Anti-truancy efforts ) in 2010 In 2011, Harris urged criminal penalties for parents of truant children as she did as District Attorney of San Francisco, allowing the court to defer judgment if the parent agreed to a mediation period to get their child back in school. Critics charged that local prosecutors implementing her directives were overzealous in their enforcement and Harris's policy adversely affected families. In 2013, Harris issued a report titled "In School + On Track", which found that more than 250,000 elementary school students in the state were "chronically absent" and the statewide truancy rate for elementary students in the 2012–2013 school year was nearly thirty percent, at a cost of nearly $1.4billion to school districts, since funding is based on attendance rates.
Environmental protection Harris prioritized environmental protection as attorney general, first securing a $44million settlement to resolve all damages and costs associated with the
Cosco Busan oil spill, in which a container ship collided with
San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and spilled 50,000gallons of
bunker fuel into the
San Francisco Bay. In the aftermath of the 2015
Refugio oil spill, which deposited about 140,000gallons of crude oil off the coast of
Santa Barbara, California, Harris toured the coastline and directed her office's resources and attorneys to investigate possible criminal violations. Thereafter, operator
Plains All American Pipeline was indicted on 46 criminal charges related to the spill, with one employee indicted on three criminal charges. In 2019, a Santa Barbara jury returned a verdict finding Plains guilty of failing to properly maintain its pipeline and another eight misdemeanor charges; they were sentenced to pay over $3million in fines and assessments. From 2015 to 2016, Harris secured multiple multi-million-dollar settlements with fuel service companies
Chevron,
BP,
ARCO,
Phillips 66, and
ConocoPhillips to resolve allegations they failed to properly monitor the hazardous materials in its underground storage tanks used to store gasoline for retail sale at hundreds of California gas stations. In summer 2016, automaker
Volkswagen AG agreed to pay up to $14.7billion to settle a raft of claims related to so-called
Defeat Devices used to
cheat emissions standards on its diesel cars while actually emitting up to forty times the levels of harmful nitrogen oxides allowed under state and federal law. Harris and the chair of the
California Air Resources Board,
Mary D. Nichols, announced that California would receive $1.18billion as well as another $86million paid to the state of California in civil penalties. Harris's office was later awarded a $1.6million grant from the
Manhattan District Attorney's initiative to eliminate the backlogs of untested
rape kits. In 2015, Harris conducted a 90-day review of
implicit bias in policing and
police use of deadly force. In April 2015, Harris introduced the first of its kind "Principled Policing: Procedural Justice and Implicit Bias" training, designed in conjunction with
Stanford University psychologist and professor
Jennifer Eberhardt, to help law enforcement officers overcome barriers to neutral policing and rebuild trust between law enforcement and the community. All Command-level staff received the training. The training was part of a package of reforms introduced within the California Department of Justice, which also included additional resources deployed to increase the recruitment and hiring of diverse special agents, an expanded role for the department to investigate officer-related shooting investigations and community policing. The same year, Harris's California Department of Justice became the first statewide agency in the country to require all its police officers to wear
body cameras. Harris also announced a new state law requiring every law enforcement agency in California to collect, report, and publish expanded statistics on how many people are shot, seriously injured or killed by peace officers throughout the state. chief
Charlie Beck, Harris, and civil rights lawyer
Constance L. Rice celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. Later that year, Harris appealed a judge's order to take over the prosecution of a
high-profile mass murder case and to eject all 250 prosecutors from the Orange County district attorney's office over allegations of misconduct by
Republican D.A.
Tony Rackauckas. Rackauckas was alleged to have illegally employed jailhouse informants and concealed evidence. Harris noted that it was unnecessary to ban all 250 prosecutors from working on the case, as only a few had been directly involved, later promising a narrower criminal investigation. The
U.S. Department of Justice began an investigation into Rackauckas in December 2016, but he was not re-elected. In 2016, Harris announced a patterns and practices investigation into purported civil rights violations and use of
excessive force by the two largest law enforcement agencies in
Kern County, California, the
Bakersfield Police Department and the
Kern County Sheriff's Department. Labeled the "deadliest police departments in America" in a five-part
Guardian expose, a separate investigation commissioned by the
ACLU and submitted to the California Department of Justice corroborated reports of police using
excessive force.
