In the last action by the mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti stood with Kristen Crowley, who was named the city’s first female fire chief and announced a new bureau in the fire department.

The Bureau of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, established in November 2022, should have been the first to recruit under-numbered groups, including women, who were less than 4% of firefighters at the time. The bureau should also "safety and support" for everyone working for LAFD.

Instead, amid the whirlpool of budget cuts, a bunch of criticism from the conservative media and criticism of the Trump administration of DEI, Mayor Karen Bass proposed folding the equity office into another part of the fire department.

Of the nine “equity and inclusion” positions in the department, five were cut in the bass for the proposed budget for 2025-26, although the mayor’s office said it would not lead to any layoffs.

"This is for Karen Bass of the Trump administration," said former fire commissioner Rebecca Ninburg of Garcetti. "Crowley is very proud of this, and they are basically eliminating the project during the installation of a brand new regime."

Bass ousted Crowley in February, saying the professional standards division folding the equity office to the department had nothing to do with opposing the campaign. The fire department remains committed to diversity, including recruiting more female firefighters, she said.

"This is the beauty of living in Los Angeles, and I don't need to appease anyone for diversity and inclusion," she said in an interview Friday. "We are thinking about doing some reorganization at this level. But we will never overturn our goals. We simply have no reason to do that."

LAFD did not respond to a request for comment.

The January 7 fire destroyed Palisade and surrounding areas of the Pacific, with conservative opposition to the equity office. Videos of 2019 surfaced, including Deputy Commissioner Kristine Larson, who now leads the Stock Bureau, talks about becoming a black woman in LAFD.

Larson said in the video that residents want to look like their first responders, which she said can be more comfortable in an emergency. She also seems to be devalued in her ability to take someone out of the burning building.

"If I had to send him out of the fire, he put himself in the wrong place," Larson said in the video, spreading the video, and experts like the New York Post and Bill Maher used it to point out "suspicious budget priorities" in Liberty City.

Bass said in an interview Friday that she was unfamiliar with the video.

A month after the Palisades Fire, the city’s fire commission reported that the departure of the main staff of the Stock Bureau “compromises” its ability to implement many of its stated goals, including developing a “strong equity and inclusive framework.”

Larson declined to comment on the 2019 video or the dissolution of the stock market.

She touted the Bureau's work on mediation and reconciliation in an effort to win lower-level disputes between firefighters. She said the bureau is also developing new beauty standards and updating its racial equality plan.

Since the inception of the Stock Bureau, there has not been a significant increase in the LAFD's slim representation of women, hovering below 4% in 2023.

LAFD is not alone in trying to recruit female firefighters. According to a 2018 national survey cited in a city report, less than 5% of U.S. career firefighters are women.

In 2023, about 30% of Los Angeles firefighters are Latino, while 47% of the city's population is. About 11% of firefighters are black, in a black city of 9%.

A group of black firefighters, Stentorians, in a letter to the city council in March, said there had been an increase in discrimination and harassment reports in Crowley's department, as well as an increase in discriminatory hiring practices.

Ningbo said she was concerned that the department's welcome to women and Latinos will be reduced. She said the city may end up spending more money on lawsuits filed by firefighters in marginalized groups.

"These are not very small problems. These are huge problems," she said. "It goes back to the status quo, which doesn't work, which is why the stock office was created in the first place."

Meanwhile, Bass proposed cutting the stock office, and her budget required fire department staff to rise overall.

To bridge the nearly $1 billion gap, Bass recommends adding 1,650 city workers to the fire department while adding 227 positions. The department with about 3,250 firefighters will be about half of the new employees. The remaining new positions will include 25 new emergency medical technicians, in addition to mechanics and other agencies.

Crowley, who was also LAFD's first public LGBTQ+ head, asserted that the Palisades blazing budget cuts affected LAFD's ability to fight the fire. Bass and her team say that once employees raise their pay, the department’s budget has not yet decreased and will actually increase.

Bass explained that she decided to remove Crowley as Chief, and he said she didn't hear from Crowley until after the fire broke out. She also questioned the Chief's decision to deploy.

Crowley serves as LAFD, as assistant director of the operations assistant Valley Bureau, and Ronnie Villanueva serves as interim head of the department.

Jimmie Woods-Gray, a member of the New York City Fire Commission, said cutting the stock office is a necessary step in a difficult budget year.

"It won't affect the safety of the public and the people," she said.

Times employee reporter David Zahniser contributed to the report.