By Peggy Lee Kennedy

The latest dirt on the Venice Neighborhood Watch is that the newest neighborhood watch s/hero and queen anti-homeless blogger must have got into it with another neighborhood watch person – triggering a background check revealing a felony conviction, among other things. Even as a felon, she is just another tool for a police state culture.

The true intention of Community Policing, which is the umbrella organization for Neighborhood Watch, is to create civilian groups that directly communicate the needs of the community to the police. It is a basically a good idea – if it were not controlled by the police. The problem is that the leaders are not always picked from a diverse cross section of positions in the community. Even if moderate people do join the local Neighborhood Watch, they often enter into a police snitch culture that does not foster diverse points of view.

Some of our most public Venice Neighborhood Watch figures are Boston Dawna, Alex Thompson, Rick Feibush, and Councilman Bill Rosendahl as the big top Neighborhood Watch promoter.

Boston Dawna, AKA Donna Chaet and mentor to Alex, is a crude toilet mouth woman who drove or walked around Venice at all hours taking the law into her own hands apparently under the premise that some people do not have civil rights. Until she moved back to Boston.

Alex Thompson, AKA Alexandria Thompson (alias Amie Thompson, Amie M Thompson, Alexandreia Thompson, Alexanderia Thompson), is a convicted felon that the LAPD allegedly has issued a police radio. Thompson is well known for stirring up community hate for homeless people or the locals who help the homeless people. She has a history of posting anti-homeless fairy stories or foul verbiage on YoVenice, which included going after our Venice Justice Committee that helps poor people being unjustly treated and cited with infractions or misdemeanors (NOT FELONY CONVICTIONS). She goes out on the street to be the cheering section when homeless disabled people loose their RV, doggies, or get arrested. She filed false criminal charges and went after Ivonne Guzman inappropriately.

Alex also created a snitch web site mimicking the City’s 311 info number. Her Venice311 site is yet another outlet for her to fill with misinformation meant to encourage hate. She is a busy little ex-con.

Rick Feibush, AKA Watchdawg, has also told fairy stories on YoVenice to stir things up, like one of the Justice Committee members being a scary Convict Parolee. Everything he said about him on YoVenice was an absolute lie. Rick ran with the Alex propaganda against our Justice Committee to encourage people to contact the Venice United Methodist Church to complain against us, all based on a hate movement founded on lies. He repeatedly stated how scary all the homeless people are and how they are criminals.

The real crime is how our city is dealing with homelessness.

The majority of the homeless people I have been in contact with are not criminals. However, they are criminalized by an anti-poor, fear-based, pro-gentrification, quality of life, law enforcement campaign that costs tons of money and provides no real solutions. And they are not convicted felons either.

The main thing that these popular Venice Neighborhood Watch leaders have in common is they appear to care less about basic human rights or constitutional rights when it comes to the poor, the odd, or the homeless.

Another interesting fact is that Alex and Boston Dawna were the two main witnesses (neither credible in my opinion) to that infamous RV Dumping incident August 17, 2010 – which was ground zero for a wide scale movement to tow, arrest, ticket, and harass vehicle live-aboards in Venice. All championed by Councilman Rosendahl with multiple task forces.

The result being an untold amount of city funds spent on hurting disabled people and yet another civil rights lawsuit. Then there is that $750,000 Venice money to a RV parking program with no city ordinance in sight, no Venice parking lot, and maybe housing a few of the RV people. Any financially sane taxpaying person should feel pretty ripped off by this stuff.

Yet our city council person puts up a front pretending to care while riding the tsunami wave of gentrification crashing down on Venice. Caring is not violating human and civil rights of disabled poor people. And building community does not mean co-opting people into a snitch police state culture.

My final questions are: Who is watching the Neighborhood Watch people that the police are empowering? And will there ever be an objective and independent community advisory to the LAPD? (Or the City for that matter.) Because even though civil rights lawsuits can be successful and the city pays out – the lawmakers, the police, and the city attorneys seem to take it in stride with no apparent repercussions.