Kamala Harris endorsed the “defund the police” movement in 2020, before she was appointed Joe Biden’s running mate
Footage has resurfaced on social media of Kamala Harris endorsing the “defund the police” movement and saying that system should be “upended.”
In footage from a Zoom call with radio host Ebro Darden that took place in 2020, during the pandemic but presumably before the election, Harris looks forward to a time when Attorney General Bill Barr is gone, so that the system can be “overhauled.”
Darden Then asks Harris about “defund the police.”
“Defund the police: The issue behind it is that we need to reimagine how we are creating safety,” Harris responds.
“When you have many cities that have 1/3 of their entire city budget focused on policing, we know that is not the smart way and the best way or the right way to achieve safety. For too long the status-quo thinking has been that you get more safety by putting more cops on the street. Well that’s wrong. Because, by the way, if you want to look at upper-middle-class suburban neighbourhoods, they don’t have that patrol car, they don’t have those police walking those streets. But what they do have, they have well-funded schools. What they do have is home ownership, high home ownership rates. What they do have are thriving small businesses. What they do have is access to public-health and mental-health services. So this whole movement is about rightly saying, ‘We need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities.’”
BREAKING: Footage found of VP Kamala Harris supporting DEFUND THE POLICE:
“It’s about upending the system”
“We need to look at police budgets”
“More safety with more cops is wrong” pic.twitter.com/0HxUQeov9x— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 26, 2024
After her appointment as Biden’s running mate in August, Harris was careful to distance herself from the “defund the police” movement. Her press secretary was quoted as saying, “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris do not support defunding the police, and it is a lie to suggest otherwise.”
Harris’s record on crime, as San Francisco District Attorney and then California Attorney General, is likely to figure significantly in her presidential run.
“I took on perpetrators of all kinds, predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own game,” Harris said at a rally in Wisconsin on Tuesday.
“So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.”
Critics, however, say that Harris was a pragmatist, who was tough on crime when it suited her and then made baffling decisions like sparing the killer of policeman Isaac Espinoza from the death penalty.
