The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) ended its protection for former Vice President Kamala Harris just days after beginning it, following President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of her Secret Service protection.
The media, and the Democrats, made a fuss about the end of Secret Service protection, but vice presidents are not entitled to it, and past vice presidents have also lost their protection about six months after leaving office.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) made a show of diverting California Highway Patrol (CPD) officers to provide Harris with security, and the LAPD joined in, as reported Thursday by the Los Angeles Times:
Los Angeles police Metropolitan Division officers, meant to be working crime-suppression assignments in hard-hit areas of the city, are instead providing security for former Vice President Kamala Harris, sources told The Times.
The department is “assisting the California Highway Patrol in providing protective services for former Vice President Kamala Harris until an alternate plan is established,” said Jennifer Forkish, L.A. police communications director. “This temporary coordinated effort is in place to ensure that there is no lapse in security.”
A dozen or more officers have begun working a detail to protect Harris after President Trump revoked her Secret Service protection as of Monday. Sources not authorized to discuss the details of the plan said the city would fund the security but that the arrangement was expected to be brief, with Harris hiring her own security in the near future.
By Saturday, the LAPD had ended its involvement, the Los Angeles Times reported:
The Los Angeles Police Department on Saturday discontinued its protection for former Vice President Kamala Harris after heavy criticism within its own ranks that officers were being diverted from crime suppression, sources told The Times.
LAPD Metropolitan Division officers had been assisting the California Highway Patrol in protecting Harris and were visible until Saturday morning outside her Brentwood home.
Both California police agencies scrambled this week to protect Harris after President Trump, her rival in November’s election, revoked Harris’s Secret Service protection last week. Thursday. President Biden had extended that protection for Harris beyond the six months after leaving office that vice presidents traditionally get.
Harris has declined to run for governor in 2026. Her political future remains uncertain as she mulls another presidential run in 2028.
LAPD ends protection of former Vice President Kamala Harris amid criticism over diverting cops, sources say
The Los Angeles Police Department on Saturday discontinued its protection for former Vice President Kamala Harris after heavy criticism within its own ranks that officers were being diverted from crime suppression, sources told The Times.
LAPD Metropolitan Division officers had been assisting the California Highway Patrol in protecting Harris and were visible until Saturday morning outside her Brentwood home.
Both California police agencies scrambled this week to protect Harris after President Trump, her rival in November’s election, revoked Harris’s Secret Service protection last week. President Biden had extended that protection for Harris beyond the six months after leaving office that vice presidents traditionally get.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had directed the LAPD to provide the security team to assist the CHP in the short term. According to sources, those Metro officers had to be drawn away from crime suppression work in the San Fernando Valley this week.
The department is “assisting the California Highway Patrol in providing protective services for former Vice President Kamala Harris until an alternate plan is established,” said Jennifer Forkish, L.A. police communications director, on Thursday. “This temporary coordinated effort is in place to ensure that there is no lapse in security.”
The CHP has not indicated how the LAPD’s move would alter its arrangement with the former vice president nor said how long it will continue.
A dozen or more LAPD officers began working a detail to protect Harris after Trump revoked her Secret Service protection as of Monday. Sources not authorized to discuss the details of the plan said the city would fund the security but that the arrangement was expected to be brief, with Harris hiring her own security in the near future.
A security detail was seen outside Harris’ Brentwood home by a Fox 11 helicopter as the station broke the story of the use of L.A. police earlier this week.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file LAPD officers, criticized the move.
“Pulling police officers from protecting everyday Angelenos to protect a failed presidential candidate who also happens to be a multi-millionaire… and who can easily afford to pay for her own security, is nuts,” its board of directors said.
The statement continued, “Mayor Karen Bass should tell Governor Newsom that if he wants to curry favor with Ms. Harris and her donor base, then he should open up his own wallet because LA taxpayers should not be footing the bill for this ridiculousness.”
Newsom, who was required to sign off on CHP protection, has not confirmed the arrangement to The Times, but a spokesperson for Newsom added: “The safety of our public officials should never be subject to erratic, vindictive political impulse.”
Bass, in a statement last week, commented on Trump scrapping the security detail for Harris, saying: “This is another act of revenge following a long list of political retaliation in the form of firings, the revoking of security clearances, and more. This puts the former Vice President in danger and I look forward to working with the governor to make sure Vice President Harris is safe in Los Angeles.”
On Saturday the mayor’s office said: “The plan was always to provide temporary support and I thank LAPD for protecting former VP Harris and always prioritizing the safety of all Angelenos.”
Deploying LAPD officers to protect Harris was a source of controversy within the department in years past.
During L.A. Police Chief Charlie Beck’s tenure, when Harris was a U.S. senator, plainclothes officers served as security and traveled with her from January 2017 to July 2018. Beck said at the time through a spokesman that the protection was granted based on a threat assessment.
