February 19, 2025 • 26 mins
Gary begins the second hour or the show with story of strained relationship between LA Mayor Karen Bass and LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath. Gary speaks with LAPD Chief, Jim McDonnell on continued fire operations in the Palisades and the potential for immigration raids in Los Angeles.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app. Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's house
was the latest high profile home to be targeted by burglars.
The LAPD says officers responded to a burglary report about
eight o'clock Friday night on Lime Orchard Road over technically,
(00:20):
I think this is Beverly Hills. Officers learned from a
security guard that a burglar had smashed the glass door
of the house, ransacked the house, and took off. It's
not clear, at least not yet if he took anything
at the time. We're actually going to be talking with
LAPD Chief Jim McDonald coming up at the bottom of
this hour and talk more about some of those high
(00:41):
profile things and what the LAPD can do, if anything,
to protect to protect homes there. We've seen quite a
little bit of conundrum maybe between LA Mayor Karen Bass
and LA County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath. Go back to January
(01:04):
twenty first, if you will, the Palisades fire only partially contained.
There were new fires that were going to erupt. January
twenty second, I believe, is when the Castag fire, the
Hughes fire broke out, and Karen Bass is still wobbling
(01:27):
and wobbling simply because her first few days on the
fire were week at best in terms of the response
of the leadership, etc. City and county officials were doing
these daily news conferences every day LA Unified or whatever
(01:48):
the term they were using for their eight o'clock news
conferences until that morning because Mayor Bass went to the
reporters and did so without anybody from the county, I mean,
the two most common faces that we saw from the
county Supervisor Catherine Barger and Supervisor Lindsay Horvath, So behind
(02:13):
closed doors, they were a little bit of a little
bit of contention maybe between two of arguably the most
powerful politicians in LA. Lengthy text message that Lindsay Horvath
sends Karen Bass. This almost feels dirty seeing their seeing
(02:33):
their text messages. And by the way, these all come
from text messages and other correspondents that are available through
public records requests in this case the LA Times. So
Lindsay Horvath, supervisor whose district covers the Pacific Palisades, to
(02:54):
Karen Bass, you asked us to lay off the daily pressers.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
We did.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
We asked you to join us for this announce tomorrow.
No response. Now we hear you're doing one without us
today when we are in lead role at your department's request.
Doesn't feel very locked arms to me, of course, locked
arms is this slogan that Karen Bass kept talking about
(03:18):
over and over again in terms of we're all going
to work together to rebuild. So Karen Bass responds five
hours later, says she's not even sure what announcement that
Lindsay Horvath was referring to. When they should sit down
later in the afternoon and talk about it by contract. Now, listen,
(03:38):
Lindsay Horvath and all of the county supervisors right now,
they represent about two million people a piece, and you
could argue that's more powerful, at least in sheer number
of constituents, more powerful than a member of Congress. Members
of Congress represent each district is seven hundred and fifty
thousand ish people. And again five board, sorry, five supervisors
(04:02):
on the county board, each of them represent about two
million people, and in her case, Lindsay Horvath's district stretches
from Malibu and Santa Monica into West Hollywood North through
a lot of the San Fernando Valley, but it does
include the entire burn area in the Pacific Palisades. By contrast,
(04:24):
Karen Bass obviously the most visible politician in all of
La County, responsible for about four million people. So this
January twenty first back and forth about Hey, why'd you
cut us out of these news conferences? I thought we
were doing this together. It doesn't feel very locked arms,
hardly a one off. When asked about the text messages
(04:48):
and the relationship, Karen Bass was very careful. She praised
Lindsay Horvath, said they're very unified in their mission. She
said in a statement, Supervisor Horvath has been a tremendous partner.
She and I continue to work together to make sure
the Palisades can rebuild as quickly and safely as possible.
But when you ask Lindsay Horvath about it, a little
bit less less in love with Karen Bass than Karen Bass,
(05:12):
at least as saying she is with Lindsay Horvath.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
We'll talk more about this.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
I'll explain Lindsay Horvath's response to all of this, and
again at the bottom of the hour, LAPD Chief Jim
McDonald is going to join us, asking questions about the
continued operations when it comes to fire response in the Palisades,
what's going on in terms of the celebrity burglaries, and
the potential for LAPD to either get involved or not
(05:37):
get involved with the federal immigration rates that have been
talked about that's coming up at the bottom of the hour.
We're talking about this back and forth between LA Mayor
Karen Bass and LA County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath, specifically about
the county getting bounced out of some of those post
fire news conferences just a couple of weeks after the
fire itself, in fact, to the two week mark, and
(06:00):
Lindsay Horvath says doesn't feel very locked arms to me.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Now that was January.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
In November, these two kind of went at it because
Lindsay Horvath went public with a proposal that would have
shrunk the duties of LASA, the LA Homeless Services Authority,
and she was calling for hundreds of millions of dollars
to be shifted out of the agency and into the
county department that's focused on homelessness. Karen Bass said, no,
(06:28):
that's not a good idea, because all you're doing is
creating a new bureaucracy, and that didn't.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Go very well.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Now, all of this is echoed by the fact that
Governor Newsom once said that his team at the state
level wasn't getting straight answers from local leaders about some
of the fire conditions on the ground and the things
that the city and county were doing to get people
back up and running in Palisades and in Alta. Dina Aaron.
