Kamala Harris is running for president as an effective prosecutor. But California's violent crime rate rose 26% during & after she was Attorney General. And her policies on crime & migration increased border crossings 5x, putting vulnerable women and children in grave danger. 
Indifference And Ambition Behind Kamala Harris Policies That Increase Violence And Trap Children On Street
Author discovers two-year-old migrant child in Los Angeles living amidst crime and psychosis caused by bad migration and homeless policies
by @Shellenberger
Vice President Kamala Harris (left) in Guatemala in 2021. Venezuelan migrant mother and her two-year-old son (right) on Skid Row sidewalk last Friday, July 19. (Author photo)
Vice President Kamala Harris is the tough prosecutor and compassionate candidate America needs right now, she and her supporters say. “As a prosecutor, I specialized in cases involving sexual abuse," Harris said. “Well, Trump was found liable for committing sexual abuse." The Vice President launched her formal campaign for the presidency by pointing to her work as California’s Attorney General and San Francisco’s District Attorney. “In those roles, 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. "So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump's type.”
But Harris is poised to win the Democratic Party’s nomination through undemocratic means, was President Joe Biden’s border czar when border crossings rose five-fold, and was unable to prevent crime and homelessness from skyrocketing in San Francisco and California. From 2014 to 2023, violent crime in California rose more than 26%, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, a liberal think tank. Today, the state’s violent crime rate is 31% higher than in the rest of the United States. One out of four San Franciscans say they were a victim of crime last year, 42% of them victimized more than once, and only half bothered to report it. California, with 12% of America’s population, has one-third of America’s homeless. That number rose 50% over the last ten years, from 113,000 in 2014 to 181,399 in 2023.
It’s true that crime and homelessness are complex problems requiring difficult trade-offs and caused by drivers that are not entirely under the control of Vice President Harris or any other political leader. California has expensive housing, weather that allows the homeless to sleep outside year-round, and a culture that welcomes outsiders. California spends significantly more to help the homeless than other states. And San Francisco has a liberal culture that has long tolerated open-air drug use.
All of those factors and trends were in place before Harris became California’s Attorney General in 2011, United States Senator in 2017, and Vice President in 2021. And, by nature of his position, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, deserves a significant amount of the blame for the state’s crime and homelessness crisis.
But Harris is closely allied with Newsom and may be the second most powerful politician in America. She has had significant and growing political power since when she became District Attorney of San Francisco in 2004 to her selection by President Joe Biden as Vice President last week. And Harris wasn’t just any politician, she was the top law enforcement officer in San Francisco and California, respectively, from 2004 to 2017, the exact period when crime and homelessness sharply worsened in California.
And, now, there are migrant children living in dangerous conditions on Skid Row, Los Angeles, near downtown, as a direct result of Harris policies on migration, crime, and homelessness. I discovered the children and interviewed their parents last Friday, July 19, 2024. They are from Venezuela and live on a sidewalk. The mother described women fighting with knives outside their tent and being in a store when a man pulled a gun on the store owner and demanded a cigarette. All around the tent under which they live, there are people in various states of psychosis, some violent.
One of the children is two years old, and the mother says he is autistic and had heart surgery; the scar is visible on the boy’s chest. The father told me he came here for work, after which the mother corrected him and said he came for refuge. A source told us the man had abused the mother of the boy in a local shelter, and he was asked to transfer to a different shelter. Instead, he camped on the street. A few days later, the mother joined the man with her child. The mother offered a similar account but said he was threatened with violence in the shelter and that the child had cried and asked to be near his father.
Venezuelan migrant mother and her child on Skid Row, July 19, 2024 (author photo)
There are currently 3,500 homeless families in Los Angeles County, with 900 having arrived in the first half of 2024. An estimated 4,000 homeless live in Skid Row, the largest congregation of homeless in the United States. Migrant families have displaced local families. Today, 75% of the 400 family members in Union Rescue Mission are migrants. “There’s not enough shelter space,” said a case worker. “We need another shelter.”
Union Rescue Mission employees said Skid Row had become significantly more violent over the last six months. “We’ve had shootings,” the same case worker said. “Residents assaulted. There was a stabbing the other day up the street. There was a shooting.” The caseworker and others at the shelter blamed the increased potency of meth for the rising violence and chaos.
The statistics of what happened in the 13 years since Harris has held national and statewide office in California are sobering. San Francisco’s drug overdose and poisoning rate rose to become twice as high as America’s. California sheltered just 38% of its homeless as compared to the 96% shelter rate in New York state. Open-air drug dealing and homelessness became rampant in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, and cities across the state. The death rate of homeless people in California doubled. Today, the homeless in California die at a rate three times higher than the homeless in New York.
And now it’s clear that the quintupling of border crossings, under the Biden-Harris administration has contributed to homelessness in cities across the United States. The reason is simply the lack of shelter. As a result, every group tracked by the US government saw an increase in homelessness, including families with children. The number of homeless people in America grew by 70,000 in 2023, a number that is four times larger than any previous increase. “Even without the migrant crisis, we would have seen some increase, but certainly not to this extent,” said University of Pennsylvania’s Dennis Culhane, the lead academic advisor to the US government on counting homeless.
