She embraced the movement to defund police in 2020, saying that activists had ‘rightly’ called to redirect police budgets from officers.

By Chuck Ross, The Washington Free Beacon

Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign is touting her as a tough-on-crime prosecutor who “put murderers and abusers behind bars” as part of a $50 million ad blitz in several battleground states.

But that PR effort will have to contend with Harris’s record as San Francisco district attorney, which includes lenient plea deals and probation for a string of career criminals—a serial domestic abuser who later murdered his girlfriend, a repeat felon who gunned down a newspaper editor in Harris’s hometown of Oakland, and others.

Harris’s fledgling campaign is leaning on her prosecutorial past—as San Francisco district attorney, then California attorney general—to fend off criticism of her soft-on-crime record.

“I took on perpetrators of all kinds—predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” she said at a campaign rally in Wisconsin last week.

“So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”

But in 2005, Harris struck a plea deal with Dwayne Reed, charged with the murder of the California secretary of state’s son during a robbery.

Harris agreed to release Reed, who had six prior felony convictions, in exchange for testifying against his accomplice in the murder-robbery, according to news reports at the time.

Reed, who was released from jail two days after testifying against his accomplice, murdered another man eight months later.

In December 2004, Harris’s office agreed to a plea deal with Scott McAlpin, who was charged with domestic violence against a woman, Anastasia Melnitchenko, whom he had stalked and terrorized since 2001, according to SFGATE.

Eight months after the plea deal, McAlpin, who had eight other domestic violence charges on his record, murdered Melnitchenko and stuffed her body in his trunk.

Prosecutors in Harris’s office did oppose McAlpin’s release from a San Francisco jail days before the murder.

Former San Francisco homicide prosecutor Jim Hammer, who worked under Harris, criticized her for striking plea deals with both Reed and McAlpin, and wrote in a September 2006 column that Harris lacked the “guts and the willingness to go after tough cases.”

In 2006, Harris’s office granted probation to Devaughndre Broussard, charged in the brutal assault and robbery of a metro train passenger.

A year later, Broussard assassinated Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, who was investigating a crime syndicate implicating Broussard’s family.

“He should have gone to state prison,” the father of Broussard’s previous assault victim said at the time. “Blame it on Kamala Harris.”

Harris has not addressed her handling of those cases, and her campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

But she has faced criticism before as being soft on crime, and overly critical of police officers.

She embraced the movement to defund police in 2020, saying that activists had “rightly” called to redirect police budgets from officers on the street to social services programs.

During Harris’s tenure as district attorney—from 2004 to 2011—police officers accused her of being too slow to charge murder cases, and offering lenient plea deals in lieu of going to trial.

She even alienated fellow Democrats, including then-Sen. Dianne Feinstein, for quickly rejecting capital murder charges in the April 2004 murder of San Francisco police officer Isaac Espinoza.

A San Francisco homicide investigator blasted Harris over her handling of the murder case of David Taylor, who confessed to beating and stabbing his 65-year-old mother to death in a drug-induced haze.

Harris’s office took over the case, and agreed to a voluntary manslaughter charge against Taylor, which carried a 12-year prison sentence.

“This deal was made without any input from me,” San Francisco homicide inspector Maureen D’Amico said in 2006.

“It was just picture-perfect investigation when everything was done right, done well,” D’Amico said.

“If (Taylor) gets out, goes back to crack cocaine, he is liable to flip out. This time it could be an innocent citizen.”

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The report suggests that Harris has struggled to manage border crime issues dating back to the early days of her political career.

By Alana Goodman, The Washington Free Beacon

As district attorney for San Francisco, Kamala Harris misappropriated over $5 million in federal grants that were intended to combat border crimes, according to a 2010 Department of Justice audit.

Records show that Harris while serving as chief prosecutor of the sanctuary city from 2004 to 2011, requested millions of dollars from the Department of Justice’s Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative.

The program reimburses local prosecutors for handling “illegal immigration and drug and alien smuggling cases” referred to them by federal authorities.

But a DOJ inspector general audit report found that none of the cases that Harris’s office filed for reimbursement were eligible under the program. The city was forced to pay back the improper funding claims.

The report suggests that Harris has struggled to manage border crime issues dating back to the early days of her political career.

Harris, who serves as the point person for Biden’s migrant policies as vice president, has faced criticism from Republicans for failing to slow the surge in illegal immigration and border crime.

“I think she’s been consistent throughout her political career, whether she was D.A., a California attorney general, a senator,” said Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

“Her entire record was about not enforcing immigration laws, [and] making sure that the people who violate those laws are not prosecuted or removed in any way.”

Jon Feere, a former Immigrations and Customs Enforcement official and investigator at the Center for Immigration Studies, said there has “not been any initiative by Kamala Harris, the border czar, to discourage illegal immigration or stop the fallout from open borders, going back to her time as district attorney.”

“She doesn’t see a problem with victimization, and thinks that the policies are more important than any harm to American citizens,” he said.

As district attorney, Harris championed San Francisco’s status as a “sanctuary city, a city of refuge,” and vowed not to prosecute immigration offenses.

But her office still raked in over $5 million in unlawful reimbursements from the federal program intended to address migrant-related crimes.

DOJ auditors said they noticed a “red flag” after Harris’s office requested significantly more reimbursements in 2006 from the program than any other local prosecutor in the United States, “despite being located about 500 miles north of the Southwest Border,” according to a 2010 report issued by the DOJ inspector general.

Harris’s office claimed the money was repayment for handling illegal immigrant-linked drug cases that the U.S. Attorney’s office had referred to her agency for prosecution. But the inspector general investigation determined that none of the cases were eligible and they had not been referred to Harris by federal prosecutors.

“[A]ll of the cases for which San Francisco had received SWBPI funds were ineligible for reimbursement,” said the audit, which blamed Harris’s staff and an outside contractor hired by her office for the failure.

The contractor also worked for other California prosecutors who had filed ineligible claims, although those reimbursements were significantly lower than the amounts requested by Harris’s office.

The investigation found that Harris’s office, instead of submitting individual cases for reimbursement, had “submitted approximately 30 percent of its drug cases” for the funding, even though the “cases were not federally initiated.”

The DOJ inspector general referred the results of the audit to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California.

No criminal action appears to have been taken against Harris’s office or the contractor she hired.

The funding mishap wasn’t the only mark on Harris’s immigration record while serving as DA.

She was also criticized for her “Back on Track” program, which provided job training in lieu of prison time to convicted felons—including those who were in the United States illegally.

One “Back on Track” participant, Alexander Izaguirre, robbed and brutally assaulted a woman while in the program in 2009.

Harris and San Francisco’s sanctuary city policies also came under fire in 2008, after illegal immigrant Edwin Ramos gunned down a 49-year-old father and two sons in a road rage murder.

Ramos had previously been arrested for a gang assault and attempted robbery. He had been released by local authorities without being turned over to federal authorities for deportation.

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