Students answer the phone, ask questions, and gather all the critical details – just like in a real emergency. “I try to base it on actual calls that we have, the type of scenario,” Martinez said. “Other things will obviously be changed for them and then made so that it is appropriate for high school students.” When the call ends, an AI tool scores their performance based on how well they handled the emergency.
This kind of training is becoming increasingly important. Across the country, dispatch centers are struggling to find workers. In 2022, a study by the federal government estimated that nearly a third of emergency centers reported high vacancy rates.
A California court on Tuesday quickly denied Attorney General Rob Bonta’s request to halt the Riverside County Sheriff Department’s effort to recount ballots from the November 2025 special election.
In an unprecedented move, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican who is running for governor, seized roughly 650,000 ballots and began conducting a recount of votes. At a press conference Friday, he characterized the investigation as a “fact-finding mission” that is intended “just as much to prove the election is accurate as it is to show otherwise.”
Bonta’s office this month ordered Bianco and the Riverside County Sheriff Department to pause its work, citing “grave concerns” over the legality of the criminal investigation. The state Justice Department instructed the sheriff’s department to share any information that could substantiate its concerns in order to understand the basis for the investigation.
Those orders went unheeded, according to court filings. Bonta’s lawsuit in the 4th District Court of Appeal, filed Monday, asked that the court intervene in order “to prevent further abuse of the criminal process.” But a three-judge panel struck down Bonta’s request, writing that he should have filed his complaint with the Riverside County court. Bonta’s office said they were “evaluating next steps to ensure a swift and appropriate resolution to this matter.” “The Sheriff has not identified any particular crime that may have been committed by anyone — a necessary predicate to obtain a criminal search warrant,” said the attorney general’s office in an earlier statement to CalMatters. “The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office is not equipped nor legally authorized to play the role of elections monitor. By all appearances, this investigation is little more than a fishing expedition meant to sow distrust and undermine public confidence in our elections.”
Bonta has taken particular issue with the sworn statements that Bianco has made to a Riverside County judge to obtain warrants allowing him to seize the ballots. The sheriff got two warrants in February and another last week after receiving a complaint about ballot discrepancies from a Riverside County citizens’ group. Bonta has said the sheriff’s department statements his office reviewed did not establish enough probable cause to justify seizing election materials. The citizens’ group claimed Riverside County elections officials overstated the number of ballots counted in the November special election over Democrat-drawn congressional maps. Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco has denied the group’s claims and told county supervisors last month the group was using incomplete data that did not include confidential, provisional and other ballots his office received.
Ten weeks before the primary election, California Democrats still haven’t narrowed down the field of candidates enough to reduce the chances of splitting the vote so much that two Republicans make it to the ballot in November.
That’s what polling released by the Democratic Party on Tuesday showed, with the two GOP candidates — Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News host Steve Hilton — tied for the lead, and Democrats Rep. Eric Swalwell, billionaire Tom Steyer and former Rep. Katie Porter roughly tied behind them. The results mirrored other recent polls in the race.
It was the first of several polls party chairperson Rusty Hicks intends to release in an effort to nudge some of the candidates to drop out. “If you’re polling at 1 to 2 percent, do you have a path to get to 20? That’s the question,” he said. “Do you have a path to put you in a position to win the primary election?”
But the lower-polling candidates remain unlikely to bow out. Former controller Betty Yee, polling at 1 to 2 percent, told reporters Tuesday afternoon that she’s “staying the course.” Yee is the former vice chairperson of the party and placed second in a tally of party delegates’ support last month.