(07:00):
Bass has also had some issues with Tracy Park, who
was a city council member who represents the Palisades and
her own Steve Sobroff handpicked chief recovery officer in all
of that. Now, some of this came to a head
back on the thirty first of January. If you remember,
this would have been ten days after Lindsay Horvat says
you doesn't feel very locked arms to me. There was
(07:23):
a zoom meeting and Karen Bass comes out and says
that the Palisades was going to reopen to the public Sunday.
This would have been Friday night that she said it
was happening Sunday. Well, Steve Sobroff was one of the
people who criticized her and said it's probably too early
to do that. Tracy Park again representing the city that
(07:46):
district represents, but she represents the Palisades. She said it
was too soon for the neighborhood to reopen. So Palisades
residents get upset with Mayor Bass and hours before they're
set to reopened, she reverses course, and she says, okay,
So the checkpoints that block off the area to almost
everyone except residents would stay in place. All of this
(08:09):
catches everybody flat footed. Mayor's the decision to reopen catches
everybody flat footed. Her aids don't inform Lindsay Horvath of
the reversal until after they put out a press release
announcing such a thing. Then it got into the assistant level.
You've got a spokesperson for the supervisor talking to a
(08:32):
spokesperson for the mayor, and they know that their bosses
aren't on the same page, and they start getting chippy
with each other, saying that this is problematic, saying why
did you call the mayor of Malibu and not the county.
The Malibu obviously is its own separate city from La
(08:52):
so it doesn't work the way palisades do, and sending
a press release is not coordination. What you have done
is create more chaos and less chaos. And then finally,
Lindsay Horvath goes directly to Mayor Bass at ten o'clock
at night and says, is there a reason your staff
called Malibu officials without calling me or the sheriff. And again,
(09:14):
this is a decision to partially reopen pch and the
pala Shads. We are working within protocol and they are
not your jurisdiction. Sheriff has been working with Chief McDonnell,
and you pull the rug on the coordinated plan. I
reach out to you to no avail. Even you and
Tracy Park don't seem to me on the same page.
No love lost between Lindsay Horvath and Mayor Bass of la.
(09:40):
If we get into what you watch on Wednesday late
in the show, I'd love to hear what it is
that you are watching. My wife and I are several
episodes into The Pit right now, which is a hospital
drama that, according to a lot of doctors and nurses,
is very very realistic.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
So we'll talk about that a bunch of other shit.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Let us know what you're watching, send us a talk
back on the iHeart app. When you're listening on the app,
just hit the little red button with a white microphone
on it and it sends a little message right here
and we get it live. Other stories that we continued
to follow. The US Special Envoy to the Ukraine to
Ukraine was war retired General sorry Keith Kellogg, arrived in
(10:21):
Kiev this morning for a continuation of talks with President Zelensky.
Kellogg told reporters that he intends to make his three
day visit to learn of Kiev's views on ending Russia's war.
With Russia's war on Ukraine, he says, we're going to listen.
We understand the need for security guarantees and of course
the sovereignty of this nation and the defense of this
nation as well. And the risk that they asteroid called
(10:46):
twenty twenty four, why are for is going to crash
into earth has increased.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
We'll talk about that a little bit later.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
We're going to start our conversations with LAPD's new chief,
Jim McDonald sworn and back on November eighth, hopefully on
a regular basis. So Chief, first of all, thanks for
taking time for us today.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Thank you, Gary, thanks for having me on. I appreciate
the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
All Right, you're at one hundred and three days in
to your tenure as chief of the LAPD. Let's take
a look back and give yourself a report card on
how you've done for one hundred days.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
You know, I feel like we've done pretty good as
a team. None of this is any individual effort, but
a giant team effort. And when I look at the
time we've had together here and the challenges that we
face between the fires, the events we've had building up
to the Academy Woods, We've had the Grammys, we had
(11:41):
the worst fire in LA's history, big effort in supporting
the fire department, working with our partners on that, and
then we had the floods, the mud slides, and then
dealing with the protests, the immigration protests has been very
challenging on our deployment, but everybody has been pulling together.
Look at out of this tragedy, I think we've become
(12:03):
stronger as a department, but also stronger as a city
in a region.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Well, we all saw law enforcement play a huge role
in the aftermath of the fires, and since LAPD patrols Palisades.
We'll talk specifically about that. What is the ongoing mission
is what is left for the LAPD to do when
it comes to Palisades recovery, keeping law and order there.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Yeah, you know, it's we're down from we had six
to nine hundred officers a day assisting in our efforts,
and they're focused mainly on evacuation on the initial stages
and then getting ready for any subsequent evacuations due to
flooding or mudslides or slippage, but then also traffic control
(12:51):
and crime suppression, traffic control allowing ingress and egress to
the affected areas. That was something that was very challenging
because people certainly want to get back in to be
able to see their property, to see in some cases
what's left of it, or to try and figure out
what they need to go for next steps. Very emotional.
