And I made sure to tell you she was a BLACK LESBIAN right up front because she’s so damn proud of it. Historic, even.
I know she would want me to.
Plus, she’s got the Ivy League DEI certificate, and I don’t.
I feel so unworthy.
Kristine Larson is a 33+ year veteran of the Los Angeles City Fire Department. Prior to joining the LAFD, Kris earned her bachelor’s degree in Sociology from UCLA while achieving the distinction of becoming a three time All-American as a track and field athlete. She went on to graduate summa cum laude from Capella University with a master’s degree in public service leadership with an emphasis in Emergency Management. She has completed a DEI certification program through Cornell University and is participating in the International Association of Fire Chief’s Diversity Executive Leadership Program which aims to advance DEI within the fire service, with a cohort of members from around the Country.
Kristine has held various ranks within the LAFD consisting of Fire Inspector, and subsequently was the first African American woman to be promoted to the rank of Captain I, Captain II, Battalion Chief, Assistant Chief and Deputy Chief in the history of the LAFD.
So she was the Deputy Chief in the Equity and Human Resources Bureau (pronouns she/her) before her next big bump up the ladder to Assistant Chief of the whole she-bang.
Larson was apparently a stud in her younger years, having been a 3 time All-American on the same UCLA track and field team as Jackie Joyner Kersee (although I haven’t seen she specialized in). She came to firefighting as a 25 year-old.
…Larson is a real-life firefighting warrior. She sports a short fade haircut and intricate Māori and tribal tattoos on her upper arms. A gifted athlete, she’s a three-time All-American athlete in track & field. When she joined the LAFD at 25, about thirty-one years ago, she was ahead of the game.
Larson graduated from UCLA in 1989 and was already halfway through her master’s program specializing in public service leadership at Capella University in Minneapolis. Her rise within the department was arduous. In 2017, she became the first Black female captain promoted to battalion chief at the LAFD.
Some sexist attitudes have changed in her time at the department, but many haven’t.
In 2016, as Larson was taking her battalion chief exam, one of the male test-takers questioned her saying, “What are you doing here?”
“It was an attempt to belittle my accomplishments as an officer already within the department,” Larson said. All her extensive experience had more than qualified her to test for the battalion chief position.
“I was taken aback that someone would say something out loud like that,” Larson said.
Because a guy would never say that to another guy, I guess?
Larson was one of a group of women in 2021 agitating for former LA mayor Eric Garcetti to fire the previous Fire Chief, Ralph Terrazas, for reportedly ignoring a litany of complaints from female firefighters about the rampant culture of sexism, racism, and abuse thriving in the LA Fire Department. At the time, Larson was the president of the Los Angeles Women in the Fire Service (LAWFS), could well be painted as an activist, and was an outspoken critic of the fire chief.
A coalition of female firefighters and advocates released a demand letter to Mayor Eric Garcetti, denouncing Los Angeles Fire Department’s culture of “rampant sexism, racism and abuse in the ranks that women and minorities routinely face.”
…The Equity on Fire (EOF) coalition — consisting of Los Angeles Women in the Fire Service (LAWFS), a women’s LAFD employee association; Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Southern California; Women’s March Action and the California National Organization of Women — gathered on a virtual meeting on Oct. 18 to publicly address the unsafe work environment women and minority firefighters experience within the department, according to a statement.
EOF is asking for the fire chief to be removed and replaced along with a demonstration of accountability from Terrazas, who “has ignored, downplayed, denied or actively obstructed any investigation into the cultural problems within LAFD,” the demand letter reads.
…Kristine Larson, president of Los Angeles Women in the Fire Service and a 31-year LAFD veteran and officer, said numbers of equal employment opportunity (EEO) violations are growing within the department and that Terrazas is aware of the upward trend of LAFD’s discrimination and harassment.
Larson explained that Terrazas receives regular briefings, notifying him of complaints within the department, from LAFD’s professional standards division (PSD), which handles complaint and disciplinary action “in compliance with federal, state and local news and departmental policy,” according to the Professional Standards Division complaint form.
“He knows about these incidents.”
She said he discounts that EEO violations have increased from seven in 2017 to 63 in 2019.
All the politically correct buzzwords are used throughout every paragraph of this story and Larson’s responses in the interview. I’m not going to opine on the veracity of accusations and conditions I have no personal knowledge of other than to say, as a veteran of being one of only 4000 women in the biggest 275,000 member men’s club on earth, I look at all the umbrage – and EEO violations – with a bit of a jaundiced eye.
By January of 2022, the pressure was enormous, and Terrazas was out, replaced by current LAFD Chief Kristin Crowley.
