(Daily Mail) California lawmakers and former top cops say Kamala Harris’s new campaign ads presenting her as ‘tough’ on drug trafficking don’t match with her record as a prosecutor – when she advocated not charging dealers until their third arrest.
Harris proposed a policy in 2005 when she was San Francisco District Attorney to only prosecute drug dealers the third time they were caught selling narcotics, DailyMail.com has learned.
The plan sparked a scandal and was only halted when the city’s police chief Heather Fong pushed back to prevent it.
So when the Harris presidential campaign released an ad on August 7 trumpeting her record as a ‘tough’ prosecutor who ‘took on drug cartels’ and ‘spent decades fighting violent crime’, California lawmakers and senior police officers who served during Harris’ tenure decided to speak up and challenge the candidate.
‘The campaign is trying to completely reinvent reality,’ said GOP congressman Kevin Kiley.
California lawmakers and former police officials are criticizing Kamala Harris’ recent campaign ads that portray her as a tough prosecutor
Lawmakers argue that these ads misrepresent her record, citing her 2005 proposal as San Francisco DA to only prosecute drug dealers after their third arrest, which was widely criticized and eventually halted.
‘She was a champion of San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy, she wanted drug dealers to go without being prosecuted until the third attempt, and she herself said in her own book that she was a progressive prosecutor.
‘The more the American people learn about what her actual record was, they’re going to see this campaign rhetoric for the facade that it is.’
Kevin Cashman, who was Deputy Chief of San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) at the time, said he and his colleagues were ‘shocked’ by DA Harris’ 2005 proposal.
‘We immediately saw that it wouldn’t be effective for our mission of keeping San Francisco safe,’ he told DailyMail.com.
‘The District Attorney called the strategy she recommended Operation Safe Streets. We in the police department called it Catch and Release, because we would have to catch them, identify them, and then release them back in the community without any action taken.
‘We saw that if we implemented that, we’d be overrun by commuter criminals, if word got out that you can come to San Francisco and deal drugs without consequence.’
Cashman said he felt the policy would mean more officers putting themselves in harm’s way for nothing.
