California Bureau of Investigation
The California Bureau of Investigation ("CBI" or "BI") is California's statewide criminal investigative bureau under the California Department of Justice (CA DOJ), in the Division of Law Enforcement (DLE), administered by the Office of the State Attorney General that provides expert investigative services to assist local, state, tribal, and federal agencies in major criminal investigations ranging across the state. History. The California Office of the Attorney General (AG) was created in 1850; however, permanent law enforcement and criminal investigative elements of the CA DOJ were not established until the early 20th century. Despite this, CA  DOJ's Law Enforcement personnel can trace part of their roots back to that of the original California Rangers; the first statewide criminal investigative and law enforcement agency created on May 17, 1853. Although the California Rangers were quickly disbanded (following their success in bringing the violent Five Joaquins gang to justice), their special law enforcement capabilities and statewide investigative mission now reside primarily with CA DOJ Special Agents, such as those assigned to CBI. The CBI is the oldest, continuously operating, statewide criminal investigative agency in the CA DOJ, and in the state of California. Listed below are some  key dates in the history of the CBI clarifying this lineage: 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/de-confliction 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. In fiction. A fictional version of CBI was featured in the television series "The Mentalist". It featured several units, with the one featuring the main  characters focusing mostly on the investigation of homicides, and occasionally kidnappings or missing persons. The Region 1 DVD release of the fourth season of "The Mentalist" includes the special "CBI: Behind the Badge", featuring interaction with actual law enforcement officers in California, specifically focusing on a homicide task force with several agents and officers of different agencies (including those from CBI), who tutored those who worked on the program in providing a realistic portrayal. A CBI Special Agent was also featured in a third-season episode of the crime television series "Numb3rs", where the CBI agent worked together with the  FBI to catch a murderous cult leader. Beginning in 2008, "New York Times" best-selling author Jeffery Deaver wrote a series of crime drama novels starring the fictional Special Agent Kathryn Dance of the CA DOJ/CBI. The most recent novel in the series was written in 2016.