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ellisonz

ellisonz's Journal
ellisonz's Journal
December 23, 2023

Part 56: Why I am Staying on Substack to Fight Nazis - Life Lessons on LAPD Corruption

By Zachary Ellison
December 23, 2023

The cool night air of Southern California requires only a light jacket for much of the year. Beneath mine is a side pack with a bottle of Jose Cuervo illegally obtained from a liquor store. The part I’ve gone to in Arcadia at Peck Road Park next to the golf course is well enough hidden away. I park my 1993 Honda Accord LX bought from an old lady in Palos Verdes in the lot and make my way down to the reservoir shoreline with my friends. Then I see them, Nazis, their skinned heads standing out like the most proverbial Nazi Bar.

I’m like why I am here before the word starts to spread, the police are in the parking lot of the golf course and we make our way toward the exit before being apprehended. The police take my tequila, but soon after calling our parents, their attention turns elsewhere. The kids from Sierra Madre, not like me from East Pasadena, one of the young men who I didn’t know, an African-America has snatched a purse from one of the kids and taken off into the channel. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department helicopter comes overhead.

https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-56-why-i-am-staying-on-substack


Hello DU!

Fellow members of the Democratic Underground! I’ve reached a decision. I’m going to stay and fight the Nazis! This is not a decision that I take lightly, as you can read I’ve been investigating political corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department.

For the last year, I’ve considered what it means to look at the authorities and wonder if the biggest hidden Nazi Bar isn’t in LAPD Headquarters. From the news lately it doesn’t seem I’m dreaming!

As such, my intention is to quickly ferret out and eliminate the Nazis on this platform using the power of journalism. Nazis are going down!

Best,

Zach

Zachary Ellison
Independent Journalist
Chief Nazi Hunter of Substack
https://zacharyellison.substack.com/

December 22, 2023

Part 55: Sexual Violence and Retaliation at USC - Accountability Journalism for Victims Rights

By Zachary Ellison
December 22, 2023

The summer afternoon was beautiful on campus at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, it was a perfect July day and we were having a special lunch just because quite often my work at USC was satisfying. There’s a misperception that I was a total malcontent, that day I was asked to tell a story of the mountains, and so a story I told, of hearing woodpeckers in the San Gabriel mountains deep in the Devil’s Canyon that were in fact Native American drums banging up above at Chilao.

Well investigative journalism can be a lot like hearing woodpeckers, but rest assured readers it’s not woodpeckers that I am hearing. Instead I am reporting an additional suspected case of Title IX Retaliation at USC, intentional abuse of the process in order to intimidate a witness in an ongoing sexual harassment investigation. Like woodpeckers in my head, I am sure that we will hear more such stories from USC, and most especially because I write about it hear which gives people a trusted voice that they can come to share their stories.

Link: https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-55-sexual-violence-and-retaliation


These stories are real, unfortunately this whole world is very secretive, and I protect my sources All Tips Welcome!

I can be reached via email at zachary.b.ellison@gmail.com or on my cell at 310-415-4253 (both Signal and WhatsApp)

Zachary "Obama" Ellison out!

December 20, 2023

Political Corruption in the LAPD Exposed? The Case Against Chief Michel Moore and Rick Caruso

By Zachary Ellison

KABOOM! I wrote in excitement at last night’s truly bombshell reporting from the Los Angeles Times journalist duo of Libor Jany and Richard Winton. “Detectives claim LAPD chief sought investigation of Mayor Bass over USC scholarship” read the headline in the expose that only slightly undersold its explosive contents. The principal subject of the story, two complaints made by Los Angeles Police Department Internal Affairs detectives to the LAPD Office of Inspector General regarding the Chief’s conduct following the November 2022 elections.

According to the Times report, soon after the November 2022 elections Chief Moore ordered two high-ranking subordinates to have the two IA detectives, one of whom is named in the story, were directed to stop an investigation into retired LAPD Commander Cory Palka’s relationship with the University of Southern California, and that USC was itself the target of the investigation. “Their investigation centered on whether Palka’s daughter, who was a USC student at the time, had received an internship thanks to her father’s cozy relationship to [CBS’S Les] Moonves.

Link: https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-54-political-corruption-in-the


I don't want to quite say I told ya so DU! But after more than a year of investigating this that's a whole lot of smoke coming out of the LAPD for there not to be any fire. We can always talk about things besides Donald Trump on DU

Zachary "Obama" Ellison out!!!
December 20, 2023

Detectives claim LAPD chief sought investigation of Mayor Bass over USC scholarship

BY LIBOR JANY, RICHARD WINTON
DEC. 19, 2023 7:26 PM PT

Two detectives in the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division say they were ordered to investigate Mayor Karen Bass shortly after her election at the behest of Chief Michel Moore, accusations the chief denied.

