Decades of scandals, but few changes at LAFD

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Friday, May 5. I’m Paul Pringle, an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

Official Los Angeles might cultivate the image of being a progressive city. But when it comes to L.A.’s Fire Department, that seems more like a smokescreen.

Year after year, and even decade after decade, the 3,400-member LAFD has been hit with the sort of scandals that cast the department as a throwback — a good ol’ boys network where egregious misconduct, including the type that targets women and nonwhites, is often met with a slap on the wrist.

Not much has changed in the past few years, as my latest story on the LAFD’s disciplinary system — published Thursday — makes clear.

According to the department’s own internal records, LAFD investigators found that firefighters had physically abused women; made racially offensive comments; embraced on social media a group that civil rights organizations say promotes white nationalism and other forms of hate; drove drunk and battered a cop; and falsified medical reports on 911 calls.

And none of those firefighters got fired. Neither did one who admitted to abandoning his post in the 911 dispatch center to have sex with a prostitute while on duty. Many other firefighters who the department determined behaved horribly escaped with reprimands or brief suspensions or faced no discipline at all.

The firefighters who tipped me off about the bad apples in their ranks are among those most outraged by the lack of serious consequences. Some of them only blew the whistle anonymously because they fear retaliation, another longstanding complaint about the LAFD.

Critics inside and outside the department say there is plenty of blame to go around. They point first to the department’s leaders, but also fault City Hall politicians who they say are afraid to alienate the two unions that represent firefighters and are valued from their campaign cash and election endorsements. The result, the critics lament, is a warped and deeply rooted culture that resists reform.

It’s hard to know what Fire Chief Kristin Crowley thinks of all this. She declined my request for an interview. The Times is suing the city over the department’s refusal to release documents in a disciplinary case, a violation of the California Public Records Act.

Over the years, there have been many pledges to clean up the LAFD. Some date back generations. A half-century ago, the federal government placed the department under a consent decree to force the LAFD to hire more firefighters of color. The order stayed in place for 28 years, until nonwhites accounted for about half of the force.

But the heads of organizations representing Black, Latino and female firefighters say other forms of discrimination have persisted — particularly in discipline and promotions and in the hiring of women. Former Mayor Eric Garcetti vowed more than once to up the recruitment of female firefighters, who accounted for 2.9% of the LAFD roster when he took office in 2013. Today, a decade later, that number is just 3.4% — for a job whose duties consist overwhelmingly of medical calls, not lifting heavy ladders on the fireline.

Following Times disclosures, the organizations representing nonwhite and female firefighters petitioned the U.S. Justice Department two summers ago to investigate their complaints. The civil rights section of the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles responded by stating it was “carefully reviewing” the allegations of bias. But the federal government since has taken no public action and declines to comment on the matter. Those pressing for reform tell me they believe the Justice Department has shrugged, yawned and moved on.

As my story notes, Mayor Karen Bass and City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto are the latest at City Hall to call for reforms. But when The Times asked both for specifics, Bass offered none and Feldstein Soto said in a statement that she was “hopeful” the LAFD “has taken a long-needed step in the right direction” under Crowley’s leadership and with help from city equity offices.

We’ll see.

You can read the story here.

And now, here’s what’s happening across California from Ryan Fonseca:

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L.A. STORIES

City officials have selected the winning design for a memorial marking a shameful, violent moment of L.A. history: the 1871 Chinese Massacre. The monument will consist of sculptures resembling petrified banyan trees in tribute to the villages where many of the city’s Chinese immigrants came from. Los Angeles Times

A rendering shows the winning concept for the memorial, devised by artist Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong and writer Judy Chui-Hua Chung.

(Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong and Judy Chui-Hua Chung)

If you’re feeling lost, a meditative walk through a local labyrinth may help. “You cannot get lost in a labyrinth as long as you follow the path,” Times faith reporter Deborah Netburn wrote this week as she traced the path of labyrinths’ medieval roots to their pandemic resurgence. Los Angeles Times

A community in South Los Angeles has a new library after years of waiting. Residents in the unincorporated Florence-Firestone neighborhood celebrated the ribbon-cutting of the new facility, which replaces the former Florence Library that was demolished in 2019, despite community efforts to save it. LAist

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

When will Sen. Dianne Feinstein return to Washington? That remains unclear as pressure builds on the 89-year-old senator and her staff to provide more details about her health months after she was diagnosed with shingles. Los Angeles Times

San Diego city leaders acknowledged that widening a portion of State Route 56 work against its own climate goals. But the City Council moved forward with the project, with one leader saying an increase in dense developments and a lack of mass transit investment made it necessary. San Diego Union-Tribune

Oakland teachers are on strike as negotiations between the teachers union and district officials reached an impasse this week. Schools remain open as teachers hit the picket lines outside, demanding higher wages and better working conditions. KQED

CRIME, COURTS AND POLICING

Police in Davis have arrested a 21-year-old man suspected in a series of stabbings over the past week. Carlos Dominguez, a former UC Davis student, is accused of killing two men and injuring a woman in a week of violent attacks that rattled the small city. Los Angeles Times.

A jury in Riverside County jury awarded a woman $2.28 billion in damages for sexual abuse she experienced as a child. The allotment is perhaps the largest in U.S. history for this kind of case, though the woman doesn’t expect to receive much of the award. The Press-Enterprise

HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Three environmental groups are suing California over cuts to the state’s incentives for residents who install solar panels on their property. “The courtroom battle could have significant implications for California’s efforts to phase out planet-warming fossil fuels and reach 100% climate-friendly energy,” my colleague Sammy Roth wrote this week in The Times’ “Boiling Point” newsletter. Los Angeles Times

California’s Winnemem Wintu Tribe has signed a pact with state and federal agencies to save endangered salmon. The groups plan to work together to return the Chinook salmon to their traditional spawning areas near the McCloud River north of Redding. Los Angeles Times

AND FINALLY

Today’s California memory is from Matthew Robbins of San Diego: the waterfalls of Yosemite National Park.

Lower Yosemite Fall, photographed June 2022.

(Matthew Robbins)

Matthew writes:

If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. (Please keep your story to 100 words.)

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