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Kamala Harris on CrimeDemocratic candidate for President (withdrawn); California Senator |
KAMALA HARRIS: I have put a lot of people in jail. I have personally prosecuted everything from, you know, child sexual assault to homicides. And then as attorney general, transnational criminal organization which I took on as a leader.
HOWARD STERN: So when you went after gang members, were you ever directly threatened by these people? They said, hey, you better just shut this down or you're going to get it.
KAMALA HARRIS: I've definitely had death threats. I don't generally talk about them.
HOWARD STERN: Right. Why don't you talk about it? Because you don't want to encourage any kind of nuts out there or is it because it just is too hard to confront.
KAMALA HARRIS: I refuse to live in fear of the bad guys.
In that conversation, Kagan said, Harris told her that she was inspired to become a prosecutor largely because of "what she went through with me." She told Harris that living with the Harris family was one of the few good memories she had from those years.
BIDEN: I did talk about what we have to do. This is the guy who has a budget calling for cutting a half a billion dollars in local law enforcement. I'm proposing that there be basic laws relating to police conduct, we have to help the police departments with psychologists, sociologists, people who can get involved in making sure they can negotiate things that don't require a policeman with a gun to deal with.
Q: You joined the protest after George Floyd, while you still support law enforcement. Can you do both?
HARRIS: Absolutely. There needs to be accountability and consequence for anyone who breaks the law, including police officers, but also we need to reimagine how we are creating safe communities and understand that the way to create safe communities is to invest in those communities, invest in high rates of homeownership, invest in public education in schools, invest in access to capital.
This not only points to the corrupt nature of this administration, but it also means that there are clearly two different set of rules for two different groups of people in America: the powerful people who with their arrogance think they can get away with this and then everybody else.
Because here's the thing. For those working people who are working two or three jobs, if they don't pay that credit card by the end of the month, they get a penalty. For the people who don't pay their rent, they get evicted. For the people who shoplift, they go to jail. We need the same set of rules for everybody. And part of the reason I'm running for president is to say that we have to bring justice back to America for all people, and not just for some.
HARRIS: I made a decision to become a prosecutor for two reasons. One, I've always wanted to protect people and keep them safe. And second, I was born knowing about how this criminal justice system in America has worked in a way that has been informed by racial bias. And I could tell you extensively about the experiences I and my family members have personally had. I created one of the first in the nation requirements that a state law enforcement agency would have to wear cameras and keep them on full-time. Was I able to get enough done? Absolutely not. But my plan has been described by activists as being a bold and comprehensive plan that is about ending mass incarceration, about taking the profit out of the criminal justice system. I plan on shutting down for-profit prisons on day one.
A: I agree that the right to vote is one of the very important components of citizenship and it is something that people should not be stripped of needlessly, which is why I have been long an advocate of making sure that the formerly incarcerated are not denied a right to vote, in some states permanently deprived of the right to vote. These are policies that go back to Jim Crow. These are policies that go back to the heart of policies that have been about disenfranchisement, and we need to take it seriously.
Q: But those now in prison?
A: I think we should have that conversation.
We need an America where no mother or father has to teach their son that people may stop him or kill him because of the color of his skin.
The strength of our union is in our diversity and our unity. We see the State of our Union in the formerly incarcerated individual who re-enters society looking to contribute and in the DREAMer who pursues her future in the face of uncertainty.
At the time, criminal justice policy was still trending toward things like harsher sentences or militarizing the police. More than a decade later, that attitude has, thankfully, evolved. Reentry programs like Back on Track are now part of the mainstream conversation. But in those days, I faced intensive backlash.
Though compassionate in its approach, Back on Track was intense by design. This was not a social welfare program. All of the first participants were nonviolent first-time offenders. Participants had to first plead guilty and accept the responsibility for the actions that had brought them there. We promised that if participants completed the program, we would have their charges expunged, which gave them more the reason to put in the effort. We hadn't designed a program that was about incremental improvement around the edges. It was about transformation.
In this country, you are innocent until proven guilty. The Bill of Rights explicitly prohibits excessive bail. That's what justice is supposed to look like.
What it should not look like is the system we have in America today. The median bail in the United States is $10,000. But in American households with an income of $45,000, the median savings account balance is $2,530. The disparity is so high that roughly 9 out of 10 people who are detained can't afford to pay to get out.
By its very design, the cash bail system favors the wealthy and penalizes the poor. If you can pay cash up front, you can leave, and when your trial is over, you'll get all your money back. If you can't afford it, you either languish in jail or have to pay a bail bondsman, which costs a steep fee you will never get back.
"Getting Smart on Crime does not mean reducing sentences or punishments for crimes," she explains in her book. As her website outlines, "Kamala believes that we must maintain a relentless focus on reducing violence and aggressively prosecuting violent criminals." Fittingly, when she became San Francisco DA, the felony conviction rate rose from 52 percent to 67 percent in three years.
Harris had charged Backpage executives with 13 counts of pimping and conspiracy to commit pimping. Harris said the new charges were based on new evidence. A judge threw out pimping charges against the men on 9 December, citing federal free-speech laws.
