LAFD

The Los Angeles Fire Department is requesting a budget of more than $1 billion for the coming year, arguing that the additional funding is necessary to be prepared for wildfires like the one that devastated Pacific Palisades in January.

The request, which represents a more than 15% increase over this year’s budget, includes money for 179 new firefighting recruits and a second crew dedicated to fighting wildfires, as well as helitanker services to battle fires from the air.

In the immediate aftermath of the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes, top LAFD officials blamed a lack of resources and extraordinarily high winds for their failures in combating the flames.

United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112, the union that represents the city’s firefighters, has long argued that the department is severely underfunded and is pushing for a half-cent sales tax that, if approved by voters, would generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Fire Chief Jaime Moore, who was appointed to his post earlier this month, wrote in a memo to the Board of Fire Commissioners last Friday that “the proposed budget will reinforce and accelerate operational enhancements implemented following the devastating Palisades wind-driven vegetation fire in January 2025.”

Moore’s request is the first step in a lengthy process to hammer out a city budget that requires approval by the City Council and the mayor. This year, the city had to close a nearly $1-billion shortfall caused largely by rising personnel costs, soaring legal payouts and a slowdown in the local economy.

City department heads often request amounts far higher than they eventually receive. With the city still in a budget crunch, the outlook for the LAFD’s request is unclear.

“The budget process is in its early stages. Reforms must continue to be implemented at the department and Mayor Bass looks forward to working with Chief Moore to strengthen the city’s emergency preparedness,” said Clara Karger, a spokesperson for Mayor Karen Bass.

Genethia Hudley Hayes, who heads the civilian Board of Fire Commissioners, said Tuesday that she had not yet seen the request but that she generally supports a 15% increase in the LAFD budget.

“We need it,” she said. “The smart thing would be to let the public know what you are going to do with that money.”

In the days leading up to Jan. 7, LAFD officials decided not to order firefighters to remain on duty for a second shift — which would have required paying them overtime — and staffed just a few of the more than 40 engines available to aid in battling wildfires, despite warnings of life-threatening winds, a Times investigation found.

Then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said that commanders had to be strategic with limited resources while continuing to handle regular 911 calls.

An LAFD after-action report released last month cited “financial constraints” as a factor in pre-deployment decisions.

The Times also found that an LAFD battalion chief ordered firefighters to leave the site of the Jan. 1 Lachman fire, despite firefighters’ complaints that the ground was still smoldering. That fire later reignited into the Palisades fire.

Moore’s budget memo tied many of his requests to the Palisades fire.

The second wildland hand crew, which would include 32 positions for $2 million, would supplement a hand crew formed this year, after the Palisades fire. The crew’s 26 recruits, who are trained in wildfire fighting and management, establish fire lines to stop flames from spreading. Throughout the year, they do brush clearance around the city.

The helitanker lease, costing slightly less than $1 million, would support aerial attacks of flames that are difficult for crews on the ground to reach.

Moore’s budget request includes the reinstatement of the LAFD’s emergency incident technicians, who help coordinate responses to fires — positions that were cut in the last budget cycle. The after-action report described the LAFD’s disorganized response to the Palisades fire, citing major issues with staffing and communications.

In the fire’s aftermath, the LAFD’s budget was a subject of public debate, with some saying that Bass had reduced it. The 2024-25 budget actually increased slightly after firefighters received raises and the city invested in new firetrucks and other purchases. The budget increased again in 2025-2026.

Bass said she has committed additional resources to the Fire Department in each year she has been mayor.

The half-cent sales tax proposed by the firefighters union would go before city voters as a ballot measure next November.

By 2050, the sales tax would raise at least $9.8 billion, funding at least 30 new fire stations and new fire trucks, as well as adding 1,400 Fire Department employees, according Doug Coates, the acting president of UFLAC, and Councilmember Traci Park, whose district includes Pacific Palisades.

In the weeks since federal investigators announced that the devastating Palisades fire was caused by a reignition of a smaller blaze, top Los Angeles Fire Department officials have insisted that they did everything they could to put out the earlier fire.

But The Times has obtained records that call into question the agency’s statements about how thoroughly firefighters mopped up the Jan. 1 Lachman fire in the days before it reignited.

