Karen Bass isn’t Fooling Anyone. She Must Go

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(Editor’s note: This story appeared on February 21 in Christopher Legras’ All Aspect.)

L.A. Karen Bass is captain of the Titanic, aka the Palisades Fire.

Firing LAFD Chief Kristin Crowley is Too Little, Too Late

By CHRISTOPHER LEGRAS

In a move that surprised no one, on Friday Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass fired Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) Chief Kristin Crowley. According to a story in the Westside Current, Bass said at a press conference announcing the move, “Acting in the best interests of Los Angeles’ public safety and for the operations of the Los Angeles Fire Department, I have removed Kristin Crowley as fire chief. We know that 1,000 firefighters who could have been on duty the morning the fires broke out were instead sent home on Chief Crowley’s watch.”

Yes, Madam Mayor, we do know that. We also know that you were equally derelict in your duty to the people of Los Angeles in, among other things, ignoring dire warnings from the National Weather Service that a “particularly dangerous situation” (PDS) was about to pummel the region in the form of unusually severe Santa Ana winds. Instead, you took a literal ego trip to the country of Ghana, to attend the swearing in of the new president as part of a Biden Administration delegation to strengthen ties between the United States and the country.

Because, of course, that’s part of the job description of the Mayor of Los Angeles. Perhaps your goal is to follow in your predecessor Eric Garcetti’s footsteps when you leave office and become an ambassador. It would be nice to see you move 8,000 miles away.

Shamefully, it took you almost six weeks to so much as acknowledge that the trip was a mistake. What took so long, Madam Mayor? You returned within 24 hours, but it may as well have been 24 days. When a reporter from Sky News UK confronted you on the jetway at LAX, you had nothing to say. Your city was on fire, people were dying, lives were being devastated by the tens of thousands, and you couldn’t muster a single syllable? Not even an anodyne, “My heart goes out to the victims?” Nothing?

Your – oh, let’s call it “leadership” – during and after the fires has been a disgrace. You’ve appointed a “recovery czar,” Steve Soboroff, hired consulting firms for millions, and signed a bunch of executive orders. Yet no one in the City knows who’s actually in charge. It certainly isn’t you. Your lack of control and coordination is opening the door for all sorts of fraud, graft, and corruption during the rebuilding process. Given how poorly managed the City’s finances are already, and in the face of thousands of lawsuits, there’s a very real chance Los Angeles will soon face de facto insolvency, if not outright bankruptcy. Do you have a plan for that, Madam Mayor?

As an aside, given your dereliction and failure during the worst natural disaster in L.A. since the St. Francis Dam collapse in 1928, how can you expect the people of this City to have the slightest confidence in your ability to manage the 2028 Olympics, which already are looking like a slow motion disaster in the making, the 2027 World Cup, or even the 2026 Super Bowl?

No one believes, not for one nanosecond, that firing Chief Crowley is anything but a hopelessly transparent act of political ass covering.

According to the Los Angeles Times, you told reporters that you “didn’t receive enough information about the weather.” If you had, you said, you would have canceled her trip. Presumably you said this with a straight face. On Wednesday you told  FoxLA’s Elex Michaelson, ““So when I talked about [the threat of fire] with, with the Fire Chief, what she said is, is that we have warnings of Santa Ana winds a lot, but predicting this – and you saw from the city, from the county, that level of preparation really didn’t happen. So, it didn’t reach that level to me to say something terrible could happen and maybe you shouldn’t have gone on a trip.”

Excuse me, but bullshit. This is the worst kind of word salad blame ducking and buck passing. It’s like saying, well, sure, I saw the tsunami coming, but the Coast Guard didn’t tell me it was going to be really bad, so I took off.

You also have a terrible poker face. You started to say we couldn’t have predicted this, then caught yourself. Could that be because the NWS had been warning of a major, dangerous wind event that would endanger human lives for nearly a week before you left? Culminating with the agency’s highest threat level, culminating with that PDS, the equivalent of warning that a Category 5 hurricane is about to make landfall?

The average Angeleno squirrel knew what was coming, Madam Mayor. Deranged lunatic vagrants in your illegal homeless encampments and $17,000 a month “Inside Safe” facilities (another bang up job, by the way) knew. Yet you expect people to believe that you, of all people, didn’t? Were you so busy preparing for your ego trip that you stopped reading the news and stopped taking briefings from your staff for a week?

It’s time for you to fire yourself. When the people of Los Angeles needed you most, you bailed. The Titanic was headed for the iceberg, and the captain decided to pop down to his stateroom to work on his memoirs.

No wonder a petition calling for you to step down has garnered 172,198 signatures and counting. Here’s a fun fact for you: That’s 34% of the number of people who voted for you (to their assured regret) in 2022. You raised $7 million during your campaign and benefitted from an additional $5.1 million in PAC money.

The people behind the petition have raised $0.

Even the normally loyal L.A. Times has turned on you, noting that your ouster of Crowley “only add[s] to the sense of disarray that has enveloped City Hall, and the Mayor’s office in particular.” You’ve clashed with Soboroff, Supervisor Lindsay Horvath, and Councilwoman Traci Park. You ordered PCH reopened without so much as informing LAFD, LAPD, or the Sheriff’s office. Then you changed your mind. You were going to pay Soboroff (via “nonprofits”) $500,000, then you weren’t.

You announced that you’ll be conducting a “national search” for Crowley’s replacement. You’re telling Angelenos that there’s no one, not a single person, among LAFD’s current senior leadership who’s qualified? You’re going to hire someone who’s unfamiliar with L.A. and unfamiliar with LAFD, to lead a department in crisis?

At this point you’ve made every conceivable mistake. Now you’re coming up with new mistakes just so you can make them.

The only decent thing is for you to step down. I write those words as someone who initially was supportive, even enthusiastic, about your election. You’ve even lost the support of City Council, which may well vote to overturn your decision. Personally, I hope they don’t.

Though your decision is shamelessly political, Crowley did need to go. She failed the City as well. She also engaged in insubordination by lashing out at city officials over LAFD’s budget on national television while the flames were still burning. That’s inexcusable. It also doesn’t change the fact that your decision had far less to do with the City’s and department’s well-being than your own political fortunes. This is a situation in which there are no good guys.

Step down, Madam Mayor. As the City slowly recovers, Angelenos deserve, and desperately need, real leadership. You had your shot.

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