But then also from a public safety standpoint, you've got
(13:15):
a very toxic area there with a lot of you know,
danger involved, and initially with down power lines, with open
gas lines, with broken water mains, as well as when
you know the materials in modern housing, they're very safe
until they burn and then they become toxic. That coupled
(13:36):
with the challenges of how many people have electric cars,
you know, Teslas or others, and the lithium ion batteries
in those cars and as well as in the garages
on the power wall that they charge the car with.
Those are all as well lithium ion batteries, which when heated,
become unstable and are potentially explosive. Those had to be
(13:57):
updated before we could safely let people in the area. Thankfully,
the EPA played a significant role in that, in removing
and neutralizing them and then disposing of them. But it's
kind of one thing after another, and the more technology
improves and makes our lives easier, it provides also additional
challenges for us and what happens to those materials of
(14:19):
that technology when it's under unusual conditions, And certainly this
was very unusual.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I know it's a consistent practice for law enforcement agencies,
the LAPD specifically to look back at events like that
and sort of do a post mortem. Are we too,
Is it too early to do a post mortem on
that and see what could be improved, what was done?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Well, yeah, you know, it's probably too early to do
anything formal, but I think everybody who is out there,
and the benefit we get is from the collective wisdom
of people who looked at this from different perspectives. But
some of the things that we could look at, I
think for any kind of future event like this, certainly
(15:01):
our deployment, you know, the question of pre staging critical
resources in an area when you have you know, winds
predicted or things. Those are those are front of mine
things for people, but they also come with challenges because
you have limited resources. When you pre stage them and
it happened somewhere else, then you're not where you could
have been or quickly respond able to respond to those areas.
(15:24):
But I also look then at the type of conditions
that our people worked in and people, when I say
are people not only our department, but everybody who was
the first respond to everybody who was out there, uh,
and just the air quality and the type of things
that people were exposed to without really knowing it. You
went out there to do the job you could do
to help save lives and protect property, but there was
(15:48):
an awful lot of unknown substances in the air during
that period, burnt particulate, and my concern was are we
preparing our people and equipping them well enough to be
able to deal with potentially what we'll find down the
road was a health challenge.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Can you talk about some of these headlines when it
comes to international crime rings. We saw another high profile
robbery I believe it was Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's
house in a gated community. Is that being blown out
of proportion or is that a big concern for LAPD.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
You know, I've heard, you know, a lot of people
talk about celebrities, sports stars their properties being burglarized, and
I don't know that we could attribute it to their
celebrity status, but rather they live in affluent areas which
are being targeted by these type of criminal enterprises. We
do have those that come in from other countries for
(16:44):
the sole purpose of engaging in this kind of activity.
South American crime gangs have been pretty prolific here in
the last couple of years, particularly as it involves burglaries
of affluent areas. We work those. We have people dedicated
to work in gathering intelligence on those individuals in the ring,
and we've made a significant number of arrests to disrupt
(17:06):
some of that activity, but they are then backfilled by
others who come in and keep going The level of
sophistication we've seen from these groups is unlike we've seen before.
They come in with jammers. They can jam your your
system if you have wireless cameras, wireless alarm systems, so
they shut those down. And then they go in after
(17:27):
they've done surveillance of your house without probably you being
aware of that by leaving a car across the street
with cameras in it, or implanting cameras and your flower
better your neighbor's flower bed, to get a pattern of
life when you're going to be home, when you're not
to know what you're going to do. And then when
they get there, they check the house and they go
in the back, usually break a rear slider, go in there,
(17:48):
in there for a very limited duration, and then they're
out and off, and then they pool their their where
they're stolen property in a very organized fashion into a
warehouse where it's distributed or sold from there. So these
are transnational criminal enterprises that in this case specialize in
(18:12):
this type of activity, and we've seen it not only
in Los Angeles and southern California, but in various areas
throughout the nation.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
We're talking with LAPD Chief Jim McDonald now one hundred
and three days on the job as chief, of course,
spent time years as chief of Long Beach PD and
then years as La County Sheriff. Just about every kind
of job you could have in law enforcement is what
Chief McDonald has had. Let's talk about Special Order forty
(18:40):
and what's going on with federal immigration rates. Now, back
in nineteen seventy nine, Special Order forty was adopted under
then Chief Daryl Gates, and it prevented officers from initiating
contact to figure out if somebody was in the country illegally.
But it did say if after all a said and done,
someone was in the country illegally, it was going to
(19:01):
go up to the chain, up the chain to supervisors.
