Harris was once tough on crime. How does she see the police now?

Which Harris is running for president? Is it the Harris of 2009 who wrote that “serious and violent criminals should be locked up” or the Harris of 2019 who made it a priority to release them?

Jeffrey Zeeman and Paul Robinson
| Opinion makers

Which Kamala Harris is running for president? And which Democratic Party does she represent?

The Democrats want you to think Vice President Harris was once a tough, no-nonsense prosecutor. The Republicans want you to believe she was a “pro-crime” progressive who expressed her support abolishing the police.

The problem is that they are both right. Harris was a crime fighter who valued upholding the law. Harris then turned herself into a progressive prosecutor to appeal to the left wing of her party. Now she remains silent to avoid controversy. But the real problem isn’t that Harris changed — it’s that the Democratic Party did.

The uncontroversial truths Harris told as San Francisco district attorney cannot be repeated in today’s Democratic Party because they have become too controversial. The Democratic Party, like Harris, doesn’t seem to know where it stands on crime. Democrats should read Harris’ 2009 book to find the way back to sanity.

Harris wasn’t always a ‘progressive prosecutor’

The conservative claim that Harris was always a progressive radical on crime is simply not true. When she was elected The San Francisco District Attorney in 2003 her views were quite moderate, combining a strong desire to prosecute criminals with support for social interventions to prevent crime.

Harris shared her views on criminal justice in a 2009 book, “Smart on Crime.” The Kamala Harris of 2009 called for “more police officers on the streetsdeployed more effectively” as one of its top priorities. She also denounced what she called “the partisan liberal argument … that the police are an unwelcome occupying force in poor neighborhoods.”

She rightly pointed out that police are desperately wanted by law-abiding residents of poor and minority neighborhoods. The prospect of cities moving to de-police or create police-free zones is said to have shocked Harris in 2009.

As Harris wrote: “Don’t send police because you assume they are not wanted or because it is somehow not “fair” to the community to respond to its wrongdoers, goes against the fundamental principles of democracy. … All communities want and have the right to law enforcement. Law enforcement agencies must investigate and prosecute all crimes and make all streets safe.”

While she was always against the death penaltyher record as a prosecutor in San Francisco was far from progressive. She cracked down on drug courts that she said were letting drug dealers off the hook. She wrote about the need to punish thieves regardless of their motivation. And she fought for higher bail amounts to keep dangerous criminals behind bars and reduce gun violence.

2009 Harris owned, in her words: “the desire to prosecute criminals to the fullest extent of the law.”

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But then the Democratic Party changed. And so did Harris.

After the Black Lives Matter movement rose to national prominence in 2014, progressives increasingly turned against law enforcement. Suddenly the police were racist. Prison was racist. Enforcing the law was racist. The left wing of the Democratic Party forgot the truths Harris wrote in her book: That the police are not an occupying force, and that while there is of course always room for police reform, high-crime communities need more police, not less.

Apparently Harris has forgotten her book too.

When she first ran for president in 2019, she played for progressives to win votes. She adopted the “progressive prosecutor” label and attacked Joe Biden for being that way too tough on crime. She repeated the claim that Michael Brown had been murdered (despite the fact that the Justice Department has proven otherwise), attacked shadowy “systemic racism‘ in the justice system and advocated a series of policies designed to put criminals back on the streets.

Ironically, despite her repositioning, her record was simply too conservative for progressives. Then-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard made Harris famous on the Democratic debate stage because they are too tough on crime by prosecuting drug offenders and fighting to keep criminals in prison.

When Democrats moved left on crime, so did Harris

In the wake of the riots that broke out following the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, progressives pushed to de-police. The leaders of the Democratic Party stood back and stood by.

Harris helped raise bail money for protesters and rioters spreading chaos in Minneapolis and praised the mayor of Los AngelesEric Garcetti, for cutting $150 million from the police budget. More than 20 cities have cut their police budgets. Crime increased.

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After the disastrous consequences became clear, Democratic leaders tried to quash the “Defund the Police” slogan, but their message on crime remained confused and uncertain. The Democratic Party was caught between moderates who pushed for law enforcement and radical progressives who demanded more cuts to police and prison closures. Today, Democrats continue to sidestep the issue to avoid an intraparty civil war. Harris is no exception.

Which Harris is running for president? Is it the 2009 Harris who wrote: “serious and violent criminals must be locked up‘or the Harris of 2019 who made it a priority to release serious criminals? Is it the Harris of 2009 who called for more police on the streets, or the Harris of 2020 who praised depolicing? We don’t know because she won’t say. And she won’t say that, because the Democratic Party is divided between those who want to defund the criminals and those who want to defund the police.

For the good of their country and their party, Democrats must rediscover common sense about crime. As Harris wrote in her 2009 book: “Achieving justice for the victims and preventing future victims is ultimately our mission.”

That shouldn’t be controversial, but it is in today’s Democratic Party. And it will remain controversial until Democrats loudly state the truths that Harris did in 2009 but won’t again in 2024.

Jeffrey Seaman is a Levy Scholar and Paul Robinson is the Colin S. Diver Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. They are the most recent co-authors of “Confronting the failure of justice: getting away with murder and rape.”