At the most recent West Hollywood city council meeting on October 3, 2022, Shane Ivan Nash, chair of the Transgender Advisory Board of West Hollywood, called out the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station for mishandling his sexual assault case which occurred at a local West Hollywood bar. Nash alleges he was drugged and raped back in December 2021 and he has since advocated for the distribution drink spiking test strips at WeHo bars.
West Mayor Lauren Meister presented the LGBTQ+ Advisory, its Transgender Advisory Board and Women’s Advisory Board with a proclamation acknowledging Domestic Violence and Intimate Partner Violence Awareness Month in October.
During the speaker portion of the presentation, Nash went over the time limit allowed for comments. Mayor Meister cut him off and said his time was up. He continued speaking and his mic was eventually muted.
Council member John D’Amico asked that he be allowed to continue with his comments and the council chambers complied with the request.
Mayor Meister later apologized for not letting him go over the time limit, saying her efforts to try to run the meeting got the better of her. She invited Nash to meet with her in person to discuss the matter further (Nash harshly rejected the Mayor’s apology and invitation via a post on his Facebook timeline the following day).
Nash was very emotional when reading his statement before the council. Below is his complete speech which he shared on his Facebook page:
“Good evening esteemed council members, Mayor Meister, city staff and the city of West Hollywood.
I was promised an update from the Sheriff’s Department after speaking out. I received same update that was previously disseminated to me prior to the request made by the city council on Aug 24th.
As it stands they can no longer do anything for my case because the suspect is no longer cooperating.
Then the current head of the LASD went live on Instagram from one of the clubs that has the highest rates of drugging & sexual assault in the city to say activists are a tiny fraction and they don’t represent the community.
The sheriff then gestures to the New West Hollywood Captain & club owner and says these are the people who represent the community. This is the new impression the captain has agreed to make on the city by participating in this behavior alongside the sheriff on Instagram.
I’ve also been notified that same club owner didn’t want to accept drink test strips provided by the city inside their establishment and called it a liability, eventually strips where given but the folks passing them out said they didn’t feel welcomed when distributing to that particular location.
The current Los Angeles Sheriff has admitted in a Los Angeles times interview that 80% of his department deputies are far right conservatives whom believe in conspiracies. This same sheriff has created an environment that has caused damage to multiple communities across Los Angeles County that includes the denial of deputy gangs.
To assume West Hollywood isn’t effected is naive especially after the discovery in a prior City Council meeting that 100% of the sexual assault and drugging incidences that have occurred in west Hollywood, brought no charges since 2016.
It’s important to note the current leadership of LASD was elected in 2018 but these statistics go back to 2016.
In the history of your city work have you ever come across a statistic that was at 100%?
Does that indicate to you there is a problem?
If you are sexually assaulted in West Hollywood your case will be automatically transferred to Whittier CA to a detective that might fail to bring in other victims related to your case and you might be told your case is not a priority. That’s what happened to me.
It’s interesting times we live in with Jeffery Dahmer’s relevancy coming back into pop culture. I am reminded of ED Buck’s case and how it relates here to the systematic issues within law enforcement when it comes to the lack of empathy for LGBTQ+ survivors of sexual violence.
I am here because one of the victims with the same potential suspect as mine took their life after telling me too! This potential suspect is still in community attending local nightlife in West Hollywood regularly.
The detective on my case had over a month to reach out to the second victim and didn’t. I was notified of their passing and sent a text message to ask if the detective spoke with second victim, she responded no.
I’ve spoken to the Lieutenant who manages the detective, and she could not explain to me why that detective did not call that victim. I then asked her what are you going to do to prevent this from happening in the future, she had no answers throughout the call.
That same Lieutenant then attempted to gaslit me and asked me why I didn’t help that victim…I did I tried I sent them to your detective & gave their number and name along with screenshots of them asking for a referral for a 72 hour hold.
Then the Lieutenant told me the detective gave me too much information about my case.
You mean how I was last seen at 12:43 yet the call for service didn’t go out until 1:11AM
It took the paramedics 7 minutes after that call went out to make contact with me.
Why was the call delayed?
Security was making medical decisions for an unconscious person in a bathroom without knowing what was in their system for over 30+ minutes? The same security that said I was a Chilean pickpocket, and they didn’t help me because of it.
The footage provided by the club two weeks and two days from the incident couldn’t determine a time when the security went into the restroom. or why all my clothing was wet down to my socks & underwear? Or why the detective didn’t even interview the manager or place their name in the report? Or how I was sent a text message on December 23rd that my case had been closed only two weeks and five days after the detective was assigned to my case, before the DNA came back?
That same Lieutenant who manages the detective said my case had never been closed and was always open, then I read her the text message directly from the detective that states
‘Good Morning Shane, for the time being I am going to close your case. When we get the results of the exam, If there is any DNA or additional evidence to work with, we will reopen it. Please contact me with any questions or concerns. Happy Holidays.’
The Lieutenant replied, ‘I don’t know why she would say that.’
