Arellano: In a turbulent time, LAFD union head isn't who you think he is

Yahoo

21-03-2025

With piercing brown eyes, a biker mustache, a gravelly voice and the build of an NFL defensive end, Freddy Escobar has long cut an imposing figure in Los Angeles' political conflagrations as head of the city firefighters union.
He was in my face during a Rick Caruso campaign stop in 2022, complaining about what he felt was my overly negative coverage of the mega-developer's run for mayor. Most recently, Escobar blasted Mayor Karen Bass for firing L.A. Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley in the wake of the Palisades fire.
'Management and labor, together. We were unstoppable," the 55-year-old told me during an hourlong interview at union headquarters in Westlake. "And [Crowley] was used as a scapegoat. We removed a big, big champion for us.'
Read more: Firefighter union rallies behind LAFD chief, denounces unsigned attack on her performance
President of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City since 2018, Escobar is serving a final two-year term before he retires. During his tenure, L.A. firefighters have weathered some tough times: COVID. The Palisades inferno. Fewer fire stations than there were in 1960, when the population was much lower than today's nearly 4 million. Scandals involving past union leaders.
'The members in the field are doing well,' Escobar responded when I asked how the firefighters are, after all that.
He sat in an armchair, thick glasses and a long-sleeved shirt softening his look. Mementos from his 35-year firefighting career surrounded us: Family photos. Helmets and hats. Lanyards. Liquor bottles. Santa Claus dressed as a firefighter. Dozens of binders filled with reports.
'You will never hear them complain," he said of his colleagues in the field — the complaining is left to him.
'What we're doing every single day is not sustainable in the field — I don't care how young you are,' Escobar said a few seconds later, more weary than angry. 'It's a Band-Aid that's been on for years and years. And we need to fix it.'
Since the Palisades fire, Escobar has been everywhere: On CNN touring the devastation. Claiming in USA Today that the LAFD is "woefully, dangerously understaffed." Appearing at City Hall alongside Crowley in an ultimately unsuccessful campaign for the City Council to reinstate her.
"She was the first chief that has actually taken our advice. And I said, 'Hey, I'll be with you all the way to the end of this,'" he said.
Born in Ecuador to a Ecuadorean mother and a Colombian father, Escobar moved to Pico-Union when he was 4, then to Lynwood as 'the gangs were coming in.'
During fourth grade at Roosevelt Elementary, firefighters responded to a blaze at his school. Soon after, his class visited a fire station for career day.
'You're just a kid,' Escobar remembered. 'You're in awe — they're your heroes, you know. You're like, 'Oh, these guys are bigger than the man upstairs.''
He participated in a firefighting Explorers program at Downey High, then joined the LAFD after a stint with the Marines. His first assignment: Station 11 in Pico-Union. Escobar became a shop steward but didn't think of getting more involved in labor leadership until the early 2000s, when drivers twice crashed into his idling fire truck.
"The chaps there, we call them," he said, a term I had never heard for chapines — Guatemalans. Escobar didn't blink as he began to channel his inner Nury Martinez, the former City Council president who resigned after her racist ramblings were caught on a recording. "They love to drink during the day and night. They just drink a lot. They get behind cars, they drive. So I got hit ... twice by chaps."
His casual insults against an important part of L.A.'s fabric were so out of nowhere that I just stared ahead and let him go on.
He said he complained to a colleague that his union rep wasn't defending him enough during the investigation into the crashes, which ultimately cleared him of wrongdoing.
The colleague encouraged him: "Six months later, it's election time and he says, 'Hey, big mouth. Here you go. You want to make a difference? Make a difference.'"
Escobar followed through, winning a position on the union's 10-member executive board. After years of experiencing what he described as "a crybaby arena' that was more "about the usual keeping your own power" than helping the rank and file, he took on an incumbent for the top spot and won.
Read more: COVID-19 has cost LAFD $22.5 million in overtime, much of it to cover for sick firefighters
During the pandemic, the union made national news for refusing to sign off on a mandate that city employees be vaccinated or risk losing their jobs. Escobar got the COVID vaccine but felt he had to respect the wishes of his members who didn't want the shot.
That battle "separated us a lot" politically, he said, but lingering internal enmity largely dissipated after the ordeal of fighting the Palisades fire. Escobar's eyes glistened when I brought up his warning a month before the fire that 'someone will die' if LAFD resources were further cut.
