Mayor’s response to LAFD data discrepancies

Seek­ing to bol­ster pub­lic con­fid­ence in how the Los Angeles Fire De­part­ment re­sponds to emer­gen­cies and handles data, May­or Ant­o­nio Vil­larai­gosa has called on the City Coun­cil to dip in­to budget re­serves to pay for six ad­di­tion­al res­cue am­bu­lances and has an­nounced that he wants to in­stall a na­tion­ally re­cog­nized ex­pert in stat­ist­ics to over­see the agency’s ac­count­ing of its per­form­ance.

In a let­ter to the coun­cil sent late Thursday, Vil­larai­gosa char­ac­ter­ized as “un­ten­able” re­cent con­fu­sion over how fast fire units re­spond to emer­gen­cies. “We must take im­me­di­ate steps to rec­ti­fy it,” he said.