The Brief

Bill Scott, the outgoing chief of the San Francisco Police Department, will lead Los Angeles Metro’s new in-house public safety department, Metro announced Wednesday.

The announcement is the first major step towards Metro’s goal of reimagining public safety on its trains and buses.

“I’m really excited about the building blocks that we have here with someone of the caliber of Chief Scott to really be our leader in this,” Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins said to LAist in an exclusive interview the day before the announcement.

Scott’s experience overseeing safety on San Francisco’s Muni and deep roots in Los Angeles, where he served with the Police Department for 27 years, position him for the task that stands before him, Wiggins said.

Once he starts as chief of Metro’s public safety department in June, Scott will need to stitch together what is currently a splintered public safety apparatus without a central authority. He will have until 2029 to build and deploy a staff of nearly 1,100, including police officers and a growing corps of Metro ambassadors, and instill a cohesive culture centering “community-oriented” safety solutions.

“This is the first big milestone of setting up the department,” Wiggins said.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announced Scott’s resignation from the police force at a news conference Wednesday morning. Scott is the longest-running police chief for San Francisco, having served in the role for eight years.

“Every team needs leaders,” Lurie said. “People who get the job done day in and day out, who set the tone for everyone else. Chief Bill Scott has been that kind of leader.”

The Metro Board of Directors unanimously approved plans for the new in-house department last June. In doing so, it heeded Metro staff’s warning that policy differences, lack of accountability and cost escalations have rendered the current model of outsourcing law enforcement to other police departments unworkable.

Beyond the formidable task of building a police department from the ground up, Scott will have to dispel the perception of Metro being unsafe, overcome low interest in law enforcement that has made recruitment for police departments in the U.S. difficult and ensure the safety of the system for riders, operators and the millions of visitors that are going to pour into the area for upcoming mega events.

At the press conference announcing his new job, Scott said the responsibility he's about to take on is "ambitious and necessary."

"This is about creating something truly meaningful. It's about building a department that reflects the values of L.A., community safety and progress," he said. "I'm ready, I'm grateful, and I'm all in."

Police officers at the Union Station Metro stop.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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The decision to choose Scott

Wiggins said Scott demonstrated during the interview process that he has experience practicing elements of care-based approaches to policing like deescalation, procedural justice and community engagement, which Metro hopes to infuse into its new department.

That experience will be especially important, Wiggins said, because one of Scott’s first tasks will be finalizing the training Metro’s officers will need to undergo after they’re hired.

Metro said in its implementation plan for the new department that its officers will go through “four weeks of training tailored to a transit environment.” The officers currently contracted to work on the system go through four hours of rail-specific training.

Metro's Public Safety Advisory Committee, which is made up of people who regularly ride or operate Metro buses and trains, engaged with community members and businesses at the end of last year to help develop search criteria for the chief.

Jeremy Oliver-Ronceros, the chair of the committee, said the conversations he had through that community engagement revealed that people want someone who is accountable, transparent and focused on integrating “care-based solutions ... into the law enforcement culture.”

Those aren’t just buzzy descriptors, Oliver-Ronceros said. Pointing to the planned increase in unarmed personnel, Oliver-Ronceros said Metro is balancing traditional law enforcement with people with the training to respond to crises specifically seen on transit systems, like homelessness, substance abuse and mental health episodes.

He also said Metro’s plans to deploy law enforcement to the same areas every day — a concept known as zone-based deployment — further the idea that the new public safety department will be in service to the community.

“One of the advantages of building this from scratch is being able to integrate [zone-based deployment] day one and make sure that we're building those relationships with the community instead of being seen as an outside force,” Oliver-Ronceros said.

Scott’s record in San Francisco

Scott began as chief of the San Francisco Police Department in January 2017.

During his tenure there, Wiggins said Scott successfully implemented wide-ranging reforms for the department. A review by the California Department of Justice concluded those reforms led to a drop in the number of use of deadly force incidents, better monitoring of biased police behavior and the development of a community policing plan.

In announcing Scott’s resignation, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said these reforms contributed to greater trust between the police and community.

At the end of 2024, Scott and the former mayor of San Francisco reported that the number of homicides in the city dropped to their lowest rate since the early 1960s.

During Wednesday morning’s press conference, Scott highlighted reductions in gun violence, property crime and car burglaries as some of the accomplishments of his tenure as chief of police in San Francisco.

His time as chief hasn’t been without controversy.

In 2019, the San Francisco police union said Scott should quit his post after he defended, and then said he regretted, a raid on a freelance journalist’s home.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Scott initially alleged that the journalist, Bryan Carmody, illegally acquired a police report about the death of a public defender who died in February 2019.

Carmody sued the city following the raid, resulting in a $369,000 settlement, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

During San Francisco’s mayoral election last year, then-candidate and former mayor Mark Farrell said he’d fire Scott if elected, saying the department was in need of a “new face.”

While Farrell finished fourth in the race, there had been “persistent” rumors that Lurie would fire Scott, according to the SF Examiner.

A Metro Ambassador helps a person at Union Station in Los Angeles on April 30, 2025.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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The new approach to public safety on Metro, by the numbers

There are currently nearly 870 people deployed to Metro buses, trains and stations on an average day.

