The Brief

The Natural History Museum of L.A. County on Sunday will unveil a 75,000-square-foot renovated wing the museum hopes will attract more visitors. It’s called NHM Commons, a bright and airy two-story space with a café on the first floor and exhibits on the second floor.

That space includes Gnatalie, a brand new species of sauropod and the first ever green dinosaur skeleton mounted for display, according to Lori Bettison-Varga, the museum’s director and president. The museum held a preview event on Wednesday.

Gnatalie (the “g” is silent) is a big deal. It took scientists 15 years to dig up Gnatalie from a hillside in Utah. From head to toe it’s about the length of two-and-a-half school buses, its head looking out two south-facing windows. No other sauropod like it is on display.

Yes, its fossilized bones have a green shade. That’s from the celadonite mineral that replaced its bones over 150 million years.

Erika Durazo, paleontological preparator with NHM’s Dinosaur Institute, worked on the project that unearthed Gnatalie.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

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Gnatalie's bones have sea-green layer from fossilization.

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Jason Rodriguez/LAist

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“The color is beautiful,” said Erika Durazo, paleontological preparator with NHM’s Dinosaur Institute. “[The dinosaur] is in the center where the sun hits it so I can imagine that throughout the day, the green coloring will be highlighted differently."

The museum’s ‘front porch’

The Natural History Museum is L.A.’s first museum. It was founded in 1913 in Exposition Park, south of downtown. It has other dinosaur bones on display, but museum leaders emphasize that it also has important insect, gem, and historical collections.

NHM Commons is a new, 75,000 square foot new addition to the Natural History Museum of L.A. County.

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The plaza in front of the renovated wing was designed to include rocks and plants in consultation with the museum’s Native American Advisory Council.

Museum leaders want the new NHM Commons to be the museum’s “front porch” that welcomes everyone, in particular working class residents of South L.A., some of whom may not know what the building is and are hesitant to approach and wander into it. There is no entry fee for NHM Commons.

More recent LA history on display

The museum hopes visitors see themselves in a 16-foot-tall and 80-foot-long mural across from Gnatalie that tells L.A.’s history over the last several hundred years, called L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective. The 1981 mural was painted by local artist Barbara Carrasco, but it remained in storage for decades.

“We are building more and more bridges with our community,” said William Estrada, NHM curator and chair of NHM’s history department.

"L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective" is a 1981 mural by Barbara Carrasco, pictured, that is on permanent display at NHM Commons.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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LAist

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The mural depicts Native Americans who lived in this region before the arrival of Europeans, a massacre of Chinese residents in 1871, 19th century Black entrepreneur Biddy Mason, orange groves, and the Hollywood sign.

“I think this mural, really, is one of those bridges that speaks to this museum being a museum of, for, and with Los Angeles,” Estrada said.

Jason Rodriguez contributed to this story.

How LAPD responds when someone is experiencing a mental or behavioral health crisis is getting a closer look. 

Last week, Mayor Karen Bass issued an executive directive ordering an independent review of the department’s response, including its policies, training and use of force. 

“There is a severe shortage of mental and behavioral health care, and too many people in crisis have nowhere to turn,” Mayor Bass said in a prepared statement. “People cycle between the streets, emergency rooms, and detention facilities, and too often come into contact with law enforcement.” 

The Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners will need to retain an independent firm to conduct the audit and report back recommendations to the mayor’s office within six months. Bass said that the firm selected should be experts in constitutional policing and crisis response. 

The review will determine how officers identify people in crisis, including those with intellectual and physical disabilities, and people who are under the influence of illicit substances.

LAPD officers fatally shot more than 60 people between 2021 and 2025, according to the most recent data the department reported to the California Department of Justice. All of those deaths will be reviewed.

The audit will also look into how the department tracks repeat calls about a person who is in crisis or needs help. Yong Yang’s case is one example. Yang was fatally shot by police in 2024, after his parents attempted to get him help during a behavioral health crisis.

His parents previously told The LA Local about how Yong Yang had nonviolent encounters with police before the encounter that ended in his death. They question why officers failed to de-escalate the confrontation before he was shot.

They’ve continued to call for accountability, even after LAPD closed its investigation into his death. Under Bass’ new directive, his case is one that would be reviewed. 

The audit will evaluate:

• Use of force: Incidents over the last five years of uses of force and arrests that resulted in death or serious bodily injury to determine if the person was experiencing a behavioral health crisis or had an intellectual disability.
• De-escalation: Incidents over the last five years that did not result in death or serious bodily injury to determine how they were de-escalated.
• Repeat calls: The department’s procedures for keeping track of people involved in repeated calls to police, including those who have a disability.
• Training: The training officers receive about incidents with people experiencing behavioral crises.
• Less-lethal options: What less-lethal force options are available to officers.
• Custody and care: Uses of restraint and processes for medical treatment for people in police custody. 
• Officer wellness: Protocols for providing officers with mental health care after these confrontations.

Bass’ order comes about a month after the police department released graphic videos of men who died during police encounters. One video captured officers sitting on and restraining a handcuffed man for an extended period of time at a holding facility in the San Fernando Valley. The man, Jose Carlos Hoyos-Munoz, died soon after. 

