Fox 11 is blowing the lid off Los Angeles City Council and its perpetual malfeasance, which continues to cost people their lives. If it’s not the COVID mess, vaccine, or fentanyl deaths, it’s the poor response time for emergency services, and little of it is the fault of the 911 operators or the EMTs.

FOX 11 News spent three months communicating with multiple LAFD paramedics. Some went on camera but asked us to protect their identity for fear of retaliation. Others served as background sources providing crucial information. They all said the public needs to know the truth.

“The truth is you don’t have the ambulance service, the EMS service that you think you have. Ambulances are coming from greater and greater distances. It’s taking longer and longer to get to your emergency,” says one LAFD paramedic. “The longer it takes, the less your chance of a good outcome.”

Bottom line: If you need an emergency response in the City of Angels, it sucks to be you. If you live in a high-crime, low-income area, it sucks even more. The Los Angeles Fire Department is tasked with serving just shy of four million people. That number does not include the tourists, who, amazingly enough, are still ubiquitous, despite the homelessness, graft, and rising crime in the city. The department only has 106 fire stations, and an average 24-hour shift could see 30 calls, if not more.

Many stations also lack basic infrastructure, e.g. actual ambulances to roll out, which factors into the longer response times. So, a station with an ambulance in the Pico-Union district, which is near Downtown Los Angeles, may have to respond to a call in Baldwin Hills, which is near the Los Angeles International Airport. That’s 6.1 miles and 17 minutes on a good day. There is never a good day when it comes to Los Angeles traffic.

It’s not uncommon for firefighter paramedics to travel from downtown LA to the West side; from Pacific Palisades to South Central and from DTLA to San Pedro.

“They talk about, ‘Well, we’ll move this fire engine over here and do that.’ Well, that’s just shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic,” said one paramedic. At hospitals, you will often see several ambulances parked outside the Emergency Room. Paramedics cannot leave until the patient they transported has been admitted into the ER and with hospitals being understaffed, paramedics could be stuck there for hours.

However, LAFD staffing has seen a decrease. Hmm… wonder why? Burnout is definitely a factor. What else might have factored into this drastic decline in staff?

The COVID vaccine mandate passed by the City Council in 2021.

LAFD and LAPD personnel protested over this mandate, and even sued the city. They lost in court, so many took early retirement and moved to friendlier climes (Hello, Florida) to do their work, while some chose to be put on leave pending an administrative discharge. Los Angeles city was also slow-rolling or denying religious and medical exemptions in record amounts. An LAFD spokeswoman told the Los Angeles Times that out of the 335 employees who sought exemptions, only nine were granted.

“Our staffing levels have decreased over the years. Our call volume has more than doubled. We’re running around 2,000 calls a day from about 1,000 when I first started. Our number of fire stations has not increased,” said the LAFD Paramedic.

Lo and behold, on February 4, The city ordered the approval of all religious and medical exemptions to the vaccine mandate filed by employees. This policy will also extend to those who were previously denied exemptions and who have been placed on leave.

Nevertheless, the City Council’s self-inflicted wound is costing people their lives. One woman recounted her story to Fox 11:

When Carin Bannos called 911, she was confident an ambulance would arrive right away to help her 51-year-old husband Michael Davis, who had suddenly collapsed.

“I was very, very anxious and I kept running from the house to the street, back to the house, back to the street to make sure they would not miss the house,” said Bannos.  She knew the Los Angeles Fire Department was on the way. But as the clock kept on ticking, minute after minute after minute and still no ambulance, panic set in for Bannos and her 9-year-old son.

“My son was screaming, ‘Where are they, where are they?’ He kept running through the house, ‘Why can’t they save my daddy? Why is no one here?” said Bannos.

Next door neighbor Phyllis Patterson was with the family when the paramedics finally arrived approximately 15 minutes after the 911 call.

“One of them said to me, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and I said, ‘Why did it take so long?’ And they said, ‘Well, we had to come from a different station,” Patterson recalled.

Michael Davis died waiting for that ambulance. He had suffered a heart attack.

According to the fire personnel interviewed, Ms. Bannos’ tragedy is one of many incidents that the public never hears about.

“It happens every day,” he said. “You guys don’t ever hear about it. We don’t go public with it, but it’s on a constant basis. Our average response time should be anywhere for three to four minutes; 10 minutes, you’re lucky. Fifteen is common, and 20 is going to be the norm.”

But Huzzah! for those two million dollar “Peace and Healing Centers” Mayor Karen Bass just opened across the city.

“So many Los Angeles communities were shut out from progress and opportunity, and those same communities now suffer from the highest rates of poverty, pollution and violence,” said LA Civil Rights Executive Director Capri Maddox. “They also happen to be primarily communities of color. Peace & Healing Centers are one way we can begin to repair this harm, by working with trusted community partners and creating public spaces for social, economic and environmental healing.”

Eight community-based organizations were selected to operate Peace & Healing Centers in nine REPAIR Zones, which stands for Reforms for Equity and Public Acknowledgement of Institutional Racism. REPAIR Zones have some of the highest pollution and overcrowded housing in the city, and account for half of all Angelenos living in poverty. Roughly 87% of the people living in REPAIR Zones are people of color.

This is a three-part investigative series by Fox11, so expect more horror stories and excuses from the LAFD brass. And remember, while former Pacoima (District 6) City Councilwoman Nury Martinez, former District 1 councilmember Gil Cedillo, and current District 14 councilman Kevin de Leon were maligning Los Angeles citizens and fighting over their piece of the re-distribution pie, it is obvious they cared little about how their foolish policies and lack of focus on LAFD infrastructure was affecting their minority constituents and possibly contributing to their deaths.

And don’t think newly minted Democrat Socialist council critters Hugo Soto-Martinez (District 13) or Eunisses Hernandez (District 1) care one wit either.

The Los Angeles Fire Department, as well as the city, is horrifically broken, and its citizens are forced to pick through the wreckage.