California Bureau of Investigation

The California Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is California's statewide criminal investigative bureau under the California Department of Justice (CA DOJ), in the Division of Law Enforcement (DLE). It is administered by the Office of the State Attorney General and provides expert investigative services to assist local, state, tribal, and federal agencies in major criminal investigations ranging across the state. The CBI is the largest of the Division of Law Enforcement agencies with approximately 210 sworn law enforcement officers (Special Agents) as of 2019.

## History

The California Bureau of Investigation (CBI), was established in 1918 as the California Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (CBCII). CBCII, along with the disbanded California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement (BNE) which was created in 1927 (the remainder of BNE merged with CBI in 2012), provided the state with its initial criminal investigative law enforcement capabilities and is considered the direct predecessor to the modern day CBI, the oldest, continuously operating, law enforcement investigative bureau/agency within CA DOJ, and the state. In 1998, despite many throughout the state already referring to it as such, the BI officially re-brands itself as "CBI" with the approval of the 30th Attorney General of California, Bill Lockyer, and becomes an extremely well-known and respected, state investigative law enforcement agency. At this point in time, CBI includes field operations, an organized crime unit, a witness protection program, a major crimes program, a gang/criminal extremist unit, and an intelligence unit. The DOJ/CBI Special Agents of this time are assigned to multiple task forces (state and federal), and assist other departments throughout the state with investigations, operations, support, and advanced law enforcement training, while also still conducting investigations related to any of the California Attorney General's work/cases/matters of interest.

Today the CBI provides statewide expert investigative services through special agents combating multi-jurisdictional criminal organizations, and also operates several programs including a Special Operations Unit (SOU) primarily handling violent gang and murder investigations assisting local agencies, a Special Investigations Team (SIT) handling high-profile criminal and civil investigations, an Electronics Crime Unit handling cyber-based and/or electronic crimes including hacking and fraud, the state task force program, LA CLEAR, and the state anti-terrorism program. As the state's FBI counterpart, the CBI investigates a wide-variety of crimes including homicides, fraud, sexual predators, violent/repeat offenders, serial crimes, internet crimes against children, human trafficking, money laundering, extortion, public corruption, rapes, false imprisonment, terrorism, and much more.

## Current Functions

Today the CBI can be assigned at the discretion of the State Attorney General, performs investigations on public land for incidents that occur outside of local jurisdictions, or can be requested by local authority for various reasons (e.g., areas that are too small to have local detectives or cross-jurisdiction coordination of major crimes). The CBI also operates several programs including a Special Investigations Team (SIT) handling high-profile investigations and special investigative requests from the Attorney General's Office, a Special Operations Unit (SOU) targeting murder suspects and violent criminal groups with special equipment/resources, a Human Trafficking Team, a Sexual Predator and Assault Team (SPAT), an Electronic Crimes Unit (ECU), a Tax Recovery and Crime Enforcement (TRACE) Task Force, a Recycling Fraud Team (RFT), an intelligence operations clearing house/deconfliction center for law enforcement agencies (LA CLEAR), and the state anti-terrorism program. The CBI also runs and/or participates in several other highly successful state and federal task forces, and also operates and oversees the California Gang Task Force.

## Offices

### Regional Offices

* Sacramento Regional Office
* San Francisco Regional Office
* Fresno Regional Office
* Orange Regional Office
* Los Angeles Regional Office
* San Diego Regional Office

### Field Offices

* Redding Field Office
* Riverside Field Office
* Imperial Field Office

## Rank Structure

* Special Agent Trainee
* Special Agent (141)
* Special Agent Supervisor (60)
* Special Agent in Charge (6)
* Assistant Director (2)
* Bureau Director (1)