LAVC Omsbudsman Stalked Whistleblowers

Los Angeles Valley College has been embroiled in scandal after scandal, the latest being running a massive, multi-million dollar racketeering scheme to defraud Pinner Construction with the Valley Academic and Cultural Center project, that came to light in the past year. Further the racketeering-scheme that involved the LAVC Media Arts Department, which at the time of the Valley Academic and Cultural Center’s approval, was subject to multiple complaints by students in the Department for Academic and Payroll Fraud.

These complaints were documented in several news stories ran in in May 2023, including ‘‘Dozen LAVC Cinema Student Narratives challenges Erika Endrijonas’s LACCD Success Story’ and ‘Erika Endrijonas faces new questions in LACCD fraud.’

A further article ‘L.A. City City College Presidential Hopeful Fostered Retaliation Culture as LAVC President’ demonstrates that students bringing accreditation complaints were targeted for retaliation.

Instrumental in this was Dr. Annie Goldman-Reed. Reed has already been documented in ‘Dozen LAVC Cinema Student Narratives challenges Erika Endrijonas’s LACCD Success Story’ for covering up serious accreditation violations in her role as Omsbudsman.

But Reed apparently didn’t stop there.

According to Student 1, Reed and LAVC employees began a campaign of stalking Student 1.

After Student 1 withdrew from classes, Reed accessed Student 1’s Twitter account and began liking posts in an attempt to invade Student 1’s digital space. After this she went to classes and ran a smear campaign to former classmates.

However Reed did not stop there and began targeting friends of Student 1, including Student 2. Reed demanded a meeting with Student 2 on trumped up charges.

After this Student 1 documented that nine months after leaving Los Angeles Valley College, Reed continued to view Student 1’s Facebook Profile so frequently that she started showing up in the recommended friends section. This was one of many incidents involving LAVC employees.

At first glance this would seem trivial, if un-professional. However we now know that LAVC was involved in a racketeering scheme and we know that Reed’s husband was involved in lobbying for the projects authorization.

However a new piece of evidence surfaced in the past few years from the most unlikely source – Annie Reed herself.

Reed gave an interview to the Los Angeles Valley College Podcast, in which she smugly bragged her ‘superpower’ (as she called it) was to persuade people of things thats weren’t true.

Reed then went on to brag that she cultivated a culture of spying, encouraging members of the local community, students and even faculty to gossip with her about her targets. Worse, she also encouraged faculty members to develop close relationships with students and then betray their confidences to her behind their back.

At the same time Reed refused to meet students in her office to discuss life issues, while claiming she was trying to be ‘empathetic.’

Reed also used her position to try and both cover-up and interfere with Board matters relating to Trustee Scott Svonkin. July 13, 2017, Reed made a point of inserting herself in a situation that did not concern her and was well beyond her purview, when the LACCD Board met to discuss the alleged aggressive behavior Svonkin was accused of exhibiting at a board meeting. Reed further made public statements to the Los Angeles Daily News that as an employee she had no business making.

Criminal behavior does not appear to bother Reed very much given her husband, Dennis Reed (also a Professor at LAVC) was arrested for hit-and-run on two bicyclists and then lying to the police filing a false report against his victims. Given Annie Reed's comments about her 'super-power' and her law degree, it raises the question of whether she was an accomplice.

Given this culture of retaliation and terror, the picture is becoming clearer regarding why and how a multi-million dollar racketeering scheme was able to go unnoticed for years. OR rather it didn’t go unnoticed, an LACCD employee was permitted to silence and trash low-income students and members of the community.