L.A. Mayor Axes Fire Chief Weeks After Wildfires in Palisades and Altadena
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has ousted the city's Fire Chief Kristen Crowley. Bass cited Crowley's response to last month's devastating wildfires in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods that destroyed thousands of homes and killed 29 people.
The mayor said the firing is 'in the best interest of Los Angeles' public safety.'
More from Rolling Stone
'You Got Fucking Lucky': One Family's Improbable L.A. Fire Story
Why Los Angeles Burned
'It's All Gone': Devastation, Survival, and Hope From the California Fires
'We know that 1,000 firefighters that could have been on duty on the morning the fires broke out were instead sent home on Chief Crowley's watch,' Bass said in a statement on Friday. 'Furthermore, a necessary step to an investigation was the President of the Fire Commission telling Chief Crowley to do an after action report on the fires. The Chief refused. These require her removal. The heroism of our firefighters — during the Palisades fire and every single day — is without question. Bringing new leadership to the fire department is what our city needs.'
The fires unearthed a flurry of critiques toward city leadership over L.A.'s preparedness for fires of this magnitude. Aside from Crowley, who faced calls for her resignation amid the blazes, Bass herself has faced heavy criticism over her response to the fires as well, as the mayor was in Ghana when the Palisades fire first erupted on Jan. 7 despite the warnings days prior of dry high wind conditions. Monica Rodriguez, a member of the Los Angeles City Council, told the Los Angeles Times that she would attempt to get the council to vote to overturn the firing.
'On Jan. 7 she was praising the fire chief and her response, and then it appears, as the heat kicked up for her absence, she continued to try and attribute blame to someone else,' Rodriguez told the Times on Friday.
Bass said that former Chief Deputy Ronnie Villanueva, who has been with LAFD for over 40 years, would serve as fire chief on an interim basis. 'While the Department is in the experienced and expert hands of Chief Villanueva, my office will lead a national search and I will speak directly with firefighters and Angelenos about what they want to see in their next permanent chief,' Bass said.
Best of Rolling Stone
Every Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best
The United States of Weed
Gaming Levels Up
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
20 minutes ago
World Cup host city organizers acknowledge immigration crackdown may impact next year's tournament
NEW YORK -- Philadelphia's host city executive for the 2026 World Cup says organizers accept that an immigration crackdown by President Donald Trump's administration may be among the outside events that impact next year's tournament. "There are certainly things that are happening at the national level, the international level, there are going to be geopolitical issues that we don't even know right now that are going affect the tournament next year, so we recognize that we're planning within uncertainty,' Meg Kane said Monday at a gathering of the 11 U.S. host city leaders, one year and two days ahead of the tournament opener. The World Cup will be played at 16 stadiums in the U.S., Mexico and Canada from June 11 to July 19 next year, a tournament expanded to 48 nations and 104 games. All matches from the quarterfinals on will be in the U.S., with the final at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. 'Whether it's the Olympics, whether it's a World Cup, whether it's a Super Bowl, you name it, anytime you've got a major international sporting event, geopolitics is going to have a role,' said Alex Vasry, CEO of the New York/New Jersey host committee. Kane said the host committees must adapt to decisions made by others. 'One of the things that I think we all recognize is that we have to be really good at operating within that uncertainty,' Kane said. 'I think for each of our cities, we want to be prepared to make any person that is coming and makes the decision to come to the United States or come to this World Cup feel that they are welcome. We do not play a role necessarily in what is happening in terms of the decisions that are made.' Trump's travel ban on citizens from 12 countries exempted athletes, coaches, staff and relatives while not mentioning fans. 'We allow for FIFA to continue having constructive conversations with the administrations around visas, around workforce, around tourism,' Kane said. FIFA is running the World Cup for the first time without a local organizing committee in the host nation. Asked in late April whether FIFA president Gianni Infantino was available to discuss the tournament, FIFA director of media relations Bryan Swanson forwarded the request to a member of the media relations staff, who did not make Infantino available. Legislation approved by the House of Representatives and awaiting action in the Senate would appropriate $625 million to the Federal Emergency Management Agency 'for security, planning, and other costs related to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.' The 11 U.S. host committees have been consulting with each other on issues such as transportation for teams and VIPs, and for arranging fan fests. At the last major soccer tournament in the U.S., the 2024 Copa America final at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, started 82 minutes late after fans breached security gates. 'Certainly we were not involved in the planning or the logistics for that particular match,' said Alina Hudak, CEO of the Miami World Cup host committee. She said local police 'have done an extensive review of the after-action reports related to that in collaboration with the stadium and so all of the things that happened are in fact being reviewed and addressed and I can assure you that everything is being done within our power to make sure that the appropriate measures are being placed, the appropriate perimeters.'
Business of Fashion
22 minutes ago
- Business of Fashion
Attorney for Deported Makeup Artist: If ‘It Could Happen to Him … It Could Happen to You.'
