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.

The competition schedule for the Olympics is out, more than two years ahead of the 2028 Games.

The extensive program, released by Olympics organizing committee LA28 this morning, lays out the dates, times and locations of all competitions for 51 sports taking place across Southern California (and as far as Oklahoma City).

The first Olympic winner will be named at the women's triathlon in Venice Beach on the morning of July 15 — the first day of the Games and the day after the opening ceremony. The last will be more than two weeks later, July 30, when the men's and women's medley relay finals and other swimming finals will take place at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

The closing ceremonies will take place the same day at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum in Exposition Park.

The 2028 Games have flipped the traditional Olympic schedule to start with track and field and end with swimming. On a press call, LA28 executive Shana Ferguson said that's because SoFi Stadium is one of the venues hosting the Opening Ceremonies, and the site of all swimming competitions.

"In order to transition from opening ceremonies to swimming, we just couldn't do it," Ferguson said.

Olympics schedulers considered summer weather

Ferguson called developing the competition schedule a "painstaking process" that took months of coordinating with the International Olympic Committee and 36 international sports federations, which manage individual sports.

The Games will come to Los Angeles in the middle of summer, and Ferguson said LA28 considered heat and sunshine when it laid out the schedule.

" Some of the timings were made based on having a little bit later session in the evenings for cooling for fans and for athletes, as well as sun position, water tides, water quality," she said. "When we're having a diving competition outside, we have to think about the position of the sun so as to not distract the athletes."

Diving will take place at the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center in Pasadena . Those competitions are scheduled either in the morning or afternoon, with a gap between 12:30 and 2 p.m.

Equestrian competition also has been scheduled with the summer heat in mind.

Those competitions will take place at the Santa Anita racetrack in Arcadia, either in the morning or late afternoon. Ferguson said that's for the horses — and also the fans.

" We are also thinking about, quite frankly, how quickly we can get 'em into the venue, right?" she said. "We don't want them necessarily standing outside in long lines for too long. Let's get them inside where it's shaded."

Schedule highlights

July 29, will be the busiest day of Olympic Competition, with 26 finals in marathon, boxing, swimming, table tennis and many more.

The first day of competition will have the most women's finals, including the triathlon and 100-meter and women's rugby sevens.

You can find the detailed competition schedule here . The Paralympic schedule hasn't been released yet.

When can I get tickets? And how much will they cost?

Fans will be able to register for tickets starting in January . They'll cost as little as $28.

Los Angeles is working on its first major overhaul of the city’s charter — the document that acts as the city’s constitution for how government is run — in more than 25 years. Now there’s a new way residents can get involved. Applications are open for Angelenos who want to be a part of an upcoming mini civic assembly on charter reform.

The details

The L.A. Charter Reform Commission, a civilian board with 13 appointed commissioners, recently endorsed these mini assemblies and pledged to hear their recommendations at commission meetings. This group selected from the applications will come up with a set of suggestions for updating the rules on how L.A. is run and present them to the commission for consideration.

A mock civic assembly taking place in Culver City on June 7.

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What’s a civic assembly?

It’s a process by which a small group of residents get together and work out solutions to thorny community problems . Think of it as an intensive, in-person group project. Members are chosen by lottery but also selected to be demographically representative by factors like age, race or geography.

When is the assembly and how do I apply?

The first mini assembly, organized by a coalition called Rewrite LA , takes place Dec. 13 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in downtown L.A. Forty people will be selected, and this session will focus on one specific topic related to charter reform. If you’re interested, apply on Rewrite LA’s website by Tuesday .

How else can I weigh in on charter reform if I don’t get picked?

There are more assemblies planned for 2026. In the meantime, Rewrite LA is asking residents to share their thoughts here for what the assembly should address and how the city should be run. You also can give public comment at upcoming Charter Reform Commission meetings or submit written comments at ReformLAcharter@lacity.org .

Go deeper 

• Want residents, not politicians, to find answers to LA’s thorniest problems? Try a civic assembly

The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended an order blocking full SNAP payments, amid signals that the government shutdown could soon end and food aid payments resume.

The order keeps in place at least for a few more days a chaotic situation. People who depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to feed their families in some states have received their full monthly allocations, while others have received nothing.

The order will expire just before midnight Thursday.

The Senate has approved a bill to end the shutdown and the House of Representatives could vote on it as early as Wednesday. Reopening the government would restart the program that helps 42 million Americans buy groceries, but it's not clear how quickly full payments would resume.

The justices chose what is effectively the path of least resistance, anticipating the federal government shutdown will end soon while avoiding any substantive legal ruling about whether lower court orders to keep full payments flowing during the shutdown are correct.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only one of the nine justices to say she would have revived the lower court orders immediately, but didn't otherwise explain her vote. Jackson signed the initial order temporarily freezing the payments.

Beneficiaries in some states have received their full monthly allocations while in others they have received nothing. Some states have issued partial payments.

How quickly SNAP benefits could reach recipients if the government reopens would vary by state. But states and advocates say that it's easier to make full payments quickly than partial ones.

Carolyn Vega, a policy analyst at the advocacy group Share Our Strength, also said there could be some technical challenges for states that have issued partial benefits to send out the remaining amount.

