From 2004-2011 Ms. Harris was the District Attorney for the most liberal large city in America — San Francisco. In that role she dictated which groups to target and how to prosecute them. During Harris’s tenure her office treated minorities, especially Blacks, in a statistically appalling fashion. While many groups have spoken of her progressive approaches, her office decided to target Blacks, Hispanics and Asians like too many other racist prosecutorial offices in America. So, SF District Attorney Harris, like Biden, is not a racist but, she sure did “hurt” a bunch of minorities.
In 2010, during her tenure, San Francisco’s population was 6% Black. “By contrast, between 2008 and 2014 Blacks accounted for 41 percent of those arrested, 43 percent of those booked into jail, 38 percent of cases filed by the Office of the District Attorney, and 39 percent of new convictions.” (p.16) While the study includes data before, during and after Harris’s tenure, the report clearly shows that during her tenure San Francisco exhibited racial disparities in prosecution, detention, and sentencing that significantly disfavored Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics relative to White suspects.
The noted study doesn’t report exclusively on the time period where Harris enjoyed leading an office which disproportionately targeted minorities. Yet, “disparities in disposition and sentencing outcomes narrow considerably with the passage of proposition 47.” (p.36) Prop 47 was passed in 2014 so it was the years prior to that, when Harris was leading the charge, that it was even worse. The city didn’t turn racist after she left but instead, got “considerably” less racist only once she left.
We can certainly praise Harris for her programs to reduce punishment and recidivism. Yet, when you honestly translate this pattern, she still led an office which disproportionately targeted minorities for prosecution, pretrial detention, and more severe punishment despite her innovative approaches once she screwed them. Harris’s innovative approaches created anecdotal examples of treating defendants better and yet, anecdotes do not trump the statistical study which demonstrate 6% of the City’s population being treated like they are responsible for a lion’s share of the criminal activity in the city.
And just to be clear, “95 percent of black people don’t commit a crime in any given year. Whenever almost any kind of crime is committed in the U.S., it is far more likely that the person responsible is white.” The question we must ask is how was San Francisco’s top prosecutor so good at catching people of color and those non-minority criminals were so damn good at evading capture, arrest, pre-trial detention and, oppressive punishment?
While none of the democratic candidates are racist, should we not feel “hurt” by the way Harris has conducted herself, despite the color of her skin? She was the lead prosecutor in San Francisco and she still couldn’t stop her office from acting like some racist city in the South.
We see further evidence of how her talk doesn’t meet her walk when on stage she tells us she is for universal health coverage and the abolishment of private healthcare and then she tells us, when she is out of reach of moderators and combatants, she understood the question to be one only pertaining to her personal choices. We all heard the question — “who here would abolish their private health insurance in favor of a government-run plan?” And to be sure, this was the second time she heard the question since it was asked the night before. (search the transcript using the word “hand.”) Nor were they asking her if she would “quit” her plan rather, they were asking about the abolishing of the plan. Her quick pivot has us in the realm of a Trump/Bill Clinton pivot.
I wouldn’t vote for Biden and I am certainly not trusting Harris.