In the latest case, Harris claims Backpage illegally funneled money through multiple companies to get around banks that refused to process transactions. She also alleged that the company used photos of women from Backpage on other sites without their permission, to increase revenue, and knowingly profited from the proceeds of prostitution.
"By creating an online brothel--a hotbed of illicit & exploitative activity--[Backpage.com] preyed on vulnerable victims, including children, and profited from their exploitation," Harris said.
Crime is not a monolith. Instead of a one-size-fits-all justice system, [we must] focus on the top of the pyramid and avoid treating all offenders the same. This approach has three pillars: maintain a relentless focus on reducing violence and prosecuting violent criminals, identify key points in the lives of young offenders to stop the escalation of criminal behavior, and support victims of crime.
Within her first 100 days in office, the Attorney General brought law enforcement leaders from across the state to California's border with Mexico to see firsthand the everyday problems that transnational gangs cause--the smuggling of guns, drugs and human beings across the border.
"If a business had a failure rate of that number, we would reorganize, we would reexamine and we would guide our approach by a well proven method which thinks about what is the return on our investment," Harris said. Instead, she said, the system's been all about "business as usual," meaning that it is dependent on imprisoning repeat wrongdoers, at a cost of about $47,000-per-year, per prison inmate. Harris said cutting the recidivism rate by just 10 percent could save the state $233 million annually.
DOJ staff will also help local law enforcement agencies find grants to develop technology to bring law enforcement into the digital age. "You'd be shocked at how obsolete we are," Harris said.
Officials whittled down the backlog by shifting cases among the state's seven crime labs that handle DNA testing. In addition, robotics helped reduce part of the process for analyzing sexual assault evidence from two days to two hours. Last year the labs analyzed 5,400 evidence samples, up from 4,800 in 2010 and 4,100 in 2009, according to the department.
The state's crime labs came under increasing pressure in January 2009, when Proposition 69 began requiring authorities to collect DNA samples from any adult arrested for a felony. But Jill Spriggs, who oversees the state forensic system, said that backlog is also gone. "That's been eliminated for almost a year now," she said.
'It is often said that a good prosecutor wins convictions. But a great prosecutor has convictions. In the coming four years, we are going to do whatever it takes in the cause of protecting and defending the lives and livelihoods of all officer for the state, Harris plans to focus on reducing recidivism and on reforming the state's revolving door prison system. A major priority of her office will be to lead a renewed collaborative effort against transnational gangs and organized crime.
I believe that in the criminal justice system notions such as supply and demand, input and output, and looking for patterns are not abstract concepts. They tell us a lot about the effectiveness of what we're doing. When you measure, you can see quite clearly the results of making particular adjustments to complex systems. And we can apply the logic and principles of economics to fight against crime. It is crucial to ask how we can achieve the most safety for the lowest cost. We have spent billions of dollars on ineffective solutions that have not delivered the safety we must demand.
And today, more urgently than ever, I think all Americans want to spend our limited resources on those things that will deliver the most safety for the investment.
It's time to rock the crime pyramid.
These lower-in-the-pyramid offenders often have no job skills, and far more often than not are addicted to drugs. We quite appropriately arrest them when they offend and re-offend, but then we warehouse them in jails, which pushes them deeper into the grip of gangs and the culture of hardened criminals.
Our thoughts are also with the communities across our nation whose calls for help are often met with suspicion, distrust, and even violence. The disturbing footage confirms what we know from the lived experiences of so many--we have much work to do to ensure that our justice system fully lives up to its name.
I call on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a bill that I coauthored in the Senate. In this moment, in honor of Sonya's memory and the memory of so many more whose names we may never know, we must come together to achieve meaningful reforms that advance the safety of all communities.
In a June 2020 radio interview, one host asked Harris, "Where do you stand on defund the police?"
Harris said, "Defund the police, the issue behind it is we need to reimagine how we are creating safety. 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. For too long, the status quo thinking has been you get more safety by putting more cops on the street. Well, that's wrong."
Harris said suburban communities "don't have police walking those streets," but what they do have is well-funded schools & thriving small businesses. "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," Harris said.
Marianne WILLIAMSON: All of these issues are extremely important, but they are specifics; they are symptoms. And the underlying cause has to do with deep, deep, deep realms of racial injustice, both in our criminal justice system and in our economic system.
Kamala HARRIS: As the only black person on this stage, I would like to speak on the issue of race. Race is still not being talked about truthfully and honestly. There is not a black man I know, be he a relative, a friend or a coworker, who has not been the subject of some form of profiling or discrimination. Growing up, my sister and I had to deal with the neighbor who told us her parents couldn't play with us because we were black.
Harris addressed her law enforcement background in her book. She argued it was a "false choice" to decide between supporting the police and advocating for greater scrutiny of law enforcement. She wrote, "When activists came marching & banging on the doors, I wanted to be on the other side to let them in."
