When training for my IFR ticket thirty years ago, I was in Van Nuys, California (just on the other side of those hills) when a Cessna with student and instructor on board was vectored into a mountain when on approach to Burbank.
My grizzled old instructor, who had flown bombers in the fifties, said to me, "If a controller vectors you into a mountain, it will ruin their day. They'll have trouble driving home. But you'll be very dead. So who is really in charge of keeping you out of terrain?"