The detectives filed the complaints with the Office of the Inspector General alleging that Moore called for Internal Affairs investigators to conduct an inquiry into a USC scholarship that Bass received.
----
The two detectives had already been investigating the university over its connection to Cory Palka, the former LAPD captain who retired last year amid allegations that he schemed to cover up a sexual abuse claim against former CBS Corp. chief Leslie Moonves. Their investigation centered on whether Palka’s daughter, who was a USC student at the time, had received an internship thanks to her father’s cozy relationship to Moonves.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-12-19/lapd-chief-ordered-internal-affairs-investigation-of-mayor-bass-detectives-claim


This is going to be even worse than it looks! Allegations of political corruption at the highest-levels of Los Angeles. I'm going to have another story on this morass tommorow up on my Substack and will share it here. I've been investigating corruption exactly like this for the last 15 months since going whistleblower as a journalist and so here we are! People on here told me before that Rick Caruso couldn't possibly be behind those LA Fed Tapes either, but what do we have here, our Chief of Police engaging in corrupt behavior to investigate the Mayor of Los Angeles allegedly. I can't wait for the full truth about what's been going on in LA to come out soon!

Zachary "Obama" Ellison out!
https://zacharyellison.substack.com/
December 19, 2023

Part 53: Social Media and Violence in Los Angeles and Beyond - Do the Ends Justify the Means?

By Zachary Ellison

You have to love Social Media! Even more than the Worlds behind Closed Doors, our Accounts provide a window into our daily reality that often escapes the intimacies of real life. So it seems my last column went over some heads slightly in a good way, sometimes I’m serious and direct but other times I’m using irony and sarcasm. You should still listen to the Rolling Stones “Street Fighting Man” but the debate around its message back in August of 1968. The simple point was sometimes people make business decisions for the smart reason of managing certain perceived risks.

For liability as I recently heard one person say, I always try to be careful about what I write. People get litigious toward journalists real fast, and especially one’s without newsrooms, so for liability reasons I don’t always share all my leads, or even my full story. In addition, I value people’s expectations for privacy who haven’t engaged in any newsworthy wrongdoing or were in any ways known witnesses to an event. That would be unfair, but when there’s audio, video, or documentary evidence involved that’s clear and compelling, I don’t hesitate to make a judgment on the facts.

Link: https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-53-social-media-and-violence


This one should rub people on both sides in both the wrong and right ways with any luck. Thanks for your support DU!

Zachary "Obama" Ellison out~! : hide:
December 15, 2023

Part 52: A Treatise Against the Nazis on Substack - Why We Shouldn't Endorse Street Fighting Man

Published December 15, 2023

By Zachary Ellison

I wanted to be at Los Angeles City Council this morning where our elected officials recently moved to change meeting rules to move general public comment to the end of the meeting. You can still speak to individual items as usual. While I’ll be the first person to admit the displeasure of watching regular commentators spew the most vile language including sporting Swastika signs and presenting themselves as “Adolf Hitler” for official public comment, it’s not just that this morning that we are going to talk about in this treatise.

As so many have noted with the rise of Donald Trump, fascism is on the move in America. The ex-President who won’t go away now faces more felony charges than I can count. In 2016, when Trump was elected I launched a solo effort to protest him directly at his golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes. For 5 Saturday lunch times in a row, I’d stand out there in front of his sign with my “Not My President” and “Love Trumps Hate” signs. The security guards tried to chase me off at first, but after pointing to the real estate times on the space between the sidewalk and the curb there was nothing they could do about my protest.

https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/substack-part-52-a-treatise-against


I just got called "Retarded" and "Idiot" by some dude with like a gajillion followers so I must be doing something right. No one is flogging anyone, but I'm not giving Adolf Hitler a pass and I'll even applaud Rick Caruso for denouncing Donald Trump. There are business limits to free speech, it's not a blanket permission slip to incite hatred and violence against other people and businesses in the long run should lose profits when they monetize Nazism online. That's not free speech. That's failing everyone and how got to January 6, 2021.

"Obama" out
December 15, 2023

Part 51: What is Whistleblower Journalism? The Most Unique Career Choice in Los Angeles

By Zachary Ellison

Last night I had a question, I’d thought on it before at the outset of writing 50 Part’s to date in this series. What is Whistleblower Journalism? At the outset, I thought, here’s a cool concept, the whistleblower does the journalism, the story gets told. That’s not so simple in Los Angeles, but at just over a year into this project I’ve developed some impressions about how someone might define this term. Doing so I hope will help this emerging field burgeon of journalism and advance its practice while telling my story.

I did what you do when you first have a question as a journalist. I looked for the answers online, in JSTOR, in Whistleblower Network News, and Google Scholar too and beyond, but although there were some usages of the terms, and indeed even descriptions, no one had attempted to offer a comprehensive definition that I could identify yet completely available to the public. Some decried it, others praised it, but no one, not the least a whistleblower journalist themselves had sought to offer an explanation and describe their actions in great detail. It’s a self-consuming process.

