Who is Terry Cole, Trump's point man for DC police takeover?

President Trump on Monday tapped Terry Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), to lead the federal takeover of the Washington, D.C., police department.

On Thursday, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Cole would serve as "emergency police commissioner” of the nation's capital amid the president's deployment of National Guard soldiers and federal agents.

Cole, a longtime DEA agent who was Virginia’s secretary of public safety before joining the Trump administration, will be at the forefront of efforts to stamp out what the president has described as out-of-control crime in the District.

"It is frustrating for law enforcement because they are encountering these same violent youth criminal offenders, numerous occasions, with handguns. But this is something we cannot turn a blind eye to," Cole said during a Tuesday interview with Fox News. 

"We must continue to support law enforcement. We must continue to have a unified effort. And now that the president is involved with making significant changes, we are eventually going to change the code, hold these criminals accountable, even at a juvenile age," he added.

DEA leadership

Cole has been at the DEA for 22 years and has spent a total of 31 years in the field of law enforcement, serving a stint as a police officer in New York state.

Prior to being named head of the agency, Cole served as acting regional director of Mexico, Canada and Central America targeting drug cartels and transnational crime.

Cole was confirmed as DEA administrator in July in a party-line vote.

Working in Virginia government

Most recently, Cole served as Virginia’s public safety secretary under Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). He oversaw the state’s law enforcement agencies and efforts to combat fentanyl.

“It is a bad day for criminals in Washington, D.C.,” Youngkin wrote on social platform X. “Terry Cole knows from our partnership with Director @Kash_Patel and General @PamBondi in Virginia that when we back the blue and let police catch criminals- we make our streets safer!”

Prior to his two-year stint in Virginia, Cole worked in the private sector for an intelligence company. On a podcast last year with former Rep. Mary Bono (R-Calif.), Cole said he grew up in a law enforcement family.

DEA career

He obtained a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Rochester Institute of Technology and has leadership certificates from both the University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business and the University of Virginia.

He joined the DEA in 1997 to combat drugs, but he said he was also attracted to being able to have a post in a foreign country.

“I wanted my kids to grow up diverse. I wanted my kids to experience different cultures. I wanted my kids to explore different countries,” he said. “And I wanted them to remember and see how great this country was each time we came home.”

Cole worked as an agent in Bogotá, Colombia; Kabul, Afghanistan; and Mexico City, in addition to spending time in management in Dallas and the D.C. area.

ProPublica reported in April that, as a budding agent in the early 2000s, Cole was dispatched to Bogotá, where the U.S. was in the thick of an ambitious operation called Plan Colombia. The billion-dollar plan hoped to stamp out corruption and combat drug cartels.

DEA agents like Cole worked with vetted teams of Colombian police. In 2006, 10 officers with whom Cole worked were gunned down by Colombian soldiers later convicted of working with a cartel, CNN reported. 

On Bono’s podcast, Cole called the killings the “hardest day of my life.” He said he and his family were evacuated from the country a few days later.

Cole then moved to the DEA’s Dallas office, overseeing a probe into Mexican drug cartels. In 2011, Cole’s office received a list of phone numbers that could be used to track leaders of the Zetas, a drug cartel. He passed the information on to the DEA’s offices in Mexico, which in turn gave them to local police, who tipped off the cartel. The Zetas proceeded to terrorize the border town of Allende, kidnapping and killing anyone suspected of involvement in the leak.

Both ProPublica and CNN reported that DEA agents in Mexico — not Cole’s office — were responsible for sharing the information with local police.

Federal takeover of DC police

Trump’s takeover is authorized by law for 30 days. He would need congressional approval to legally maintain control after that.

On Wednesday, Trump told reporters he would work to extend the federal takeover. The federalization comes as statistics released in January show violent crime is at a 30-year low in the District.

“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore. We’re not going to take it,” Trump said Monday.

Originally published 2:08 p.m. EDT Aug. 11.