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HARRIS: Low Number of Prison Terms Per Arrest
During Harris’ tenure as San Francisco district attorney (2004-11), the number of prison terms per arrest in San Francisco was California’s lowest — ten times lower than the corresponding rate in San Diego County.
HARRIS: Supported the Release of Thousands of Prisoners
In August 2024, Douglas Eckenrod, a former deputy director of parole for the California prison system, stated that Attorney General Harris had been a key supporter of Proposition 47, a 2014 California state ballot measure that reduced numerous felony offenses to misdemeanors and thereby caused thousands of prison inmates statewide to be released. “Prop 47 couldn’t happen without the AG’s office support,” said Eckenrod. “Her support of it was literally critical.”
According to Fox News: “Under Prop 47, petty theft of goods valued at under $950 is classified as a misdemeanor, even for multiple offenses. It also took a broad swath of narcotics possession offenses that were previously felonies and converted them to misdemeanors.” The results were disastrous. In February 2015, Breitbart.com reported that since Prop 47’s passage in November 2014, crime in Los Angeles County had risen dramatically: “Compared with the same three-month period a year ago, auto theft is up 20 percent, felonies are up 16 percent, misdemeanors are up 27 percent, and homicides are up 18 percent.”
HARRIS: Massive Increase in California Rapes under AG Harris
When Harris first ran for California Attorney General in 2010, there were 8,325 rapes statewide that year. By 2016, the corresponding figure was 13,695 — a 64% increase. Conservative columnist and author Daniel Greenfield has provided the following insights vis-a-vis Harris’ terrible track record:
“Kamala Harris … led a rebrand of soft-on-crime policies as ‘smart on crime’. This would also become the title of her book arguing for keeping many criminals out of prison. Among other things, ‘smart on crime’ meant cutting quick and easy plea deals while working as the DA in San Francisco to maintain the appearance of the high conviction rates that she would cite when running for attorney general. The plea deals that her office later cut statewide … cooked statistics by raising conviction rates and lowering prison populations to create the illusion that pro-crime policies worked…. By [2020], arrest rates [in California] had fallen to their lowest point since 1969 while violent crime soared.”
HARRIS: Supporter of Proposition 57, a Pro-Criminal Ballot Measure
Attorney General Harris was a strong supporter of Proposition 57, a 2016 California ballot measure that:
In July 2016, the Fresno Bee published an analysis of Prop 57 that pointed out its lack of clarity in defining exactly what constituted a “violent” crime. For example, Prop 57 limited the definition of rape to “sexual intercourse” by force, violence, extortion or threat, but excluded “dozens of other forms of rape” – e.g., sexual penetration with a foreign object, or of an unconscious or inebriated victim.
HARRIS: Refusal to Bar Sex Offenders from Living Near Schools & Parks
In 2015, AG Harris chose not to enforce Proposition 83, a measure that California voters had passed overwhelmingly nine years earlier to prevent the state’s 6,000 paroled sex offenders from being allowed to live within 2,000 feet of schools and parks. After the passage of Prop 83, the California Supreme Court ruled that those residency restrictions violated the constitutional rights of sex offenders who lived in that county. But the Court issued no ruling whatsoever on the legality of the restrictions in California’s 57 other counties. Nevertheless, Harris concluded that the restrictions were invalid in those counties as well — and then refused to explain her legal reasoning.
HARRIS: Condoning a Two-Tiered Justice System
When President Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2017, Sen. Harris tweeted: “Judge Gorsuch has consistently valued legalisms over real lives. I won’t support his nomination.” As the American Thinker subsequently pointed out: “'[L]egalisms’ (a.k.a. what the law actually says) are the very basis of the rule of law. When [Harris] touts ‘real lives,’ [and] not the law, as the proper basis for SCOTUS rulings, she openly endorses a political system based on favoritism, not the rule of law.”
HARRIS: Opponent of the Death Penalty
When she campaigned for San Francisco DA in 2003, Harris pledged that she would never pursue capital punishment for any criminal, because she considered it unjust and immoral. During her 2004 inaugural address as DA, she again vowed to “never charge the death penalty” — a promise she kept for all of her seven years in that office.
