Mayoral aide’s letter to City Attorney on LAFD data

In a let­ter to City At­tor­ney Car­men Trutanich’s of­fice, Bri­an Cur­rey, Chief Coun­sel to the may­or, un­loaded a lengthy leg­al ana­lys­is claim­ing the of­fice has hobbled the re­lease of de­tailed data on how quickly fire­fight­ers get to those in need in vari­ous parts of the city. Among oth­er things, Cur­rey claimed that the city at­tor­ney’s of­fice wrongly warned fire of­fi­cials that they could be crim­in­ally pro­sec­uted for dis­clos­ing in­form­a­tion that has been routinely dis­trib­uted in the past, in­clud­ing loc­a­tions of emer­gen­cies.

Cur­rey called on the of­fice to re­verse its opin­ions. And in an un­usu­al step, he en­cour­aged out­side parties — in­clud­ing The Times — to sue to gain ac­cess to in­form­a­tion be­ing denied by the de­part­ment.