The Los Angeles Police Department suspended his protection for former vice president Kamala Harris on Saturday after strong criticisms within his own ranks that the officers were being diverted from the suppression of the crime, sources told the Times.
The Officers of the LapD Metropolitan Division had been helping California road patrol to protect Harris and were visible until Saturday morning outside his home in Brentwood.
Both California police agencies rushed this week to protect Harris after President Trump, his rival in the November elections, revoked Harris's secret service protection last week. Thursday. President Biden had extended that protection for Harris beyond six months after leaving the position that the vice presidents traditionally obtain.
The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, had ordered the LAPD to provide the security team to help the CHP in the short term. According to the sources, those Metro officers had to be far from the crime suppression work in the San Fernando Valley this week.
The department is “helping California road patrol to provide protection services for former vice president Kamala Harris until an alternative plan is established,” Jennifer Forkish, communications director of the Los Angeles Police on Thursday. “This temporary coordinated effort exists to ensure that there is no period of security.”
The CHP has not indicated how the LAPD movement would alter its agreement with the former vice president or say how long it will continue.
A dozen or more official LAPD began to work a detail to protect Harris after Trump revoked his protection of the secret service to Monday. Sources not authorized to discuss the details of the plan said the city would finance security, but that the agreement was expected to be brief, with Harris hiring its own security in the near future.
A Harris Brentwood saw a security detail outside Brentwood's house in Harris for a Fox 11 helicopter when the station broke the history of the use of the Los Angeles Police earlier this week.
The Los Angeles Police Protection League, the union that represents the base LAPD officers, criticized the movement.
“Extract police officers to protect daily angels to protect a failed presidential candidate who is also a billionaire … and that can easily pay their own security, it is crazy,” said their directors.
The statement continued: “Mayor Karen Bass should tell Governor Newsom that if she wants Curry in favor of Mrs. Harris and her donor base, then she must open her own wallet because Los Angeles taxpayers should not take into account the bill of this ridicule.”
Newsom, who was asked to sign the protection of CHP, has not confirmed the agreement to the Times, but a Newsom spokesman added: “The safety of our public officials should never be subject to a vindic and vindictive political impulse.”
Bass, in a statement last week, commented on Trump discarding Harris's security details, saying: “This is another act of revenge after a long list of political reprisals in the form of shots, the revocation of security authorizations and more. This puts the former vice president in danger and I hope to work with the governor to ensure that Vice President Harris is safe in Los Angeles.”
The deployment of LAPD officers to protect Harris was a source of controversy within the department in past years.
During the mandate of the Los Angeles police chief, Charlie Beck, when Harris was a US senator, Plainclothes officers served as security and traveled with her from January 2017 to July 2018. Beck said at that time through a spokesman that the protection was granted based on an evaluation of threats.
Beck's successor, Michel Moore, finished protection in July 2018 after he said a new evaluation determined that it was no longer necessary. The decision occurred when the Times filed a lawsuit that sought records of then alkalor Eric Garcetti that details the security costs related to his own extensive trip. Garcetti said he was not aware of police protection until Moore finished it.
The former vice presidents generally obtain protection of the secret service for six months after leaving office, while former presidents receive protection for life. But before his mandate ended, then President Biden signed an order to extend Harris's protection to July 2026. Harris assistants had asked Biden the extension. Without him, his security detail would have ended last month, according to Fuentes.
The reduction of secret service protection occurs when Harris will begin a book tour next month for his memoirs, entitled “107 days”. The tour has 15 stops, which include visits to London and Toronto. The title of the book refers to the short duration of its presidential campaign.
Harris, the first black woman to serve as vice president, was subject to a high threat level, particularly when she became the Democratic presidential contender last year. Associated Press's reports, however, a recent evaluation of intelligence of threats for the secret service carried out in those that protects, such as Harris, did not find red flags or credible evidence of a threat to the former vice president.
