The Vice President of the United States of America HAS a record as upholding the LAW as a prosocutor….
She IS running against a ex-President , who lost the last election, and who IS a Convicted Felon, Sexual Predator and Fraudster to the tune of around $850 Million in Civil Fines outstanding…..
The Democratic Party these days stand behind having law enforcement being essential…
It also stands behind reforms like body camera’s to help cops do a better job….
State attorney General do NOT ‘Control’ crime….
Their job, along with local District Attorney’s is to process arrests made by cops…..
Vice President Kamala Harris‘ prosecutorial record is facing fresh scrutiny now that she’s running to be president.
The big picture: Harris is pointing to her time as a district attorney and California Attorney General as a point of contrast against former President Trump, the GOP nominee who is a convicted felon.
State of play: It’s a risky strategy as Harris has consistently faced criticism from some progressives who accused her of being too tough on crime and helped derail her 2020 presidential campaign.
- This time around, she is betting it will help her against Trump.
- “I took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” she said at a campaign rally in Wisconsin this last week. “So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.”
Yes, but: The Trump campaign has simultaneously accused Harris of being weak on crime and a San Francisco “liberal” — a classic GOP attack against a Democrat.
Reality check: The violent crime rate per 100,000 residents in California dropped by 10% during Harris’s first four years in office as the state’s attorney general, according to an Axios review of FBI crime data.
- The violent crime rate in the state was 439.6 per 100,000 residents the year before she took office and fell to 396.4 by 2014.
- During that period, the California Department of Justice improved DNA testing capabilities and cleared the state’s DNA backlog for the first time. Her office also signed an agreement with Mexico’s AG to combat transnational gangs.
- However, violent crime surged to 444.8 in 2016 during her last year in office to a six-year high, an Axios review found.
Zoom in: As District Attorney of San Francisco, the number of cases from violent crimes in the city her office cleared skyrocketed by 24% during her time as DA, an Axios review found.
- Those cleared cases came as the number of violent crimes rose steadily in the city of San Francisco during her first five years in office then fell 15% in her last two years, the analysis found.
Between the lines: Harris’ early record and comments at the time showed she was part of the fledging restorative justice movement of the early 2000s while balancing a moderate approach to fighting crime.
- In her 2009 book, “Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer,”Harris urged Americans to see crime as “a non-partisan issue” while pushing programs to intervene on potential repeat nonviolent offenders.
- The left, she wrote, needed to get “past biases against law enforcement and (recognize) that even low-incoming communities…want and deserve great public-safety resources.”
- “For the right, it means acknowledging that crime prevention is a key to crime fighting, and that the tools we need to ensure community safety are far more diverse than simply laws that make prison sentences longer.”…..