In an interview last month, then-Interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva said that firefighters returned to the burn area on Jan. 3 — due to a report of smoke — and “cold-trailed” an additional time, meaning they used their hands to feel for heat and dug out hot spots.

“We went back over there again. We dug it all out again. We put ladders on it. We did everything that we could do — cold-trail again,” Villanueva told The Times on Oct. 8. “We did all of that.”

A dispatch log obtained by The Times, however, shows that firefighters arrived at the scene that day and quickly reported seeing no smoke. They then canceled the dispatch for another engine that was on the way, clearing the call within 34 minutes. The log does not mention cold trailing. It’s unclear if crews took any other actions during the call, because the LAFD has not answered questions about it.

The Times has made multiple requests for comment to LAFD spokesperson Capt. Erik Scott by email, text and in person, but the agency has refused to explain the discrepancy. Villanueva also did not respond to an emailed request for comment and an interview request.

The conflict between the LAFD’s statements and its own records is likely to intensify frustration and anger among Palisades fire victims over contradictory and incomplete information about what was done to protect their community. With the first anniversary approaching, gaps remain in what the LAFD has told the public about what it did to prepare for and respond to the fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

The LAFD’s after-action report on the Palisades fire makes only a cursory reference to the Lachman blaze. Missing from the 70-page document, released last month, are the report of smoke in the area on Jan. 3 and a battalion chief’s decision to pull firefighters out of the scene the day before, even though they warned him that there were signs of remaining hot spots.

The head of the board that oversees the LAFD has maintained that information about the firefighter warnings — or any examination of the Lachman fire — did not belong in the after-action report.

“The after-action review that was presented to the commission is exactly what we asked for,” Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, said at the board’s meeting on Tuesday. She said the review was only supposed to cover the first 72 hours after the Palisades fire erupted.

“It is not an investigation,” she said. “It should not include things that the newspaper seems to feel like should be included.”

The after-action report detailed missteps in fire officials’ response to the Palisades fire, including major failures in deployment and communications, and made recommendations to prevent the issues from happening again.

Two former LAFD chief officers said the report also should have provided an examination of what might have gone wrong in the mop-up of the Lachman blaze, which investigators believe was deliberately set, as part of its “lessons learned” section.

“A good after-action report documents what happened before the incident,” said former LAFD Battalion Chief Rick Crawford, who retired from the agency last year and is now emergency and crisis management coordinator for the U.S. Capitol. “The after-action report should have gone back all the way to Dec. 31.”

Patrick Butler, a former assistant chief for the LAFD who has worked on several after-action teams, including for the federal government, agreed.

“If you limit an after-action to an artificial timeline, you’re not going to uncover everything you need to learn from,” said Butler, who is the Redondo Beach fire chief.

He noted that the reports shape training and operational improvements for the Fire Department.

“To exclude the Lachman fire from the report gives the appearance of a coverup of foundational facts,” Butler added. “It’s not a harmless oversight. The consequences can be significant and far-reaching.”

The Jan. 3 report of smoke at the Lachman burn area came in shortly before noon, according to a dispatch log of the incident. Firefighters from Fire Station 23 — one of two stations in the Palisades — arrived on the scene about 10 minutes after they were dispatched.

A couple minutes later, they reported “N/S,” or nothing showing, according to the log. A few minutes after that, they canceled the dispatch for an engine from Fire Station 69, the other Palisades station.

The last entry in the log was from 12:20 p.m., indicating that an L.A. County crew was working in the area.

The L.A. County Fire Department said in a statement that the crew was at the scene for less than 30 minutes conducting an “informal ‘lessons learned’ discussion of their actions from the night of the fire.”

“They did not gear up or perform any work while there and they did not see anything of note,” the statement said.

The L.A. County crew left the scene about 12:40 p.m.

The Times previously reported that firefighters were ordered to roll up their hoses and leave the burn area of the Lachman fire on Jan. 2, even though they had complained that the ground was still smoldering and rocks remained hot to the touch. The paper reviewed text messages among three firefighters and a third party, sent in the weeks and months after the fire, in which they discussed the handling of the blaze.

LAFD officials also opted not to use thermal imaging technology to detect lingering hot spots. Despite warnings of extreme winds leading up to Jan. 7, they failed to pre-deploy any engines or firefighters to the burn area — or anywhere in the Palisades.

