Kristin Crowley, the former chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, filed a legal claim against the city and Mayor Karen Bass on Wednesday, accusing city leaders of destroying her decades-long career after she spoke out about missteps relating to the catastrophic wildfires in January.
Ms. Bass abruptly removed Ms. Crowley from her post in February, blaming the chief for failing to properly warn the mayor about the scope of the threat before the fires broke out, an assertion Ms. Crowley has disputed.
Ms. Crowley filed a tort claim, which is often a precursor to a lawsuit, for emotional distress and lost wages of more than $25,000. She is also demanding that city leaders retract “false and defamatory statements,” formally apologize to her and stop all ongoing retaliation.
“Integrity, truthfulness, and serving others before self have guided me throughout my career,” Ms. Crowley said in a statement. “Doing the right thing even when it is hard is always the right decision and that is why I am continuing to fight for the resources our firefighters need to keep us all safe.”
In a statement, David Michaelson, counsel to the mayor, said that Ms. Bass would not comment on personnel matters and that she was busy focusing on “preparations for the hottest temperatures of the year and the potential for regional fire danger.”
The day before Ms. Crowley filed her claim, the mayor made an appearance alongside leaders of the Fire Department to detail how it was positioning itself to respond quickly in the event of fires during the expected heat wave in Southern California this week.
Earlier this year, as Los Angeles leaders and firefighting officials faced intense criticism for their handling of the deadly Palisades fire, Ms. Bass and Ms. Crowley engaged in a public battle over who was to blame for what many said was an insufficient firefighting response.
The mayor stirred outrage in Los Angeles because she was in Ghana when the fires broke out. While she eventually admitted she had made a mistake in leaving the country, she blamed Ms. Crowley for failing to make the severity of the fire threat clear to her. She also accused Ms. Crowley of refusing to prepare a report for the city’s fire commission on the department’s actions during the blaze.
Veteran fire officials in the Los Angeles area also suggested that Ms. Crowley’s preparations were inadequate compared with what other local departments had done and with what the city Fire Department’s own playbook called for.
Ms. Crowley disputed those claims and instead blamed the mayor and city leaders for refusing to properly fund the department in a time of growing need, as climate change has made weather extremes more dangerous. In the legal claim she filed, she mentioned more than a dozen instances over the past couple of years when she pleaded to get enough money to repair aging equipment and to fill her ranks. Instead, she said, the city cut her budget. The mayor and city budget officials have denied that the department was underfunded.
The acrimony between the two officials continued to escalate until Feb. 21, when Ms. Bass removed Ms. Crowley from the department’s top job, although she was able to stay with the department at a lower rank.
Ms. Crowley then embarked on a protracted campaign to get her job back. Days after her removal, the former chief appealed her dismissal.
The next month, she pleaded her case before the City Council. Scores of firefighters in T-shirts packed the chambers, as Ms. Crowley defended the department’s response to the fire and disputed the mayor’s claims.
The former chief told city leaders then that her staff “engaged in all of its standard communication,” including with the mayor’s office, to warn officials about the red flag conditions. And she said she had not refused to prepare the report the mayor had requested, but rather had recommended working with external investigators who were already looking into the response.
Two City Council members, Monica Rodriguez and Traci Park, sided with Ms. Crowley.
Ms. Rodriguez said at the time that the dismissal amounted to “political expediency overshadowing the service of a decorated civil servant.” Ms. Park, who represents Pacific Palisades, said that she was worried about the shortage of firefighters and critical failures in the community’s water infrastructure, but that “accountability doesn’t just stop with one person or one department.”
But the rest of the 15-member City Council voted to uphold the mayor’s decision.
Shawn Hubler contributed reporting.
Jill Cowan is a Times reporter based in Los Angeles, covering the forces shaping life in Southern California and throughout the state.
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