Vice President Kamala Harris has spoken at great length about the tragic shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia on Wednesday. Harris' remarks, as well as remarks from other Democrats, focused on gun control, though that's not the only problem. In 2019, when she was running for president for the 2020 cycle, Harris called for removing police officers from schools. It was an armed officer at the high school on Wednesday, however, who confronted and took the 14-year-old suspect, Colt Gray, into custody. As Mia covered, the suspect was also known previously to law enforcement.
Georgia Sheriff describes the scene where an armed school resource officer confronted and took the shooter into custody. pic.twitter.com/mg1ayOfrIR
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 4, 2024
Is this why Kamala Harris wants to remove police officers from the public schools? https://t.co/OXgEJvkejP
— Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) September 5, 2024
Fox News unearthed Harris' comments from October 2019 just last week. Harris had been participating in the Presidential Justice Forum at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina. Although the Palmetto State holds its primaries earlier in the process, and is thus one of the more coveted states, Harris didn't even make it that far. She dropped out in December 2019, before any primary vote was cast.
As the Fox News report summarized:
"What we need to do about … demilitarizing our schools and taking police officers out of schools. We need to deal with the reality and speak the truth about the inequities around school discipline. Where in particular, Black and Brown boys are being expelled and or suspended as young as, I've seen, as young as in elementary school," Harris said in 2019 in South Carolina, when she served as a California senator running for president during the 2020 cycle.
...A college student asked Harris how she would go about expunging the records of juveniles to allow them to attend college, including expunging "a criminal offense," not "just a marijuana expungement."
"That's a great question and a great point, because when we talk about reform of the criminal justice system, we've got to understand that the juvenile justice system is in dire need of reform, and I know that. And I've seen it," Harris responded, touting her 2020 campaign’s "plan of action" on criminal justice reform.
"I will end solitary confinement of juveniles, which includes what we need to do to talk about and have a commitment for less incarceration of juveniles. And have guidelines in terms of exactly what those, those numbers should be, because right now, in so many states, children are being incarcerated for … a child being incarcerated for a couple of days is traumatic, much less the weeks, months and years that we're seeing that happen," she explained.
Harris has yet to release her political platform for the 2024 election cycle. Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris-Walz campaign asking if she still supports removing officers from schools but did not immediately receive a reply.
The report was written before Wednesday's shooting, but nevertheless listed plenty of failed examples where school districts removed police officers, only to then have to bring them back. This includes in Harris' state of California.
"In California, the Pomona Unified School Board voted to defund its school police in 2021," the report mentioned. "Just four months later, SROs were back on campus after a shooting near Pomona High School that injured a 12-year-old," it also included, referring to School Resource Officers.
While an SRO officer at Apalachee High School played a role in taking the suspect into custody, there were students at other schools who were not so fortunate.
The Trump War Room shared Harris' unearthed remarks last week as well, with many pointing to how they lost loved ones at other school shootings.
Wreckless. Radical. Kamala wants to make schools less safe.
— Ryan Petty (@rpetty) August 28, 2024
Your kids aren’t safe with Kamala Harris in office. https://t.co/bA3VTkytiS
My brother was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting because of liberal policies like the one Kamala is pushing here…
— JT Lewis (@thejtlewis) August 28, 2024
I wish there had been a police officer there to protect him.
Students need more protection, not less! https://t.co/p9VvO9iixx
This is sickening.
— Andrew Pollack (@AndrewPollackFL) August 28, 2024
My daughter was killed because Parkland didn’t have enough security.
We need more school resource officers — not fewer! https://t.co/9mDww7FjU8
Beyond her opposition to SROs, Harris has had a devastating record on crime when it comes to her previous roles, including as the district attorney for the now increasingly crime-ridden San Francisco and as Attorney General of California. As attorney general, she championed soft-on-crime Proposition 47 and Proposition 57, as Ann Coulter wrote about in a column published by Townhall in July.
On the issue of juvenile crime, Townhall published a column by Armstrong Williams earlier on Thursday, "Costly Missteps in Striking the Right Balance on Juvenile Justice."
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