At least one battalion chief assigned to the LAFD’s risk management section has known for months that crews had complained about hot spots after the Lachman fire. But the department kept that information hidden from the public.

At the Tuesday fire commission meeting, newly appointed Fire Chief Jaime Moore — in an apparent reference to The Times reporting — slammed what he called media efforts to “smear” firefighters who battled the worst fire in city history.

“Something that’s been very frustrating for me as fire chief, and through this process, is to watch my friends in the media smear our name and the work that our firefighters did to combat one of the most intense fires, the Palisades, the wind-driven monstrosity that it was,” Moore, a 30-year LAFD veteran, said on his second day on the job.

He added: “The audacity for people to make comments and say that there’s text messages out there that say that we did not put the fire out, that we did not extinguish the fire. Yet I have yet to see any of those text messages.”

Moore made those remarks despite having been tasked by Mayor Karen Bass with conducting an investigation into The Times report about the LAFD’s response to the Lachman fire.

Bass had requested that Villanueva investigate, saying that “a full understanding … is essential to an accurate accounting of what occurred during the January wildfires.”

Critics have said it would be improper for the LAFD to investigate itself and called for an independent review.

Before the City Council confirmed his appointment as chief, Moore also had called for an outside organization to conduct the inquiry, describing the reports of the firefighters’ warnings on Jan. 2 as alarming.

On Tuesday, he said he would review the LAFD’s response to the Lachman fire.

“I will do as Mayor [Karen] Bass asked, and I will look into the Lachman fire, and we will look at how that was handled, and we will learn from it, and we’ll be better from it,” he said.

A Bass spokesperson said Wednesday that the mayor “has made clear to Chief Moore” that the investigation into the Lachman fire should be conducted by an independent entity.

The LAFD has not responded to a question about who will conduct the probe.

On his second day as chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, Jaime Moore criticized what he called media efforts to “smear” firefighters who responded to the worst wildfire in city history.

Moore’s comments Tuesday appeared to be in reference to a Times report that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to roll up their hoses and leave the burn area of the Jan. 1 Lachman fire, which days later reignited into the deadly Palisades fire, even though they had complained that the ground was still smoldering.

The Times reviewed text messages between firefighters and a third party, sent in the weeks and months after the Palisades fire, indicating that crews had expressed concerns that the Lachman fire would reignite if left unprotected.

“The audacity for people to make comments and say that there’s text messages out there that say that we did not put the fire out, that we did not extinguish the fire,” Moore told the Board of Fire Commissioners. “Yet I have yet to see any of those text messages.”

Moore’s statements represented a dramatic shift from his comments last week, when he told the L.A. City Council’s public safety committee — two days before the full council approved his appointment as chief — that the reports had generated an “understandable mistrust” of the fire department.

“The most alarming thing to me is … our members were not listened to, or they were not heard,” he said last Wednesday.

In response to Mayor Karen Bass’ request that he investigate the department’s missteps during the Lachman fire, Moore had called for an outside organization to conduct the probe.

On Tuesday, he said he would review LAFD’s response to the Lachman fire, though he did not specify who would conduct the investigation.

“I will do as Mayor Bass asked, and I will look into the Lachman fire, and we will look at how that was handled, and we will learn from it, and we’ll be better from it,” he said.

In one text message reviewed by The Times, a firefighter who was at the Lachman scene Jan. 2 wrote that the battalion chief in charge had been told it was a “bad idea” to leave because of visible signs of smoldering terrain.

A second firefighter was told that tree stumps were still hot at the location when the crew packed up and left, according to the texts. And another firefighter said in more recent texts that crew members were upset when directed to leave the scene, but that they could not ignore orders.

The firefighters’ accounts line up with a video recorded by a hiker above Skull Rock Trailhead late in the morning Jan. 2 — almost 36 hours after the Lachman fire started — that shows smoke rising from the dirt. “It’s still smoldering,” the hiker says from behind the camera.

At least one battalion chief assigned to LAFD’s risk management section knew about the complaints for months, The Times found. But the department did not include that finding, or any detailed examination of the reignition, in its after-action report on the Jan. 7 Palisades fire — or otherwise make the information public — despite victims demanding answers for months about how the blaze started and whether more could have been done to prevent it.