“When an encounter results in death or serious injury, we must rigorously examine whether our policies, training, tactics, supervision, and accountability systems are sufficient,” Bass said after the videos were released.

The post Mayor Bass orders independent review of how LAPD responds to mental health crises appeared first on LA Local.

A new law will require local agencies to publicly disclose audio recordings and written records of 911 calls originating from privately run immigration detention facilities. The bill was prompted by CalMatters reporting on alleged sexual assaults at the Otay Mesa Detention Center.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 423, called the Detention Facility Transparency Act, on Tuesday. It was one of 21 immigration-related bills in a package his office announced the same day.

The law will require local agencies to turn over recordings and written records of 911 calls from privately run detention facilities, if a member of the public requests them. It includes an exception if an active investigation is underway and requires redacting the names of affected individuals.

“Well, it goes without saying, these past two years, Donald Trump has brought fear and has brought anxiety, disruption and stress to our immigrant communities,” Newsom said in a recorded video statement on his website.

“So, today, I sign a number of bills to strengthen transparency and to strengthen accountability and oversight over federal immigration enforcement and civil detention in our state,” the governor said.

State Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat from Long Beach, introduced SB 423 as state investigations and courts found serious gaps in essential medical care within the facilities. She said the aim was to stop private operators, and the agencies that work alongside them, from keeping what happens behind detention walls from the public's view.

In February, L.A. Taco reported that detainees inside Otay Mesa were throwing lotion bottles wrapped with notes about conditions inside over the wall of the facility to organizers standing outside.

“For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh," an Otay Mesa detainee wrote, the news outlet reported. "We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick.”

Gonzalez, who is chair of the Legislative Latino Caucus, said no person “should have to resort to throwing notes over the walls of a detention facility to have their needs met and their voices heard.”

Earlier this year, CalMatters sought information, including 911 audio records and other reports, about alleged serious incidents at detention facilities through a California Public Records Act request. While a San Diego County sheriff’s spokesperson said the agency was not investigating those cases, he said he was unable to turn over additional records because they were part of “a law enforcement investigation.”

“When journalists and reporters attempted to obtain records about reported incidents at these facilities through the Public Records Act, they faced severe pushback from law enforcement, citing vague investigatory records exemptions, despite there being no active investigation,” said Gonzalez.

Immigrant Defense Advocates and the First Amendment Coalition co-sponsored the bill.

“The governor has sent a powerful message: No more secrecy. SB 423 makes clear that 911 calls and related records about events in detention must be released upon request. This will shed more light on a notoriously opaque system, leading to stronger oversight and accountability,” Ginny LaRoe, Advocacy Director, First Amendment Coalition, said in a written statement.

Gonzalez’s bill was one of several detention oversight bills Newsom signed Tuesday. Others impose a new 25% tax on private detention facilities, expand health, safety and oversight requirements for the centers, and add to the state attorney general’s oversight role.

The new laws take effect Jan. 1.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Six Flags Magic Mountain is retiring its famous X2 roller coaster amid lawsuits alleging serious brain injury caused by the ride.

The Southern California theme park said Tuesday that it is permanently shuttering the ride after nearly 20 years. Six Flags recently settled a wrongful-death lawsuit from the family of a 22-year-old man who died after riding the coaster in 2022, and three more lawsuits alleging traumatic brain injuries were filed last week.

“While X2 consistently passed a multitude of safety tests, we have decided to close the ride because we believe it’s the right thing to do,” park President Brian Oerding said in an online announcement. “Ride safety is a cornerstone of our business, and when we see guest confidence affected, we take it seriously.”

The ride has been closed since the evening of July 12, after two women who rode the coaster less than a week apart both needed to be rushed to the hospital after they exited.

One of them, 25-year-old Naomi Greer-Wilkinson, collapsed shortly after the ride ended and was found to have massive brain bleeding inside the skull that required emergency brain surgery. She remains in a vegetative state in the hospital, unable to speak or move and dependent on a ventilator. Her family filed a lawsuit against Six Flags on her behalf.

Her attorneys said more than 100 people claimed they suffered brain injuries from the roller coaster in the past two years, and more lawsuits would be filed in the coming weeks.

According to the Six Flags Magic Mountain website, the X2 roller coaster reaches a top speed of 76 mph (122 kph) and has a total length of 3,610 feet (1,100 meters). The seats rotate 360 degrees “so your body will be flipping around the entire time,” and the ride features two “raven turns” — half loops that turn into sheer drops midway.

It debuted at the park in 2002 under the name X as the world’s first “fourth-dimension” roller coaster and reopened in 2008 as X2 with new trains and special effects. The uniqueness of the ride drew thrill-seekers from around the world and garnered a fervent fanbase.

The park settled a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of Christopher Hawley, a 22-year-old who died the day after he rode X2. He was taken to the hospital after the ride with severe brain bleeding. The medical examiner’s office said his death was from blunt head trauma. The case was settled at the end of August, a few days before the trial was scheduled to start.