I was also able to obtain both the supplemental report & police report with the help of a UCLA Rape trauma counselor. We called West Hollywood station first to get a police report, we were told that because of the transfer you can only obtain that from the Whittier station. I then had to drive to Whittier to collect the report.
For folks that don’t know a supplemental report shows you what work the detective has done in a dated timeline so I have a clear picture, in their words what they have and the work that has been done.
At a public safety Commission meeting on August 24th the head of security of the club where I was assaulted whom repeatedly stated has a great relationship with LASD talked about how they know everything that goes on in their club, that same individual used air quotes while talking about rape in their bathrooms, in some bizarre PR attempt to disarm the commissioners while presenting, asserting they aren’t a great public speaker repeatedly while confidently explaining the live-scan ID system they use & how well it works.
They go on further to talk about their amazing 360 cameras that see everything but “not what’s going on in the bathroom” of course.
Again the video evidence supplied by the club I was assaulted in was unable to give the detective a time stamp on when the security went into the bathroom to discover me, all you see is shoes and lower half’s of bodies. I still wonder if he was the manager the detective forgot to mention.
My Question is how did your security not know when I was in the only stall in the restroom for 30 minutes? And in the police report, why couldn’t your security guard remember if my pants where on or off?
I am not the only one who has this type of story, since going public, dozens of stories in the same area & the same clubs keep popping up.
So I am here again asking the city council to take action before someone else ends up dead.
The detective texted me the second to victims drivers license to confirm if they had they right body but never contacted that person when they were alive to help them.
I am asking the council Who benefits the most from these crimes going unsolved?
And If the sheriff is actively fighting with the district attorney where does that leave survivors that are caught in the middle trying to have their case properly looked at.
100% is unheard of in statistics.”
Shane should sign a document that allows LASD to release info regarding this case. He should then present that document to WeHo Captain Moulder and ask that Moulder obtain details about this case and then present those details during the next Public Safety meeting. (Understanding this case is being investigated by a group in Whittier, not the WeHo station.)
Shane is being public about what he believes has been done incorrectly. Let Captain Moulder provide LASD’s version of the story.
Glad to see Shane advocate for himself so fiercely. He’s right about how local officers enabled Ed Buck’s serial predation: they escorted multiple victims out of that hellish apartment at Bucks request. Sick!
That’s right. He also calls out Ed Buck and John Duran by name, but will not call out then name of his own attacker. What’s up with that? It doesn’t make sense.
Believe the victims always. I do have a question for Shayne if he’s reading this. You call out the Sheriff’s. You call out the Mayor of West Hollywood. You call out the city of West Hollywood. Why are you not calling out your attacker? You know who did it, so why protect his identity? Why are you coy about where your attack happened? The vagueness doesn’t make sense especially when you are so outspoken about the mishandling of your case. Also were you just drugged? Were you raped? Or were you sexually assaulted and what does that mean? Forgive me.… Read more »
It’s Shane as listed in the article. There have been no inconsistencies in Shane’s story, recounting or in the facts Shane chooses to share at any given time. If you don’t know the difference between rape and sexual assault here is a link to where you can get more informed (please do not put this work on survivors). https://www.rainn.org/articles/sexual-assault. Regarding the name of the attacker** and location, this is an ongoing case. Recently, the City removed the locations of sexual assault drink spiking incidents from their reporting. it is clear that the City is doing all it can to protect… Read more »
Yours is nothing but a political rant attempting to lay blame and further a narrative that you were clearly appointed to represent and foster. Shane’s Facebook rant is the same–a political attack, rather than a call to serious dialogue. Stay focused, stop the denial, diversion and deflection. Activist is not a self-appelation, it is merely a grandiosity of ego. Pay attention and show up to meetings.
Alan Strasburg, when is the last time you’ve been to meetings on a consistent basis? The answer – at no time have you attended any of the city meetings on a regular basis. You troll WEHOTIMES and WEHOVILLE on the regular, and do nothing but spew problematic rants and attacks on our LGBTQ+ community. Your attacks are full of biases, overt racism, microaggressions toward persons of color and women, internalized homophobia, and a special hatred toward community members serving on boards and commissions. However, you don’t have a problem inviting a current WEHO City Council candidate to your home for… Read more »
Exactly! Shane’s Facebook rant sounds very political, very anti-police and anti city council. He bashes the sheriff’s deputies, and is “appalled” by the Mayor of West Hollywood and even links Duran to Ed Buck, but when it comes to his attacker and the details of what really happened, that’s when he withholds the receipts. People get drugged and people get sexually assaulted, but there have been many cases where people say they were drugged and raped and the camera footage reveals that they were not, like that woman that said she was drugged at the Abbey and she changed her… Read more »
Oh God. WeHo Times.com should have a no wehoville troll policy. Go spew your malcontent garbage where you feel at home. We come here for WeHo news. We know where to go if we want to read the same crap written by the same trolls with 20 different accounts.