Former LA Fire Chief Fires Lawsuit Against Mayor Karen Bass for Mishandling Palisades Fire

Former Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) Chief Kristin Crowley has filed a lawsuit against Mayor Karen Bass, criticizing her and the city for mishandling the Palisades Fire of 2025.

Crowley was fired six weeks after the crippling wildfires last year, after she and Mayor Karen Bass engaged in a public feud about the response. Crowley blamed Bass for several budget cuts that led to a dearth in personnel and available fire engines, while Bass accused Crowley of failing to brief her about the severity of the potential damage prior to the massive windstorm. The lawsuit, filed by Crowley last Friday, alleges that Bass and the city orchestrated “a campaign of retaliation to conceal the extent to which Bass undermined public safety and transparency,” per Laist:

Crowley also criticized the mayor’s handling of last year’s fire, saying the mayor ignored repeated warnings about the risks posed by LAFD’s “worsening resource and staffing crisis” and instead further cut the department’s budget. She claims that Bass retaliated against her by removing her as fire chief and relegating her to a lower position in the department following comments Crowley made publicly about the LAFD being underfunded.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages and “accountability for Bass’ calculated efforts to punish a dedicated LAFD civil servant for exposing the truth, and for choosing the safety of the city and its firefighters over the interests of Bass and her cover-up.”.

Yusef Robb, senior adviser to Bass, dismissed the lawsuit as having “no merit.”

“There is nothing new here,” said Robb. “Ms. Crowley was removed from her post for her failure to predeploy and her decision to send 1,000 firefighters home instead of keeping them on duty on the morning the fires broke out. This lawsuit has no merit.”

The lawsuit comes after several sources confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that Mayor Karen Bass ordered the watering down of the after-action report to provide a smoother picture than what happened.

The first draft of the report in August, overseen by the then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva after Mayor Karen Bass fired Kristin Crowley, also had side notes in the margins with suggestions to replace the cover page from a “negative” photo of flaming palm trees to a “positive” photo of firefighters hard at work. As many as seven drafts of the report were created before the final publication. No names were attached to the edited drafts.

According to a report from the Los Angeles Times, those edits were ordered by Mayor Karen Bass, most especially, regarding the city’s “failure not to fully staff up and pre-deploy all available engines ahead of dangerously high winds.” Though Mayor Bass consistently denied ordering the edits, two sources indicated that she did:

Two sources with knowledge of Bass’ office said that after receiving an early draft, the mayor told then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva that the report could expose the city to legal liabilities for those failures. Bass wanted key findings about the LAFD’s actions removed or softened before the report was made public, the sources said — and that is what happened.

The sources told The Times that two people close to Bass informed them of the mayor’s behind-the-scenes role in watering down the report. One source spoke to both of the people; the other spoke to one of them. The sources requested anonymity to speak frankly about the mayor’s private conversations with Villanueva and others.

One source said flatly that Bass “didn’t tell the truth when she said she had nothing to do with changing the report,” with the source saying that a confidant close to Bass said that altering the report “was a bad idea.”

The sources said that two confidants will testify under oath if the matter were to be litigated in court.

“All the changes [The Times] reported on were the ones Karen wanted,” a source said.

Bass’s office denied that the mayor ever demanded changes. The statement said:

The Mayor has been clear about her concerns regarding pre-deployment and the LAFD’s response to the fire, which is why there is new leadership at LAFD and why she called for an independent review of the Lachman Fire mop-up. There is absolutely no reason why she would request those details be altered or erased when she herself has been critical of the response to the fire — full stop. She has said this for months.

“This is muckraking journalism at its lowest form. It is dangerous and irresponsible for Los Angeles Times reporters to rely on third hand unsourced information to make unsubstantiated character attacks to advance a narrative that is false,” it added.