Planned Parenthood In 2016, Harris's office seized videos and other information from the apartment of an antiabortion activist who had made secret recordings and then accused
Planned Parenthood doctors of illegally selling fetal tissue. Harris had announced that her office would investigate the activist in the summer of 2015. She was facing increasing criticism for not taking public action by the time Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against the activist.
Sex crimes In 2011, Harris obtained a guilty plea and a four-year prison sentence from a
stalker who used
Facebook and
social engineering techniques to illegally access the private photographs of women whose social media accounts he hijacked. Harris commented that the Internet had "opened up a new frontier for crime". Later that year, Harris created the eCrime Unit within the California Department of Justice, a 20-attorney unit targeting technology crimes. In 2015, several purveyors of so-called
revenge porn sites based in California were arrested, charged with felonies, and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. In the first prosecution of its kind in the United States, Kevin Bollaert was convicted on 21 counts of identity theft and six counts of extortion and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Harris brought up these cases when California Congresswoman
Katie Hill was targeted for similar cyber exploitation by her ex-husband and forced to resign in late 2019. In 2016, Harris announced the arrest of
Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer on felony charges of
pimping a
minor, pimping, and conspiracy to commit pimping. The warrant alleged that 99 percent of Backpage's revenue was directly attributable to prostitution-related ads, many of which involved victims of sex trafficking, including children under the age of 18. The pimping charge against Ferrer was dismissed by the California courts in 2016 on the grounds of
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but in 2018, Ferrer pleaded guilty in California to
money laundering and agreed to give evidence against the former co-owners of Backpage. Ferrer simultaneously pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering and conspiracy to facilitate prostitution in Texas state court and Arizona federal court. Under pressure, Backpage announced that it was removing its adult section from all its U.S. sites. Harris welcomed the move, saying, "I look forward to them shutting down completely." The investigations continued after she became a senator, and, in April 2018, Backpage and affiliated sites were seized by federal law enforcement.
Transnational criminal organizations , California. During her term as attorney general, Harris's office oversaw major investigations and prosecutions targeting transnational criminal organizations for their involvement in violent crime, fraud schemes, drug trafficking, and smuggling. Significant arrests and seizures (of weapons, drugs, cash, and other assets) under Harris targeted the
Tijuana Cartel (2011), the
Nuestra Familia,
Norteños, and the
Vagos Motorcycle Club (2011), the
Norteños (2015), the
Crips (2015), the
Mexican Mafia (2016), and businesses in the
Los Angeles Fashion District accused of operating a major money-laundering hub for Mexican narcotics traffickers (2014). In summer 2012, Harris signed an accord with the
Attorney General of Mexico,
Marisela Morales, to improve coordination of law enforcement resources targeting
transnational gangs engaging in the sale and trafficking of human beings across the
San Ysidro border crossing. The accord called for closer integration on investigations between offices and sharing best practices. In 2012,
Governor Jerry Brown signed into law two bills advanced by Harris to combat human trafficking. In November, Harris presented a report titled "The State of Human Trafficking in California 2012" at a symposium attended by
U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Attorney General Morales, outlining the growing prevalence of human trafficking in the state, and highlighting the involvement of transnational gangs in the practice. In early 2014, Harris issued a report titled, "Gangs Beyond Borders: California and the Fight Against Transnational Crime", addressing the prominent role of drug, weapons, and human trafficking, money laundering, and technology crimes employed by various
drug cartels from
Mexico,
Armenian Power,
18th Street Gang, and
MS-13 and offering recommendations for state and local law enforcement to combat the criminal activity. Later that year, Harris led a bipartisan delegation of
state attorneys general to
Mexico City to discuss transnational crime with Mexican prosecutors. Harris then convened a summit focused on the use of technology to fight transnational organized crime with state and federal officials from the U.S., Mexico, and
El Salvador. == References ==