With piercing brown eyes, a biker mustache, a gravelly voice and the construct of an NFL defensive finish, Freddy Escobar has lengthy lower an imposing determine in Los Angeles’ political conflagrations as head of town firefighters union.
He was in my face throughout , complaining about what he felt was my overly unfavorable protection of the mega-developer’s run for mayor. Most not too long ago, Escobar blasted Mayor Karen Bass within the wake of the Palisades hearth.
“Administration and labor, collectively. We have been unstoppable,” the 55-year-old instructed me throughout an hourlong interview at union headquarters in Westlake. “And [Crowley] was used as a scapegoat. We eliminated a giant, huge champion for us.”
President of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles Metropolis since 2018, Escobar is serving a closing two-year time period earlier than he retires. Throughout his tenure, L.A. firefighters have weathered some robust occasions: . . Fewer hearth stations than there have been in 1960, when the inhabitants was a lot decrease than immediately’s practically 4 million. Scandals involving .
“The members within the discipline are doing effectively,” Escobar responded after I requested how the firefighters are, in any case that.
He sat in an armchair, thick glasses and a long-sleeved shirt softening his look. Mementos from his 35-year firefighting profession surrounded us: Household pictures. Helmets and hats. Lanyards. Liquor bottles. Santa Claus dressed as a firefighter. Dozens of binders full of experiences.
“You’ll by no means hear them complain,” he stated of his colleagues within the discipline — the complaining is left to him.
“What we’re doing each single day isn’t sustainable within the discipline — I don’t care how younger you’re,” Escobar stated just a few seconds later, extra weary than indignant. “It’s a Band-Help that’s been on for years and years. And we have to repair it.”
For the reason that Palisades hearth, Escobar has been in all places: On CNN touring the devastation. that the LAFD is “woefully, dangerously understaffed.” Showing at Metropolis Corridor alongside Crowley in an for the Metropolis Council to reinstate her.
“She was the primary chief that has truly taken our recommendation. And I stated, ‘Hey, I’ll be with you all the way in which to the tip of this,’” he stated.
Born in Ecuador to a Ecuadorean mom and a Colombian father, Escobar moved to Pico-Union when he was 4, then to Lynwood as “the gangs have been coming in.”
Throughout fourth grade at Roosevelt Elementary, firefighters responded to a blaze at his faculty. Quickly after, his class visited a hearth station for profession day.
“You’re only a child,” Escobar remembered. “You’re in awe — they’re your heroes, you recognize. You’re like, ‘Oh, these guys are greater than the person upstairs.’”
He participated in a firefighting Explorers program at Downey Excessive, then joined the LAFD after a stint with the Marines. His first task: Station 11 in Pico-Union. Escobar turned a store steward however didn’t consider getting extra concerned in labor management till the early 2000s, when drivers twice crashed into his idling hearth truck.
“The chaps there, we name them,” he stated, a time period I had by no means heard for chapines — Guatemalans. Escobar didn’t blink as he started to channel his . “They like to drink in the course of the day and evening. They simply drink loads. They get behind vehicles, they drive. So I obtained hit … twice by chaps.”
His informal insults towards an necessary a part of L.A.’s cloth have been so out of nowhere that I simply stared forward and let him go on.
He stated he complained to a colleague that his union rep wasn’t defending him sufficient in the course of the investigation into the crashes, which in the end cleared him of wrongdoing.
The colleague inspired him: “Six months later, it’s election time and he says, ‘Hey, huge mouth. Right here you go. You need to make a distinction? Make a distinction.’”
Escobar adopted by means of, profitable a place on the union’s 10-member government board. After years of experiencing what he described as “a crybaby area” that was extra “concerning the typical retaining your individual energy” than serving to the rank and file, he took on an incumbent for the highest spot and received.
Throughout the pandemic, the union made nationwide information for that metropolis staff be vaccinated or danger shedding their jobs. Escobar obtained the COVID vaccine however felt he needed to respect the desires of his members who didn’t need the shot.
That battle “separated us loads” politically, he stated, however lingering inner enmity largely dissipated after the ordeal of preventing the Palisades hearth. Escobar’s eyes glistened after I introduced up his warning a month earlier than the hearth that “somebody will die” if LAFD assets have been additional lower.
