The Brief

Roughly a month after the Los Angeles Unified School District revoked its AI chatbot, Ed, communities of parents, teachers and experts are demanding that the school district respond to their concern that the short-lived association with AllHere, the company that built and supported the program, has potentially compromised data on the district’s larger educational priorities.

“While we welcome technological advancements, it’s crucial to engage in transparent discussions with educators, educational staff, parents, and policymakers about the risks and impacts of AI in schools,” said Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), in a statement.

UTLA also encouraged the district to engage outside counsel and move forward with an investigation. Myart-Cruz also emphasized in the statement that any AI tools moving forward are part of collective bargaining.

School board member Rocío Rivas said in a July 31 Facebook post that the district has “initiated investigations” to look into allegations of compromised data.

A spokesperson for LAUSD said on July 15 that regardless of what happens to AllHere, student data will be protected by security measures that forbid the company from storing student data outside the U.S., unless the district grants the company permission to do so.

The lead-up

In March, LAUSD rolled out the red carpet to introduce Ed, a smiling sun chatbot designed to serve as a personal assistant for students — capable of connecting them to mental health resources, informing them of cafeteria menus and waking them up in the morning.

The district has repeatedly justified its decision to use AllHere.

“Los Angeles Unified launched a rigorous and competitive RFP (request for proposal) process and adhered to the District’s procurement process,” a district spokesperson told EdSource. “What we intended to develop did not readily exist as an off-the-shelf product, and we needed to build this from the ground up.”

The district considered three entities — AllHere, Afirma and Kokomo 24/7, which LAUSD collaborated with to provide telehealth services — and paid AllHere roughly $3 million for the product.

Carvalho said the bot was also designed to nudge students who are falling behind and allow them to click on resources for help. He also reassured the March event’s attendees that agencies at various levels — local, state and national — would help monitor any cybersecurity concerns.

At the time, he acknowledged that Ed might endure some challenges but that the district was committed to its success.

“Just like humans are not perfect — although sometimes, in certain political circles, some say they are — the technology produced by humans isn’t perfect either,” Carvalho said at the March event.

“With all of the protections against the vulnerabilities, there is always a concern. That’s why we are over vigilant,” he said.

The rollout

Ed was supposed to be rolled out in phases — beginning with the district’s 100 priority schools.

Three months later, on June 14, alarms began to sound, and AllHere had furloughed the bulk of its staff due to financial challenges, The 74 reported. Meanwhile, the CEO left.

In response — and because AllHere staff were unable to supervise it — the district removed the chatbot feature. LAUSD, however, still owns Ed, the district spokesperson confirmed, and the resource is still largely available to families.

The LAUSD spokesperson said Ed’s chatbot will return to families when the “human-in-the-loop aspect is re-established.”

“Los Angeles Unified was surprised by the financial disruption to AllHere. We were not made aware of any red flags concerning the organization, its solvency, or any financial issues,” the district spokesperson said.

“We had every confidence in their ability to develop a solid product. We, like other districts, were notified of their financial collapse and immediately ceased payment for a pending invoice.”

The spokesperson also said that the district has not found a connection between what happened at AllHere and a data breach known as the Snowflake incident, adding that AllHere “does not maintain data on Snowflake.”

Concerns over potentially compromised data have remained in the LAUSD community since, leading the district to begin investigating.

The pushback

While Los Angeles Unified remains committed to Ed, community members and experts at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education continue to express their concern about student safety and the district’s priorities.

“All we want are smaller class sizes and happy teachers. Basic stuff,” said Joanna Belson, the parent of a senior at North Hollywood High School, whose sister teaches in the district. “We don’t want Ed. We don’t want AI.”

She added that the district should instead spend its money on expanding music and arts education — and extending sports programs to middle schools.

Echoing Belson, Alicia Baltazar, another LAUSD parent, voiced concerns about any potential data compromise, saying the district’s newfound emphasis on AI contradicts its new decision to ban cellphones in school. She added that the district should instead spend the money on bolstering its staff.

“I don’t know … how I’m going to tell my kid: ‘Stay off your cellphone. Don’t touch that at all. But here, use your laptop all day long. Use your chatbot,’” she said.

