While serving in the U.S. Senate, Kamala Harris celebrated the Democrat primary victory of Philadelphia progressive prosecutor Larry Krasner—and the controversial policies he would later champion as the city’s district attorney.
“As I said yesterday, progressive prosecutors are key to criminal justice reforms like rolling back mass incarceration and ending cash bail,” Harris wrote on social media, May 17, 2017.
Progressive prosecutors, also referred to as rogue prosecutors, are those who, in the name of social justice, “have usurped the legislative power by refusing to prosecute large categories of crimes,” according to Zack Smith and Charles Stimson, authors of “Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America’s Communities.”
Before being elected as Philadelphia’s district attorney, Krasner worked as a criminal defense and civil rights attorney. He “sued the Philadelphia Police Department dozens of times over the decades, ran to be Philadelphia’s district attorney and received almost $1.45 million in campaign spending from George Soros in the process,” Smith and Stimson previously reported for The Daily Signal.
On his website, Krasner touts that under his watch, “the office broke its information-sharing contract with [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement], has “stopped prosecuting nearly all simple drug possession cases,” and “Other drug possession cases are diverted toward treatment.”
Harris served as a prosecutor in California in the 1990s and was later elected district attorney of San Francisco in 2003. In 2010, she was elected attorney general of California and won reelection in 2014. While serving in these roles, Harris implemented policies championed by the progressive prosecutor movement.
In 2004, black gang member David Hill shot and killed San Francisco police officer Isaac Espinoza. Harris, who was the district attorney of San Francisco at the time, did not pursue the death penalty.
In 2012, while serving as attorney general, Harris issued a bulletin to law enforcement in California regarding an Immigration and Customs Enforcement program called Secure Communities that enables ICE to detain and deport criminal illegal aliens. In the bulletin, Harris told law enforcement that they were not required to fulfill individual ICE immigration detainers but could instead “make their own decisions” about detainer requests.
Despite her past embrace of policies progressive prosecutors have been known to advocate for, Harris has pegged herself as a tough on crime criminal prosecutor on the campaign trail.
Within days of launching her campaign, Harris used her record as a prosecutor in an effort to contrast herself with former President Donald 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 event in Wisconsin in July. “So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.”
During her debate with Trump on Sept. 10, Harris said she was “the only person” on stage to have “prosecuted transnational criminal organizations for the trafficking of guns, drugs, and human beings.”
Harris, who wrote the book “Smart on Crime” in 2009, has previously received criticism for her support of “soft on crime” policies, such as her pledge to “never charge the death penalty” during her 2004 inauguration speech to the office of San Francisco’s district attorney.
During her 2020 campaign for president, Harris issued a memo in which she detailed her support for ending mass incarceration.
Harris advocated for “significant federal investments in policies that would end mass incarceration and especially into evidence-based, non-carceral social supports and programs at the state and local level to improve public safety and reduce violence,” she said.
In the same 2020 campaign memo, Harris called for the end of cash bail.
“Our bail system is unjust and broken,” Harris said, adding, “450,000 Americans sit in jail today awaiting trial because they cannot afford to pay bail. Excessive cash bail disproportionately harms people from low-income communities and communities of color,” she wrote.
Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment, but the campaign’s previous statements indicate Harris still backs ending cash bail.
“On the issue of cash bail, she believes that we need a system where public safety, not wealth, determines who should stay behind bars following an arrest,” James Singer, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, told Fox News Digital in August. “Anyone who is a danger to society should be detained regardless of how wealthy they are.”
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
