{"id":42020,"date":"2025-11-07T05:20:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T05:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/42020\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T05:20:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T05:20:14","slug":"la-put-politics-first-and-sparked-its-worst-ever-wildfire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/42020\/","title":{"rendered":"LA put politics first \u2014 and sparked its worst-ever wildfire"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Los Angeles Police Department\u2019s after-action report on the Palisades Fire reveals a stunning lack of preparation \u2014 and confirms that officers were unavailable<\/a> because they had been diverted to protect President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

The 90-page report pulls no punches in its criticism of the LAPD\u2019s failures during the fire \u2014 unlike the LA Fire Department\u2019s version, which glossed over key failures and has been slammed by whistleblowers.<\/p>\n

The LAPD was generally slow to respond to the Jan. 7 blaze \u2014 as was the LAFD.<\/a><\/p>\n

The police department received its first emergency call about the fire at 10:23 am, the report notes, but aside from one officer on the scene, it took the rest of the department nearly an hour to mobilize.<\/p>\n

The \u201clong drive to the far westside of the division prevented the units from arriving quickly,\u201d and insufficient units were in place nearby ahead of the disaster.<\/p>\n

Police had been briefed the day before, on Jan. 6, about the impending \u201clife-threatening and destructive windstorm.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the LAPD told a meeting of city emergency officials that \u201cmany resources were assigned to a visit from the President of the United States\u201d \u2014 lame-duck Biden.<\/p>\n

As I would later report, dozens of LAPD officers were assigned to the president\u2019s security detail \u2014making them unavailable for emergencies or evacuations.<\/p>\n

As panicked residents became stuck in traffic on Sunset Boulevard \u2014 the only way into, and out of, several neighborhoods \u2014 no officers were available to direct traffic, the new report admits.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of the Department\u2019s on-duty motorcycle officers\u201d were with Biden. Their \u201cability to maneuver through heavy traffic would have helped reduce the gridlock in the Palisades.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the president could not \u2014 or did not \u2014 let them go.<\/p>\n

Panicked residents, trapped in their cars, saw the smoke arriving and decided to flee on foot. The abandoned vehicles meant no one else could drive out, either.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the LAFD had to use bulldozers to move cars to the side to allow fire engines \u2014 which had not been pre-deployed, either \u2014 through.<\/p>\n

The LAPD did manage to reassign 65 officers in patrol cars, and credits them with helping to evacuate the remaining residents. But crucial hours had been lost.<\/p>\n

The department acknowledges a catastrophic breakdown of communications.<\/p>\n

Reports at the time suggested that residents who called 911 found dispatchers had no idea there was a fire, and the LAPD after-action report reveals radio transmission, difficult enough in the hilly terrain, were \u201cmade exponentially worse when the fires destroyed the radio and cell phone sites designed specifically to serve the area.\u201d<\/p>\n

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On the ground in the fire zone, \u201ccoordination between LAFD and LAPD was minimal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two agencies were even working from the same command post, at Fire Station 23 on Sunset Boulevard, but could not find a way to work together: \u201cThough both agencies were colocated at the same CP, the two departments did not collectively establish a unified command structure or identify shared objectives, missions, or strategies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, police had to evacuate that post, which was threatened by fire, causing even more confusion.<\/p>\n

Inexcusably, the report reveals that the LAPD is not trained to work with nearby emergency agencies: \u201cThe Department has little experience working with agencies outside of the City of Los Angeles, especially in dynamic disaster response scenarios.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the complex, overlapping jurisdictions in the area \u2014 Los Angeles County, for example \u2014 that seems almost impossible. But according to the LAPD\u2019s new report, it is the sad truth.<\/p>\n

The LAPD should be commended for offering the public such a forthright admission of the terrible mistakes it made.<\/p>\n

Yet there can be no excuses \u2014 and responsibility lies at the top, with Mayor Karen Bass and LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell.<\/p>\n

There were far higher priorities on Jan. 7 than Biden\u2019s family visit to Los Angeles. And the federal government provides ample grants for training local police to work with firefighters and other outside agencies.<\/p>\n

The LAPD\u2019s failures can also be traced to other factors \u2014 such as the attrition caused by the hostile attitudes of the Black Lives Matter era, when police offers were dehumanized, and the harsh vaccine mandates of the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n

City leaders put politics over preparedness, leading to a collapse in morale and public trust.<\/p>\n

The LAPD after-action report will go some way toward restoring that trust \u2014 but only if it brings accountability, and a new approach to public safety.<\/p>\n

Joel Pollak is The California Post\u2019s Opinion Editor. The California Post, a sister publication to The New York Post, will be launching early in 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Police Department\u2019s after-action report on the Palisades Fire reveals a stunning lack of preparation \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7,3936,13912,48,28249,52,51,47,50,49,975],"class_list":["post-42020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-california","tag-california-wildfires","tag-joe-biden","tag-la","tag-la-fires-2025","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}