Vice President Kamala Harris praised defunding the police about two months before joining the Biden 2020 ticket.
Harris joined the “Ebro In The Morning” New York radio show in June 2020 in the wake of the ongoing George Floyd protests and riots that summer, saying the defund the police movement was justified in questioning police budgets, according to the interview. Now-President Joe Biden picked Harris as his running mate that August, after which she appeared to change her position.
“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 during the Ebro interview. “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.”
“We need to have this conversation and critically examine and understand this is not working,” Harris said in the interview. “It’s not working. So, this is an important conversation and not just a conversation – cause to your earlier point, can’t just be about talk. It has to be about forcing change.”
Sabrina Singh, who at the time was Harris’ press secretary, later said in October 2020 that Harris did not support defunding the police, according to CNN.
“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris do not support defunding the police, and it is a lie to suggest otherwise,” former Harris press secretary Sabrina Singh said in October 2020, according to CNN. “Throughout her career, Sen. Harris has supported increasing funding to police departments and boosting funding for community policing.” (RELATED: Ex-Obama Official Rejoices At Kamala Harris Not Facing ‘Brutal’ American ‘Primary Process’)
Here’s anti-police Kamala telling us she supports defunding the police and “re-imagining” how we “create safety”
— Phil Holloway ✈️ (@PhilHollowayEsq) July 26, 2024
Harris also praised Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2020 for cutting $150 million from the police budget to redirect to social services, CNN reported. She also called to “demilitarize police departments” and said it was “wrong and backward” to suggest more police was the solution to crime, according to a 2020 MSNBC interview.
A 10% increase in the police force leads to a 3 to 10% reduction in crime, according to a 2016 Council of Economic Advisors report. A 2020 National Bureau of Economic Research noted that there is one less homicide for every 10 to 17 officers hired.
The Harris Campaign did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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