Boss Bass’s Crooked Los Angeles
The 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco not only leveled much of the city but also prompted investigations into widespread graft and corruption. They all led back to Abraham “Boss” Ruef. Born in San Francisco in 1864 to a family of prosperous Jewish immigrant merchants, Ruef excelled in school, graduating from Berkeley at 18 and from Hastings College of Law at 21. As a student, he was intent on one day reforming the political system in San Francisco, but once out in the real world practicing law, he became determined to get some of the spoils for himself.
In 1901, he was one of the principal organizers of the Union Labor Party. In the city elections that year, it was Ruef’s puppet, the tall, handsome, and well-spoken but malleable Eugene Schmitz, who ran for mayor as the Union Labor Party candidate. He won by a narrow margin, and the fun began. Anyone who wanted to get something from the city—construction or service contracts, franchises, zoning changes, permits, variances, licenses, exemptions—would hire Ruef for legal representation. Ruef would collect exorbitant legal fees and share the ill-gotten gains with Schmitz and others. Schmitz was reelected in 1903 and 1905. The money kept rolling in. By 1906, Ruef was thinking of running Schmitz for governor. Then came the earthquake and fire, and the investigations. Boss Ruef’s empire came tumbling down, and he served five years in San Quentin.
When the Palisades Fire of January 2025 exposed the utter incompetence, if not corruption, of Mayor Karen Bass’s administration, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Boss Ruef’s San Francisco. Lawsuits have been filed on behalf of the more than 6,000 Palisades and Malibu residents who lost their homes and, in a dozen cases, their lives, too. Mayor Bass’s administration, the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD), the L.A. Department of Water and Power (LADWP), and California State Parks have come under close scrutiny. It doesn’t look good for Bass—or for California Governor Gavin Newsom, who reminds me of Eugene Schmitz, although I can’t name who may be pulling the strings behind the tall, handsome, and well-spoken Newsom.
A year ago, I wrote a Chronicles column titled “Gone With the Wind” about the failure of the state government to use controlled burns to clear brush from state park land bordering the Palisades and to maintain firebreaks and fireroads. I also described Los Angeles’ failure to repair and fill a Palisades reservoir, repair water lines, service water hydrants, and stage firefighters and equipment in critical areas.
Since I wrote that, an investigation has revealed that the Palisades Fire, which erupted on Jan. 7 last year, was actually a continuation of a small fire that scorched eight acres on state parkland a week earlier, and hadn’t been fully extinguished. Making that failure even worse is the recent revelation that the Los Angeles Fire Department and the state knew the fire was still burning, albeit underground, and tried to deny knowing of it.
The first fire, called the Lachman Fire, was allegedly started by Jonathan Rinderknecht, an Uber driver living in the Palisades at the time. After a long investigation, Rinderknecht was arrested in October 2025 and indicted by a federal grand jury. He was charged with one count of destruction of property by means of fire, one count of arson affecting property used in interstate commerce, and one count of setting timber afire.
Through witnesses, video surveillance, cellphone data, and analysis of the burn, investigators determined that the perpetrator started the fire at 12:12 am on New Year’s Day, 2025. Although Rinderknecht has pleaded not guilty, it would seem he’s toast.
On New Year’s Eve, Rinderknecht drove two Uber passengers on separate trips between 10:15 p.m. and 11:15 p.m. to locations in the Palisades Highlands neighborhood of Pacific Palisades. Both passengers said Rinderknecht appeared agitated and angry. After dropping off his second passenger, Rinderknecht drove to a spot just off Via La Costa at the very top of the neighborhood and began walking up a trail on state parkland. He used his iPhone to take a video of the area and also repeatedly listened to a rap video featuring various things being set on fire.
Environmental sensing platforms in the area indicated that a fire had started. During the next few minutes, Rinderknecht repeatedly called 911 while hurrying back down the trail, but because of spotty reception in the area, he couldn’t connect. At the bottom of the trail, he finally connected and reported the fire. Just before he did so, a local resident also called in the fire.
Rinderknecht was driving out of the Highlands and down Palisades Drive towards Sunset Boulevard when he passed a fire engine and truck speeding in the opposite direction. He turned his car around and followed the vehicles back up to the fire, then followed firefighters up the trail, where he used his iPhone to take videos of the blaze. Because there was no wind, the firefighters were able to extinguish the blaze fairly quickly—or
so they thought.
When interviewed by investigators on Jan. 24, 2025, Rinderknecht said he was at the bottom of the trail when he first saw the fire and called 911. However, his iPhone data revealed that he was well up the trail and not more than 30 feet from the ignition point when he first called 911. With that revelation, investigators began suspecting that Rinderknecht started the fire.