Supervisors in the department would then notify federal authorities. Has
has that changed at all since nineteen seventy nine?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
And if so, how yeah, No, it's we're basically you
have adopted that policy and that has been our guiding
principle since nineteen seventy nine. We so for my career,
which goes back to nineteen eighty one, we have never
stopped anybody for the purpose of finding out their immigration
(19:32):
status or any portion of their involvement with the criminal
justice system. While in LAPD custody does not involve their
immigration status. We don't ask about that, and that's not
part of what we do. We're enforcing criminal laws in
Los Angeles and trying to be able to maintain see
(19:52):
maintain the trust of those who we serve, and we
found that if we were to enter into that realm
where we're in forcing civil immigration of law, then we
would lose the trust of much of our community and
ultimately the community would be less safe overall. So we're
committed to the principle of Special Order forty. There are
(20:15):
other laws that have come along more recently, the California
Trust Act and the California Values Act, which have basically
put into law what we've been doing for almost forty
five years.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
LAPD currently has.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
I think you put the number at about eighty eight
hundred sworn officers. How many is the right number? How
many would you like to see if you had the
power and an unlimited budget.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
I mean, in an ideal world, I'd love to see
us at twelve five hundred or thereabouts. I think that
given that we could deploy resources where they need to
be when they need to be and to be able
to do all of the things that we are stretching
ourselves to do. Now. You look at the challenges we
(21:05):
face as we move forward, just worth regard alone to
cyber fraud, cyber terrorism, all of the threats that we'll
see that involved that. The Internet has been a great
boon for our society, but has also provided challenges for
public safety with online scams of every type where people
are being ripped off for you know, for their life
(21:28):
savings in some cases, elder abuse, you know, the internet
exploitation of children. There's so much more we'd like to
do if we had enough resources to do that, but
we do the very best we can with what we have. Now.
We try and be as judicious as we can be
and to continue to prioritize our resources to address the
(21:50):
threats of the day.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
What is the biggest speed bump to that. Is it
just funding or is it recruiting?
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Yeah, it is right now. It is primarily recruiting. Being
able to have enough people interested in making this their
profession coming into the process and then being able to
process them rapidly enough so we don't lose them to
other departments. That has been a challenge for us in
Los Angeles. Here, we're working with the mayor, We're working
(22:19):
closely with the Personnel Department, another city department who does
much of that work, to be able to move this
forward in a way where we're able to fill classes
of sixty each month, which is a good capacity for us. Unfortunately,
we've been at about a third of that for the
last several years, which really doesn't match our attrition rates.
(22:40):
So we continue to move forward and every chance I
get to try and recruit people and share with them
that you know that you have a tremendous opportunity to
be able to make a difference, to be able to
change our city for the better by becoming a Los
Angeles police officer. The opportunities are great, and at the
end of the day, you're able to say that maybe
(23:01):
you made someone's worst day of their life a little
bit more manageable.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I think it's amazing that even in this side of
the business, where we talk about law enforcement a lot,
we don't talk enough about the positives. I mean that
just the LAPED alone, thousands and thousands of contacts with
people in Los Angeles every single day. The vast majority
of them go unheard of, unspoken of, and probably some
(23:26):
of them are at times funny, some of them are positive,
some of them are life saving, and we just don't
we don't spend enough time talking about those contacts.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Now, thank you for bringing that up. And you're exactly right.
When things go right, we just go on to the
next call and go about our business, and you know,
there's no celebration, there's no comments being made or anything.
And it's the rare exception that get all the attention.
And what we do is critical enough in our society
that we hold our people to very high standards and
(23:58):
hold them accountable, but also that we have to be
reasonable with our people. That nobody calls the police when
they're having a good day. They call them when things
are upside down. It's chaotic, there's emotion involved, off and
alcoholic drugs are also involved in the situation. So we
insert our people into the most challenging problems that society
(24:20):
can pose, and we have an expectation they're going to
be right one hundred percent of the time. And I
don't think we hold any other profession in our society
to those kind of standards.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
I've always had a question for the chief of police,
whether it's you or anybody else who had the position
before you. When do you wear your uniform and when
do you wear a tie?
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Thank you? Yeah, I wear a tie all the time.
When I wear my uniform, I wear a full class
a because I representing the men and women of this
organization and I want to do it to the best
of my ability. Whether I wear a uniform or a
suit depends on what I've got going for the day.
So if there's situations where it's ceremonial or more formal
(25:02):
from a policing standpoint, I'll wear the uniform, and other
days I may wear a suit. But I'm proud to
wear this uniform. I think it's probably the nicest uniform,
if you will, or the most professional uniform. It's relatively
unadorned and plain, if you will, but also, you know, plain,
(25:22):
professional looking and easily recognizable.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Well, the stars on the collar are pretty recognizable too.
Chief Listen. Thanks, I appreciate you taking time for us today.
We know you're a busy guy. We'd love to be
able to continue the conversation in the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Absolutely, how is it, Brian Solo?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
It can be tiring. I'll tell you that that ride
home gets pretty quiet.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
My wife has to pay me to say words after
about two pm, so I can imagine.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
I can't imagine. Well, thank you for what you do. Gary,
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Thank you, Chief, We greatly appreciate it. Thanks for your service.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
We'll talk again, I promise, Okay, LAPD Chief Jim McDonald again.
As he mentioned, he's been a law enforcement officer since
nineteen eighty one, every type of job. And we'll continue
our conversations with Chief McDonald sometime next month.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
We'll pick it back up. All right, up next swamp.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Watch what's going on between the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine.
Everybody's in it now and they're throwing some insults back
and forth.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
We'll talk about that when we come back.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
You miss any part of our show where you want
to hear more of that interview with the Chief, you
can always go back and.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Check out the podcast.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Go to KFIAM six forty dot com, slash Gary Shannon
or anywhere you find your favorite podcast.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Just type in Gary and Shannon. We'll be back next.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show, you
can always hear us live on KFIAM six forty nine
am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime
on demand on the iHeartRadio ap
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app. Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's house
was the latest high profile home to be targeted by burglars.
