Welcome to L.A. TACO’s daily news briefs, where we bring our loyal members, readers, and supporters the latest headlines about Los Angeles politics and culture. Stay informed and look closely.
The family of Houston Tipping, an LAPD officer who died during a training exercise earlier this year, accused the department of attempting to “cover-up” the nature of Tipping's death. Tipping died of a spinal cord injury after he was dropped on his head during a “mob simulation” training exercise at the police academy in Elysian Park. An attorney for the family said during a press conference that Tipping was investigating the officer who dropped him on his head for allegations of sexual assault. “It smacks of a cover-up,” the attorney said during a press conference last week. [VICE News]
—Los Feliz: P-22, the famous mountain lion who recently killed a leashed chihuahua, was captured in the backyard of a home in Los Feliz. [LAT]
The Los Angeles County Department of Animal Control issued its first "pre-approved unicorn license" to a six-year-old. [CNN]
—Norwalk: L.A. County prosecutors declined to criminally charge the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputies who shot and killed Frederick Holder. Deputies claimed that Holder pointed a firearm at them, but no weapons were found at the scene, only a butane lighter. Following Holder’s death, his family held 33 days of protests outside of the Norwalk sheriff’s station. One day for each shot that deputies fired at Holder. [Cerise Castle/Twitter]
—Downtown: The infamous Cecil Hotel is still mostly empty after being converted into homeless housing nearly a year ago. [LAT]
A day after officially leaving office, former Councilmember Gil Cedillo released a desperate 1,000+ word essay titled, “Why I Did Not Resign.” In the essay, Cedillo spends a lot of time going through his resume and blaming others rather than accepting responsibility for what he did and did not say during a racist conversation last year that was secretly recorded and led to the resignation of a city council president and labor leader. He even manages to throw in a Lizzo reference and Trevor Noah quote. You can read the full essay here. [Lexis-Olivier Ray/Twitter]
Newly elected L.A. Mayor Karen Bass declared a state of emergency yesterday morning to address the ongoing homeless crisis. The declaration gives her special powers to speed up affordable housing development and commandeer properties to shelter people living on the streets. [LAist]
—Long Beach: The Long Beach Press-Telegram is doing a series on sand erosion on our coast. [Long Beach Telegram]
—DTLA: LAPD officers denied members of Stop LAPD Spying access to a public city council meeting at City Hall this morning. The group is one of several calling for the resignation of Kevin de León. "At today's inaugural meeting of the new "progressive" City Council, LAPD is for the first time enforcing bans on several people based on past protesting," the group said in a tweet. "Police deliberately waited for today to do this." [Stop LAPD Spying/Twitter]