Link: https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-51-what-is-whistleblower-journalism


Some people love my story, some people don't. They go, how can a whistleblower have two stories? That and more!

December 14, 2023

A Family Called 911 To Help a Suicidal Loved One, They Got a 'Nightmare a Thousand Times Worse'

It’s an increasingly common dilemma facing the families of citizens in crisis—whether contacting the authorities in the midst of a mental health crisis could cause the situation to get worse, such as in the well-known case of Takar Smith.

11:23 AM PST on December 13, 2023

By Lexis-Olivier Ray
When Jesse Batten’s girlfriend called 911 on October 4 at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, she was desperately seeking help for the 30-year-old R&B music producer.

For about a week, he’d been drinking almost nothing but fifths of vodka. And he wasn’t eating or taking his medication for depression. During this time, he began sending her text messages that were “suicidal in nature,” said a family member, who didn’t feel comfortable having their name appear in this story, during an interview with L.A. TACO last month.

“She made it very clear that” it was a “mental health-related call" and that Jesse “just needed to go to the hospital,” the family member explained.

Police weren’t needed.

Link: https://lataco.com/911-suicide-lapd


December 12, 2023

Part 50: Symbols of Faith in Santa Ana - Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Meaning of Devotion

By Zachary Ellison
December 11, 2023

Last month during the search for formerly missing person Ramón Balderrama (more on that story to come) I visited Ernest E. Debs Park in Highland Park to try and narrow down the search area as we awaited new tips and information. During my visit to the park, named after the late Assemblymember, Councilman and Supervisor, Ernest Eugene Debs, of no relation to American socialist former Presidential candidate Eugene Victor Debs, I spotted a very interesting piece of art that should have rang some very important warning bells before making it to the Internet.

The painting of the Our Lady of Guadalupe, an apparition of the Virgin Mary sits at the top of the park along the roadway on concrete in front of the bench with a commanding view of the Arroyo Seco and Los Angeles. My girlfriend insisted that it was the Virgin Mary herself, even as I tried to explain that I didn’t think it was quite that simple. The following day offloading the footage, I found the clip of myself slowing walking across the image GoPro camera in hand and put some gospel music on it and uploaded it to YouTube as the “Virgin Mary of Debs Park, LA.”

Link: https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-50-symbols-of-faith-in-santa
December 8, 2023

EXCLUSIVE: Two Stories of Sexual Violence at USC - Tragedies of Danger and Corruption in Los Angeles

By Zachary Ellison
December 7, 2023

The history of sexual violence at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles is undoubtedly long and checkered, even before the rise of Title IX establishing protections for gender equity in 1972 signed into law by Richard Nixon there was undoubtedly sexual violence. I will not attempt to tell that full history in this part, but instead will focus on two stories, one purely from my own perspective, and one told with the help of a leaked Notice of Investigation from USC’s EEO-TIX office, the first part stands for equity and equal opportunity. In doing so, I hope to illustrate common themes of public perception and private peril to create progressive conversation.

First though, I would be derelict if I did not mention what happened at USC this year on Halloween. No sooner had I dashed off another email pressing the university to increase transparency in its legally mandated reporting on these issues than another attack occurred with great notoriety and national public media attention. A female student taking a Lyft ride from a nightclub in West Hollywood was sexual assaulted, raped as the media headlines, while returning to her apartment just east of the 110-freeway. Our thoughts are with that student, and the driver has reportedly been banned from the app. LAPD’s investigation is ongoing according to the Daily Trojan.

Link: https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-49-two-stories-of-sexual-violence

Profile Information

Name: Zachary Ellison
Gender: Male
Hometown: Los Angeles
Home country: United States of America
Current location: Los Angeles
Member since: Tue Oct 4, 2005, 03:58 AM
Number of posts: 27,711

About ellisonz

Zachary Ellison is an Independent Journalist and Whistleblower in the Los Angeles area. Zach was most recently employed by the University of Southern California, Office of the Provost from October 2015 to August 2022 as an Executive Secretary and Administrative Assistant supporting the Vice Provost for Academic Operations and the Vice Provost and Senior Advisor to the Provost among others. Zach holds a Master’s in Public Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Policy and Planning from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. While a student at USC, he worked for the USC Good Neighbors Campaign including on their newsletter distributed university wide. Zach completed his B.A. in History at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon and was a writer, editor, and photographer for the Pasadena High School Chronicle. He was Barack Obama’s one-millionth online campaign contributor in 2008. Zach is a former AmeriCorps intern for Hawaii State Parks and worked for the City of Manhattan Beach Parks and Recreation. He is a trained civil process server, and enjoys weekends in the great outdoors. Find me on: https://zacharyellison.substack.com/
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