The LAPD says officers responded to a burglary report about
eight o'clock Friday night on Lime Orchard Road over technically,
(00:20):
I think this is Beverly Hills. Officers learned from a
security guard that a burglar had smashed the glass door
of the house, ransacked the house, and took off. It's
not clear, at least not yet if he took anything
at the time. We're actually going to be talking with
LAPD Chief Jim McDonald coming up at the bottom of
this hour and talk more about some of those high
(00:41):
profile things and what the LAPD can do, if anything,
to protect to protect homes there. We've seen quite a
little bit of conundrum maybe between LA Mayor Karen Bass
and LA County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath. Go back to January
(01:04):
twenty first, if you will, the Palisades fire only partially contained.
There were new fires that were going to erupt. January
twenty second, I believe, is when the Castag fire, the
Hughes fire broke out, and Karen Bass is still wobbling
(01:27):
and wobbling simply because her first few days on the
fire were week at best in terms of the response
of the leadership, etc. City and county officials were doing
these daily news conferences every day LA Unified or whatever
(01:48):
the term they were using for their eight o'clock news
conferences until that morning because Mayor Bass went to the
reporters and did so without anybody from the county, I mean,
the two most common faces that we saw from the
county Supervisor Catherine Barger and Supervisor Lindsay Horvath, So behind
(02:13):
closed doors, they were a little bit of a little
bit of contention maybe between two of arguably the most
powerful politicians in LA. Lengthy text message that Lindsay Horvath
sends Karen Bass. This almost feels dirty seeing their seeing
(02:33):
their text messages. And by the way, these all come
from text messages and other correspondents that are available through
public records requests in this case the LA Times. So
Lindsay Horvath, supervisor whose district covers the Pacific Palisades, to
(02:54):
Karen Bass, you asked us to lay off the daily pressers.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
We did.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
We asked you to join us for this announce tomorrow.
No response. Now we hear you're doing one without us
today when we are in lead role at your department's request.
Doesn't feel very locked arms to me, of course, locked
arms is this slogan that Karen Bass kept talking about
(03:18):
over and over again in terms of we're all going
to work together to rebuild. So Karen Bass responds five
hours later, says she's not even sure what announcement that
Lindsay Horvath was referring to. When they should sit down
later in the afternoon and talk about it by contract. Now, listen,
(03:38):
Lindsay Horvath and all of the county supervisors right now,
they represent about two million people a piece, and you
could argue that's more powerful, at least in sheer number
of constituents, more powerful than a member of Congress. Members
of Congress represent each district is seven hundred and fifty
thousand ish people. And again five board, sorry, five supervisors
(04:02):
on the county board, each of them represent about two
million people, and in her case, Lindsay Horvath's district stretches
from Malibu and Santa Monica into West Hollywood North through
a lot of the San Fernando Valley, but it does
include the entire burn area in the Pacific Palisades. By contrast,
(04:24):
Karen Bass obviously the most visible politician in all of
La County, responsible for about four million people. So this
January twenty first back and forth about Hey, why'd you
cut us out of these news conferences? I thought we
were doing this together. It doesn't feel very locked arms,
hardly a one off. When asked about the text messages
(04:48):
and the relationship, Karen Bass was very careful. She praised
Lindsay Horvath, said they're very unified in their mission. She
said in a statement, Supervisor Horvath has been a tremendous partner.
She and I continue to work together to make sure
the Palisades can rebuild as quickly and safely as possible.
But when you ask Lindsay Horvath about it, a little
bit less less in love with Karen Bass than Karen Bass,
(05:12):
at least as saying she is with Lindsay Horvath.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
We'll talk more about this.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
I'll explain Lindsay Horvath's response to all of this, and
again at the bottom of the hour, LAPD Chief Jim
McDonald is going to join us, asking questions about the
continued operations when it comes to fire response in the Palisades,
what's going on in terms of the celebrity burglaries, and
the potential for LAPD to either get involved or not
(05:37):
get involved with the federal immigration rates that have been
talked about that's coming up at the bottom of the hour.
We're talking about this back and forth between LA Mayor
Karen Bass and LA County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath, specifically about
the county getting bounced out of some of those post
fire news conferences just a couple of weeks after the
fire itself, in fact, to the two week mark, and
(06:00):
Lindsay Horvath says doesn't feel very locked arms to me.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Now that was January.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
In November, these two kind of went at it because
Lindsay Horvath went public with a proposal that would have
shrunk the duties of LASA, the LA Homeless Services Authority,
and she was calling for hundreds of millions of dollars
to be shifted out of the agency and into the
county department that's focused on homelessness. Karen Bass said, no,
(06:28):
that's not a good idea, because all you're doing is
creating a new bureaucracy, and that didn't.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Go very well.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Now, all of this is echoed by the fact that
Governor Newsom once said that his team at the state
level wasn't getting straight answers from local leaders about some
of the fire conditions on the ground and the things
that the city and county were doing to get people
back up and running in Palisades and in Alta. Dina Aaron.