Harris supported legislation that passed the Senate last year that overhauled the criminal justice system, particularly when it comes to sentencing rules.
Whether or not someone can get bailed out of jail shouldn't be based on how much money he has in the bank. Or the color of his skin: black men pay 35 percent higher bail than white men for the same charge. Latino men pay nearly 20 percent more. This isn't the stuff of coincidences. It is systematic. And we have to change it.
In 2017, I introduced a bill in the Senate to encourage states to replace their bail systems, moving away from arbitrarily assigning cash bail and systems where a person's actual risk of danger or flight is evaluated. If someone poses a threat to the public, we should detain them. If someone is likely to flee, we should detain them. But if not, we shouldn't be in the business of charging money for liberty.
If there aren't serious consequences for police brutality in our justice system, what kind of a message does it send to the community? Public safety depends on public trust.
But when black and brown people are more likely to be stopped, arrested, and convicted than their white counterparts; when police departments are outfitted like military regiments; when egregious use of deadly force is not met with consequence, is it any wonder that the very credibility of these public institutions is on the line?
I say this as someone who has spent most of my career working with law enforcement. I say this as someone who has a great deal of respect for police officers. It is a false choice to suggest that you must either be for the police or for police accountability. I am for both. Most people I know are for both.
Assembly Bill 2524 will convert Crime in California and other annual reports published by the California Department of Justice into digital data sets that will be published on the Attorney General's OpenJustice Web portal. These reports provide statistical summaries including numbers of arrests, complaints against peace officers, hate crime offenses, and law enforcement officers killed or assaulted. The OpenJustice Web portal will transform the way this information is presented to the public with interactive, accessible visualization tools, while making raw data available for public interest researchers.
Legislative outcome: Aug/24/16 passed Senate 39-0-0; Aug/30/16 passed Assembly 80-0-0; Sep/21/16 signed by Governor Jerry Brown
Harris, whose own department is the first statewide agency to adopt a body camera program, waded into an issue that has sparked intense debate at the Capitol. One measure, Assembly Bill 66, has undergone several revisions to permit police officers in most jurisdictions to review footage captured on the cameras before giving a report of an incident involving force.
"We have a history in this country that we can be proud of and then there's a part of the history that we are not proud of," Harris said, adding, "But we also have to acknowledge that the relationship of trust is a reciprocal relationship, and everyone has a responsibility to be a part of leading that effort."
The context: Gabbard is referring to the case of Kevin Cooper, a Death Row inmate convicted of quadruple murder in 1983. Harris, during her tenure as attorney general, declined to use advanced DNA testing in the widely publicized case.
Last year, after the New York Times published an investigative piece on Cooper's case, then-Sen. Harris backtracked, saying, "I feel awful about this," and that she hoped the governor would order the testing. In February, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered new tests. The results are pending.
Harris was asked if there should be "a federal equivalent" to Newsom's order. She said, "Yes, I think that there should be."
Asked if no one would be executed if Harris was president, she responded, "Correct, correct."
As California's attorney general, Harris defended the state's use of the death penalty. But in a statement this week, she said it is "immoral, discriminatory, ineffective, and a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars." She noted that black and Latino defendants were more likely to be executed than white defendants, as were poor defendants with poor legal representation versus wealthier defendants with good legal representation.
As Harris launched her presidential bid, she said she was running as a "progressive prosecutor." But she has drawn scrutiny from some liberals for "tough on crime" positions she held as a California prosecutor, with her stance on the death penalty among those issues.
As a district attorney in 2004, she drew national headlines with her decision not to seek the death penalty for the killer of a San Francisco police officer. That decision, announced days after the officer's death, enraged local law enforcement officials
However, a decade later, she appealed a judge's decision declaring California's death penalty law unconstitutional. While Harris has personally opposed the death penalty, she has said that she defended the law as a matter of professional obligation.
The Chris Kelly campaign, in an effort to emphasize the San Francisco DA's refusal to enforce the law, released a video that shows Harris telling an astonished reporter for the local KTVU news station that "she had never seen a case that merited pursuing the death penalty during her time as District Attorney."
Congressional Summary:
Opposing press release from Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA-1):: The reform sentencing laws in this bill may compromise the safety of our communities. Criminals convicted of violent crimes would have the opportunity to achieve `low risk` status and become eligible for early release. California already has similar laws in place--Propositions 47 and 57--which have hamstrung law enforcement and caused a significant uptick in crime.
Supporting press release from Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY-10):: S. 756 establishes a new system to reduce the risk that [federal prisoners] will commit crimes once they are released. Critically, S. 756 would not only implement these reforms to our prison system, but it also takes a crucial first step toward addressing grave concerns about our sentencing laws, which have for years fed a national crisis of mass incarceration. The bill is a `first step` that demonstrates that we can work together to make the system fairer in ways that will also reduce crime and victimization.
Legislative outcome: Concurrence Passed Senate, 87-12-1, on Dec. 18, 2018; Concurrence Passed House 358-36-28, Dec. 20, 2018; President Trump signed, Dec. 21, 2018