Kamala Harris praised ‘defund the police’ movement in June 2020 radio interview

(CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris voiced support for “defund the police” in a radio interview in June 2020 amidst nationwide protests for police reform, just months before denouncing the movement after she had joined the Biden presidential campaign.

Harris said in the June radio interview the movement “rightly” called out the amount of money spent on police departments instead of community services such as education, housing, and healthcare, emphasizing that more police did not equate to more public safety.

“This whole movement is about rightly saying, we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities,” Harris said on a New York-based radio program “Ebro in the Morning” on June 9, 2020, adding that US cities were “militarizing police” but “defunding public schools.”

Harris made her comments just weeks after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer galvanized the “defund” movement among progressive activists. At the time, Harris was six months removed from ending her own presidential campaign and was still two months away from being tapped as Joe Biden’s vice presidential nominee.

In an interview a day earlier, Harris also lauded Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti for his decision to slash $150 million from the police budget and move it into social services.

As Harris works to replace Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee following his decision to drop out of the 2024 race, the newly unearthed interview could complicate her strategy of highlighting her history as a tough on crime prosecutor in a potential matchup against Donald Trump, who is facing numerous legal challenges, including multiple felony convictions.

Before she was elected to the Senate in 2016, Harris spent seven years as the district attorney in San Francisco before serving as California’s attorney general for six years.

Mitch Landrieu, national co-chair for the Biden-Harris campaign and former mayor of New Orleans, on Friday walked back Harris’ 2020 statements, saying Harris meant that she supports being “tough and smart on crime.”

“Her position has always been that you can both be tough and smart on crime, and it requires funding police, but it also requires funding rehabilitation and things that might criminal justice system safer. You can do both,” Landrieu told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”

“Our actions indicate that she wants to fund the police, but she wants to do the other things as well,” Landrieu said.

Flurry of June 2020 interviews

After June 2020, Harris rarely if at all mentioned the “defund the police” movement. The Biden campaign later tried to clarify after adding her to the ticket that she supported funding the police.

But in June 2020, Harris argued the “defund” movement was correct to examine police budgets, and also talked about police departments needing to be demilitarized.

“We need to have this conversation and critically examine and understand this is not working,” Harris said on “Ebro in the Morning.” “It’s not working. So, this is an important conversation and not just a conversation – cause to your earlier point, can’t just be about talk. It has to be about forcing change.”

“And this is why, you know, I was out there with folks and we’ll, any movement, any progress we have gained has been because people took to the streets,” Harris added.

A day before her “Ebro in the Morning” radio interview, Harris appeared on MSNBC where she explicitly called to “demilitarize police departments” and said it was “backward” to think more police officers created more safety.

“Part of what we have to do here is also look at the militarization of police departments and, and the kind of money that is going to that. And we need to demilitarize police departments,” Harris said. “At its core, one of the issues that I think we should all agree on is that it is old thinking. It is outdated and is actually wrong and backward to think that more police officers will create more safety.”

In another interview on “The View” on June 8, 2020, Harris engaged in an exchange on defunding the police where she directly suggested the funding for police could be used in other social programs.

“In many cities in America, over one third of their city budget goes to police. So, we have to have this conversation. What are we doing? What about the money going to social services? What about the money going to helping people with job training? What about helping with the mental health issues that communities are being plagued with for which we’re putting no resources?”

Also on June 8, 2020, Harris praised the mayor of Los Angeles for removing money from police and investing it in social services in an interview on “Good Morning America. “

“I applaud Eric Garcetti for doing what he’s done,” she said.

In the same interview, Harris added she didn’t support “getting rid” of police.

“We have to be practical about this,” she said.

‘Reimagine how we are creating safety’

At the time “defund the police” became a rallying cry for protestors, with some arguing that police departments should be abolished altogether. Others, like Harris, framed it as a means of questioning spending on police budgets and investing more in areas like education, mental health services, and affordable housing as essential for creating safer communities.

“Defund the police, the issue behind it is that we need to reimagine how we are creating safety,” Harris said in the June 2020 radio interview. “And when you have many cities that have one third of their entire city budget focused on policing, we know that is not the smart way and the best way or the right way to achieve safety.”

“For too long, the status quo thinking has been, you get more safety by putting more cops on the street,” Harris added. “Well, that’s wrong, because by the way, if you wanna look at upper middle class suburban neighborhoods, they don’t have that patrol car.”

Harris, citing suburban communities, said that true safety comes from well-funded schools, homeownership, thriving small businesses, and access to health services – not increased police presence.

Despite the nationwide movement, polling showed reducing police budgets remained heavily unpopular, even in 2020. A Pew Research poll found that just 25% of adults supported reducing police budgets that year and, by 2021, that support had decreased to 15%, with 47% of adults supporting more police spending.

After Biden picked as VP

After Harris was selected as Biden’s running mate in August 2020, the Biden campaign tried to make it clear she opposed defunding the police – and said she supported increasing police funding.

“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris do not support defunding the police, and it is a lie to suggest otherwise,” Sabrina Singh, Harris’ then-press secretary said in October 2020. “Throughout her career, Sen. Harris has supported increasing funding to police departments and boosting funding for community policing.”

According to a POLITICO-Morning Consult poll published in mid-June 2020, almost 60% of registered voters supported major reforms or a complete overhaul to police departments in 2020, but only 29% backed the “defund the police” movement.

Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee at the time of the protests in the summer of 2020,  made clear repeatedly throughout his campaign that he opposed the “defund” movement – saying he supported increasing spending for both police and social services.

In a joint interview on ABC News from August 2020 featuring both Biden and Harris, Biden answered the question on whether the campaign supported the “defund the police” movement.

“I don’t want to defund police departments. I think they need more help. The vast majority of the police – they’re ashamed of what they saw,” Biden said in reference to the Floyd murder. “But you have to take action and it has to be national.”

Harris’ record as a prosecutor was heavily scrutinized during her failed 2020 presidential campaign. Harris was known for her “smart on crime” approach, initiatives like truancy prosecution, and the creation of the “Back on Track” program for first-time drug offenders.

She also defended the death penalty as California attorney general, opposed a statewide ballot measure to legalize marijuana, and pushed for higher bails for certain gun charges as district attorney.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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