This week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti nominated Kristin Crowley to become the Los Angeles Fire Department’s first female fire chief, pending confirmation by the Los Angeles City Council.
Fire Chief Ralph Terrazas’ retirement was confirmed at the same time. In October, firefighters and activists demanded that Chief Terrazas step down, saying he had failed to address the discrimination against women in the department and “ignored, downplayed, denied, or actively obstructed any investigation.” An LAFD survey assessing workplace culture conducted in November also concluded that 56% of women within the department had experienced bullying and harassment on the job.
Speaking to Crowley’s appointment, Garcetti said, “There is no one better equipped to lead the LAFD at this moment than Kristin. She’s ready to make history.”
This is not the first time Crowley is making history. A 22-year veteran, she was the department’s first female fire marshal and the second woman to earn the rank of chief deputy. She also served as program director for the LAFD’s youth development program.
…Not only is Crowley inheriting a department with deep-rooted misogyny issues, but she will also have to tackle firefighters’ mass refusal to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Fire commissioner Rebecca Ninburg says, “She is going to follow the mandate. She’s going to continue to educate, she’s going to implement the city policies and hold people to account if they don’t comply.”
Crowley suspended more than 100 firefighters without pay, many of whom were later terminated.
Larson cheered the new chief’s selection as a sign the bullying culture would change.
…She attributes the adversity women face to a lack of representation within the fire service and welcomes the new fire chief’s appointment. “Crowley is well-respected in the department by the rank and file members and she has done the work necessary to achieve this promotion,” Larson said.
…Women have been fighting for their place in the Los Angeles Fire Department for decades. In her current role as chief deputy, Crowley helped to develop a five-year strategic plan to identify areas of growth within the Department and as the new fire chief, she could be the push the department needs for systemic cultural change.
At Tuesday’s event, Crowley said she was up to the task. “I will be fully committed to leading and inspiring our tremendous department into an exciting future that is filled with new opportunities to grow, to innovate and to empower.”
I guess it’s swung progressively, judging by this delightful video starring the now Assistant Chief herself.
What a delightful woman.
I don’t ever want her near me in an emergency.
LAFD Assistant Chief Kristine Larson:
“Am I able to carry your husband out of a fire? He got himself in the wrong place.” pic.twitter.com/BofTVr6dWP
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 9, 2025
“You want to see somebody that responds to your house, your emergency – whether it’s a medical call or a fire call – that looks like you”
No, I don’t. I don’t give a rat’s ass what they look like if it’s an emergency. I only know I want them there and that they know what they’re doing.
“Or ‘You couldn’t carry my husband out of a fire.’ Which my response is, ‘He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.'”
I definitely do not want her or any other angry, smart-ass diversity hire anywhere near our house if they think carrying a man out of a burning building is too Gott-danged much trouble.
No, sir.
I want that pizza delivery kid who selflessly goes in three times, and then dives in for a fourth when told he missed someone.
That’s the DEI ‘tude in one, revolting snark. She’s doing him a favor for being in the wrong place by carrying him out.
CARRY YOUR OWNSELF
Blows my mind.
But besides the budget cuts, it explains a lot about what’s happening in Los Angeles.
So does one other thing I came across while researching this. In a weird, creepy coincidence, probably the last straw for former Fire Chief Terrazas’s career was an accusation that he had protected a chief deputy whom a female firefighter had reported as drunk on duty during a big May 2021 brush fire.
You’ll never guess where the brush fire was.
…The 30-year resident was monitoring two radios and a stream of Twitter feeds, 18 browser tabs open as he toggled back and forth between weather reports and emergency alerts.
The fire was just over the eastern ridge, and he didn’t think it would reach his home in Fernwood, on the canyon’s western side. But his car was packed just in case.
“This is not normal, to have a big fire like this in May,” said Ferguson, who also serves as board chair of the Topanga Coalition for Emergency Preparedness. “This is the type of thing we’d usually be doing in November.”
The Palisades fire, which had swelled to more than 1,300 acres by Sunday afternoon and forced the evacuation of about 1,000 people, came as a reminder of an unsettling truth: The fire season is starting earlier each year, and it is now underway.
Damn.
Personally, from my point of view, I think the smug preening and virtue-signaling of these women – from the LAFD to the mayor to the water czar and every posturing DEI chica in-between – with the subsequent proof of the emptiness of it all evinced in the smoking devastation? They’ve set women who would want to earn their place in any ‘manly’ profession back decades.
This horrific, unfathomable loss will always be colored by the question of how much competent leadership and professionals have been able to save.
What a travesty.
.