In a defiant speech, Lindsay Toczylowski, president and co-founder of social justice legal firm Immigrant Defenders Law Center, called the deportation of undocumented immigrants without due process a direct attack on democracy. Her client, Andry José Hernández Romero, a 31-year-old Venezuelan makeup artist seeking asylum in the US, was in March deported to El Salvador, where he was taken to the country's notorious CECOT prison along with over 200 other Venezuelan and Salvadoran deportees. The American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing the Trump administration over its use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport undocumented immigrants without due process, said in court filings that the government relied solely on Romero's tattoos to incorrectly label him a violent gang member. Family and supporters say they fear for the safety of Romero, who is gay and was seeking asylum after being persecuted for his sexual orientation in Venezuela. He has not been seen or heard from since his arrival in El Salvador, including by his legal representation. 'The only fight that we lose is the one we give up on… It's about the future of our democracy and the country we want to live in,' she said, speaking at The Business of Beauty Global Forum in Napa Valley, California. 'His story is the embodiment of it could happen to him, it could happen to me, it could happen to you, it could happen to any one of us. It's why the rule of law is so important. It's why due process is so important.' Toczylowski also addressed escalating tensions in Los Angeles, where President Donald Trump has sent thousands of National Guard and Marines to quell protests against ICE deportation roundups in the city. Opponents of the move, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass, say the decision to send troops was disproportionate to the small number of violent incidents associated with the protests, and will only inflame the situation. On Monday, protests spread to other cities around the country. 'There are more than 200 residents of Los Angeles that have been picked up off the streets,' said Toczylowski. 'I have watched masked agents in plain clothes push people into service elevators in the middle of federal buildings in downtown LA in the last two weeks. This is an all-out assault on the values that we hold as Angelenos, as Californians, as Americans.' She said one of the most important methods of pushing back against the Trump administration's immigration actions, whether in LA or El Salvador, is to speak out against them as often, and as forcefully as possible. 'The moment that we stop talking about [Romero], about his story and others like him is the moment that the Trump administration is successful in completing the disappearance of Andry José Hernández Romero,' she said.
Hamilton Spectator
3 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Los Angeles' image is scuffed since ICE raids and protests, with World Cup and Olympics on horizon
LOS ANGELES (AP) — This isn't the image Los Angeles wanted projected around the globe. Clouds of tear gas wafting over a throng of protesters on a blocked freeway. Federal immigration agents in tactical garb raiding businesses in search of immigrants without legal status. A messy war of words between President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom . Photos captured several Waymo robotaxis set on fire and graffiti scrawled on a federal detention center building, while videos recorded the sounds of rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades hitting crowds. In a city still reeling from January's deadly wildfires — and with the World Cup soccer championships and the 2028 Olympics on the horizon — Mayor Karen Bass has been urging residents to come together to revitalize LA's image by sprucing up streets, planting trees and painting murals so LA shows its best face to nations near and far. 'It's about pride,' she's said. 'This is the city of dreams.' Instead, a less flattering side of Los Angeles has been broadcast to the world in recent days. Protests have mostly taken place in a small swath of downtown in the sprawling city of 4 million people. As Trump has activated nearly 5,000 troops to respond in the city, Bass has staunchly pushed back against his assertions that her city is overrun and in crisis. Bass, in response to Trump, said she was troubled by depictions that the city has been 'invaded and occupied by illegal aliens and criminals, and that now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming our federal agents. I don't know if anybody has seen that happen, but I've not seen that happen.' The series of protests began Friday outside a federal detention center, where demonstrators demanded the release of more than 40 people arrested by federal immigration authorities . Immigration advocates say the people who were detained do not have criminal histories and are being denied their due process rights. An international city Much like New York, Los Angeles is an international city that many immigrants call home. The city's official seal carries images referencing the region's time under Spanish and Mexican rule. Over 150 languages are spoken by students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. About half of the city's residents are Latino and about one-third were born outside the U.S. Bass faulted the Trump administration for creating 'a chaotic escalation' by mobilizing troops to quell protests. 'This is the last thing that our city needs,' Bass said. Los Angeles resident Adam Lerman, who has attended the protests, warned that protests would continue if the Trump administration pushes more raids in the city. 'We are talking about a new riot every day,' Lerman said. 'Everybody knows they are playing with fire.' It's not the publicity LA needs as it looks to welcome the world for international sporting events on a grand scale. 'At this stage in the process, most host cities and countries would be putting the final touches on their mega-event red carpet, demonstrating to the world that they are ready to embrace visitors with open arms,' said Jules Boykoff, a Pacific University professor who has written widely on the political and economic impacts of the Olympic Games. The scenes of conflict are 'not exactly the best way to entice the world to plan their next tourist trip to the U.S. to watch a sports mega-event.' A mayor under pressure The federal raids and protests have created another dicey political moment for Bass, who has been struggling with a budget crisis while trying to recover from political fallout from the wildfires that ignited when she was out of the country. She's been careful not to discourage protests but at the same time has pleaded for residents to remain peaceful. The mayor will likely face backlash for involving the Los Angeles Police. And she needs to fight the perception that the city is unsafe and disorderly, an image fostered by Trump, who in social media posts has depicted Bass as incompetent and said the city has been 'invaded' by people who entered the U.S. illegally. Los Angeles is sprawling — roughly 470 square miles (750 square kilometers) — and the protests were mostly concentrated downtown. 'The most important thing right now is that our city be peaceful,' Bass said. 'I don't want people to fall into the chaos that I believe is being created by the (Trump) administration.' On Monday, workers were clearing debris and broken glass from sidewalks and power-washing graffiti from buildings — among the structures vandalized was the one-time home of the Los Angeles Times across the street from City Hall. Downtown has yet to bounce back since long-running pandemic lockdowns, which reordered work life and left many office towers with high vacancy rates. Trump and California officials continued to spar online and off, faulting each other for the fallout. At the White House, Trump criticized California leaders by saying 'they were afraid of doing anything' and signaled he would support Newsom's arrest over his handling of the immigration protests . If Los Angeles' image was once defined by its balmy Mediterranean climate and the glamor of Hollywood, it's now known 'primarily for disaster,' said Claremont McKenna College political scientist Jack Pitney. 'A lot of perception depends on images,' Pitney added. Right now, the dominant image 'is a burning Waymo.' ___ Associated Press writer Jason Dearen contributed. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