If that original fire had been fully extinguished, Rinderknecht would have been responsible for only eight acres of burned brush and two or three trees. Because the authorities allowed the Lachman Fire to grow into the devastating Palisades Fire, Rinderknecht sits in jail without bond in the L.A. Metropolitan
Detention Center.
Since Rinderknecht is not talking, we don’t know why he allegedly ignited the fire, but it would seem he quickly regretted it, as he called 911 only a minute or two after the fire started. He may have been intoxicated, having a mental breakdown, seeking a thrill, or angry at his lot in life. We don’t know. What we do know is that only hours later, the LAFD declared the fire extinguished, and a State Parks representative there on the scene agreed. This is where the plot thickened and the lies and cover-up began.
The Lachman Fire was not fully extinguished; it was still burning root systems and debris underground. Smoke could be seen rising through the soil. We know from text messages, emails, photographs, and whistleblowers in the LAFD that the firefighters on the scene knew the fire was still smoldering underneath a layer of topsoil. They wanted to bring in a dozer to thoroughly churn up the burn area. Somewhere up the chain of command, they were overruled. It seems that State Parks personnel expressed concerns over a bulldozer destroying “endangered plants,” especially Astragalus or Braunton’s milk vetch.
For years, the federal and state environmental policies protecting certain plants have prevented homeowners from clearing brush around their properties. Even public agencies have gotten in trouble for destroying endangered plants. In 2019, in an attempt to reduce fire risks on its Palisades property, LADWP replaced wooden poles with steel ones and bulldozed brush. Among the plants churned up was the milk vetch. The DWP was fined $1.9 million and ordered to restore the bulldozed area.
Could it be that the milk vetch was responsible for the Palisades Fire and its 12 deaths and, by conservative estimates, more than $50 billion in property damage, which is four times greater than L.A.’s annual budget?
In the face of multiple lawsuits, both the city and the state of California are busy trying to cover their heinies. The L.A. Times interviewed anonymous LAFD whistleblowers who said the fire department had revised its after-action report seven times before it was released. The edits in the many drafts were, as alleged by the whistleblowers, intended to shield the department from any responsibility for failing to extinguish the Lachman Fire.
At first, Governor Newsom claimed the state was not even at the Lachman Fire. When photos surfaced of a State Parks environmental scientist at the Lachman Fire on Jan. 1—with smoke rising from the ground—Newsom conceded there may have been someone there, but State Parks has nothing to do with firefighting. He didn’t mention that State Parks personnel had been texting back and forth about the loss of Astragalus that had already occurred and the threat of widespread destruction of the endangered plant if a dozer was brought in.
Newsom reminds me of Bill Clinton claiming he never smoked marijuana and then, when incontrovertible evidence surfaced that he had smoked marijuana, that he didn’t inhale. Newsom is every bit as slippery as Slick Willie.
Boss Bass is now acting as if all the failures of the LAFD and the LADWP have nothing to do with her. Yet, Bass supported and regularly praised Fire Chief Kristin Crowley right up to and through the Palisades Fire. Only when Crowley, in the face of criticism, pointed out that Bass had taken nearly $18 million from the fire department’s budget to be used elsewhere, did Bass turn against and then fire Crowley. Bass not only supported and repeatedly praised the LADWP’s chief, Janisse Quiñones, but also recommended her for the position. This is the LADWP chief who left one of Pacific Palisades’ two reservoirs bone-dry, and water lines and hydrants in poor condition or inoperable.
Mayor Bass has done everything to distance herself from all the city’s failures. However, at the time of the Palisades Fire, Bass had been mayor of Los Angeles for more than three years. Moreover, Bass served in the California State Assembly from 2004 to 2010 in a district that covered a good portion of Los Angeles, and then in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2022 in a district that covered almost the same area of Los Angeles. By the time she became mayor in 2022, she had been intimately involved with Los Angeles politics for 18 years. Bass also had been born and reared in Los Angeles and had graduated from the city’s Hamilton High School.
Bass has promised a full investigation of everything surrounding the disastrous Palisades Fire. I suspect any report from that investigation will be full of omissions and obfuscations. No worries, though, because lawsuits have been filed and a battery of attorneys is demanding every relevant email, text message, and document. Whether what’s revealed through discovery in these lawsuits is enough to take down Boss Bass—and, perhaps, put a dent in Gavin Newsom—remains to be seen.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/columns/boss-basss-crooked-los-angeles