Deleted messages, disappearing chats, and a firestorm of L.A. controversy

In the days after the devastating Palisades and Eaton wildfires, and as questions mounted about the Los Angeles Fire Department, the mayor, and how the city handled the unprecedented firestorm, this text was sent to then-LAFD chief Kristin Crowley:

Hello Chief. This is Chief Deputy City Attorney Denise Mills. We are asking the Mayor and ITA to temporarily shut off G-chat until at least Friday. Will this create any disastrous effects with respect to your department’s operations (i.e. do you rely on G-chat for emergency communications? Please let me know ASAP. Thank you.”

Six minutes later, the fire chief replies, “Hi, please give me a call.”

The text from January 13 was one of more than 300 pages of documents obtained by KTLA last month that we reviewed amid new reporting by the Los Angeles Times that “Mayor Karen Bass is deleting her text messages, raising eyebrows and questions.”

In KTLA’s reporting last month, we questioned where all the Bass communications with the Chief were.

One thing that is not part of the texts—any meaningful conversations between the Mayor and Crowley. If they were communicating regularly, it was with a different method of communication—perhaps disappearing Google Chats

The City Attorney tells the L.A. Times that the mayor’s phone “is set not to save text messages, and there is ‘no requirement that a city official or employee’ do so” – something that seems to contradict the city’s own document retention policies.

By January 15, KTLA had already submitted a records request for any digital communications to or from Chief Kristin Crowley.  The Times reports their request to the city for the mayor’s communications came on January 10.

As we now know, the note from the city that it was considering shutting down Google Chats came January 13, after the city would have already known media outlets were reaching out to obtain those communications…  and after the Times reported last December about an internal review of Google Chat’s use by city officials.

When asked Monday why the city wanted to shut down Google Chat, the city told KTLA:

“In response to user requests related to the citywide emergency, the City Attorney wanted to ensure that all official communications were retained. One way to do so would be to eliminate Google Chat, thereby requiring all employees to use email (all of which are retained) to communicate. The other option was to enable Google Chat history so all chats are retained. To better inform the City’s decision, our office inquired with both LAPD and LAFD to determine if terminating the Chat function would cause problems with operations. This email reflects our inquiry to LAFD. Chief Assistant City Attorney Mills never reached out to the Mayor’s office. Ultimately, the Google team enabled Google Chat History effective January 14, 2025. As a result, all 1-on-1 and group messages in Google Chat are saved in the chat history.

The city says to their knowledge, Google Chat was never shut off, but it also says in the same statement that chat history was only enabled on January 14 – days after the Palisades Fire scorched thousands of acres and flattened entire neighborhoods and after media requests for communications were submitted.

In the weeks following the Palisades Fire, KTLA received parts of some public records requests and not others. Some were heavily redacted. We saw only two text messages from Mayor Karen Bass to the LAFD chief: one from January 10 and the other from January 22.

One had to do with a meeting being scheduled. The other concerned missing a phone call. These were regular text messages. It’s unclear if other messages exist—and if they do—if they were redacted, automatically deleted, or resided on Google Chat which didn’t have chat history enabled until January 14.

KTLA legal analyst Alison Triessl says, when it comes to the conduct of elected officials, transparency is expected.

“The mayor and the fire chief are public servants. As a result, they are employed by the citizens of Los Angeles. We must trust that civil servants are working in our best interest,” said Triessl. “The best way to build trust is to have full transparency in our government. Conversely, the quickest way to erode that public trust is for our public officials to work in secrecy, hiding behind disappearing text messages.”

At a news conference Monday, the mayor didn’t specifically address Google Chat or if her office used that chat service, but she did say her phone automatically deletes messages after 30 days, that they (the city) have been ‘swamped’ with public records requests, and they’re looking now to see if there is a way to retrieve those messages so “stay tuned.”