LAFD Response-Time Scandal

The city is in serious fiscal straits. Last year the deficit hole was $336 million; this year it is $200 million. The L.A. Daily News reported in December that Villaraigosa's benchmark mayoral achievement has been that the city has not declared bankruptcy.

Some parts of city government escape deep cuts each year — such as the City Council's and mayor's huge personal staffs. But not the fire department. Stiff cuts backed by Council members Zine, Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry — all of whom are now running for higher office — were justified in part by citing LAFD emergency-response times that looked great on paper. The argument was that such a fine department could roll with the huge cuts. But those numbers are known now to be false.

ILLUSTRATION BY JARED BOGGESS

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More About

• Tennie Pierce
• Antonio Villaraigosa
• L.A. City Council
• Politics
• Local Politics

Firefighters say the cuts have created extreme workloads and dangerous staff and equipment shortages.

"I've been talking with a lot of guys, and they look like zombies," says a second veteran fireman who has worked under five chiefs. "You're put into a position where you can't do a good job. You can't even do an adequate job. We feel we're going to lose people, and we're putting our lives on the line. We'll do it, but the guys are concerned."

L.A. City Council members, despite having personal staffs of 15 to 22 aides each, did not grasp during the budget debates that the response-time data touted by Cummings and then-chief Millage Peaks were from computer projections.

Instead, two community activists — Mike Eveloff and Jim O'Sullivan — created a spreadsheet showing that quick response times by LAFD were cratering. Then on March 1, city controller candidate Cary Brazeman released a "citizen audit" based on their data, showing that LAFD was achieving its response-time goals only 60 percent of the time.

A few days later, former Villaraigosa aide Austin Beutner penned a widely read Huffington Post column, stating that LAFD's quick response rate had plummeted from 86 percent to 59 percent of all calls. Then the Los Angeles Times reported that LAFD had seriously misrepresented its actual response times.

Beutner, a candidate for mayor in 2013, says city politicians "ought to be courageous enough to admit their role in this, and then come up with solutions." He is calling for a citizens' task force, similar to the Christopher Commission, which looked into the L.A. Police Department after the 1991 Rodney King beating.

Union president McOsker welcomes scrutiny. And Bob Stern, seen by some as L.A.'s reigning "good government" expert, says it may be necessary.

"If [the political establishment] punts, then someone else needs to investigate the department," says Stern.

A sweeping, independent review of LAFD has not been attempted in recent memory. The last such crisis was set off by a much narrower departmentwide hazing problem in 2005. Then, black firefighter Tennie Pierce claimed racial harassment by "nine white" fellow firefighters at Fire Station 5 after one of them put dog food in his spaghetti during a prank. Flanked by top black leaders, Pierce went on camera claiming racism. His lawyer demanded $3.8 million from the city.

Then-Chief William Bamattre issued a strict ban on all pranks and hazing but was forced out by Villaraigosa. Pierce got rich. But L.A. Weekly discovered that Pierce's story had holes, and that Pierce himself was a hazer. The firefighter who fed him dog food was not white but a small Latino, whom Pierce had that day compared to the size of his own excrement. His "white" crew members were a picture of racial diversity. Then photos emerged showing Pierce as an extreme prankster, strapping firefighters to gurneys or spraying water up their noses. In a widely decried move, a majority of City Council members refused to review the photos and awarded Pierce $2.7 million. Villaraigosa vetoed that award and Pierce got $1.5 million.

Now, with a deeper crisis that involves risk to the public, McOsker says the L.A. Fire Commission — five political appointees of Villaraigosa's — has dropped the ball. It appeared to be unaware that LAFD was using false response times. McOsker says he'd be surprised if Fire Commission President Genethia Hudley-Hayes and her colleagues "do anything to fix the problems with the chief. We've just been getting more platitudes, not real action."

Hudley-Hayes did not return the Weekly's calls.

During the hubbub over Cummings' news blackout, the mayor abruptly shifted respected Police Commission member Alan Skobin onto the fire commission. Skobin told the Los Angeles Daily News, "There are certainly issues at the [LAFD]. Many of them are accountability, transparency, civilian oversight" — problems that once dogged LAPD.

Stern tells the Weekly that LAFD brass "don't seem to get the idea that the fire department has to be a responsible, transparent agency — or the same as everyone else."

And Captain Jeff Dapper, a vice president of the firefighters union, says he's fed up with the "changing reasons" given by the brass to explain its false response-time stats. "Just be truthful. Each time you say something different, you lose your credibility."

City Controller Wendy Greuel, who is also running for mayor in 2013, had not audited the response-time stats — but is doing so now. Greuel says, "Everything is on the table about improving the department." But as to forming an investigatory panel, she says, "I'm not going to play politics with public safety."