(07:00):
Bass has also had some issues with Tracy Park, who
was a city council member who represents the Palisades and
her own Steve Sobroff handpicked chief recovery officer in all
of that. Now, some of this came to a head
back on the thirty first of January. If you remember,
this would have been ten days after Lindsay Horvat says
you doesn't feel very locked arms to me. There was
(07:23):
a zoom meeting and Karen Bass comes out and says
that the Palisades was going to reopen to the public Sunday.
This would have been Friday night that she said it
was happening Sunday. Well, Steve Sobroff was one of the
people who criticized her and said it's probably too early
to do that. Tracy Park again representing the city that
(07:46):
district represents, but she represents the Palisades. She said it
was too soon for the neighborhood to reopen. So Palisades
residents get upset with Mayor Bass and hours before they're
set to reopened, she reverses course, and she says, okay,
So the checkpoints that block off the area to almost
everyone except residents would stay in place. All of this
(08:09):
catches everybody flat footed. Mayor's the decision to reopen catches
everybody flat footed. Her aids don't inform Lindsay Horvath of
the reversal until after they put out a press release
announcing such a thing. Then it got into the assistant level.
You've got a spokesperson for the supervisor talking to a
(08:32):
spokesperson for the mayor, and they know that their bosses
aren't on the same page, and they start getting chippy
with each other, saying that this is problematic, saying why
did you call the mayor of Malibu and not the county.
The Malibu obviously is its own separate city from La
(08:52):
so it doesn't work the way palisades do, and sending
a press release is not coordination. What you have done
is create more chaos and less chaos. And then finally,
Lindsay Horvath goes directly to Mayor Bass at ten o'clock
at night and says, is there a reason your staff
called Malibu officials without calling me or the sheriff. And again,
(09:14):
this is a decision to partially reopen pch and the
pala Shads. We are working within protocol and they are
not your jurisdiction. Sheriff has been working with Chief McDonnell,
and you pull the rug on the coordinated plan. I
reach out to you to no avail. Even you and
Tracy Park don't seem to me on the same page.
No love lost between Lindsay Horvath and Mayor Bass of la.
(09:40):
If we get into what you watch on Wednesday late
in the show, I'd love to hear what it is
that you are watching. My wife and I are several
episodes into The Pit right now, which is a hospital
drama that, according to a lot of doctors and nurses,
is very very realistic.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
So we'll talk about that a bunch of other shit.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Let us know what you're watching, send us a talk
back on the iHeart app. When you're listening on the app,
just hit the little red button with a white microphone
on it and it sends a little message right here
and we get it live. Other stories that we continued
to follow. The US Special Envoy to the Ukraine to
Ukraine was war retired General sorry Keith Kellogg, arrived in
(10:21):
Kiev this morning for a continuation of talks with President Zelensky.
Kellogg told reporters that he intends to make his three
day visit to learn of Kiev's views on ending Russia's war.
With Russia's war on Ukraine, he says, we're going to listen.
We understand the need for security guarantees and of course
the sovereignty of this nation and the defense of this
nation as well. And the risk that they asteroid called
(10:46):
twenty twenty four, why are for is going to crash
into earth has increased.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
We'll talk about that a little bit later.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
We're going to start our conversations with LAPD's new chief,
Jim McDonald sworn and back on November eighth, hopefully on
a regular basis. So Chief, first of all, thanks for
taking time for us today.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Thank you, Gary, thanks for having me on. I appreciate
the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
All Right, you're at one hundred and three days in
to your tenure as chief of the LAPD. Let's take
a look back and give yourself a report card on
how you've done for one hundred days.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
You know, I feel like we've done pretty good as
a team. None of this is any individual effort, but
a giant team effort. And when I look at the
time we've had together here and the challenges that we
face between the fires, the events we've had building up
to the Academy Woods, We've had the Grammys, we had
(11:41):
the worst fire in LA's history, big effort in supporting
the fire department, working with our partners on that, and
then we had the floods, the mud slides, and then
dealing with the protests, the immigration protests has been very
challenging on our deployment, but everybody has been pulling together.
Look at out of this tragedy, I think we've become
(12:03):
stronger as a department, but also stronger as a city
in a region.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Well, we all saw law enforcement play a huge role
in the aftermath of the fires, and since LAPD patrols Palisades.
We'll talk specifically about that. What is the ongoing mission
is what is left for the LAPD to do when
it comes to Palisades recovery, keeping law and order there.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Yeah, you know, it's we're down from we had six
to nine hundred officers a day assisting in our efforts,
and they're focused mainly on evacuation on the initial stages
and then getting ready for any subsequent evacuations due to
flooding or mudslides or slippage, but then also traffic control
(12:51):
and crime suppression, traffic control allowing ingress and egress to
the affected areas. That was something that was very challenging
because people certainly want to get back in to be
able to see their property, to see in some cases
what's left of it, or to try and figure out
what they need to go for next steps. Very emotional.