Moore, a 30-year LAFD veteran, told the City Council on Friday that one of his top priorities is raising morale in a department that has come under heavy criticism for its handling of the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

In January, The Times reported that LAFD officials decided not to pre-deploy any engines or firefighters to the Palisades — as they had done in the past — despite being warned that some of the most dangerous winds in recent years were headed for the region.

The LAFD after-action report released last month described fire officials’ chaotic response, which was plagued by major staffing and communication issues, as the massive blaze overwhelmed them.

After Bass ousted Fire Chief Kristin Crowley over her handling of the Palisades fire, the department was led by interim Chief Ronnie Villanueva until Moore took over Monday.

Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, which provides civilian oversight for the fire department, said at Tuesday’s meeting that she had not seen the text messages quoted in The Times. Because she hadn’t seen them, she said, the messages have “no bearing on the work of the fire commission.”

She also said that the commission supported the fire department’s after-action report, noting that that the report was not about the rekindling of the Lachman fire, but about the first 72 hours of the department’s response to the Palisades fire.

“It has nothing to do and should not have had anything to do with the Lachman fire, because that is not what we asked for,” Hudley Hayes said.

As Jaime Moore prepares to take the helm of the Los Angeles Fire Department, he said he plans to commission an outside investigation into missteps by fire officials during the mop-up of a small brush fire that reignited days later into the destructive Palisades fire.

Mayor Karen Bass had requested a probe late last month in response to reporting by The Times that firefighters were ordered to roll up their hoses and leave the burn area, even though they had complained that the ground was still smoldering.

Moore — a 30-year department veteran whose appointment was confirmed Friday by the Los Angeles City Council — said the reports have generated “understandable mistrust” in the agency.

The Times found that at least one chief assigned to LAFD’s risk management section knew about the complaints for months, but that the department kept that information hidden despite Palisades fire victims pleading for answers about whether more could have been done to protect their community.

On Wednesday, Moore told the council’s public safety committee that bringing in an outside organization to investigate the LAFD’s handling of the Jan. 1 Lachman fire would be one of his first moves as chief.

“Transparency and accountability are vital to ensure that we learn from every incident and is essential if we are to restore confidence in our Fire Department,” Moore said. “As fire chief, I will focus on rebuilding trust, not just with the public, but within the LAFD itself.”

Federal investigators say the Lachman fire was deliberately set on New Years’ Day and burned underground in a canyon root system until it was rekindled by high winds on Jan. 7. LAFD officials have said they believed the earlier fire was fully extinguished.

Moore said one of his top priorities is raising morale in a department that has come under heavy criticism for its handling of the worst wildfire in city history, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

In the days after the Jan. 7 Palisades fire, The Times reported that LAFD decided not to pre-deploy any engines or firefighters to the Palisades — as they had done in the past — despite being warned that some of the most dangerous winds in recent years were headed for the region.

An LAFD after-action report released last month described fire officials’ chaotic response, which included major staffing and communication issues.

Moore — who has the backing of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, the union that represents firefighters — said his other priorities include better preparation for major disasters, with a focus on pre-deployment and staffing, as well as for the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics.

“I’ve got skin in the game,” he said, adding that his son is an LAFD firefighter. “We need to address the amount of calls they’re going on, and make sure that they’re going on the right calls with the right resources, and if that means us having to change our department model, so be it. I have the courage to do that.”

He also said he wants to expand the LAFD’s technological capabilities and better deploy the equipment it already has, like the thermal imaging cameras and heat-detecting drones that officials did not deploy during the Lachman fire mop-up.

“We are now requiring them to be used, and we’re not picking up any type of hose until we know that we’ve been able to identify through the use of the drone, thermal imaging cameras to ensure that those surface hot spots are all taken care of,” he said.

“I wish it didn’t take this for us to have to learn the lesson about using the tools we already have,” Councilmember Traci Park replied.

Park grilled Moore on reporting by The Times that firefighters warned a battalion chief about the Lachman fire not being fully extinguished.

“We know now that our own firefighters on the ground were offering warnings that it was still too hot, that it was still too smoldering,” Park said. “For Palisades residents and Angelenos across the city who have questions and concerns, what would you say to them at this point?”

Moore referred back to independent investigation he plans to launch.

“I want to know why it happened, how it happened, and take the necessary steps to ensure that never happens again,” he said.

