‘Tough On Crime’ May Be Kamala Harris’ Biggest Campaign Lie

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 got him out of prison in less than a year. A few months after his release, he murdered Anastasia Melnitchenko, “the woman he had repeatedly terrorized, ultimately dumping her body in a car trunk,” Hammer related.

In a 2006 interview on “San Francisco/unscripted,” Hammer talked about murderer James McKinnon, who killed a man, placed the body in the man’s bathtub, and moved into the victim’s apartment. According to Hammer, who was aware of the case from working in the DA’s office, McKinnon was spending the victim’s money and had a second victim, an elderly man from whom he was taking money.

“When I was in the DA’s office, we demanded life in prison,” Hammer said in the interview. Then Harris took over the case when she was sworn in. McKinnon was offered a plea deal, the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, and six years in prison (including time served while awaiting trial) in exchange for a guilty plea for the murder, and she dropped the charges for the elderly victim. He was paroled two years later.

“Tough on crime” is just another campaign lie. Harris has actually been wimpy on crime and sought to free criminals, with no regard for public safety, victims’ rights, or meaningful justice.

Freeing Drug Dealers

Hammer was speaking out in 2006 to warn the public about a radical plan Harris was pursuing to release San Francisco drug dealers on their first and second offenses, and only charge them criminally if they were picked up for dealing a third time.    

The plan “sends a message to criminals that, even if they are arrested by San Francisco police, they stand a good chance of being freed when the district attorney refuses to file charges,” Hammer wrote. “Many homicides are directly related to battles over turf and drug dealing. While some murders are indeed difficult to prosecute, aggressively prosecuting the most dangerous drug dealers is an effective way to nip violence in the bud.”

San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong sent Harris a letter on Oct. 24, 2005, raising alarm over the plan.

“This proposal asks us not to arrest, but instead detain and release observed narcotics sales suspects,” Fong wrote. “When the same suspect is arrested the third time for narcotics sales, your office would then charge all three counts.” Fong noted that she was in a meeting where the plan was discussed and the benefits presented were described as triple the amount of evidence for prosecution, increased bail, and a reduced cost of housing inmates, as the drug dealers would be on the street and not in prison.

Fong’s letter said it was important to consider the adverse effects of such a plan, including narcotics sellers being released back onto the street soon after arrest and suffering no immediate negative consequences for their illegal actions.

Fong warned of an increase in “commuter crime,” that is, criminals coming to San Francisco from out of town to ply their trade where they know they can sell drugs without consequences. It would lead to more drug sales and competing drug dealers battling over turf, producing even more violent crime.

Fong said her department declined to participate in the program.

Today Fong works in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the Biden-Harris administration under DHS Secretary Mayorkas as senior counselor for law enforcement and acting assistant secretary for the Office for State and Local Law Enforcement.

Conviction Rates

Harris may sound like an airhead without a clue when she speaks, but there is a dangerous, criminal-friendly agenda behind her professed “tough on crime” policies.

For example, the presidential agenda on her website promises to “Make our communities safer from gun violence and crime.” As proof that she can make that happen, her agenda crows, “During her time as district attorney, she raised conviction rates for violent offenders — including gang members, gun felons, and domestic abusers.” Of course, that doesn’t mean violent criminals didn’t get out of prison fast and reoffend.

Raised conviction rates — that sounds good. And sure, compared to the previous district attorney, Terence Hallinan, who had a 49 percent conviction rate for murder, rape, robbery, and assault cases, Harris did raise conviction rates, winning 55 percent of the murder trials her office brought. But her rate was still comparatively low considering rates across California were averaging 83 percent at the time, according to a report by San Francisco Weekly.

But conviction rates don’t tell the entire story, Hammer said. The conviction rate is based on the cases the district attorney chooses to prosecute and how many she wins.  

“If you do easy cases, you get more [convictions]. If you take on tough cases, you’re going to get a worse conviction rate,” Hammer said, noting that in the seven years before Harris was in office, homicides went down every year. And in the three years (at the time of Hammer’s interview) since Harris was in office, homicides had gone up each year, he said. A conviction rate also does not indicate what punishment the criminal got. It could be life without parole or six years for murder. “There is a connection between not going after tough cases, plea bargaining serious murder cases … and crime going up.”

Harris likes to talk about her background as a prosecutor, but under scrutiny, it becomes clear she has long been unwilling to protect the people who elected her. That has not changed. Today Harris’ disregard for crime and its consequences on innocent people is apparent in the way she has ignored her responsibility to protect the U.S. border from foreign invaders crossing illegally into our country. That is a crime. She doesn’t care.

We don’t have to imagine how perilous it will be for law-abiding citizens to live in a nation where even more criminals are freed and consequences are muted. We need only to look at her feckless track record in San Francisco.

Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.