For Yasemin Copur-Gencturk, a professor at USC, the concerns lie in the technology itself.

Where the evidence?

Copur-Gencturk said there’s no evidence that the tool can accomplish what the district said it can do: promote academic recovery.

“AI has incredible potential to transform education and improve educational outcomes. There is no doubt about that. But there is a big ‘if,’” Copur-Gencturk said. “And I think many are ignoring that part. Most of the AI-based tools are not designed based on what we have learned from research on teaching and learning.”

She said, for example, that AI tends to take each learning goal separately, without considering how concepts build on or connect to one another. This is particularly common in subjects like mathematics and could negatively impact students’ learning experience.

School districts, she said, should not spend large sums of money on AI unless they are certain the necessary security measures are in place and will have the positive academic impact they are seeking.

“There’s a notion that as long as artificial intelligence is involved, or a newer technology is involved, it will solve the problems,” Copur-Gencturk said. “Unfortunately, life is not that simple. We really need to, as educators, as administrators, we really need to be more cautious.”

Beyond Los Angeles Unified

While LAUSD has struggled with its rollout of Ed, districts across the nation that are contemplating incorporating AI could feel the effects, said Robin Lake, the director of the nonprofit Center for Reinventing Public Education.

“We never want to see things like that happen, and it’s obviously a setback for LAUSD in their goals for that tool,” Lake said. “But it’s also potentially a setback for other districts around the country who might look to LAUSD and think, ‘Oh, no, I don’t want to take any risks at all around AI, because I don’t want to end up in the newspaper.’”

She also said LAUSD’s story could serve as a reminder for other districts to roll out any AI features more slowly and more carefully, especially amid a “gold rush of providers” and a desire to remain ahead of the curve.

Lake also emphasized the importance of the education communities coming together to communicate their needs to education technology companies — and stressed the need for state and federal governments to provide better guidance to help ensure AI is woven into education equitably.

Despite the challenges, however, Lake maintained that AI has incredible potential to transform education — and that a “couple blowups” experienced by one district should not deter others from pursuing AI tools.

“Could AI help transform the teaching profession? Could AI help address student mental health crises? Could AI help improve assessments in education?” Lake said.

“There’s so many, so many possibilities. There’s still big questions around all of them, but as times get tighter around money, as federal funding goes away, we really must look to all potential solutions, and AI should be one of those.”

In April 2023, the FBI discovered that Rafael Silva, an officer with the Delano Police Department in California’s Central Valley, had made violent threats against transgender people on TikTok.

Under a pseudonym, Silva posted several comments that the FBI found imminently dangerous. One read, “You ain’t safe. We finna change your pronouns soon. Was/were.” Another said that Silva’s “AR will track y’all down.” And yet another read, “The only power you’ll see is the one from a barrel and a 9mm,” according to investigative documents.

Silva is one of the 148 California law enforcement officers who engaged in explicitly biased conduct between 2014 and 2024, according to an investigation by The California Newsroom and UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program. Records show the officers used racist, sexist and homophobic slurs; mocked transgender people; made violent comments about Black people; and demeaned members of the public, co-workers and incarcerated people, records show.

Yet only about 12% were fired because of their conduct. Silva was not one of them. After leaving Delano, he went on to work for police departments in Avenal and Wasco.

The news organizations reviewed thousands of pages of internal affairs investigations, disciplinary records and court filings obtained from nearly 500 law enforcement and oversight agencies. The records show that some officers accused of overtly biased behavior often faced limited consequences, such as a letter of reprimand or training.

The California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, or POST, determines whether to decertify officers, barring them from working in law enforcement in the state. However, the responsibility to investigate misconduct and impose discipline generally falls to individual agencies and local oversight boards, according to POST.

An investigation of California law enforcement records found officers accused of racist, sexist and anti-LGBTQ conduct often remained employed.

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Despite that system, more than 40% of officers identified by the news organizations still work in California law enforcement, excluding corrections officers.

Silva did not respond to requests for comment. The Delano Police Department confirmed that Silva worked there until 2023, but declined further comment.

Attorneys, law enforcement officials and academics said the behavior erodes public trust, raises questions about officers’ credibility in court and undermines efforts to recruit and retain diverse police forces.

