[ilbegone]

This is what seems to have gone on - businessman Kayvan Setareh who repetitively and flagrantly ignores the permit process and city regulations, and elected city attorney Carmen Trutanich http://www.tru09.com/ who offers a brutal yet all too common choice of unreasonable bail or jail time to punish someone without the benefit of due process.

In this case, it does take two to tango, and getting screwed doesn't require a kiss.

That brings us to L.A.'s Trutanich, who has anger-management issues of his own. There is no doubt that the spread of digital billboards and supergraphics is a civic blight, or that many of the building owners who profit from them are flouting the city's permitting process. (I personally loathe the things and, in other columns, have argued that the city ought to ban them wholesale, while allowing reasonable signage for businesses on the premises.)

On Friday, Trutanich had Pacific Palisades businessman Kayvan Setareh arrested for ignoring warnings from the city attorney's office and allowing an eight-story supergraphic to be draped on a building he owns at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue. Setareh reportedly has a history of ignoring city regulations and neighborhood complaints about graphic ads on several other buildings he owns in Hollywood.

The problem is that even scofflaws are entitled to due process. Trutanich found a feeble-willed judge who was willing to set the landlord's initial bail at $1 million. By having him arrested on a Friday, the city attorney essentially gave Setareh a choice: Pay the nonrecoverable $100,000 a bail bondsman would have charged to write the bond, or spend the weekend in jail, because it takes three to four days to secure release by putting up your own real property as surety. (The bail was subsequently reduced to $100,000.)

Putting aside the question of whether there's any ethical proportionality in demanding $1 million bail for three misdemeanor charges, are we really supposed to believe that Setareh -- with all his holdings in Los Angeles -- is a flight risk? Bail is not a punishment; it simply is a way of enforcing a defendant's promise to appear in court. In this case, though, Trutanich essentially imposed a choice between jail time or a $100,000 fine on a defendant who'd never had a minute -- let alone a day -- in court and is entitled to the presumption of innocence.

The Bunning and Trutanich cases are good reminders that, while elected office can be made a bully pulpit, we all suffer when it's transformed into a pulpit for bullies.