Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris — who eagerly describes herself as a prosecutor running against “felon” Donald Trump — likened law enforcement in America to lynching and Jim Crow restrictions during the height of racial unrest in mid-2020.
“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,” Harris, then a senator from California, said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Police Use of Force and Community Relations” in June of that year, weeks after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
“And it has caused black Americans to be treated as less than human across time, place, and institution,” Harris, now 59, added before calling for the elimination of “systemic racism.”
Four years later, Harris is leaning into her own law enforcement background — framing the 2024 election as a battle between a prosecutor and a convicted criminal.
“Before I became vice president and before I was elected as U.S. [sic] 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.
In her 2020 remarks, Harris invoked the deaths of Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery — whom she described as being “lynched while going for a run” — and Breonna Taylor, who was killed in March 2020 during a so-called no-knock warrant in her Louisville, Ky. 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.”
Harris then added 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.”
Harris stopped short of explicitly endorsing calls to “defund the police” but parroted much of their rhetoric about local budgeting 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.”
The future vice president also complained 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, municipalities reporting police use-of-force incidents to the federal government, and expanding pattern and practice investigations into police departments.
She also accused Republicans of falling into “simplistic traps” on the topic of 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.”
Two days after the hearing, Harris reiterated her comments about the nation’s history of systemic racism on social media, striking her earlier reference to “policing.”
“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.
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.
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) June 18, 2020
A week prior to the hearing, Harris praised the “defund” movement, telling the New York-based radio show “Ebro in the Morning” that its backers were “rightly saying, we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities.”
With Harris now the Democratic nominee for president, Trump and his allies have pointed out many of the far-left positions she took during the 2020 election cycle.
Most notably, they have highlighted Harris’ promotion of a bail fund — the Minnesota Freedom Fund — during the post-Floyd protests that sprung people accused of murder, sex assault and other violent crimes, some of whom went on to reoffend.
Republicans later pummeled Democrats over the “Defund the police” movement as public opinion quickly shifted against it amid a crime wave that erupted during the later stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
President 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 law as a shield against GOP 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 police officers caught up in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Since becoming the de facto nominee following Biden’s July 21 announcement that she will not seek a second term, Harris’ campaign has released statements suggesting a pivot to the center on issues including Medicare for All, fracking, and illegal immigration — though she has yet to confirm such positions herself in a formal interview.