But then also from a public safety standpoint, you've got
(13:15):
a very toxic area there with a lot of you know,
danger involved, and initially with down power lines, with open
gas lines, with broken water mains, as well as when
you know the materials in modern housing, they're very safe
until they burn and then they become toxic. That coupled
(13:36):
with the challenges of how many people have electric cars,
you know, Teslas or others, and the lithium ion batteries
in those cars and as well as in the garages
on the power wall that they charge the car with.
Those are all as well lithium ion batteries, which when heated,
become unstable and are potentially explosive. Those had to be
(13:57):
updated before we could safely let people in the area. Thankfully,
the EPA played a significant role in that, in removing
and neutralizing them and then disposing of them. But it's
kind of one thing after another, and the more technology
improves and makes our lives easier, it provides also additional
challenges for us and what happens to those materials of
(14:19):
that technology when it's under unusual conditions, And certainly this
was very unusual.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I know it's a consistent practice for law enforcement agencies,
the LAPD specifically to look back at events like that
and sort of do a post mortem. Are we too,
Is it too early to do a post mortem on
that and see what could be improved, what was done?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Well, yeah, you know, it's probably too early to do
anything formal, but I think everybody who is out there,
and the benefit we get is from the collective wisdom
of people who looked at this from different perspectives. But
some of the things that we could look at, I
think for any kind of future event like this, certainly
(15:01):
our deployment, you know, the question of pre staging critical
resources in an area when you have you know, winds
predicted or things. Those are those are front of mine
things for people, but they also come with challenges because
you have limited resources. When you pre stage them and
it happened somewhere else, then you're not where you could
have been or quickly respond able to respond to those areas.
(15:24):
But I also look then at the type of conditions
that our people worked in and people, when I say
are people not only our department, but everybody who was
the first respond to everybody who was out there, uh,
and just the air quality and the type of things
that people were exposed to without really knowing it. You
went out there to do the job you could do
to help save lives and protect property, but there was
(15:48):
an awful lot of unknown substances in the air during
that period, burnt particulate, and my concern was are we
preparing our people and equipping them well enough to be
able to deal with potentially what we'll find down the
road was a health challenge.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Can you talk about some of these headlines when it
comes to international crime rings. We saw another high profile
robbery I believe it was Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's
house in a gated community. Is that being blown out
of proportion or is that a big concern for LAPD.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
You know, I've heard, you know, a lot of people
talk about celebrities, sports stars their properties being burglarized, and
I don't know that we could attribute it to their
celebrity status, but rather they live in affluent areas which
are being targeted by these type of criminal enterprises. We
do have those that come in from other countries for
(16:44):
the sole purpose of engaging in this kind of activity.
South American crime gangs have been pretty prolific here in
the last couple of years, particularly as it involves burglaries
of affluent areas. We work those. We have people dedicated
to work in gathering intelligence on those individuals in the ring,
and we've made a significant number of arrests to disrupt
(17:06):
some of that activity, but they are then backfilled by
others who come in and keep going The level of
sophistication we've seen from these groups is unlike we've seen before.
They come in with jammers. They can jam your your
system if you have wireless cameras, wireless alarm systems, so
they shut those down. And then they go in after
(17:27):
they've done surveillance of your house without probably you being
aware of that by leaving a car across the street
with cameras in it, or implanting cameras and your flower
better your neighbor's flower bed, to get a pattern of
life when you're going to be home, when you're not
to know what you're going to do. And then when
they get there, they check the house and they go
in the back, usually break a rear slider, go in there,
(17:48):
in there for a very limited duration, and then they're
out and off, and then they pool their their where
they're stolen property in a very organized fashion into a
warehouse where it's distributed or sold from there. So these
are transnational criminal enterprises that in this case specialize in
(18:12):
this type of activity, and we've seen it not only
in Los Angeles and southern California, but in various areas
throughout the nation.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
We're talking with LAPD Chief Jim McDonald now one hundred
and three days on the job as chief, of course,
spent time years as chief of Long Beach PD and
then years as La County Sheriff. Just about every kind
of job you could have in law enforcement is what
Chief McDonald has had. Let's talk about Special Order forty
(18:40):
and what's going on with federal immigration rates. Now, back
in nineteen seventy nine, Special Order forty was adopted under
then Chief Daryl Gates, and it prevented officers from initiating
contact to figure out if somebody was in the country illegally.
But it did say if after all a said and done,
someone was in the country illegally, it was going to
(19:01):
go up to the chain, up the chain to supervisors.