How did a two-year-old child end up on the streets of Los Angeles? Why did crime and homelessness get so much in California? And what role, if any, did Harris and her policies play in both?
Author discovers two-year-old migrant child in Los Angeles living amidst crime and psychosis caused by bad migration and homeless policies
by @Shellenberger
Vice President Kamala Harris (left) in Guatemala in 2021. Venezuelan migrant mother and her two-year-old son (right) on Skid Row sidewalk last Friday, July 19. (Author photo)
Vice President Kamala Harris is the tough prosecutor and compassionate candidate America needs right now, she and her supporters say. “As a prosecutor, I specialized in cases involving sexual abuse," Harris said. “Well, Trump was found liable for committing sexual abuse." The Vice President launched her formal campaign for the presidency by pointing to her work as California’s Attorney General and San Francisco’s District Attorney. “In those roles, 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. "So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump's type.”
But Harris is poised to win the Democratic Party’s nomination through undemocratic means, was President Joe Biden’s border czar when border crossings rose five-fold, and was unable to prevent crime and homelessness from skyrocketing in San Francisco and California. From 2014 to 2023, violent crime in California rose more than 26%, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, a liberal think tank. Today, the state’s violent crime rate is 31% higher than in the rest of the United States. One out of four San Franciscans say they were a victim of crime last year, 42% of them victimized more than once, and only half bothered to report it. California, with 12% of America’s population, has one-third of America’s homeless. That number rose 50% over the last ten years, from 113,000 in 2014 to 181,399 in 2023.
It’s true that crime and homelessness are complex problems requiring difficult trade-offs and caused by drivers that are not entirely under the control of Vice President Harris or any other political leader. California has expensive housing, weather that allows the homeless to sleep outside year-round, and a culture that welcomes outsiders. California spends significantly more to help the homeless than other states. And San Francisco has a liberal culture that has long tolerated open-air drug use.
All of those factors and trends were in place before Harris became California’s Attorney General in 2011, United States Senator in 2017, and Vice President in 2021. And, by nature of his position, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, deserves a significant amount of the blame for the state’s crime and homelessness crisis.
But Harris is closely allied with Newsom and may be the second most powerful politician in America. She has had significant and growing political power since when she became District Attorney of San Francisco in 2004 to her selection by President Joe Biden as Vice President last week. And Harris wasn’t just any politician, she was the top law enforcement officer in San Francisco and California, respectively, from 2004 to 2017, the exact period when crime and homelessness sharply worsened in California.
And, now, there are migrant children living in dangerous conditions on Skid Row, Los Angeles, near downtown, as a direct result of Harris policies on migration, crime, and homelessness. I discovered the children and interviewed their parents last Friday, July 19, 2024. They are from Venezuela and live on a sidewalk. The mother described women fighting with knives outside their tent and being in a store when a man pulled a gun on the store owner and demanded a cigarette. All around the tent under which they live, there are people in various states of psychosis, some violent.
One of the children is two years old, and the mother says he is autistic and had heart surgery; the scar is visible on the boy’s chest. The father told me he came here for work, after which the mother corrected him and said he came for refuge. A source told us the man had abused the mother of the boy in a local shelter, and he was asked to transfer to a different shelter. Instead, he camped on the street. A few days later, the mother joined the man with her child. The mother offered a similar account but said he was threatened with violence in the shelter and that the child had cried and asked to be near his father.
Venezuelan migrant mother and her child on Skid Row, July 19, 2024 (author photo)
There are currently 3,500 homeless families in Los Angeles County, with 900 having arrived in the first half of 2024. An estimated 4,000 homeless live in Skid Row, the largest congregation of homeless in the United States. Migrant families have displaced local families. Today, 75% of the 400 family members in Union Rescue Mission are migrants. “There’s not enough shelter space,” said a case worker. “We need another shelter.”
Union Rescue Mission employees said Skid Row had become significantly more violent over the last six months. “We’ve had shootings,” the same case worker said. “Residents assaulted. There was a stabbing the other day up the street. There was a shooting.” The caseworker and others at the shelter blamed the increased potency of meth for the rising violence and chaos.
The statistics of what happened in the 13 years since Harris has held national and statewide office in California are sobering. San Francisco’s drug overdose and poisoning rate rose to become twice as high as America’s. California sheltered just 38% of its homeless as compared to the 96% shelter rate in New York state. Open-air drug dealing and homelessness became rampant in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, and cities across the state. The death rate of homeless people in California doubled. Today, the homeless in California die at a rate three times higher than the homeless in New York.
And now it’s clear that the quintupling of border crossings, under the Biden-Harris administration has contributed to homelessness in cities across the United States. The reason is simply the lack of shelter. As a result, every group tracked by the US government saw an increase in homelessness, including families with children. The number of homeless people in America grew by 70,000 in 2023, a number that is four times larger than any previous increase. “Even without the migrant crisis, we would have seen some increase, but certainly not to this extent,” said University of Pennsylvania’s Dennis Culhane, the lead academic advisor to the US government on counting homeless.
How did a two-year-old child end up on the streets of Los Angeles? Why did crime and homelessness get so much in California? And what role, if any, did Harris and her policies play in both?
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https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1816596686099349912
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