WASHINGTON, DC - Kamala Harris’s gaslighting campaign in trying to fool the American people continues, and perhaps her biggest lie is claiming to be a supporter of the police. According to a piece in National Review, her actions speak far louder than her words.
Harris is trying to use her background as a prosecutor to claim she is “tough on crime.” However she has historically been anti-police, especially since coming to Washington, DC, and in 2020, said, “it is wrong-headed thinking to think that the only way you’re going to get communities to be safe is to put more police officers on the street.”
That year was of course the year of the George Floyd riots, where far-left zealots stood on the side of criminals engaged in burning down cities, destroying businesses, and engaging in sometimes violent riots. And Kamala Harris was committed to defending the criminals. It was during that time that Harris made the absurd claim that putting more police officers on the street was “old, tired, wrong, status quo thinking.”
Harris was trying to gin up support for the ill-conceived George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020 which was designed to create national standards for police use of force while expanding the federal government’s womb to the tomb control over everything, including local police departments.
During the virtual conference “JusticeCon: A Path Towards Freedom,” Harris made several anti-police statements.
“We know the reality of it is that when you go to upper-class suburbs, you don’t see that police presence,” Harris said at the time while she was a United States senator and after she scrubbed her ill-fated presidential campaign. “But what you do see,” she said, are “well-funded schools,” “high rates of home ownership,” “small businesses that have access to capital,” “People and families who have access to health care.”
She continued, “We have to reimagine how we achieve public safety, understanding that the best way to do that is [to] invest in communities, and in particular, the educational needs, or public-health needs, mental health needs, and so on.”
What Harris either failed to recognize or chose to ignore is the fact that the reason police are not seen in upper-class suburbs is that the crime rates in those areas tend to be very low. Police tend to concentrate patrols on high-crime areas, but that doesn’t make for good rhetoric.
One lawmaker who has taken notice of Harris’s anti-cop stance is Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who expressed surprise over Harris’s choice of far-left Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
“I thought she would have picked more of a centrist to balance the ticket, but she didn’t,” Ernst told a town hall audience.
Ernst noted that Harris and Walz have both been strong advocates to “defund the police.”
“If you’re defunding the police, you’re not funding the police. How do the police exist,” Ernst said. “There was a clip where she was talking about, we do not need any more police.”
Harris cannot walk away from her previous comments suggesting the defunding of police. On a New York-based radio program on Hot 97 in 2020, Harris said the “defund the police” movement “rightly” called out the money spent on police departments instead of other programs such as education, housing, and health care.
In yet another interview, Harris said resources needed to be redirected from police to other areas of government such as schools and small businesses. In an appearance on MSNBC, Harris called to “demilitarize police departments.”
In 2020 amid the George Floyd riots in Minneapolis and nationwide, Harris posted on X (then Twitter) asking people to donate to the Minneapolis Freedom Fund, which raised bail money for those who engaged in riots in the city, some of whom burned a Minneapolis police precinct to the ground.
In an interview on Nick Cannon Mornings, Harris said it was necessary to “realign resources.”
“When we talk about policing, I look at it from a number of angles, and one is this: We need to realign resources,” Harris said. “And Nick, as you may know, in many American cities, over a third of the city budget is spent on policing…meanwhile schools are suffering.
“We need to have this conversation about redirecting resources to where they are needed to really help communities be healthy, and therefore safe,” Harris added.
It should be noted that according to a 2021 report by the Urban Institute, 39 percent of direct local government spending went to elementary and secondary education, so Harris is gaslighting again.
As is typical for Harris, her feelings on police have “evolved.” According to a blog post, in her 2009 book “Smart on Crime,” Harris, then serving as San Francisco district attorney, argued for more police officers on the street, saying it made communities safer.
“A more visible and strategic police presence is a deterrent to crime and has a positive impact on a community. Virtually all law-abiding citizens feel safer when they see police officers patrolling their neighborhood. This is as true in poor neighborhoods as it is in wealthy neighborhoods,” Harris wrote.
She also argued that poor communities did not oppose increased police presence.
“There is a widespread perception that poor communities, particularly poor African-American and Latino communities, view law enforcement as the enemy and do not want police officers in their neighborhoods,” Harris wrote. “In fact, it is quite the opposite.”
When it was politically expedient, Harris changed her tone.
In a 2020 radio interview with the hosts of “Ebro in the Morning,” Harris was again critical of law enforcement spending.
“This whole movement is about rightly saying we need to look at these budgets and determine if they reflect the right priorities,” Harris told the hosts. She also claimed that American cities are “militarizing the police” but “defunding public schools,” CNN reported.
Harris also supported the decision by then-Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to take $150 million out of the LAPD budget after being questioned by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.
“I support investing in communities so they become healthier and therefore safer,” Harris replied. “The problem in the United States right now is that many cities spend over a third of their total budget on policing. But in the meantime, we’ve been defunding public schools in the United States for years.,” she said.
“I commend Eric Garcetti for what he’s done.”
Harris, as she’s prone to do, flip-flopped after she was chosen as Biden’s running mate, with the campaign releasing a statement attempting to distance her from the “defund the police” movement.
“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris do not support defunding the police, and it’s a lie to suggest otherwise,” said Sabrina Singh, then Harris’ press secretary. “Throughout her career, Senator Harris has supported increasing funding for police departments and increasing funding for community policing.”
Now, with polling showing the American people believe crime is one of the biggest problems facing the country, Harris is resurrecting her “tough on crime prosecutor” shtick.
Police officers do not believe her and neither should the American people.
Comments
2024-08-15T13:21-0500 | Comment by: Michelle
Look at the cities that defunded their police and the results. Many are now trying to refund because crime skyrocketed.