The Palisades fire, which ignited Jan. 7 after forecasters warned of catastrophically high winds, destroyed nearly 7,000 structures and killed 12 people.
A Times investigation found that LAFD officials chose to not order roughly 1,000 firefighters to remain on duty for a second shift as the winds were building — which would have doubled the personnel on hand. Bass cited the failure to keep those firefighters on duty as one of her reasons for firing Crowley.
Escobar dismissed The Times' findings as too reliant on former LAFD employees "who have their own agenda." He didn't directly answer my question about whether he thought Crowley did everything she could, asserting that she was scapegoated without an official investigation.
He argued instead that the Palisades disaster could have been better confronted if LAFD wasn't so underfunded — he wants to put a bond measure for the Fire department on the 2026 ballot.
He declined to speculate about why Bass fired Crowley, who publicly criticized the mayor days after the Palisades fire began for supposedly shortchanging her department.
The two used to be 'thick as thieves," he said. "Bass was wearing Crowley's brush jacket and helmet and all the fire stuff. They were locked arms, then they had one little breakup. Imagine if you were married — have one breakup, you're gonna get divorced?'
He made no apologies for his combative public persona: 'They want to call it being abrasive, being a bully. No, it's standing up for what's right.'
Then the conversation turned to diversity within the LAFD.
Earlier, Escobar acknowledged he had benefited from a 1974 consent decree requiring that half of LAFD hires be from a minority group (the decree ended in 2002).
Now, he criticized the fire commission — the civilian board that oversees LAFD — for supposedly 'want[ing] to have a no-fail academy' in the name of reflecting the city's demographics.
"We have plenty of people of color [and] gender that could — that should represent the city of Los Angeles without lowering the standards," Escobar said. "The females in the fire service ... we'd love to have them all. But if you're a female and you want, you could go to Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach and still have a great career and not do the call load we do."
He thinks white and Black firefighters are 'overrepresented, whatever that means' in the LAFD, with whites the beneficiaries of what was once 'an all-white department' and Black representation reflecting "how many Blacks are in the community."
Whites make up 28% of L.A.'s population and 43% of city firefighters, while Blacks account for 9% of the population and 11% of firefighters.
The LAFD is only 7% female. The other big disparity is Latinos — 47% of the population but just 31% of LAFD.
'It's not for everybody,' Escobar said, before cracking, 'They all want to be soccer players!'
Earlier, he said he had failed a tryout with the L.A. Galaxy because "I wasn't a professional soccer player. Same with firefighting. Firefighting is not for everybody."
I laughed at his joke but reminded him of his own trajectory.
He replied that LAFD has 'good' recruitment programs, but ultimately 'you've got to love to work with your hands.... The new generation's interesting. They all want to be Instagram-famous. They'll want to make a lot of money and not wake up."
Escobar was tender at times during our chat, confessing that it "breaks his heart" that he hasn't been more present for his wife and children. He thinks he "failed" at not pushing for more resources.
But his evasive explanation about why there aren't more Latino firefighters in L.A., coupled with his anti-Guatemalan thoughts, cast him as a type of Angeleno I know too well: The powerful Latino who dismisses their own kind the moment they get theirs.
We eventually headed to one of Escobar's old haunts: Station 26, motto 'Anytime Anyplace,' where he had climbed through the ranks, all the way to captain.
Station Capt. Al Ballestra praised Escobar for still covering holiday firefighting shifts. Escobar picks up about four shifts a month, even though his job as union president is full time.
'It's what any membership would want to have in their union leader,' the 18-year veteran said. 'Someone with boots-on-the-ground experience who keeps that connection with us."
Escobar then checked in on a rookie training session in the rec room. I asked the group what they thought of their union head.
Engineer Gordon Wilson raised his hand, and the room got quiet. He rattled off all the levels of bureaucracy — internal, the fire commission, the City Council, the mayor — that intersect with L.A. firefighters. He pointed at Escobar.
'This gentleman here,' Wilson said loudly, 'has an uncanny ability to communicate with them all."
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.