Vice President Harris, whose history of supporting bail funds for convicted Black Lives Matter protesters has drawn the attention of law enforcement, has sought to position herself as the law-and-order candidate.
“Let me be clear: If Kamala Harris becomes the next president of the United States, she would be an enormous disaster for public safety in this country,” Joe Gamaldi, national vice president of the Houston Brotherhood of Police and a serving police captain, told Fox News Digital.
“She is a vocal and proud supporter of bail reform, donating and encouraging others to donate to bail funds that help murderers, rapists and street shooters,” he said. “We’re not talking about helping pay bail for a mother who stole a candy bar from the store to feed her kids, we’re talking about violent criminals.”
Kamala Harris-backed “Freedom Fund” brings murderers and rapists back to the streets, but it’s still active
Vice President Harris (Reuters/Evelyn Hochstein)
Gamaldi said bail reform isn’t working “in any urban area.”
“That’s why 16 American cities experienced their highest murder rates on record in 2020 and 2021,” he said, “and we’re still suffering the aftereffects of that.”
“The United States has averaged more than 20,000 homicides per year for the past three years, numbers not seen since the mid-1990s,” he said. “And now Vice President Harris, the front-runner at this point, has seen the horrific results we’re seeing in our urban centers and is going into the election on a platform of supporting bail reform.”
Joseph Imperatriz, a New York Police Department detective and founder of Blue Lives Matter NYC, told Fox News Digital that America needs a president who will “put bad guys behind bars.”
“America needs leaders who will keep bad people behind bars, and unfortunately, Kamala Harris is not doing that,” he said, “as evidenced by her willful decision to release bad people on bail during the riots.”
“This is not a Democrat or Republican issue, this is a humanitarian issue,” Imperatriz said. “This is an accountability issue.”
Vice President Harris arrived in Milwaukee for a campaign event on July 23, 2024, and disembarked from Air Force Two. (REUTERS/Kevin Mohat/Pool)
Imperatriz noted that Harris’ record as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general for more than 12 years was a mix of soft-on-crime policies and progressive discrimination.
“But unfortunately, in recent years, we’ve seen a lot of pandering to the left and to activists,” he said.
“She’s turned things around,” he said. “She’s not the prosecutor we once knew. Now she’s not only keeping bad people out of prison, she’s helping them get out of prison, and that’s causing big problems.”
Democrats have touted Harris as Trump’s “prosecutor” during the election, but critics have slammed her legal record.
Charles “Curry” Stimson, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former prosecutor, told Fox News Digital that Harris is using “the exact same language” as Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Bernie Sanders, who have called for cuts to the police budget in the wake of the 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
“I know the language of the right and the left,” he said, “and this is Exhibit A, a dog whistle to the left.”
“So the reason the media is now fetishizing her and trying to protect her and calling her a would-be cop is because they’re engaging in a projection,” he said. “She’s anti-cop.”
Stimson said that when politicians and prosecutors say they want to “rethink” the criminal justice system, they are being “pro-criminal.”
“‘Rethink’ means pro-criminal, that’s all,” he said. “George Gascón, Larry Krasner, Alvin Bragg, Kim Foxx have implemented the policies. [as district attorneys]They are refusing to prosecute all minor offenses. They are reducing felonies to misdemeanors. They are not sending violent juveniles to adult court. The list goes on and on.”
Vice President Harris’ record as a prosecutor has come under question within law enforcement. (AP Photo/Molly Gash)
Stimson noted that Harris praised Los Angeles for cutting its police department budget by $150 million in 2020 under the leadership of then-Mayor Eric Garcetti..
“For her to praise Garcetti and other police departments for taking a massive $150 million from the LAPD and scattering it around — her words, not mine — is a defensive act,” he said. “So we have to apply common sense and logic to this. Taking away $150 million means cutting the budget.”
Bail funds, which Kamala Harris promoted in 2020 to free violent criminals, are back in the spotlight after President Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. (Fox News)
Harris said, Cash Bail System During his last presidential campaign, he touted the creation of the Minnesota Freedom Fund in June 2020 to help secure bail for Black Lives Matter rioters, but only a small portion of the more than $41 million raised was actually used to secure the release of rioters.
Minnesota man released by Kamala Harris-backed bail fund now faces murder charges
FOX 9, Minneapolis The fund reported spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure the release of a knife murder suspect and a convicted rapist who was facing charges including sexual assault and kidnapping.
Another criminal who benefited from the fund was George Howard, 48. He is accused of shooting and killing another driver after being involved in a road rage altercation on an on-ramp to Interstate 94 just weeks after being released on bail on a domestic violence charge, according to Minneapolis police.
Vice President Harris boarded Air Force Two upon departing from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on July 23, 2024. (REUTERS/Kevin Mohat/Pool)
The Minnesota Freedom Fund acknowledged its role in putting Howard back on the streets.
“We are aware of reports of a tragic and deadly shooting. Minneapolis “Earlier this week, the Minnesota Freedom Fund was assisting with a bail fund related to the suspect George Howard,” the organization posted on social media at the time. “The Minnesota Freedom Fund believes that all individuals arrested by law enforcement are innocent until proven guilty, and if a judge finds them eligible for bail, they should not be forced to wait in jail simply because they do not have the same income or access to assets as others.”
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Harris, currently the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is working on picking a vice president, most likely to be one of several Midwestern Democratic governors.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Harris’ campaign for comment.