Law enforcement officers stand guard during a protest on June 14, 2025, in Los Angeles. 

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Law enforcement officers should be held to a high standard, said Vida Johnson, a Georgetown University law professor who has testified before Congress on white supremacy and policing.

Johnson said people who express explicit bias have no place in law enforcement.

“With such an important job, if someone is exhibiting any type of bias against a member of their community, I just don’t think they should have that job,” she said.

How biased conduct can undermine public trust and the courts

When officers exhibit explicit bias, it erodes trust between law enforcement and the communities they are sworn to protect.

“It undermines our cohesion as a country when you have different perceptions of who our institutions work on behalf of,” Johnson said.

Experts said bias against protected groups — including Black people, LGBTQ people and immigrants — sends a clear message to those communities: We are not here to serve you.

A billboard put up by the Orange County District Attorney’s office that reads, “crime doesn’t pay in Orange County. If you steal, we prosecute,” stands on the southbound 710 Freeway near Del Amo Boulevard in Long Beach, California, on March 11, 2024.

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In a 2022 case, Orange County District Attorney’s Office investigator Eric Franke called a security guard who had asked him to leave a building an “angry Black lady.” In a separate incident, he remarked that Mexican people drink excessively. He received a letter of reprimand and still works for the DA’s office.

In separate cases in 2015 and 2018, Los Angeles Police Officer Armando Magana and San Diego Police Officer Alan Dyemartin ridiculed people for not speaking English. Both received letters of reprimand and kept their jobs.

The LAPD declined to comment on the incident for this story. Spokespersons for the Orange County DA’s office and the San Diego Police Department said the agencies take prejudiced behavior seriously and noted that both employees were disciplined. Franke did not comment. Magana declined to comment, and Dyemartin did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The distrust created by explicitly biased behavior can have real-world consequences, experts said.

When people believe police are prejudiced against them, they are less likely to call 911 or seek help from law enforcement, according to Stefan Vogler, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Vogler and other experts refer to this as the “overpolicing, underprotection paradox,” a phenomenon they say is common in communities of color and LGBTQ communities.

“They’re not getting the services that they’re promised by the state,” Vogler said.

Explicit bias can also undermine trust in the courtroom.

“You become concerned about using their testimony without corroboration,” said Richard Drooyan, former Los Angeles police commissioner. Drooyan recalled the O.J. Simpson case, when defense attorneys used audio recordings and witnesses to discredit an officer who had been a key witness.

Under the Supreme Court decision in Brady v. Maryland, defense attorneys have a right to any information that impacts the credibility of officers who are called to testify.

For justice to be served, it’s imperative that information affecting an officer’s credibility makes its way before the court, said Joseph Trigilio, a Loyola Marymount University law professor and executive director of the Loyola Project for the Innocent.

“A fact finder should look at all that and consider it,” he said. “A jury should hear all of that and ask that question.”

Reporters requested lists of officers whose records must be disclosed to the defense if they’re called to testify, commonly called Brady lists, from every district attorney’s office in counties where the investigation found cases of biased behavior. One office — the Madera County District Attorney’s Office — said it does not maintain such a list. Several district attorneys said they could not locate Brady material on the officers in question, while most declined to say whether the officers appeared on their lists.

Bias extended beyond the public to incarcerated people and fellow officers

The investigation also revealed dozens of instances of biased behavior against Black people, including 23 officers who were disciplined for using the n-word.

“In our profession, there’s no room for us to be able to do that,” said Sheryl Victorian, the chief of police in Waco, Texas, who advocates for strong relationships between police and the communities they serve.

The cases include a number of officers who made comments or shared images mocking George Floyd in the wake of his murder by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin. Two weeks after Floyd’s death, an officer shared a meme congratulating Floyd on being “2 weeks drug free.” Another shared a photo of Floyd being held on his stomach with a photoshopped image of a naked man sitting on him.

Two children view a mural of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Friday, as a Hennepin County court weighed the sentence to impose on former police officer Derek Chauvin. 

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Ben Grunwald, a law professor at Duke University, said negative bias is especially troubling because of the vast power given to police officers. He described officers as “street-level bureaucrats” with the capacity to use force, arrest people and put them in jail.

