LAFD Firefighters March to City Hall, Protest Deployment Plan

In protest over a proposed change to the deployment structure of the Los Angeles Fire Department, an estimated 150 firefighters marched to City Hall today and addressed the Los Angeles City Council in advance of this afternoon’s budget presentation.

The president of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, Pat McOsker, spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting. Here are his remarks, in their entirety:

Nobody knows better than your firefighters that we have a budget crisis right now in this city and nobody’s been making greater sacrifices. We’ve given back tens of millions of dollars in contract concessions. We supported pension changes that will help, and we’ve been risking our lives because of the closures we already have right now in the city. You’re already closing companies. What you’ve got to do right now is begin to restore what’s been lost, not make it permanent because that’s what the mayor is telling you to do right now. And he’s telling us to abandon communities in this city, to pull firefighters, ambulances and fire trucks out of specific places that he has targeted. Places like Wilmington and West L.A. and Porter Ranch, the Pacific Palisades. We’re not abandoning those places without a fight, let me tell you that right now. We’re calling on you to do what is right because there is money in this budget right now without stealing from anybody else. We wouldn’t ask you to cut the police department or any other important program, but there’s money in this budget right now to begin restoring what has been lost already, to reopen closed fire companies, to get us back to where we were before and to commit yourselves to doing that until we have proper fire and paramedic protection for the people of Los Angeles. By the way, don’t buy what they are telling you as they get desperate to sell you this permanent downsizing of the fire department because it is all false. It is not true that we’ll have to close twice as many companies if you don’t give the mayor what he wants. It is not true that you will have to start hiring firefighters next year instead of two or three years from now one way or another. All false. The pension costs that they’ve now come up with absolutely false. No difference there either, so they’re getting desperate. They’re lying to you. They want you to vote to pull fire and paramedic protection out of specific targeted communities in Los Angeles, and you better not do it. We talked last night at a community meeting. They reminded me of the three-year-old boy who drowned and we got there 12 minutes later and couldn’t save his life because of closures. End the closures now.

The budget presentation is item 10 on the council’s agenda.