Beck’s successor, Michel Moore, ended the protection in July 2018 after he said a new evaluation determined it was no longer needed. The decision came as The Times filed a lawsuit seeking records from then-Mayor Eric Garcetti detailing the costs of security related to his own extensive travel. Garcetti said he was unaware of the police protection until Moore ended it.
Former vice presidents usually get Secret Service protection for six months after leaving office, while former presidents are given protection for life. But before his term ended, then-President Biden signed an order to extend Harris’ protection to July 2026. Aides to Harris had asked Biden for the extension. Without it, her security detail would have ended last month, according to sources.
The curtailing of Secret Service protection comes as Harris is going to begin a book tour next month for her memoir, titled “107 Days.” The tour has 15 stops, which include visits to London and Toronto. The book title references the short length of her presidential campaign.
Harris, the first Black woman to serve as vice president, was the subject of an elevated threat level — particularly when she became the Democratic presidential contender last year. The Associated Press reports, however, a recent threat intelligence assessment by the Secret Service conducted on those it protects, such as Harris, found no red flags or credible evidence of a threat to the former vice president.
Why California shouldn’t foot the bill for Kamala Harris’s protection
The first time I worked alongside the California Highway Patrol’s Dignitary Protection Section was in Beverly Hills in the late 1990s. Think swimming pools and movie stars. The setting could have been a Hollywood caricature of itself: manicured hedges, a mansion where priceless Old World paintings hung in the hallways, and a guest list that ran from President Clinton to Barbara Streisand. The rest is appropriately redacted. I was a new Secret Service agent then still learning the art of protection, but amid the clinking glasses and camera flashes, what struck me most wasn’t the celebrities. It was the calm professionalism of the CHP officers beside me. That was my introduction to an agency that proved, time and again, to be one of the finest partners I encountered in 23 years of protecting American presidents.
That same agency is now in the headlines again because the CHP, along with the Los Angeles Police Department, has been tasked with protecting former Vice President Kamala Harris. This follows the Department of Homeland Security and President Trump’s decision to end her Secret Service protection in August, a decision some critics cast as political. But set the rhetoric aside: the decision was lawful, prudent and entirely in line with precedent and threat intelligence.
Since 2008, former vice presidents have received six months of Secret Service taxpayer-funded protection after leaving office. That’s it. President Biden extended Harris’s coverage to a full year, which was an exception to the long-standing six-month norm. Mike Pence, who left office under bipartisan criticism and faced objectively higher threats, was denied an extension beyond six months. Harris, like every vice president before her, has had plenty of time to adjust to private life and arrange her own security.
It’s worth remembering that until 1951, vice presidents received no Secret Service protection whatsoever and it was voluntary even then. It took the upheavals of the 1960s for permanent protection to become mandatory. The rules today are not a slight; they are the product of decades of balancing public duty with private status. The very fact that vice-presidential protection was not required until the 1960s highlights how exceptional continuous coverage really is.
The Secret Service has more than enough on its plate. Each September, the UN General Assembly brings 150 world leaders to New York, a logistical and workforce colossus. Add to that an ever-expanding roster of protectees and an international and American threat environment unlike any in modern memory, and the case for focusing resources is obvious. After two assassination attempts against him last year, President Trump is acutely aware of the consequences of political rhetoric. But decisions on protection must be judged by precedent and threat, not politics.
Which brings us back to the CHP and the LAPD. They are world-class agencies, fully capable of protecting Harris, just as they protect California’s governor, first family and visiting dignitaries. Their Dignitary Protection Section doesn’t just stand posts; it runs threat assessments, coordinates intelligence, and executes the same protective tradecraft the Secret Service practices daily. Having worked shoulder to shoulder with them in my earliest assignments and many times since, I can say with confidence: Harris is in good hands.
But capability isn’t the point here. Appropriateness is. When police unions themselves question whether their officers should be pulled off homicide cases or narcotics investigations to provide security for a private book tour, the problem is clear. Every officer detailed to protect Harris is one less officer tackling Los Angeles’s fentanyl crisis, or responding to wildfires, or working the endless grind of homelessness on the city’s streets. Security for a multi-city tour can run into the millions of dollars that publishers, who stand to profit, are far better placed to absorb than taxpayers.
There is no dishonor in Harris providing her own security. Many public figures do quietly, professionally and without subsidy. Indeed, some of the same private security firms employ former Secret Service agents and CHP veterans. To suggest otherwise is to confuse celebrity with sovereignty.
The California Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles Police Department deserve praise for stepping up when called upon as they always do. Their officers are some of the best in the world, and their history of partnership with the Secret Service is a model of interagency cooperation. But their resources are not infinite, and their first responsibility is to the citizens of California. Every hour an officer spends guarding a private citizen is an hour not spent on the crises California faces daily.
George Orwell once noted that “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” Strip away the noise, and the facts here are plain: precedent was followed, taxpayers should not carry a private burden, and California’s finest officers deserve to spend their time where they are most needed.
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