Kamala Harris Praises ‘Defund the Police’ Movement in Resurfaced Interview, Months Before Denouncing
(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Vice President Kamala Harris praised the Defund the Police movement in a resurfaced radio interview just months before she joined President Joe Biden’s campaign and distanced herself from it.
CNN’s KFile brought new attention to a June 9, 2020, radio interview Harris, then a senator, did with Ebro in the Morning, a New York radio program. During the chat, Harris said police were being “militarized” while budgets for education and social programs were being cut.
“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,” she said.
The interview took place just weeks after George Floyd was murdered in police custody in Minneapolis, kicking off Black Lives Matter protests and Defund the Police calls across the country.
“We need to have this conversation and critically examine and understand this is not working,” Harris said. “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.”
She added that “progress” is made by taking “to the streets.”
“Defund the police; the issue behind it is that we need to reimagine how we are creating safety,” she said. “And when you have many cities that have one third of their entire city budget focused on policing, we know that is not the smart way and the best way or the right way to achieve safety.”
The comments went further than Harris’s other public statements on Defunding the Police at the time. During an interview on The View the same month, Harris called for resources allocated to police departments to be reexamined and potentially given to social programs. She also praised the mayor of Los Angeles at the time for slashing the city’s police budget in favor of social programs.
Just months later, in October, after Harris joined Biden, Harris was distancing herself from the Defund the Police movement.
“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris do not support defunding the police, and it is a lie to suggest otherwise,” a spokesperson for the campaign said at the time. “Throughout her career, Sen. Harris has supported increasing funding to police departments and boosting funding for community policing.”
Ammar Moussa, Harris for President rapid response director, praised Harris’s record as a prosecutor and public servant in a statement to CNN.
“Whether as a district attorney, attorney general, Senator, or as Vice President, Kamala Harris has led the way to keep our communities safe, take on violent crime, and helped lead the nation to a historic drop in violent crime to a 50-year low,” Moussa said.
