Unearthed footage from 2019 showed Vice President Kamala Harris advocating for removing police officers from schools in an effort to “demilitarize” school campuses.
“What we need to do is … demilitarize our schools and get police out of our schools. We need to face up to reality and tell the truth about the inequities around school discipline, where black and brown boys in particular are being expelled and suspended as young as elementary school age, as I've seen.” “I'm not going to give up,” Harris said in South Carolina in 2019.During the 2020 presidential election, she was running for president as a senator from California.
In October 2019, Harris participated in the Presidential Judiciary Forum at Benedictine University in Columbia, South Carolina, but later withdrew from the 2020 presidential race and was selected as President Biden's running mate. A college student asked Harris how she would allow minors to have their records expunged so they can attend college, and whether that would include expunging “criminal conduct” rather than “just marijuana expungements.”
“That's a great question and a great point, because when we talk about criminal justice reform, we have to understand that our juvenile justice system is in dire need of reform, and I know that, I've seen that,” Harris responded, touting her “action plan” on criminal justice reform from the 2020 campaign.
Crime surge forces school resource officers to reinstate, funding cut movement collapses
As of Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris had not held a formal press conference or in-person interview in 24 days since being confirmed as the Democratic presidential nominee. (Bizayev Tesfaye)
“I will end solitary confinement for juveniles, and that includes discussing and committing to what we will do to reduce juvenile incarceration, and laying out guidelines in terms of exactly what those numbers should be, because right now, in so many states, children are incarcerated. Even a few days of incarceration is traumatic for a child, but even more so when it continues for weeks, months or years,” she explained.
Harris has yet to announce her platform for the 2024 election. Fox News Digital reached out to Harris and Walz's campaigns to ask if they still support removing police from schools but did not immediately receive a response.
Governor Harris' comments about removing police from schools came after the killing of George Floyd during an interaction with Minneapolis police and ahead of the protests and riots that swept across the United States in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic and resulting lockdowns upended society.
National debate raises the question of removing police from schools
People take part in a “Defund the Police” march from the King County Juvenile Detention Center to City Hall in Seattle on August 5, 2020. (Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images)
As calls to defund the police grow across the U.S. following Floyd's death and the deaths of other Black Americans who have died during interactions with police, school districts in more liberal parts of the country have also begun to cut ties with police, arguing they pose a greater threat to students of color than they do to protect schools from potential threats.
In 2020, just days and weeks after Floyd's death, school districts in cities including Minneapolis, Portland, Denver and Oakland voted to terminate police contracts and remove school resource officers from campuses. Researchers at Education Week found in 2022 that at least 50 school districts either removed police officers or cut school resource officer budgets between May 2020 and June 2022.
Alexandria City Council reinstates school resource officer after teacher and parent complaints about violence
As pandemic lockdown orders were lifted and students returned to classrooms, violence at schools became common, prompting parents in many districts to call for principals to reinstate police officers. Montgomery County, Maryland, School district officials partially reversed a policy to remove officers after a 15-year-old boy was injured in a shooting in 2022. And the Washington, D.C. City Council quietly reversed a plan last year to gradually remove police from schools amid a surge in juvenile crime in the nation's capital.
Demonstrators hold signs that read “Defund the Police” during a protest in Rochester, New York, on September 6, 2020, following the death of Daniel Prude, a black man who died after police placed a saliva hood over his head during an arrest. (Reuters/Brendan McDiarmid)
The Denver School District reinstated armed officers last year, reversing a 2020 dismissal of them following a shooting at a high school, and the Alexandria, Virginia, School District has done the same in 2021.
Virginia school districts were rocked at the start of the 2021-2022 school year by a series of violent fights on campus, which some blame on a resolution passed by the Alexandria City Council in spring 2021 to abolish police officers.
Virginia school security guard uses body to protect student during high school brawl
“Our students are sending us a warning bullet. Literally a warning bullet,” Alexandria City High School Principal Peter Barras said during a meeting about SROs returning to campus in October 2021. “Please reconsider. My staff, my students. We are not OK.”
Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris appears onstage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin, File)
In California, the Pomona Unified School District's board of education voted to defund school police in 2021.
Just four months later, SROs returned to campus after a shooting near Pomona High School left a 12-year-old boy injured.
Surge in murders of black Americans is a result of efforts to defund police: experts
Fox News Digital could not find any previous statements from Harris making similar remarks about removing police officers from schools, but she did call for “injecting funding into states to end criminal prosecutions of disciplinary behavior in schools” in her 2020 presidential campaign platform.
Click here to get the FOX News app
Harris rose to the forefront of 2024 Democratic presidential candidates after Biden dropped out of the race last month amid growing concerns about her mental fitness. She joined her party in Chicago last week to formally accept the nomination and said that if elected president, she would serve all Americans, regardless of party affiliation.
