The negative effects of California’s Proposition 47 are well known—a surge in theft, chaos, and lawlessness. Prop 47, a ballot measure approved by voters in 2014, reclassified nonviolent larceny as a misdemeanor so long as the value of the goods stolen is less than $950.
This results are seen in horrifying videos of criminals brazenly riding bikes into drugstores and plundering shelves, stealing bags full of merchandise while impotent clerks and security guards haplessly watch the crime unfold.
What’s less known is that Vice President Kamala Harris was a key champion of getting Prop 47 approved.
Progressives like Harris often bemoan what they describe as “food deserts,” a lack of grocery stores offering more healthy foods in poorer areas.
The truth is, politicians such as Harris who encouraged the very lawlessness that drove out the drugstores and grocery stores don’t advise constituents to stop looting. They punish business owners instead.
The good thing is that California voters have a chance to repeal Proposition 47 through a countermeasure this fall called Prop 36. If voters approve the ballot question, Prop 47 will die.
Harris, however, wants to impose her terrible California worldview nationwide. Harris, the state’s former attorney general, supports ending cash bail for violent criminals.
Democrats’ presidential nominee even helped raise bail money for violent rioters in 2020, including murderers and serial domestic abusers in Minnesota during the George Floyd riots. Sadly, one of those criminals Harris helped free from jail went on to kill someone.
Harris claims to be a candidate of law and order, yet she proposed allowing dealers to sell drugs without fear of criminal prosecution. She prefers that drug dealers face charges only after the third time they are arrested.
“Kamala Harris was the most liberal and progressive district attorney I worked with in over 30 years in the SFPD,” said Kevin Cashman, former deputy chief of the San Francisco Police Department.
Now that’s a difficult title to claim in a liberal city like San Francisco.
But this title makes sense when you know that Harris released a violent MS-13 gang member, Edwin Ramos. Ramos was convicted of murdering a father and his two sons after being released.
Harris shielded illegal immigrant drug dealers from prison. She wiped clean their criminal records and coddled them with job training, even as millions of U.S. citizens are unemployed. Unfortunately, one of these illegal aliens violently assaulted a woman, fracturing her skull.
Harris refused to seek the death penalty against cop killer David Hill. Even the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., disagreed with Harris’ blatant disregard for the law. She criticized Harris for it.
Harris allowed criminals who punched and spit on cops to avoid jail time.
As district attorney of San Francisco, Harris was weak on gun-carrying criminals. The San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2006: “Police have also challenged Harris over whether she is living up to her promises to get tougher on gun crimes.”
Harris also failed in the courtroom as a prosecutor. San Francisco Weekly reported in 2010: “In the first quarter of 2010, things got worse. During that time, Harris’ office secured guilty verdicts in just 53 percent of its felony trials —a remarkable figure, revealing that defendants accused of serious crimes who took their case to trial had an even one-in-two shot at winning an acquittal.”
Harris’ record as San Francisco district attorney, The Washington Free Beacon reports, includes “lenient plea deals and probation for a string of career criminals—a serial domestic abuser who later murdered his girlfriend, a repeat felon who gunned down a newspaper editor in Harris’ hometown of Oakland, and others.”
Harris was such a crime-friendly district attorney, SF Gate reported, that San Francisco police were forced to do an “end run around Harris’ office by taking several gang-related homicide cases to federal prosecutors.”
For the first time in the history of California, which was founded in 1850, the state is losing a congressional district. That means California is losing people big time.
Residents are fleeing California’s crime for places such as Florida and Texas because of Harris’ failed policies and governance, in San Francisco and statewide.
If Harris becomes president, Americans will have nowhere else to flee because she’ll be running the entire country. We deserve better.
Carrie Sheffield is a senior policy analyst at Independent Women’s Voice.
Reprinted with Permission from The Daily Signal – By Carrie Sheffield
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.