“The idea that these decisions that are really high stakes might be influenced by things like racism, sexism, homophobia — those should raise really serious concerns for everyone,” he said.

More than half of the 61 correctional officers identified by the investigation were still employed at the end of 2024, according to state controller data. CDCR, which employs more law enforcement officers than any other state agency, would not confirm whether they remain employed today.

In two cases at Pelican Bay State Prison, officers made casual comments about killing or shooting at Black people, and both received reprimands. At the California Men’s Colony, an officer taunted a transgender inmate to put lipstick on before going out to the yard, and the officer’s salary was temporarily reduced.

In response to questions from The California Newsroom and UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, a CDCR spokesperson said the agency takes corrective and disciplinary action when appropriate and that it has “implemented new staff misconduct regulations, designed with the goals of eliminating bias, increasing transparency and improving staff accountability.”

Correctional officers wield immense power over incarcerated people, who depend on them for their basic needs and access to programs that can help them successfully reenter society, said James King, program director for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a criminal justice reform organization.

“It becomes much deeper than mere words because there’s so much power and authority behind those words,” King said.

Witnessing prejudiced behavior, even when it happens between officers, undermines rehabilitation, he said.

James King stands for a portrait outside the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, California, on June 9, 2026. King, who is formerly incarcerated, is now Director of Programs at the Ella Baker Center, where he oversees and works on legislation that provides opportunity for communities that have historically been left out of policy considerations. 

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“If we are really committed to creating a safer world for all of us, then it starts with how we treat people, even as they are incarcerated and preparing to return to society,” he said.

Most of the cases we analyzed — 79% — involved comments or actions between police officers and other members of the criminal justice system, including fellow officers, court clerks, civilian employees and even a judge while court was in session.

In the case files, officers described how explicit bias in the workplace impacted them.

In the Southern California city of Orange, a Black officer reported applying to a different law enforcement agency due to Orange Police Sgt. Darrin Hall’s use of racist jokes and homophobic slurs in the workplace between 2020 and 2022. Hall received a letter stating that he would be demoted and retired later that month.

The Orange Police Department declined to comment on the incident, as it was a personnel matter.

A Los Angeles police officer wears an AXON body camera.

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Drooyan, the former L.A. police commissioner, said prejudiced behavior can create difficult working relationships between officers, leading to a morale problem, and even physical danger in high-risk or volatile environments.

“When they get into a tough situation, if they can’t trust each other, I think it becomes problematic,” he said.

Grunwald said fraught relations among law enforcement officers pose an existential problem as law enforcement leaders are trying to diversify their ranks.

“At a time when police departments are really struggling to retain good officers, and especially at a time when [departments] are struggling to attain officers of color, you’d think that this could be an important area of policy,” he said.

Uneven discipline allowed many officers to remain on the job

Despite the seriousness of explicitly biased behavior — and the fact that it can get an officer decertified — discipline varied across the 148 officers in the investigation.

Of these officers, 39% were demoted, suspended or had their pay reduced. About 20% received a letter of reprimand or were ordered to undergo training — discipline that may not permanently remain in their personnel files.

Experts said the cases uncovered by the investigation likely represent only a fraction of incidents involving explicit bias.

“We have every reason to believe that most of these types of incidents go unreported,” Johnson, the Georgetown law professor, said. “The Blue Wall of Silence. The fact that people are fearful of police. Making a police complaint isn’t easy.”

Even with those barriers, people filed more than 19,600 complaints alleging prejudiced behavior by California law enforcement officers between 2016 and 2024, according to data submitted to the state. Agencies sustained just 349 of those complaints. The figures do not include racially biased traffic stops.

Reporters were only able to examine cases that fell within a narrow band of misconduct dictated by California’s public records laws.

King said officers like Silva, the Delano police officer who threatened to shoot and kill transgender people, are not simply just “a few bad apples.”

“Law enforcement [officers] develop deep-seated cultures that you cannot train away, you cannot address through the hiring process or through the selection process,” he said.

Swift, appropriate action — via verbal reprimand, retraining or more severe discipline — is key to creating a culture of service to the community, according to Victorian, the Waco police chief.

“If nobody actually addresses the behavior when it occurs, then they continue to talk that way, and that behavior becomes acceptable,” she said.