Supervisors in the department would then notify federal authorities. Has
has that changed at all since nineteen seventy nine?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
And if so, how yeah, No, it's we're basically you
have adopted that policy and that has been our guiding
principle since nineteen seventy nine. We so for my career,
which goes back to nineteen eighty one, we have never
stopped anybody for the purpose of finding out their immigration
(19:32):
status or any portion of their involvement with the criminal
justice system. While in LAPD custody does not involve their
immigration status. We don't ask about that, and that's not
part of what we do. We're enforcing criminal laws in
Los Angeles and trying to be able to maintain see
(19:52):
maintain the trust of those who we serve, and we
found that if we were to enter into that realm
where we're in forcing civil immigration of law, then we
would lose the trust of much of our community and
ultimately the community would be less safe overall. So we're
committed to the principle of Special Order forty. There are
(20:15):
other laws that have come along more recently, the California
Trust Act and the California Values Act, which have basically
put into law what we've been doing for almost forty
five years.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
LAPD currently has.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
I think you put the number at about eighty eight
hundred sworn officers. How many is the right number? How
many would you like to see if you had the
power and an unlimited budget.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
I mean, in an ideal world, I'd love to see
us at twelve five hundred or thereabouts. I think that
given that we could deploy resources where they need to
be when they need to be and to be able
to do all of the things that we are stretching
ourselves to do. Now. You look at the challenges we
(21:05):
face as we move forward, just worth regard alone to
cyber fraud, cyber terrorism, all of the threats that we'll
see that involved that. The Internet has been a great
boon for our society, but has also provided challenges for
public safety with online scams of every type where people
are being ripped off for you know, for their life
(21:28):
savings in some cases, elder abuse, you know, the internet
exploitation of children. There's so much more we'd like to
do if we had enough resources to do that, but
we do the very best we can with what we have. Now.
We try and be as judicious as we can be
and to continue to prioritize our resources to address the
(21:50):
threats of the day.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
What is the biggest speed bump to that. Is it
just funding or is it recruiting?
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Yeah, it is right now. It is primarily recruiting. Being
able to have enough people interested in making this their
profession coming into the process and then being able to
process them rapidly enough so we don't lose them to
other departments. That has been a challenge for us in
Los Angeles. Here, we're working with the mayor, We're working
(22:19):
closely with the Personnel Department, another city department who does
much of that work, to be able to move this
forward in a way where we're able to fill classes
of sixty each month, which is a good capacity for us. Unfortunately,
we've been at about a third of that for the
last several years, which really doesn't match our attrition rates.
(22:40):
So we continue to move forward and every chance I
get to try and recruit people and share with them
that you know that you have a tremendous opportunity to
be able to make a difference, to be able to
change our city for the better by becoming a Los
Angeles police officer. The opportunities are great, and at the
end of the day, you're able to say that maybe
(23:01):
you made someone's worst day of their life a little
bit more manageable.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I think it's amazing that even in this side of
the business, where we talk about law enforcement a lot,
we don't talk enough about the positives. I mean that
just the LAPED alone, thousands and thousands of contacts with
people in Los Angeles every single day. The vast majority
of them go unheard of, unspoken of, and probably some
(23:26):
of them are at times funny, some of them are positive,
some of them are life saving, and we just don't
we don't spend enough time talking about those contacts.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Now, thank you for bringing that up. And you're exactly right.
When things go right, we just go on to the
next call and go about our business, and you know,
there's no celebration, there's no comments being made or anything.
And it's the rare exception that get all the attention.
And what we do is critical enough in our society
that we hold our people to very high standards and
(23:58):
hold them accountable, but also that we have to be
reasonable with our people. That nobody calls the police when
they're having a good day. They call them when things
are upside down. It's chaotic, there's emotion involved, off and
alcoholic drugs are also involved in the situation. So we
insert our people into the most challenging problems that society
(24:20):
can pose, and we have an expectation they're going to
be right one hundred percent of the time. And I
don't think we hold any other profession in our society
to those kind of standards.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
I've always had a question for the chief of police,
whether it's you or anybody else who had the position
before you. When do you wear your uniform and when
do you wear a tie?
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Thank you? Yeah, I wear a tie all the time.
When I wear my uniform, I wear a full class
a because I representing the men and women of this
organization and I want to do it to the best
of my ability. Whether I wear a uniform or a
suit depends on what I've got going for the day.
So if there's situations where it's ceremonial or more formal
(25:02):
from a policing standpoint, I'll wear the uniform, and other
days I may wear a suit. But I'm proud to
wear this uniform. I think it's probably the nicest uniform,
if you will, or the most professional uniform. It's relatively
unadorned and plain, if you will, but also, you know, plain,
(25:22):
professional looking and easily recognizable.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Well, the stars on the collar are pretty recognizable too.
Chief Listen. Thanks, I appreciate you taking time for us today.
We know you're a busy guy. We'd love to be
able to continue the conversation in the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Absolutely, how is it, Brian Solo?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
It can be tiring. I'll tell you that that ride
home gets pretty quiet.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
My wife has to pay me to say words after
about two pm, so I can imagine.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
I can't imagine. Well, thank you for what you do. Gary,
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Thank you, Chief, We greatly appreciate it. Thanks for your service.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
We'll talk again, I promise, Okay, LAPD Chief Jim McDonald again.
As he mentioned, he's been a law enforcement officer since
nineteen eighty one, every type of job. And we'll continue
our conversations with Chief McDonald sometime next month.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
We'll pick it back up. All right, up next swamp.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Watch what's going on between the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine.
Everybody's in it now and they're throwing some insults back
and forth.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
We'll talk about that when we come back.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
You miss any part of our show where you want
to hear more of that interview with the Chief, you
can always go back and.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Check out the podcast.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Go to KFIAM six forty dot com, slash Gary Shannon
or anywhere you find your favorite podcast.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Just type in Gary and Shannon. We'll be back next.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show, you
can always hear us live on KFIAM six forty nine
am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime
on demand on the iHeartRadio ap
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