L.A. Now Live: Eric Garcetti replaces LAFD Chief Brian Cummings
Join Times staffer Ben Welsh for an important discussion Friday morning at 9 a.m. about the replacement of Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Brian Cummings.
In Friday’s front-page story, Welsh writes:
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s decision to replace his fire chief after a tumultuous 18 months for the emergency rescue agency underscores one of the biggest challenges facing his administration: Rebooting the city’s aging technology to improve the delivery of vital services.
Cummings, who announced his retirement Thursday, never fully recovered from his management team’s admission in March of last year that highly touted 911 response times were inaccurate, making it appear that rescuers arrived faster than they actually did.
Subsequent Times’ investigations documented widespread delays in processing calls for help, routine failures to summon the closest medical rescuers from nearby jurisdictions and large disparities in getting rescuers to life-threatening emergencies in different areas of the city.
The fallout fueled a conflict between the chief and union officials over staffing adjustments and intensified City Hall’s demands for an overhaul of the complex — and largely outdated — patchwork of computer systems the LAFD relies on to handle 911 calls and manage hundreds of medical and accident rescues every day.
Join us for the lively discussion at 9 a.m. about this recent development. Send in all your questions during the chat and we’ll get to as many of them as we can.
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