She may tout herself as a “progressive prosecutor,” but Kamala Harris’ record as a career California prosecutor suggests otherwise.
Harris — who made history Tuesday as presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s pick for vice president — has long faced criticism over her prosecutorial record, with skeptics saying she skewed in favor of police and was too slow, and even sometimes mum, on criminal justice reform.
As California’s attorney general from 2011 to 2017, she refused to endorse a 2015 bill calling for a special prosecutor to investigate deadly police shootings, the Sacramento Bee reported.
She also rejected calls from civil rights groups to investigate deadly police shootings in Los Angeles and San Francisco, following the 2014 police-involved killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
In 2015, Harris required body cameras for California Department of Justice agents but didn’t support legislation mandating them for all police officers.
The senator’s history as San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011 also has been scrutinized.
Shortly after taking the job, she sparked a decade-long feud with police unions for declining to pursue the death penalty for a gang member who murdered San Francisco police officer Isaac Espinoza.
She also began prosecuting parents of habitually truant students, calling the issue of students skipping school “tantamount to a crime” — even amid criticism that the policy disproportionately targeted low-income people of color, the Los Angeles Times reported.
She sent letters to San Francisco public school parents each year, threatening them with citations for truancy, and sponsored a 2010 law to make it a misdemeanor for parents whose children miss 10 percent of school a year without a good excuse. The punishment: a $2,000 fine, jail or both.
Harris also opposed a state initiative to soften minimum mandatory sentences — even though the criminal justice reform plan she rolled out while running for president called for their end.
One of Harris’ worst scandals came in 2010 when a technician was caught skimming cocaine from a crime lab and mishandling evidence. A judge ruled her office failed to disclose that information to defense attorneys, causing more than 600 drug-related cases to get tossed out.
That same year, Harris opposed an initiative in the state to legalize marijuana, despite now supporting such legislation.
During her tenure as attorney general, at least 1,560 people were thrown behind bars for marijuana-related offenses from 2011 to 2016, according to data from the Washington Free Beacon.
Harris’ handling of wrongful convictions has also been called into question.
As AG, her office fought against new DNA testing for death-row inmate Kevin Cooper, who claims he was framed for murder. Some legal experts believed the test could help overturn his conviction.
Her prosecutors also defended the conviction of George Gage, who was charged in 1999 with sexually abusing his stepdaughter — and put away by her testimony, according to a New York Times opinion piece.
A judge later found that Harris’ prosecutor failed to turn over exculpatory evidence — including that the stepdaughter had repeatedly lied to law enforcement and that her mother described her as a “pathological liar.”
The case got pitched to the Ninth District Court of Appeals, with Harris’ prosecutors fighting against tossing Gage’s conviction on a technicality — that he had failed to raise the legal issue in a lower court.
He’s still in prison, serving a 70-year sentence.