An urgent need for beneficiaries

In Pennsylvania, full November benefits went out to some people on Friday. But Jim Malliard, 41, of Franklin, said he had not received anything by Monday.

Malliard is a full-time caretaker for his wife, who is blind and has had several strokes this year, and his teenage daughter, who suffered severe medical complications from surgery last year.

That stress has only been compounded by the pause in the $350 monthly SNAP payment he previously received for himself, his wife and daughter. He said he is down to $10 in his account and is relying on what's left in the pantry — mostly rice and ramen.

"It's kind of been a lot of late nights, making sure I had everything down to the penny to make sure I was right," Malliard said. "To say anxiety has been my issue for the past two weeks is putting it mildly."

The political wrangling in Washington has shocked many Americans, and some have been moved to help.

"I figure that I've spent money on dumber stuff than trying to feed other people during a manufactured famine," said Ashley Oxenford, a teacher who set out a "little food pantry" in her front yard this week for vulnerable neighbors in Carthage, New York.

SNAP has been the center of an intense fight in court

The Trump administration chose to cut off SNAP funding after October due to the shutdown. That decision sparked lawsuits and a string of swift and contradictory judicial rulings that deal with government power — and impact food access for about 1 in 8 Americans.

The administration went along with two rulings on Oct. 31 by judges who said the government must provide at least partial funding for SNAP. It eventually said recipients would get up to 65% of their regular benefits. But it balked last week when one of the judges said it must fund the program fully for November, even if that means digging into funds the government said need to be maintained in case of emergencies elsewhere.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to pause that order.

An appeals court said Monday that full funding should resume, and that requirement was set to kick in Tuesday night before the top court extended the order blocking full SNAP payments.

Congressional talks about reopening government

The U.S. Senate on Monday passed legislation to reopen the federal government with a plan that would include replenishing SNAP funds. Speaker Mike Johnson told members of the House to return to Washington to consider the deal a small group of Senate Democrats made with Republicans.

President Trump has not said whether he would sign it if it reaches his desk, but told reporters at the White House on Sunday that it "looks like we're getting close to the shutdown ending."

Still, the Trump administration said in a Supreme Court filing Monday that it shouldn't be up to the courts.

"The answer to this crisis is not for federal courts to reallocate resources without lawful authority," Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the papers. "The only way to end this crisis — which the Executive is adamant to end — is for Congress to reopen the government."

After Tuesday's ruling, Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on social media: "Thank you to the Court for allowing Congress to continue its swift progress."

The coalition of cities and nonprofit groups who challenged the SNAP pause said in a court filing Tuesday that the Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, is to blame for the confusion.

"The chaos was sown by USDA's delays and intransigence," they said, "not by the district court's efforts to mitigate that chaos and the harm it has inflicted on families who need food."
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WASHINGTON — Flight disruptions are likely to continue even after the government reopens , airlines and aviation regulators warned, as airlines canceled scores of flights on Tuesday.

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines to reduce air traffic at 40 of the nation's busiest airports, with cuts still ramping up to 10% of flights by Friday. The agency has been dealing with persistent staffing shortages of air traffic controllers , who are required to work without pay during the shutdown, which is now the longest in U.S. history at 42 days and counting.

This past weekend, the FAA reported staffing shortages at dozens of facilities, prompting the agency to slow air traffic to relieve pressure on air traffic controllers who did show up to work. On Tuesday, airlines canceled more than 1,200 flights, according to the aviation tracking site FlightAware .

The situation seemed to be improving somewhat on Tuesday, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, with only a handful of FAA facilities reporting staffing shortages. But Duffy said that air traffic restrictions would remain in place until regulators are satisfied that staffing is back to normal levels.

"We're going to wait to see the data on our end before we take out the restrictions in travel," Duffy said during a press conference at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. "But it depends on controllers coming back to work."

Even when those restrictions are lifted, it may take several days for airlines to return to normal operations.

"It's gonna take a bit to unwind," said former FAA administrator Randy Babbitt in an interview with NPR's All Things Considered.

"The airplanes are in the wrong cities and so forth. They're going to have to sort all that out as well. So a good deal of the responsibility will be the carriers getting their schedules and the aircraft and personnel back in the right positions to resume normal flying," Babbitt said.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Tuesday that airlines may have to "stop flying" if Congressional lawmakers don't vote to end the government shutdown.

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An aviation industry trade group, Airlines for America, also warned that it will take time for carriers to get back to normal.

"Airlines' reduced flight schedules cannot immediately bounce back to full capacity right after the government reopens. It will take time, and there will be residual effects for days," the group said in a statement.

The FAA argues the flight restrictions are necessary to keep the system safe while fewer air traffic controllers are showing up to work during the government shutdown. Some of those controllers have taken on second jobs during the shutdown, and many have called in sick.

But to the Trump administration's critics, the move appears to be about more than just safety. Some Democrats argue that the cuts were a political ploy to raise the pressure to end the government shutdown.

Secretary Duffy rejected that charge on Tuesday, saying the administration was responding to real concerns from pilots and mounting concerns about increasing loss of separation between aircraft.

And he warned of even bigger disruptions ahead if lawmakers do not vote to end the shutdown .

"You may find airlines that stop flying, full stop," Duffy said in Chicago. "You might have airlines that say, we're going to ground our planes, we're not going to fly anymore. That's how serious this is."
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