoming LAPD'S BUDGET CREEP zine:
That same pattern is how LAPD started using Palantir for its data-mining and racial profiling programs, through a donation from @Target.
Sometimes billionaires even REQUIRE the city to pick up funding after their donation expires, like @Steven_Ballmer’s @BallmerGroup did when funding LAPD's Community Safety Partnerships surveillance program.
Katzenberg wasn’t the only white elite who helped LAPD launch its body cam surveillance. LAPD paid law professors @barryfriedman1 and @m_ponomarenko to write their body cam policies. The two run a nonprofit funded by Axon, who LAPD went on to pay millions for body cam technology.
Katzenberg also brokers LAPD donations from other rich elites. In 2018, he along with @caseywasserman and @LAPDChiefMoore hosted a fundraiser for LAPD with some of the city's wealthiest elites. Every host and nearly every guest at the event was white.
LAPD's fundraising pitch for the event was that “our technology is woefully antiquated.” LAPD is one of the world's most resourced police forces, and in 2018 they were using predictive algorithms, drones, face recognition, and more. But these white people wanted to arm LAPD more.
Surveillance has always been advanced by white people getting together to decide how we will be tracked, controlled, and studied. That’s the white supremacist lineage that Katzenberg, @caseywasserman, @SteveSoboroff, @Steven_Ballmer, @barryfriedman1, and @m_ponomarenko represent.

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More from @stoplapdspying

19 May
In 2014, LAPD brass went on a tour of Israel where they "visited private security firms and drone manufacturers." They "lit up when talking about a new tethered drone that was just released to IDF."

A few months later LAPD announced a drone program. jewishjournal.com/news/united-st…
Israel has one of the most advanced weapons industries in the world, exporting technology to police everywhere. How long before we see these tear gas drones, used this week in the West Bank, by US police? haaretz.com/israel-news/.p…
This trip to Israel also covered data systems, with LAPD officials attending a Big Data Intelligence Conference. "That’s the wave of the future," LAPD's deputy chief said.

Data-driven policing is now a cornerstone of LAPD violence and dispossession. jewishjournal.com/news/united-st…
Read 4 tweets
19 May
Today several community members went to @lapdcommission to condemn LAPD collaboration and trainings with IDF. @SteveSoboroff and Commission President @lapdcommission immediately moved to silence them, saying this criticism was irrelevant.
Israel’s ties to LAPD and other police forces run deep, and the learning goes both ways. Since 2002, thousands of US police and federal officials have travelled from the US to Israel to train with Israeli forces.
Israel is one of the world’s most violent, lethal frontiers of settler-colonial violence. Police everywhere are eager to adopt their tactics and technologies, and Israel is happy to advance white supremacist policing everywhere.
Read 12 tweets
22 Mar
We recently found emails between @Target executives and @LAPDChiefMoore from last summer. They’re part of Target's long history of working closely with police forces across the country. Thread:
Barely 48 hours after George Floyd’s murder, Target emailed Moore: “Issues in Minneapolis - Translating to LA?”

The email began, “At Target HQ we often discuss that when all is said and done, we believe history will say that California got it right.” The fuck does that mean?
A couple hours later, @LAPDChiefMoore writes that “a BLM organized demo" with "verbal assaults on our people.” As people across the country were starting to condemn policing, Moore was whining to @Target that people yelled at cops.
Read 17 tweets
16 Mar
BREAKING: Along with @LACANetwork @BLMLA and 39 other community groups, we just sent City Council a letter about the new City Council report on LAPD's violence last summer. The report is a bold attempt to win LAPD more resources and spy powers. drive.google.com/file/d/1MCQIgu…
As we wrote in @KNOCKdotLA today: “It should surprise no one that this investigation, featuring almost zero effort to hear from the community, offers nothing but calls to expand policing. It’s hard to see this review as anything but a police coup.” knock-la.com/lapd-report-pr…
This report was written by a team of six LAPD veterans and insiders after interviewing 100+ police (and exactly 10 community members, all handpicked by City Council).

What does their police-fed investigation conclude? They say LAPD needs more resources and surveillance powers.
Read 11 tweets
15 Mar
Three months ago @lapdcommission removed this disclaimer from of its motions accepting @LAPoliceFdtn gifts: "To the best of our knowledge, there are no potential factors that may give the appearance of a conflict of interest in accepting this donation."
These gifts are how LAPD gets hooked on dangerous weapons that they use on the community. In 2002, @CommissBratton had @LAPoliceFdtn ask @Target (yes Target) for $200k to buy @PalantirTech for LAPD.

Once hooked on Palantir, LAPD went on to spend millions of tax $$ on it.
The @LAPoliceFdtn is also a front for the surveillance industry to buy influence with LAPD, as @awinston and @DarwinBondGraha have written: propublica.org/article/privat…
Read 4 tweets
14 Mar
A month ago we asked: who are reform professionals like @barryfriemdan1 accountable to when they push their harmful proposals?
Looking at their website, @policingproject's accountability is clear. Their Advisory Board is half police officials, plus surveillance executives, @CatoInstitute, and @CKinstitute. That's who @barryfriedman1 is “Reimagining Public Safety” with. policingproject.org/our-advisory-b…
Read 11 tweets

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