The Los Angeles Times (The Times) sues the city about Mayor Karen Bass who is said to have removed texts in the midst of the destroyed reaction to forest fires in California.
The handling of dealing with local crisis officials has been widely convicted as a Complaint against the Government of CaliforniaEspecially with Bas Road on a trip to Africa for the swearing of the President of Ghana when the Palisades fire broke out on January 7. The mayor did not return to LA until January 8.
The Times sued the city of LA on Thursday and accused officials of violating the law by holding and removing the SMS messages and other records from the mayor during the forest fires.
In a news article about the newspaper’s own lawsuit, The Times’ Staff Writer Sonja Sharp reported“The city has already turned many of the stock markets between Mayor Karen Bass and other officials who have been sought by Times Reporters. But officials have argued that they are not forced to do this according to the laws of the public registers.”
“The Times did not agree,” Sharp wrote. “Public officials enable to scrub their data or to decide which is subject to the law is a dangerous precedent, the court case argued on Thursday.”
The mayor of Los Angeles Karen Bass is now being charged by De La Times. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
“It’s bigger than these SMS messages,” said External Council for time, Kelly Aviles. “The city seems to believe that they can destroy what they want whenever they want, and that they have no duty towards the public to keep public registers.”
The Times reported that the mayor’s office, after initially said that the texts had been removed, “ultimately said it was able to recover the deleted texts and provided about 125 messages last week, and noted that a non -specific number of others ‘was’ reduced and/or withheld on the basis of exemptions for the law.”
The mayor of the mayor, David Michaelson, told the reporter Julia Wick van Times that these so -called “Ephemere” texts were outside the reach of the California Public Records Act and “A decision of the Supreme Court from 1981 that fleeting thoughts and random pieces of information” exhibited as exempt from records. “
But the Times lawyers claimed that this does not apply to texts and other electronic communication.
La Mayor Karen Bass recently admitted that she regretted she was in Ghana while forest fires broke out in her city. (AP/Getty)
“The apparent position of the city that an official can remove text communication at any time if ‘short -lived’ until a request for public registers is received, would destroy the suspicion of access to public registers,” said Times’ court case. “The only thing an official should do to prevent public control is the texts immediately after making them destroy.”
The Times further reported that these are not the only records that have been destroyed, nor are they the only ones who are still actively chased by journalists.
Research reporter Alene Tchekmedyian is said to have sought “e-mails, text messages, reports, planning documents and memos-over fire planning and pre-deployment sources” of the then fire Chief Kristin Crowley And her subordinates.
Similarly, the town hall reporter David Zahniser has reportedly submitted a petition to “copies of correspondence with regard to emergency preparations, strong wind, natural fire conditions and the National Weather Service.”
The Times said: “Zahniser received a few records, but not the SMS messages he had asked for. The request from Tchekmedyian was closed without any communication.”
Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles was criticized for the response of the city to the forest fires. (Photo by Apu Gomes/Getty Images | Photo by Alberto Rodriguez/Variety via Getty Images)
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Michaelson told Fox News Digital In an e -mail that “the mayor’s office has responded to hundreds of public archiving requests since she was chosen and we will continue to do this. The mayor’s office has released responsive texts to a PRA request from the Times last week and the office will continue to respond to public record requests.”
Fox News Digital also reached comments from the LA Times and the city lawyer, but did not receive an immediate answer.
Stephen Sorace from Fox News has contributed to this report.