The Palisades hearth, which ignited Jan. 7 after forecasters warned of catastrophically excessive winds, destroyed practically 7,000 buildings and killed 12 folks.
that LAFD officers selected to not order roughly 1,000 firefighters to stay on obligation for a second shift because the winds have been constructing — which might have doubled the personnel available. Bass cited the failure to maintain these firefighters on obligation .
Escobar dismissed The Occasions’ findings as too reliant on former LAFD staff “who’ve their very own agenda.” He didn’t instantly reply my query about whether or not he thought Crowley did every thing she may, asserting that she was scapegoated with out an official investigation.
He argued as a substitute that the Palisades catastrophe may have been higher confronted if LAFD wasn’t so underfunded — he desires to place a bond measure for the Hearth division on the 2026 poll.
He declined to take a position about why Bass fired Crowley, who publicly criticized the mayor days after the Palisades hearth started .
The 2 was “thick as thieves,” he stated. “Bass was sporting Crowley’s brush jacket and helmet and all the hearth stuff. They have been locked arms, then they’d one little breakup. Think about should you have been married — have one breakup, you’re gonna get divorced?”
He made no apologies for his combative public persona: “They need to name it being abrasive, being a bully. No, it’s standing up for what’s proper.”
Then the dialog turned to range inside the LAFD.
Earlier, Escobar acknowledged he had benefited from a 1974 consent decree requiring that half of LAFD hires be from a minority group ().
Now, he criticized the hearth fee — the civilian board that oversees LAFD — for supposedly “need[ing] to have a no-fail academy” within the title of reflecting town’s demographics.
“We’ve loads of folks of shade [and] gender that would — that ought to characterize town of Los Angeles with out reducing the requirements,” Escobar stated. “The females within the hearth service … we’d like to have all of them. However should you’re a feminine and also you need, you can go to Laguna Seaside, Newport Seaside, Huntington Seaside and nonetheless have a terrific profession and never do the decision load we do.”
He thinks white and Black firefighters are “overrepresented, no matter meaning” within the LAFD, with whites the beneficiaries of what was as soon as “an all-white division” and Black illustration reflecting “what number of Blacks are in the neighborhood.”
Whites make up 28% of L.A.’s inhabitants and 43% of metropolis firefighters, whereas Blacks account for 9% of the inhabitants and 11% of firefighters.
The LAFD is barely 7% feminine. The opposite huge disparity is Latinos — 47% of the inhabitants however simply 31% of LAFD.
“It’s not for everyone,” Escobar stated, earlier than cracking, “All of them need to be soccer gamers!”
Earlier, he stated he had failed a tryout with the L.A. Galaxy as a result of “I wasn’t knowledgeable soccer participant. Similar with firefighting. Firefighting isn’t for everyone.”
I laughed at his joke however reminded him of his personal trajectory.
He replied that LAFD has “good” recruitment applications, however in the end “you’ve obtained to like to work together with your palms…. The brand new technology’s fascinating. All of them need to be Instagram-famous. They’ll need to make some huge cash and never get up.”
Escobar was tender at occasions throughout our chat, confessing that it “breaks his coronary heart” that he hasn’t been extra current for his spouse and kids. He thinks he “failed” at not pushing for extra assets.
However his evasive clarification about why there aren’t extra Latino firefighters in L.A., coupled along with his anti-Guatemalan ideas, forged him as a kind of Angeleno I do know too effectively: The highly effective Latino who dismisses their very own form the second they get theirs.
We finally headed to considered one of Escobar’s outdated haunts: Station 26, motto “Anytime Anyplace,” the place he had climbed by means of the ranks, all the way in which to captain.
Station Capt. Al Ballestra praised Escobar for nonetheless protecting vacation firefighting shifts. Escobar picks up about 4 shifts a month, though his job as union president is full time.
“It’s what any membership would need to have of their union chief,” the 18-year veteran stated. “Somebody with boots-on-the-ground expertise who retains that reference to us.”
Escobar then checked in on a rookie coaching session within the rec room. I requested the group what they considered their union head.
Engineer Gordon Wilson raised his hand, and the room obtained quiet. He rattled off all the degrees of paperwork — inner, the hearth fee, the Metropolis Council, the mayor — that intersect with L.A. firefighters. He pointed at Escobar.
“This gentleman right here,” Wilson stated loudly, “has an uncanny capability to speak with all of them.”
