Kamala Harris is the “original defunder of the police” for overseeing the shutdown of a key anti-drug unit keeping gangs and fentanyl out of California, according to former agents from the department, who say she also boasts about cases she had no hand in.
Despite often touting her great experience “personally prosecuting” transnational criminal organizations, including at a CNN town hall this week, the Democratic presidential nominee, during her tenure as attorney general of California, oversaw the shutdown of the state’s Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement (BNE) in 2012.
“She could have fought the closure but she didn’t. I think her lack of action showed she wanted it,” Cary Cavalieri, a former special agent with the Department of Justice, told The Post, adding: “Kamala Harris was the original defunder of the police.”
Cavalieri and other former agents also called out Harris claiming she never actually prosecuted transnational drug or gang cases. They say she merely presided over arrests made by any number of state and federal agencies during her tenure.
The actual prosecution of the cases were made by local district attorneys or federal agencies, they said. But Harris claimed to have been the prosecutor, to make it seem as if she cracked down on serious crime even after the BNE was dismantled, two years into her term as AG.
“She was there for the photo op after it all went down,” Cavalieri said.
“Every stump speech she talks about ‘prosecuting’ these big cases,” Sara Campbell, a 30-year retired special agent in charge at the BNE who worked under Harris when she was AG, told The Post.
“It’s a lie. She didn’t prosecute any of those big drug and gang cases. This is how she’s gotten where she is.
“She simply says she did this or that and no one checks her. It’s all smoke and mirrors.”
California’s BNE was formed in 1927 and was the oldest drug enforcement agency in the country.
Its shuttering left the most populous state without its premier anti-drug and anti-gang fighting force, in the same year the fentanyl epidemic first rose to prominence.
“BNE was incredibly important in the fight against cartel and traffickers,” Steve Cooley, the second-longest-serving DA in Los Angeles County, told The Post.
“They would lead various task forces, especially in the smaller counties like Shasta County, where law enforcement had no expertise and the cartels were up there taking advantage of the situation.
“It was a great blow to the fight against narcotics to have the linchpin agency knocked out. Kamala Harris did not fight against it all.”
How and why the BNE was shut down is a matter of debate, with a number of former and current California law enforcement officers telling The Post that then-Gov. Jerry Brown went against the union that represented them and slashed $71 million from the budget for the Division of Law Enforcement. As a result, the BNE, then 400 agents strong and with roughly 50 task forces all over the state, was shut down.
Others, like Cavalieri and two former top agents with the BNE, believe Harris had an active hand in ensuring the BNE’s demise, even though she spoke out against the $71 million cuts when they were announced.
“It’s easy enough to pay lip service to something, but why didn’t she fight it more? She was the attorney general. We tried to fight it but she didn’t lift a finger,” said Cavalieri.
Campbell said that every year, BNE officials made sure to appeal to the state legislature for their annual funding. But after Harris took over the AG’s office, her top aide, Larry Wallace, who later had to resign over sex harassment charges, told Campbell not to bother about contacting Sacramento about funding.
“Jerry Brown did not shut down BNE,” former BNE special agent Campbell alleged. “He put out a statement saying he thought there were duplicative efforts going on among law enforcement, but it was Kamala Harris who shut down BNE. She did not like law enforcement.”
Jerry Hunter, the now-retired assistant chief of the BNE, told The Post he “intercepted” a white paper that he said was written by Wallace and that outlined the dismantling of the BNE.
“Wallace started shutting down cases right and left,” Hunter said. “He said basically [Harris] doesn’t want anything coming back to bite her.”
Former agents said the sprawling BNE, with its powerful network of task forces and relationships with federal law enforcement agencies, was vital in stemming the tide of drug smuggling.
Without it, cities in crisis like Oakland have been left without crucial help. Current Gov. Gavin Newsom had to send California Highway Patrol officers into the city this year because of spiraling crime rates.
“Back in the day, BNE agents would have gone in there,” one former BNE special agent said. “Now Newsom has to send in guys who usually write traffic tickets.”
“Most of the narcotics filtering in came from the southern border,” a former BNE special agent based in San Francisco told The Post. “We were the ones combating that throughout the state. We had 56 task forces working all over the state to prevent the flow of narcotics. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no more gate to stop the water from overflowing.”
The California Attorney General’s Office emailed a statement to The Post explaining that parts of the BNE were absorbed into other programs within California’s Division of Law Enforcement when Brown cut funding.
A source in the AG’s Office who did not want to be identified told The Post there are sufficient state and local law enforcement agencies to fight drugs and gangs despite the BNE’s demise.
Harris’ media team declined to speak to The Post on the record. However, in her 2011 inaugural address, she stated: “As attorney general, I am going to lead a renewed collaborative effort against gangs and organized crime … collaborating with our federal and local law enforcement partners to fight the gang problem will be a major focus of our work.”
Deaths caused by fentanyl overdoses in California jumped from 82 in 2012 to 6,453 in 2022, the most fatal ODs from the drug in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Brian Brokaw, who ran Harris’ campaign for both the AG and later the Senate, insisted Brown was wholly responsible for ending the BNE with his budget cuts. He also said Harris brought in some of her own people.
“Throughout her six years as attorney general, she made transnational gangs a focus of her law enforcement agency,” Brokaw insisted to The Post. “She worked with law enforcement from the federal level to local level, collaborating with them on both sides of the border.
“She made seizures of illegal firearms and illegal narcotics a priority and dismantled human trafficking operations.”
Sara Campbell disagreed with that claim.
“The AG’s Office under Harris never prosecuted a transnational gang or human trafficking case,” Campbell said. “The only cases they did were the ones that were important to her. I am ashamed I worked on one of those cases in particular. When you pick out and choose what to prosecute, that is not an investigation. That’s using your influence to go after what you want to go after.”
Campbell said she was most ashamed of working on the AG’s prosecution of pro-life activist David Daleiden, which is alleged to have been encouraged by Planned Parenthood, whose executives he filmed in July 2015. The case is ongoing and Daleiden could face jail time for making the videos without getting the executives’ permission to film them, as well as “manufacturing” a fake driving license.
Larry Wallace did not return The Post’s requests for comment.
