Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris — who touts herself as a prosecutor running against “felon” Donald Trump — once equated law enforcement in America to lynching and Jim Crow laws.
“When we say that America has a history of systemic racism, we mean that from slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and policing, our institutions have done violence to black Americans,” she said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Police Use of Force and Community Relations” back in June 2020.
“And it has caused black Americans to be treated as less than human across time, place, and institution,” she added before calling for the elimination of systemic racism.
But fast-forward four years and Harris is leaning into her own law enforcement background — and framing the 2024 election as a battle between a prosecutor and a convicted felon.
“Before I became vice president and before I was elected as U.S. senator, I was the attorney general of California. Before that, I was a prosecutor who took on predators, fraudsters, and cheaters. So I know Donald Trump’s type,” she posted on X last month.
Harris’ previous comments lamenting law enforcement during the hearing came just over three weeks after the tragic death of George Floyd, which sparked widespread unrest across the country and a national conversation about policing.
Harris, the first black senator elected from California, invoked the death of Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, whom she described as being “lynched while going for a run” and Breonna Taylor, who was killed during the execution of a no-knock warrant in her home.
“There is a movement being led by people who might appear from the outside to have little in common, who are marching together to demand an end to the black blood that is staining the sidewalks of our country,” she said. “It gives me hope.”
The then-California senator further echoed many of the activists who had taken to the streets at the time, stressing that America “must reimagine what public safety looks like” while arguing that more policing wasn’t the answer.
“The status quo thinking that more police creates more safety is wrong. It’s wrong. And it has motivated too much of municipal budgets and the thinking of policymakers,” she argued.
“[It] has distracted them from what would truly be the smartest use of resources to achieve safety in communities, which is to invest in the health of those communities. And healthy communities without any doubt are safe communities.”
Many activists at the time pushed to defund the police. Harris stopped short of explicitly going that far but mirrored much of their rhetoric about local budgets for the men and women in blue.
She dinged “our mayors and local leaders” for dedicating “so much money” to “militarize the police” as “two-thirds of public school teachers in America today are coming out of their own back pockets to help pay for school supplies.”
Beyond policing, the future vice president bemoaned that racial disparities are “deeply rooted in our education system, and our housing system, in our workforces, and health care delivery system, and more.”
Harris pitched several proposals to remedy the crisis, including a national use of force standard, independent investigations into alleged police misconduct, municipality reporting police use of force incidents to the federal government, and expanding pattern and practice investigations into police departments.
She also bashed Republicans for falling into “simplistic traps” when it comes to police reform in America.
“I was disheartened to hear our colleagues suggest that when we discuss the fact of systemic racism, we are accusing people within the system and all people within the system of being racist,” she said. “That kills the conversation.”
Days after the hearing, Harris took to social media and reiterated her comments about the nation’s history of systemic racism.
“When we say that America has a history of systemic racism, we mean that from slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, and the criminal justice system, our institutions have done violence to Black Americans. And it has caused Black Americans to be treated as less than human,” she wrote on X.
A few days prior to the June 16 hearing, Harris also praised the “Defund the Police” movement, though she didn’t flat out call for funding to drop to zero.
“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 told the New York-based radio show “Ebro in the Morning” on June 9, 2020.
Now that she is the Democratic standard bearer for president, Trump and his allies have worked to unearth many of the far-left positions she took during the 2020 election cycle, including on law enforcement.
Trump’s campaign has also highlighted how Harris promoted a bail fund — the Minnesota Freedom Fund — during the Black Lives Matter protests that ultimately helped free people accused of murder, sex assault and other violent crimes.
Roughly two months after that June 2020 hearing, President Biden publicly announced Harris as his pick for vice president.
Republicans later pummeled Democrats over the “Defund the Police” movement, as public opinion quickly shifted against it amid a crime wave across the country that erupted during the later stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden later boasted about efforts by his administration to “fund the police,” including via money allocated in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan stimulus legislation. Many Democrats have since used that as a cudgel against attacks over their record on law enforcement.
Democrats have also fired back at Trump’s and Republicans’ criticisms of their policies on law enforcement, by spotlighting the police officers who died or were injured during the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Earlier this month, Harris managed to officially clinch the nomination despite not undergoing a Democratic primary. She’s seemingly lurched toward the center compared to where she was in 2020, reversing some of her past positions on Medicare for all, fracking, illegal immigration and more.
The vice president also appears to have shaken up her messaging strategy compared to the 2020 campaign cycle. She’s seemingly opted against fixating on her identity, which came up at times during the 2020 debate.
Last week, during her acceptance speech, she made no mention of how she could become the first female and Asian American president in US history. On the campaign trail, she has largely refrained from broaching that as well.
That drew a contrast with former 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, whose speech at the convention reflected on how Harris could wind up breaking the glass ceiling on Nov. 5.