In a time of crisis, when Los Angeles is being ravaged by relentless wildfires, the people of this region need to hear one thing from their fire department: reassurance. Reassurance that the people sworn to protect them—not to mention, paid by them—are the most capable, prepared, and physically fit professionals available.

What they absolutely do not need is a lecture on identity politics or a dismissive quip that trivializes life-and-death realities.

Yet that’s precisely what the lesbian diversity hire, LAFD Assistant Chief Kristine Larson, delivered in a recent promotional video. Larson, who reportedly earns a jaw-dropping $399,000 annually, stated that people want firefighters who “look like them” responding to emergencies, as if optics somehow extinguish flames or resuscitate the dying.

She then went on to dismiss legitimate concerns about physical competency with an offhanded, smug remark: “If I have to carry your husband out of a fire, he got himself in the wrong place.”

Watch:

Let’s unpack the sheer foolishness—and the danger—of her sentiment. First, the role of a firefighter isn’t to make you feel “seen” or “represented” as your home burns to the ground. It’s to save your life, your family, and your property with the highest level of skill and strength humanly possible.

A fire doesn’t care about your gender, ethnicity, who you sleep with, or how you feel about societal representation. When your home is engulfed in flames, you’re not praying for someone who “looks like you,” you’re praying for someone who can drag you to safety, no matter your size, weight, or circumstances.

But here’s the thing. Larson’s remarks aren’t just her personal failing—it’s a symptom of the rogue DEI agenda that’s infected institutions around the nation like the LAFD. DEI—diversity, equity, and inclusion—claims to champion fairness and opportunity, but in practice, it’s a race to the bottom where qualifications and competence are sacrificed at the altar of identity.

DEI prioritizes checking intersectional demographic boxes over ensuring that the best people are in the roles that demand excellence. And when it comes to firefighting, this isn’t just ideology—it’s a death sentence.

The LAFD, like so many other public institutions, has embraced DEI initiatives that elevate optics over outcomes. Hiring and promoting people based on quotas, especially sexual quotas, instead of qualifications leads to a catastrophic erosion of public trust.

This isn’t an abstract concern or something that’s only happening in places like the Left Coast—it’s happening right now, everywhere. In your kids’ schools, in your workplace, in universities—even in churches.

The LAFD, instead of focusing on whether every firefighter can meet the grueling physical demands of the job, has allowed the conversation to devolve into platitudes about how firefighters should “reflect the community.”

Reflect the community? How about saving the community?

Wildfires are tearing through Southern California as we speak, leaving devastation in their wake. People are losing their homes, their livelihoods, and in some cases, their lives. This is not the time for identity politics.

This is the time for action, for skill, and for competence. And yet, the LAFD’s leadership seems more concerned with pandering to ideological movements than ensuring that its firefighters are prepared to meet the dire challenges at hand. Of course, the people that this is happening to don’t matter because they’re mostly wealthy white people.

Larson’s tone-deaf remarks and the DEI-driven policies behind them is the logical conclusion of when we don’t stand up to such idiocy in our society. Whether it’s firefighting, the police force, flying a plane, or serving food in a McDonald’s, innocent lives are not a diversity experiment.

The people of Los Angeles deserve firefighters who are chosen because they’re the best—not because they fill a quota. The DEI agenda has no place in life-and-death scenarios, and the LAFD owes the public an apology, not a lecture.

It’s time to stop playing identity politics, especially with public safety, and return to a standard of excellence—before more lives are lost.