LAPD Ends Taxpayer-Funded Protection of Former VP Kamala Harris Over Mounting Criticism

After reporting this week about the absurd waste of taxpayer funds to provide former Vice President Kamala Harris additional and ongoing taxpayer-funded security detail, first by the CHP, then by LAPD, the Los Angeles Police Department on Saturday announced that it discontinued its protection Harris after heavy criticism within its own ranks that officers were being diverted from crime suppression, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“Criticism within its own ranks…” Good. There was plenty of criticism throughout the state over Gov. Gavin Newsom’s bonehead move authorizing CHP then LAPD security detail for the former Vice President.

As the Globe reported, by statute, vice presidents and their families receive Secret Service protection only while in office. There is a standard six-month grace period in which the former vice president and their immediate family may remain under Secret Service watch.

How quickly Gov. Gavin Newsom moved from granting Harris “dignitary” status, to providing CHP security detail for Harris, to saddling Los Angeles taxpayers with the bill for her personal protection. And as KFI’s John Kobylt said Thursday in our show segment, the police officers would be on overtime pay, adding insult to injury.

As President Donald Trump  revoked her Secret Service protection, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom predictably criticized Trump, with Bass calling it an act of “political retaliation” and Newsom stating that the safety of public officials should not be subject to “vindictive political impulses.”

Pot, meet kettle.

As the LAT reported:

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.

Hey LA Times – Biden gave Harris a full 18-month Secret Service protection extension.

“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,” LAT continued. “The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file LAPD officers, criticized the move.”

Good.

In a statement, the League board of directors said:

“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.”

“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.”

Well said.

Kamala Harris has had eight months of additional secret service detail. She’s a private citizen now, about to embark on a book tour. Either she or her publisher should pay for private security if they feel it is necessary.

This is such middle-finger move by pompous, elitist politicians Kamala Harris and Gov. Newsom to the peasants of California. It is also more evidence that today’s elected Democrats see political office as an upwardly mobile lifestyle opportunity, and use taxpayer-funded public office as if they are rock stars or movie stars. Except rock stars and movie earn their own money and pay their own way.

As The Atlantic said in November 2024, “They [Democrats] have tried to do a zillion different things and done them badly, at great expense.” This is just more of that.

Gavin Newsom, call your office. You’re writing checks you can’t afford to pay.