The Los Angeles City Council denies dismissal of the fire chief over her criticism of department budget cuts

The office of Los Angeles Democratic Mayor Karen Bass denied the dismissal of Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley, who stated this Friday that city authorities, including Mayor Bass, “failed” residents significantly by cutting the fire department's budget and not addressing the systemic issues she has been reporting since taking office.

“This is false,” Bass’s office said, refuting media reports that had claimed Crowley’s alleged dismissal.

The 'Daily Mail' had exclusively reported the news, citing an internal source from the mayor’s office.

"Kristin was summoned by Bass this afternoon, about 4pm. She came back from that meeting, hugged her staff goodbye and left. She said she was fired," the source said.

Earlier, Crowley sharply criticized city authorities, including Bass.

"Any budget cut is going to impact our ability to provide service," Crowley said. "That is a ground truth in regard to our ability. If there's a budget cut, we had to pull from somewhere else. What does that mean? That doesn't get done or that there are delays."

Crowley said understaffing and too few fire stations relative to the growth of the city of Los Angeles is a problem that notoriously affects the department's performance, which year to year struggles to maintain optimal performance despite constraints and cuts.

She also said it is not a new problem.

"Since day one, we've identified huge gaps in regard to our service delivery and our ability of our firefighters' boots on the ground to do their jobs since day one," the fire chief said. "This is my third budget as we're going into 2025-2026, and what I can tell you is we are still understaffed, we're still under-resourced and we're still underfunded."

When asked about the most recent cut, which reduced the budget by $17,553,814, going from $837,191,237 to $819,637,423, Crowley acknowledged that the move affected law enforcement's response to the fire crisis in recent days.

"On a normal day, our firefighters are running over 1,500 calls, and they're transporting 650 patients a day – let alone the last three days of what we've had," Crowley explained.

"The amount of calls that our firefighters are running today has doubled since 2010, a 55% increase with 68 fewer people. Full transparency. This isn't a new problem for us," she said. "Since the three years that I've been in the seat, I've sounded the alarm to say we need more."

Finally, the fire chief insisted on increasing resources, hiring more personnel and opening new stations to improve response times and better address disasters.

"We know we need 62 new fire stations. We need to double the size of our firefighters. The growth of this city since 1960 has doubled and we have less fire stations," she concluded.

Editor’s Note, 11:52 PM ET: This article was updated with comments from the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office denying Crowley’s dismissal, modifying the original headline and introduction accordingly.