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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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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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.

A refrigerated warehouse operated by Lineage Logistics has burned in Boyle Heights for nearly a week. Public health officials are urging residents nearby and downwind to protect themselves from the smoky air.

But what exactly is in the air is still unclear.

Authorities say they’ve cleared the most hazardous materials — ammonia and lithium-ion batteries — from the fire zone. A spokesperson for the L.A. Fire Department said foam insulation, wood pallets of food, and solar panels on top of the 500,000 square-foot building continue to smolder.

Materials including plastics, electronics and even rotting meat are likely burning, which means the pollution particles emitted “tend to be highly enriched with toxic organics, toxic metals, that are above and beyond what just normal, day-to-day air pollution would look like,” said UCLA air pollution researcher Yifang Zhu.

She said air quality indexes may capture the concentration of particulate matter in the air, but not necessarily the specific toxins in them.

“You'll have almost like a double jeopardy in a sense that the levels [of particulate matter] are higher, and the toxicity is also higher,” she said.

Measuring heavy metals or volatile organic compounds requires special monitoring equipment, Zhu said.

“It’s very difficult to measure,” she said.

But she suspects at least some types of health-harming heavy metals are likely to be in the smoke.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado on Monday called for more specifics about what is in the smoke.

People “shouldn't have to guess about what they're breathing or rely on rumors, scattered information and updates, and incomplete information,” she said at a news conference. Jurado, whose council district includes Boyle Heights, added that data from regulators, such as the South Coast Air Quality Management District, should be released in clear, understandable language in English and Spanish.

The South Coast AQMD told LAist before Jurado spoke that the agency has monitors that measure particulate matter, ozone, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide, but not other types of pollutants. The agency said it has set up additional monitors at Eastman Avenue Elementary and Robert Louis Stevenson Middle School. The agency added that the Environmental Protection Agency is also monitoring air quality at the fence line of the facility. LAist has reached out to the EPA for details.

Zhu added that even when the fire is eventually put out, the cleanup can kick up even more pollution — a lesson learned through her research after the L.A. fires.

“ I think people really need to take precautions,” Zhu said, emphasizing that those closest to the fire and downwind should avoid being outside as much as possible, keep windows closed, run a HEPA or MERV 13 air filter, and wear an N95 or similar mask otherwise.

UC Irvine toxicology professor Michael Kleinman said if thawed meat is also burning, that could lead to further toxic gases being released.

Experts urged precautions, especially if you smell smoke.

“ For people who are very close to the fire, like the firefighters themselves, they have exposure to both particulate matter and potential toxic gases, and that's why you'll see them wearing respirators,” said UC Irvine chemistry professor Suzanne Blum. “But once you're some feet away from the building, then the primary concern is the particulate smoke that is coming from this fire.”

As the Boyle Heights warehouse fire burns into its sixth day, SoCal residents are increasingly concerned about the air quality and potential health risks that come with breathing in the smoke. So, what alerts have been issued so far and how can residents be prepared?

Both Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass declared a state of emergency on Saturday, a designation that helps California coordinate with local agencies to make sure there are enough resources for the firefight and residents who have been affected after a fire started at a cold storage industrial facility. Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis said at a press conference Monday that  the county is "delivering supplies, air filters, and air purifiers" to local households.

Los Angeles County public health officials and the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) also issued a particle pollution advisory that remained in effect until today. Affected areas included: Central Los Angeles County, the San Gabriel Valley, East San Fernando Valley and Northwest San Bernardino Valley.

Although recent air quality readings appear as “moderate” to “good” on South Coast AQMD’s website, the fire is still burning and might be for a few more days.

So what can SoCal residents do to protect themselves?

If the air quality index reads “good” or “poses little to no risk” in some areas, hazardous ash can still be present. If you see ash on your car, or windowsills, you might want to stay inside if possible. In “moderate” or yellow zones, unusually sensitive people are also recommended to avoid longer periods outside.

In the next few days, some might notice windblown ash floating in the air or coating outdoor surfaces. These particles are otherwise known as “fine particulate matter,” which consists of soot, burned plastic and perhaps even traces of the spoiling frozen food from inside the warehouse.

Why that matters

Too much exposure from these materials may cause temporary irritation to the eyes, nose, throat and lungs. If you suffer from health issues that are exacerbated by poor air quality, like respiratory illnesses, you may be affected by these conditions even more.

Four expert tips to protect yourself and your family:

• If you smell smoke or see ash, try to remain indoors with the windows closed. If you can’t, consider stepping outside with an N-95 mask, and refrain from engaging in any rigorous physical activity. 
• In your homes, also avoid using whole house fans (air conditioning is okay), as they can bring in the polluted air from outdoors. 
• If you have an air purifier, this is the time to use it. 
• Avoid using fireplaces, candles and vacuums, as they can introduce toxins into the clean, indoor environment.

