Office of Emergency Services: training: transnational repression.

Senator Caballero, working with Assembly Members Bains and Soria, seeks to embed a formal transnational repression recognition and response training within the state’s emergency services framework by directing the Office of Emergency Services to develop the training through the California Specialized Training Institute in consultation with the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, with completion due by January 1, 2027. This opening move centers a new training obligation inside the existing emergency services apparatus and ties it to the collaborative input of the state’s law-enforcement standards body.

The training would be designed to provide law enforcement with unbiased information on transnational repression and would cover six substantive areas: methods to identify tactics across physical and digital forms; governments known to employ repression and the specific tactics they use; best practices for prevention, reporting, and response by local and state agencies; information about communities targeted by repression and related misinformation (including labeling of dissidents and the role of international law enforcement cooperatives); guidance, best practices, and identified federal trends on national security and public safety; and culturally competent outreach to diverse diaspora communities and subject-matter experts. Definitions are provided for “human rights” and “transnational repression,” and the measure explicitly states it shall not prohibit First Amendment rights. The content is to be informed by federal guidance and coordinated with POST.

Implementation considerations and scope are governed by the bill’s structure: CSTI, under OES, would develop the training in consultation with POST, with no explicit funding appropriation attached to the measure, and the fiscal committee is involved in the evaluation process. The text does not specify delivery format (online versus in-person), mandatory versus voluntary participation, or a statewide deployment mandate to local agencies, nor does it create a dedicated local funding requirement. The proposal situates the training within the broader California Emergency Services Act framework and emphasizes alignment with federal perspectives, international cooperation contexts such as INTERPOL, and culturally competent engagement, while leaving questions about ongoing updates, dissemination, and accountability to future budgeting and implementation actions.