Some officers appealed discipline and succeeded in having penalties reduced at least 38 times. Others resigned before agencies completed disciplinary proceedings.

Silva was allowed to resign rather than be terminated. The California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training declined to decertify him.

The city of Wasco confirmed that Silva was still one of its police officers as of June 24, 2026.

Nicole Nguyen of Stanford’s Big Local News and Marquis Mahone-Chambers, Katey Rusch, Elizabeth Santos and Julian Wray of UC Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program contributed to this story. A grant from the Google News Initiative supported the project.

About the data analysis

The Police Records Access Project obtains records from law enforcement and oversight agencies across California involving cases in which agencies determined that officers violated certain policies, including policies prohibiting prejudice against members of protected groups. Project staff compile those files and use algorithms to identify cases in which agencies found policy violations. Staff then review the records to confirm that an agency sustained the allegation.

Reporters from The California Newsroom and UC Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program searched the text of the files and AI-generated summaries of misconduct cases using slurs and terms such as “racist” and “prejudice” to identify cases for further review. Reporters consulted academics, attorneys and law enforcement officials to develop a definition of explicit bias. Three journalists analyzed the cases to determine whether officers exhibited explicit bias against members of a protected group. Experts also reviewed a subset of cases.

To determine whether officers challenged discipline or sought to seal misconduct records, reporters searched local courts for civil lawsuits. Staff also obtained certification and employment records from POST and the state controller’s office to determine whether officers remained employed in law enforcement, including those working for CDCR.

Reporters reached out to district attorneys in the counties where we identified officers who were disciplined for biased conduct to determine if they were on Brady lists. While a few offices confirmed that the officers did not appear in their Brady materials, most said those records are exempt from public disclosure and declined to provide the information.

Los Angeles city property owners voted down a fee increase that sought to address a massive backlog of streetlight repairs.

The L.A. city clerk certified the results Wednesday: Just under 80% of the weighted votes cast rejected the idea.

The city sent ballots to owners of more than 580,000 public, commercial and private parcels in April. They were asked if they would pay more in a yearly assessment to boost the city’s streetlight budget, which has essentially been frozen since the 1990s.

Currently, it takes about one year to repair streetlights from the time an issue is reported.

In a joint statement, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and other leaders said they remain committed to improving the city’s streetlighting network.

“Every Angeleno deserves to feel safe walking their dogs, returning home from work and parking their cars at night, and the city is committed to delivering the reliable street lighting that makes that a reality,” the statement said. It was signed by Bass, L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez and Katy Yaroslavsky.

The background

Most of the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting budget comes from an assessment that people who own property near streetlights pay on their county property tax bill.

The amount people pay depends on the kind of property they own and how much they benefit from lighting. A typical single-family home currently pays $53 annually, and in total, the assessments bring in about $45 million annually for the city to repair and maintain streetlights.

According to a report from the city, the amount needed in assessments from property owners to meet the needs of the city’s streetlights in the upcoming fiscal year is nearly $112 million. That's well over double the amount the city will collect during that time period now that property owners rejected the fee increase.

Changing the amount the Bureau of Street Lighting gets from the assessment requires a vote among property owners who benefit from the lights. This year’s vote was the first attempt to increase the fees.

What happens now?

Nothing changes, really.

According to the Bureau of Street Lighting’s website, the city “will operate within its parameters, including funding … in other words, status quo.”

Had property owners voted in favor of the higher assessment, the extra funds would have been used to double the number of staff to handle repairs and to procure solar streetlights, according to Miguel Sangalang, the head of the Bureau of Street Lighting.

In previous interviews with LAist, Sangalang said that with a larger budget, the timeline to repair simple fixes could be brought down to a week.

What else is the city doing to turn the lights back on?

In March, Mayor Bass announced an initiative to convert 60,000 streetlights to solar power over the next two years. The Mayor’s Office has said the partnership with LADWP will not have an impact on the city’s general fund.

Then in May, she said hundreds of solar streetlights had already been installed as part of the initiative near city parks, including those hosting World Cup watch parties.

City Council members have also used discretionary dollars to convert lights to solar technology, which are less vulnerable to theft, and also to fund overtime for repair teams.