The Times reviewed text messages among firefighters and a third party that indicated crews had expressed concerns that the Lachman fire would reignite if left unprotected. The exchanges occurred in the weeks and months after the Palisades fire.

In one text message, a firefighter who was at the Lachman scene Jan. 2 wrote that the battalion chief in charge had been told it was a “bad idea” to leave because of visible signs of smoldering terrain, which crews feared could start a new fire.

A second firefighter was told that tree stumps were still hot at the location when the crew packed up and left, according to the texts. And another said in texts last month that crew members were upset when directed to leave the scene, but that they could not ignore orders.

The firefighters’ accounts line up with a video recorded by a hiker above Skull Rock Trailhead late in the morning on Jan. 2 — almost 36 hours after the Lachman fire started — that shows smoke rising from the dirt. “It’s still smoldering,” the hiker says from behind the camera.

A federal grand jury subpoena was served on the LAFD for firefighters’ communications, including text messages, about smoke or hot spots in the area of the Lachman fire, according to an LAFD memo. It is unclear if the subpoena is directly related to the arson case against Jonathan Rinderknecht, who is accused of setting the Jan. 1 fire and has pleaded not guilty.

Complaints that the city and state failed to properly prepare for and respond to the Palisades fire are the subject of numerous lawsuits and a Republican-led inquiry by a U.S. Senate committee.

In addition to the pre-deployment issue, the LAFD’s after-action report found other problems during the Jan. 7 fire fight. The initial dispatch called for only seven engine companies, when the weather conditions required 27. Confusion over which radio channel to use hampered communication. At one point in the first hour, three L.A. County engines showed up requesting an assignment, and received no reply. Another four LAFD engines assembled, but waited 20 minutes without an assignment. In the early afternoon that day, the staging area — where engines were checking in — was overrun by fire.

Moore said he is closely evaluating the 42 recommendations in the report to make sure they are properly implemented.

Bass announced Moore’s selection last month after conducting a nationwide search that included interviews with fire chiefs of other cities. She had ousted Kristen Crowley, who was chief during the Palisades fire, citing deployment decisions ahead of the extreme weather, and appointed interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva in February.

Moore — who said he grew up in the Mar Vista and Venice area — joined the LAFD as a firefighter in 1995, working his way up the ranks in various assignments throughout the city, including supervising arson investigations and serving as a spokesperson for the agency, according to his resume. He most recently was deputy chief of Operations Valley Bureau, directing the response to emergencies across 39 fire stations.

For months, as victims pleaded for information, the Los Angeles Fire Department kept secret that its firefighters were ordered to stop mop-up operations on a small brushfire that continued to smolder and reignited days later into the massive Palisades fire.

At least one department official learned that a battalion chief had directed the firefighters to pack up their hoses and leave the scene of the Lachman fire Jan. 2, even though they complained that the ground was still smoking in places and rocks remained hot to the touch, according to a source who was briefed on the matter in June.

But the department did not include that finding, or any detailed examination of the reignition, in its after-action report on the Jan. 7 Palisades fire — or otherwise make the information public — despite victims demanding answers for months about how the blaze started and whether more could have been done to prevent it.

The report, which was released last month and intended to identify shortcomings in the LAFD’s preparedness and response, only briefly mentioned the prior blaze, even though its role in starting the Palisades fire was clear to firefighters. According to the report, on the morning of Jan. 7, an LAFD captain called Fire Station 23 — one of two stations in Pacific Palisades — to say that the Lachman fire had started up again.

Despite this, LAFD officials were emphatic early on that the Lachman fire was fully extinguished.

“We won’t leave a fire that has any hot spots,” Kristin Crowley, the fire chief at the time, said at a community meeting Jan. 16, after the Palisades fire killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

“That fire was dead out,” Chief Deputy Joe Everett said at the same meeting, adding that he was out of town but communicating with the incident commander. “If it is determined that was the cause, it would be a phenomenon.”

The Times reported late last month that a battalion chief had ordered firefighters to leave the scene of the Lachman fire the day after it broke out, rather than stay and make sure there were no hidden embers that could ignite a new fire, according to firefighter text exchanges. Mario Garcia, the battalion chief listed as being on duty the day that firefighters were ordered to leave the Lachman fire, said in an email that he was unable to comment due to “the ongoing investigation.”

Interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva declined to be interviewed or answer questions about when top LAFD officials learned of the firefighters’ complaints about leaving the scene. Mayor Karen Bass also declined an interview request and did not respond directly to a question about whether she was informed of the firefighters’ complaints before The Times report and, if so, when.

After The Times published the story on the texts, victims of the Palisades fire expressed outrage, while Bass directed Villanueva to launch an investigation into the matter. Critics of Bass’ administration have asked for an independent inquiry. A spokesperson said Thursday that Bass’ selection for permanent fire chief, Jaime Moore, will lead the investigation, not Villanueva. Moore’s appointment still must be confirmed by the L.A. City Council.

Meanwhile, a federal grand jury subpoena was served on the LAFD for firefighters’ communications, including text messages, about smoke or hot spots in the area of the Lachman fire, according to a memo distributed to firefighters last week.

The source, a high-ranking fire official who works for a different agency in the L.A. region, told The Times that another LAFD battalion chief, Nick Ferrari, informed him in June that the department had learned of the Lachman firefighters’ account of being ordered to leave the burn site. The official asked not to be identified by name or the agency he works for because of the sensitivity of the LAFD finding.

The Times reviewed written notes that the official made shortly after the conversation, documenting what Ferrari had said about the firefighters’ complaints.

Ferrari works in the department’s risk management section, according to his LAFD email profile. That section typically conducts internal reviews of incidents such as the Palisades fire for potential liability. He did not respond to interview requests and an emailed list of questions. It is not clear what, if anything, Ferrari did with the information he shared with the official about five months ago.

Federal investigators say the Lachman fire was deliberately set and had burned underground in a canyon root system until high winds rekindled it on Jan. 7. Last month, an investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives led to the arrest of former Pacific Palisades resident Jonathan Rinderknecht, who is accused of setting the Lachman fire shortly after midnight Jan. 1.

It is unclear from the internal LAFD memo whether the federal subpoena for firefighter texts is directly related to the case against Rinderknecht, who has pleaded not guilty.

In one text message reported last month in The Times, a firefighter who was at the Lachman scene Jan. 2 wrote that the battalion chief in charge had been told it was a “bad idea” to leave because of visible signs of smoldering terrain, which crews feared could start a new fire. “And the rest is history,” the firefighter wrote in recent weeks.

A second firefighter was told that tree stumps were still hot at the location when the crew packed up and left, according to the texts. And another firefighter said in texts last month that crew members were upset when directed to leave the scene, but that they could not ignore orders. That firefighter also wrote that he and his colleagues knew immediately that the Jan. 7 fire was a rekindle of the Jan. 1 blaze.

The firefighters’ accounts line up with a video recorded by a hiker above Skull Rock Trailhead about 11:30 a.m. Jan. 2 — almost 36 hours after the Lachman fire started — that shows smoke rising from the dirt. “It’s still smoldering,” the hiker says from behind the camera.

The LAFD previously said that officials did everything they could to ensure the Lachman fire was out.

In an interview with The Times last month, Villanueva — who came out of retirement to head the department in February, after Bass removed Crowley from the position — said that firefighters remained in the Lachman fire burn area for more than 36 hours and “cold-trailed” it, meaning they used their hands to feel for heat, dug out hot spots and chopped a line around the perimeter of the fire to ensure it was contained.

He said firefighters returned Jan. 3 for another round of cold-trailing after a report of smoke in the area, though the LAFD did not provide records that corroborated those actions.

Those documents are readily available for release, but the LAFD has required The Times to pursue them through an often lengthy process under the California Public Records Act. Bass’ office declined to order the LAFD to provide the records to the paper.

The Times in recent years has filed three lawsuits against the city for its failure to release documents under the records act. Two of the lawsuits involved alleged misconduct by LAFD employees, including accusations that a chief deputy appeared to be intoxicated while the department was battling a 2021 fire in the Palisades.

The now-retired chief deputy said he was off-duty at the time and did nothing wrong. The department took no action against him. A judge ordered the city to release the records in the case and pay The Times’ legal fees.

In the second case involving alleged misconduct, the city agreed to settle by producing the records and reimbursing the paper’s legal costs. In the third lawsuit, which is pending, The Times contends that the city has unlawfully deleted Bass’ text messages related to the Palisades fire.

Pringle is a former Times staff writer.