Vice President Kamala Harris’ support for a bail fund for Black Lives Matter protesters has become a contentious issue among law enforcement as she attempts to present herself as a law-and-order candidate.
“Let’s be clear about something: If Kamala Harris becomes the next president of the United States, she will be an unmitigated disaster for public safety in this country,” Joe Gamaldi, national vice president of the Fraternal Order of Police and an active lieutenant in the Houston Police Department, told Fox News Digital.
“She has loudly and proudly supported bail reform and has even donated and encouraged other people to donate to a fund that helped get murderers, rapists, people who were shooting people in the streets, out on bail,” he said. “We’re not talking about helping bail out the mom who stole a candy bar from the store to help feed her kids; we’re talking about violent criminals.”
Gamaldi pointed out that bail reform has not been successful in “any urban community.”
“It is what has led to 16 American cities experiencing the highest murder rate in recorded history back in 2020-2021,” he said. “And we’re still living with the fallout of that.
“Over the last three years in the United States, we’ve averaged over 20,000 homicides a year, and we haven’t seen those numbers since the mid-1990s,” he continued. “And now we’re going to have Vice President Harris, who is the presumptive nominee at this point, run on a platform of supporting bail reform after seeing the horrific consequences we’ve seen in our urban communities.”
Joseph Imperatrice, an NYPD detective and founder of Blue Lives Matter NYC, emphasized the need for a president who will prioritize public safety.
“America needs a leader that’s going to keep bad guys behind bars, and unfortunately, Kamala Harris hasn’t done that,” he said. “It was proven during the riots by intentionally bailing out the bad guys.”
“This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue, this is a humanitarian issue,” Imperatrice added. “This is an accountability issue.”
Imperatrice highlighted Harris’ history as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general, suggesting that her track record included a mix of lenient crime policies and progressive discrimination.
“But unfortunately, we’ve seen over the last couple of years pandering to the left, pandering to activists,” he said. “She’s not the prosecutor that we once knew, and now she’s allowing bad guys to not only stay out of jail but helping them to get out of jail, which is causing a big problem.”
Charles “Cully” Stimson, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former prosecutor, criticized Harris for using similar language to other progressive politicians who have called for defunding the police.
“I know the language of the right and the left,” he said. “And this is exhibit A in a dog whistle to the left.
“So, the reason that the media is now fawning all over her and trying to protect her and calling her the cop candidate is because they’re engaged in projection,” he said. “She’s anti-cop.”
Stimson argued that when politicians call to “reimagine” the criminal justice system, they are essentially advocating for a pro-criminal stance.
“‘Reimagine’ means pro-criminal, that’s all it means,” he said. “The George Gascons, the Larry Krasners, the Alvin Braggs, the Kim Foxxes have enacted their policies [as district attorneys]. They refuse to prosecute all misdemeanors. They watered down felonies to misdemeanors. They don’t send violent juveniles to adult court. And the list goes on and on and on.”
Stimson pointed to Harris’ support for defunding the Los Angeles police department by $150 million in 2020 under then-Mayor Eric Garcetti’s leadership.
“When she applauds – those are her words, not mine – Garcetti and other police departments, taking $150 million from the LAPD, a huge chunk of money and sprinkling it, that is defunding,” he said. “So, we have to apply common sense and logic to this. Taking $150 million away from it, and you’re defunding it.”
During her previous presidential campaign, Harris was a prominent opponent of the cash bail system and promoted the Minnesota Freedom Fund in June 2020 to help bail Black Lives Matter protesters out of jail. However, only a fraction of the more than $41 million raised went to freeing protesters.
Minneapolis station FOX 9 reported that the fund spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to free an alleged knife murderer and a convicted rapist facing charges of sexual assault and kidnapping, among others.
Another individual, George Howard, 48, also benefited from the fund. He was allegedly involved in a road rage altercation on an Interstate 94 entrance ramp before he shot another driver, according to Minneapolis police, weeks after being bailed out on domestic assault charges.
The Minnesota Freedom Fund acknowledged its role in Howard’s release.
“We are aware of reports of the tragic and fatal shooting in Minneapolis earlier this week allegedly involving George Howard, an individual the Minnesota Freedom Fund had previously provided with bail support,” the group wrote on social media at the time. “MFF believes that every individual who has been arrested by law enforcement is innocent until proven guilty, and if a judge deems them eligible for bail, they should not have to wait in jail simply because they don’t have the same income or access to resources as others.”
As the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Harris is now focused on selecting a vice president, with potential candidates including several Democratic governors from the Midwest.