One week before the Palisades Fire erupted, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass wrote a letter to the city controller's office praising then-LAFD Chief Kristin Crowley, saying that she deserved a merit-based pay raise.
In the document obtained by KNX News dated December 27th of last year, Bass told L.A. Controller Kenneth Mejia that she had done a written evaluation of Fire Chief Crowley and was very happy with her job performance.
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The mayor recommended a 2.5% pay increase, effective January 12th. Then came the January 7th wildfires.
In the early days of the firefight, Crowley went on national television to criticize LAFD’s budget, which she said put the department at a disadvantage while fighting the fires.
Many took this as a direct shot at Mayor Bass. Rumors swirled of a closed-door meeting between the two shortly after the TV appearance, claiming Crowley was being let go. Bass assured the public the rumors were not true and that she would hold off any decisions until after reports came in.
By Feb. 21, Crowley was fired.
Bass told KNX News that her decision to remove Crowley had nothing to do with the televised criticisms. Instead, she blamed Crowley's refusal to cooperate with one of many after-action reports.
"State law requires an after-action report, and she expressed that she would not cooperate with that. To me, it was clear that the leadership needed to change," Bass said.
When Kristin Crowley appealed and tried to get her job back, she said the mayor's claim was flat-out false. "I did not refuse to conduct an after-action report. This is a false accusation," the former fire chief said during her appeal, which the L.A. City Council denied.
Sara Sadhwani, a political professor at Pomona College, tells KNX News' Craig Fiegener that the letter provides valuable insight into the two public servants' relationship before their fallout but does not reveal what really caused the bad blood.
"It's a 'she said, she said' issue, and it's unclear exactly what happened, but what we do know is that there was a change in this relationship for sure," Sadwani said. "Whether it's [Crowley's] actual performance or the fact that she went out on national television talking about the shortcomings of the fire budget, something clearly changed."
Crowley remains employed by LAFD as a deputy chief in the Valley, while Mayor Bass is facing calls for her resignation over her handling of the fire.
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