Life on the line: 911 breakdowns at LAFD

LAFD chief’s retirement message

By Ben Welsh

Los Angeles Fire Chief Bri­an Cum­mings an­nounced his re­tire­ment as head of the city Fire De­part­ment with this press re­lease.

Cum­mings had struggled to re­store con­fid­ence in his man­age­ment of the 3,500-em­ploy­ee de­part­ment after of­fi­cials ad­mit­ted last year to mis­stat­ing emer­gency-re­sponse times, mak­ing it ap­pear that res­cuers ar­rived faster than they ac­tu­ally did.

Dur­ing his cam­paign, May Eric Gar­cetti said he lacked con­fid­ence in the fire chief’s lead­er­ship and second-guessed a series of the chief’s man­age­ment de­cisions.