Kamala Devi Harris often points to her time as a prosecutor to prove she is a tough-on-crime champion of public safety. And since she is so proud of her record, if elected president, she will try to implement the same policies she tried before. But the truth is that her disastrous policies as the San Francisco district attorney (DA) increased crime, freed murderers, and cost lives.
Harris oversaw crime in San Francisco as DA from 2004 to 2010. In her first year, San Francisco saw the violent crime rate increase 19 percent, an upward trend that continued for much of her reign. Her policies, implemented and proposed, drew criticism from longtime law enforcement experts.
Former San Francisco prosecutor Jim Hammer, who worked in the district attorney’s office just prior to Harris being sworn in, wrote a scathing 2006 editorial in SFGate criticizing her lenient plea bargains for violent criminals, describing case after case where violent criminals quickly got out of jail and offended again, harming more victims.
Hammer mentioned Dwayne Reed, who, with six previous felony convictions, took a plea bargain to serve just five years for his part in the murder of a man, in exchange for his testimony against the other murderer. Under Harris’ direction, Reed was released just two days after testifying. Just eight months later, Hammer wrote, Reed murdered another man in another county and was convicted and finally sentenced to life in prison.
Scott McAlpin, a longtime domestic violence offender, got a plea deal that