Half of those people are armed and tasked with deterring and responding to crime on the system.

Most of the armed personnel are the contracted, sworn officers from the Los Angeles Police Department and L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. In addition, a small group of 34 Metro-hired security officers deter vandalism, and enforce fares and other aspects of the Metro customer code of conduct.

The new safety department will consist of the same number of armed officers, but they’ll all be hired by — and accountable to — Metro.

The biggest personnel change is with the increase of unarmed resources, who will move from different departments within the agency to the new public safety department.

The number of transit ambassadors, who help Metro customers with wayfinding, report wrongdoing and can administer the opioid overdose-reversing drug Narcan, will increase by 60% for a total of 361 ambassadors once the department is fully established.

The number of crisis intervention specialists and clinicians, who are trained to de-escalate situations where people are experiencing mental health episodes, will get a big bump from six to nearly 90 people.

By the time the department is fully formed, more than 100 homeless outreach service workers will help connect those sheltering on buses and trains to housing services.

Chuck Wexler, the head of the nonprofit organization Police Executive Research Forum, said Metro’s approach of integrating traditional law enforcement with social service-oriented professionals is “forward-thinking.”

“Public transportation is this place where people who don’t have anywhere to go very often find themselves,” Wexler said, adding that the unarmed personnel are more capable than police officers of identifying resources that would be most helpful for people experiencing mental health crises or homelessness.

Chauncee Smith, an associate director of the racial justice-focused nonprofit Catalyst California, said he’d rather see more significant investments in unarmed personnel instead of continuing to fund law enforcement at all.

“Metro is missing the mark when it comes to how public dollars should be invested,” Smith said, adding that the millions of dollars used on law enforcement could be directed toward further bolstering the ambassador, homeless outreach and crisis intervention programs.

L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who chairs the Metro Board, said she understands people have differing views on whether seeing cops improves their sense of personal safety. Ultimately, considering the limitations of ambassadors and other unarmed personnel, Hahn said she wants more visible law enforcement on the system.

“I think our riders would feel safer,” Hahn said.

In total, more than 60% of those deployed will be unarmed.

The new chief of the Metro public safety department will have until 2029 to fully build the department. That will involve incrementally increasing new Metro-hired staff while steadily decreasing the number of officers from LAPD or the Sheriff's Department that work on the system.

The stakes for Metro are high. The world is looking to L.A., as it’s the host of the FIFA World Cup in 2026, the NFL Super Bowl in 2027 and the 2028 Olympic Games.

Wiggins said that within his first 100 days, Scott will be “plugged in” with local and national law enforcement preparing safety plans for the mega-events.

Scott will also have to contend with increasing resignations and low levels of recruitment that are affecting police departments across the country. A survey from the Police Executive Research Forum found that as of 2023, large police agencies are increasing staffing but are still struggling to meet the number of personnel they had before 2020.

Hahn said recruitment is going to be the “number one challenge” facing the new chief. She said she hopes that the chief will be able to convince police hopefuls that working for Metro would follow a new model of policing and that the specific jurisdiction — trains and buses — makes the job more attractive.

San Francisco's police chief Bill Scott announced his resignation today with Mayor Daniel Lurie.

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Cultural mismatch, lack of control and booming costs

Metro has contracted with local law enforcement to patrol its system for the last three decades, a model that the agency has said is riddled with issues.

In the implementation plan that the Metro Board approved for the new public safety department, agency staff outlined that inconsistent policies with administering Narcan, disagreements on offloading trains at the end of the line and the use of a restraining device known as a BolaWrap are examples of fundamental cultural differences between Metro and its law enforcement partners.

One of the major findings of a recent Metro inspector general report that audited law enforcement activities on the system in 2021 and 2022 found that the agency has been unable to comprehensively monitor the presence of contracted officers on the system.

“Every time there was an incident of crime we tried to figure out: Where were the officers? How far away were they? Why weren’t they riding on the system?” Chair Hahn said. “We never really got good solid answers.”

Gina Osborn, Metro’s former chief safety and security officer said that the agency doesn’t have control over the actions of its law enforcement partners.

“ I do believe that the only way that they're going to … have a strong safety and security program is if they have their own department,” Osborn said to LAist.

Osborn filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against Metro in 2024 after two years on the job. The suit, which is ongoing, alleges Osborn was retaliated against after raising her concerns about the performance of officers on the system.

Outsourcing enforcement to the L.A. and Long Beach police departments, as well as the county Sheriff’s Department, cost Metro more than $1.1 billion from 2017 to 2024, according to the implementation plan.

The contract with the Long Beach Police Department ended earlier this year.

LAPD officers who work on Metro have presented liability issues for the city of L.A. too.

A jury this year awarded Randy Rangel, a former transit services bureau sergeant, $4.5 million stemming from a whistleblower complaint he filed alleging overtime fraud within the bureau, according to the L.A. Times.

Last year, a jury awarded Heather Rolland, a detective from the same bureau, $949,000 in a retaliation and gender discrimination suit.

The city is facing an unprecedented deficit of nearly a billion dollars, in part because of exploding liability costs. LAPD leads all other city departments in liability expenses, costing Los Angeles more than $100 million in liability payouts in the last fiscal year.

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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Laura Hertfeldz

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LAist

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”