The former Los Angeles fire chief lashed out publicly at Mayor Karen Bass on Tuesday, telling the City Council that the mayor had made “multiple false accusations” when removing her from the department’s top office for her handling of the devastating Palisades fire in January.
The remarks by the former chief, Kristin Crowley, were not enough to persuade the Council to reinstate her. But she used the meeting to mount her first vigorous defense of her actions as fire chief since Ms. Bass demoted her on Feb. 21 amid ongoing acrimony between the two officials.
The mayor accused the chief last month of inadequately preparing for the fire, failing to fully brief her on the impending danger, and refusing to prepare a report for the city’s fire commission on the department’s response. Ms. Bass said the lack of warning was to blame for her not canceling a diplomatic trip to Ghana.
At least a dozen people died and nearly 7,000 structures were destroyed in the fire that ravaged much of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, one of two devastating blazes in Southern California that began on Jan. 7.
With scores of Los Angeles firefighters in T-shirts packing the Council chambers on Tuesday, Ms. Crowley defended her department’s response, saying that she could not have deployed more firefighters or engines because the agency was so badly underfunded that it had critical shortages of personnel and equipment.
Among the mayor’s complaints was that the chief had declined on the first day of the Palisades fire to order about 1,000 firefighters to remain on duty after their shift. Ms. Crowley said on Tuesday that she did not keep those firefighters on because there were not enough operable engines to deploy them.
She said her staff “engaged in all of its standard communication” to warn city officials, including the mayor’s office, about the incoming red flag conditions. As for the report requested by Ms. Bass, the former chief said she had not refused to conduct the review but rather had recommended collaborating with external investigators whose work was already underway.
Members of the union that represents rank-and-file Los Angeles firefighters also spoke on the ex-chief’s behalf, claiming that Ms. Crowley had become a scapegoat for longstanding failures to sufficiently fund the Fire Department. “The reality is, Chief Crowley was fired for telling the truth and exposing the budgetary deficiencies of our Fire Department,” said Chung Ho, a union director, who called the mayor’s rationale “manufactured.”
The City Council, however, effectively upheld the mayor’s decision and voted 13 to 2 to let Ms. Crowley’s demotion stand. The city’s charter requires the approval of two-thirds of the Council, or 10 of the 15 members, to reinstate a department head who has been removed by the mayor.
In the aftermath of the blazes, veteran fire officials in the Los Angeles area suggested that Ms. Crowley’s preparations were inadequate compared with what other local departments had done and what the city Fire Department’s own playbook called for. Relations between the mayor and fire chief curdled badly.
Under the city charter, department heads can be hired and fired by the mayor, and Ms. Bass had inherited Ms. Crowley, who had been appointed by the previous mayor, Eric Garcetti.
Ms. Crowley initially was viewed as a force of stability in a department that had been beset with allegations of discrimination and harassment against nonwhite firefighters and women. But in a letter to the Council on March 3, Robert Hawkins, the president of the Stentorians, an organization of Black Los Angeles firefighters, wrote that workplace inequities had only increased under Ms. Crowley and that the organization now had “serious concerns” about her.
When the mayor announced Ms. Crowley’s demotion, it appeared that the two officials had reached an agreement: Ms. Crowley, a civil service employee, would remain with the department at her previous rank, the mayor said, and would be given an assignment to be determined by the new interim fire chief. Ms. Crowley made no indication at the time that she might seek to hold onto her post.
Her appeal late last month was viewed in City Hall as a sign either that the agreement had broken down or that the chief had decided to sue the city and was preparing to demonstrate to the court that she had exhausted her administrative remedies.
On Tuesday, Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, an ally of the former chief, accused the mayor of promoting a “false narrative” and said that Ms. Crowley’s dismissal amounted to “political expediency overshadowing the service of a decorated civil servant.” Ms. Bass herself has faced intense criticism and doubt, and a committee was recently formed to pursue a recall of the mayor.
Councilwoman Traci Park, who represents Pacific Palisades, also voted with the former fire chief, adding that she was “deeply disturbed” by 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 Councilman Tim McOsker supported the Council’s decision to allow the demotion to stand without further action, saying that the city needed to have a mayor and fire chief who could work together so that “this government can be functional into the future.”
The testimony added to the turmoil that has gripped Los Angeles in the two months since flames spread by hurricane-force winds destroyed large swaths of the region. As Ms. Bass, a nationally known Democrat, has sought to muster the city’s population of some four million residents into a united recovery effort, political skirmishes with more conservative critics have repeatedly challenged her leadership.
The mayor also has been slammed by President Trump and by the billionaire Los Angeles developer who opposed her in the election, Rick Caruso.
On Tuesday, however, the mayor’s office had scant response to the former chief’s assertions, other than noting that Ms. Crowley had inadvertently admitted to one of the mayor’s complaints about her preparation for the disaster.
“After testimony by the former chief confirming she sent firefighters home on the morning of Jan. 7, her appeal was rejected 13 to 2 by members of the City Council,” a spokesman for the mayor, Zach Seidl, said. “This is an issue of public safety and for the operations of the Los Angeles Fire Department — the City of Los Angeles is moving forward.”
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