For more guidance on precautions following the fires, visit Los Angeles County’s public health website for more. South Coast AQMD’s website also has more healthy and safety tips.

Updated June 22, 2026 at 16:22 PM ET

Argentine soccer superstar Lionel Messi has broken the record for most World Cup scoring.

Messi made the record goal, his 17th, during the first half of Monday's game against Austria. It was a heated match. Austria attacked relentlessly, and Argentina relied on its defense and on goalkeeper Emiliano "Dibu" Martinez. And, near the end in stoppage time, Messi scored again, finishing off at 2-0.

The team captain started off the World Cup with a bang: in the opener against Algeria, Messi scored a hat trick: three goals. A rare feat in soccer. He has scored all five goals for Argentina this World Cup. With the win, Argentina advances to the knockout round.

Messi hails from the province of Santa Fe, Argentina, an area known for producing excellent players. He faced challenges at an early age: he had a hormonal growth deficiency, which was difficult to treat in his hometown, given the severe economic crisis facing Argentina in the late 1990s. By 2001, the Messi family had decided to accept an offer for him to join La Masia, FC Barcelona's youth academy, in Spain. Messi was 13 years old.

It was at Barca that he rose to fame and developed his unique style of walking the pitch, patiently waiting for the right opportunity to jump on the ball, dribble skillfully past his opponents, and score.

Argentina's Lionel Messi, now the all-time World Cup scoring leader, celebrates scoring his team's second goal during the FIFA World Cup 2026 group match against Austria.

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Although a legend of Barca and European soccer, he often expressed a desire to play for the Argentine national team in a World Cup. He got his chance in his 20's, but it wasn't smooth: he was widely seen as a foreigner who had not paid his dues in the Argentine soccer system. His measured, calculating style of play was often misunderstood in South America, where players tended to have a quicker, more aggressive technique.

There were several World Cup attempts that were disappointing, and after the 2016 World Cup, he announced he would not be playing again. "It's over," he said outside the locker room, visibly shaken. "I tried so hard, it is unbelievable, but it hasn't worked. Me and this team are through."

The tides turned under the leadership of Argentine Coach Lionel Scaloni, and Messi led the team to a Copa America victory in 2021. Argentina won the World Cup the following year.

This is Messi's sixth World Cup and he's considered one of the best players in soccer history.

Messi also surpassed Brazilian superstar Marta, who had scored 17 goals at the Women's World Cup.

Copyright 2026 NPR

More than two dozen state historic parks are free through the end of the year in honor of Juneteenth — and the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the free “special edition Historian Passport,” which typically costs $50, as a rebuke to President Donald Trump’s attempts to “rewrite the past,” according to a news release by the governor’s office.

Since his inauguration, Trump has ordered staff working at all National Park Service locations to remove any content that casts Americans in a negative light from parks, monuments and memorials.

“California doesn’t hide from hard truths and uncomfortable history — in fact, we embrace it and learn from it,” Newsom wrote.

Until July 6, Californians can download the state historic park pass for free and use it as many times as they want through the end of 2026. The pass gives free entry to state historic parks for up to four people.

The Historian Passport grants entry to more than 30 state historic parks, including parks like Olompali and Malakoff Diggins which, rather than just providing outdoor recreation, also have an educational emphasis on the state’s history.

Jack London State Historic Park in Napa Valley, California.

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Many of these parks tell the story of the state’s cultural or indigenous history, from missions and museums to temples and the site that sparked the California Gold Rush.

Newsom made a similar move to make state parks free for Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year, in response to Trump’s decision to eliminate the holiday from the list of fee-free days at national parks across the country, replacing it with his birthday on Flag Day.

How to get your free Historian Passport for up to four people

You must make an account with the state’s reservation site ReserveCalifornia.com to obtain a Historian Pass. Then, visit the site’s Advance Passes page and select “Special Edition Historian Passport” from the dropdown menu, which will show as costing $0. No payment information is required.

After checking out, you’ll receive an email with an attached PDF version of your Historian Passport.

The state recommends you print off this PDF to present at any California state historic park for free entry, although you may just be able to show the image on your phone too.

Bear in mind that cellphone service may be poor at many state historic parks, so it’s worth screenshotting the PDF to save it as an image on your phone in case you’re unable to search your email.

Looking for free entry to other state parks that aren’t included in the Historian Passport? Consider checking out a parks pass from your local library, which provides these passes as part of the California State Library Parks Pass program.

KQED’s Carly Severn contributed to this report.