In March 2019, during her bid for the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination, Harris praised California Governor Gavin Newsom for placing a moratorium on the death penalty in his state. Asserting that “the application of the death penalty — a final and irreversible punishment — has been proven to be unequally applied,” Harris called the day of Newsom’s announcement an “important day for justice.”
Also during her 2020 presidential run, Harris’ campaign website said: “Kamala believes the death penalty is immoral, discriminatory, ineffective and a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars.”
In her 2024 presidential campaign, Harris has refused to answer requests that she clarify her current stance on the death penalty.
HARRIS: Restore the Voting Rights of Felons
In 2019, Sen. Harris advocated for the restoration of voting rights for all felons who had served their criminal sentences.
HARRIS: Voting Rights for Terrorists
During an April 22, 2019 CNN town hall, host Don Lemon asked Sen. Harris, who was seeking the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, whether “people who are convicted, in prison, like the Boston Marathon bomber, on death row, people who are convicted of sexual assault … should be able to vote” in political elections. Harris replied: “I think we should have that conversation.”
HARRIS: End the Cash Bail System
In 2019, Sen. Harris promised that if she were to be elected president, she would end cash bail, writing in a memo: “Excessive cash bail disproportionately harms people from low-income communities and communities of color,” thereby “criminalizing poverty.”
HARRIS: Remove Nonviolent Offenses from Criminal Records
In 2019, Sen. Harris pledged that if she were to be elected president, she would support the automatic removal of “offenses that are not serious or violent” from criminals’ records after five years.
HARRIS: Supporter of Radical Prosecutors Funded by George Soros
As explained by Charles “Cully” Stimson, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, the year 2015 saw the launch of a “progressive prosecutor” movement financed most heavily by the America-hating leftwing multibillionaire George Soros. This movement is founded upon the premise that the U.S. criminal-justice system is systemically racist to its core and can only be remedied by the wholesale replacement of law-and-order district attorneys with pro-criminal and anti-police alternatives. Says Stimson:
“One of the hallmarks of the rogue prosecutor movement has been its usurpation of the constitutional role of state legislatures. Once elected, rogue prosecutors refuse to prosecute entire categories of crimes that are on the books in their states, justifying their refusal by claiming ‘prosecutorial discretion.’ But … [p]rosecutorial discretion … does not give prosecutors the power to redefine crime and punishment. By refusing to prosecute entire categories of crime, they are in effect repealing criminal statutes—acting in place of the legislature. This is prosecutorial nullification, not discretion.”
Not surprisingly, rates of murder and other violent crimes have skyrocketed in the cities that have elected such “progressive prosecutors.”
In February 2024, Harris voiced her strong support for “progressive prosecutors … who can show what is possible and then show that it works, and show that frankly, it’s not contrary at all to public safety, [but that] in fact, it is a better way.”
HARRIS: Chose Not to Enforce a Law She Did Not Like
In 2008, DA Harris was disturbed when California voters approved Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in that state. In December 2010, as she prepared to commence her tenure as California Attorney General, Harris announced that her AG office – in a departure from the custom whereby AGs traditionally defend state laws – would not defend Proposition 8 before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The reason for Harris’ refusal to defend Prop. 8, was that she personally disagreed with it. “It’s well within the authority vested in me as the elected attorney general to use the discretion of my office to make decisions about how we will use our resources and what issue we will weigh in on or not,” she said.
“Adding insult to injury,” noted Tyler O’Neil in PJ Media, “Harris rushed to officiate the first same-sex marriage after a court struck down the will of the people.”
WALZ: Opponent of the Death Penalty
Walz believes that the death penalty should be abolished as “cruel and unusual punishment.”
WALZ: Opponent of Three-Strikes Laws
Walz argues that the discretion of judges and juries should not be diminished by formulaic sentencing policies like “Three Strikes” laws.
WALZ: End the Cash Bail System
In 2020, Governor Walz suggested that in order to give blacks and other nonwhites a sense that the criminal-justice system is not entirely stacked against them, it would be useful to either reform or end the cash bail system.
TRUMP: Great Respect for, and from, the Police
Early in his presidency in 2021, Trump told a gathering of officers: “I will always support the incredible men and women of law enforcement as much as you have always supported me.”
America’s major police organizations have unanimously voiced their support for Trump in the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections. These include such notables as the National Association of Police Officers, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the International Union of Police Associations.