What Metro's new police chief needs to do to make riders feel safe

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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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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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.