When Kamala Harris was SF DA, one of her top deputies regularly rounded the office urging prosecutors to stop by Harris' fundraisers for re-election to donate and/or volunteer. One of them told me she was told it would be good for her career to contribute. Message was clear.
While Harris was the DA in San Francisco, the supervisor in one of the criminal units was a no-show who literally phoned it in from San Diego, filling out fake time sheets from there where his boyfriend was. This went on for years, only ending under George Gascon's tenure.
Another prosecutor in Kamala Harris' DA office told me that the office, as policy, did not allege prior crime "strikes" in indictments as is routinely done in other counties such as the one where the deputy DA had come from. This DDA was criticized for alleging strikes; only supervisors were allowed to authorize this and it was rarely done, yet another way Harris went soft on crime.
What does it mean when you don't allege strikes? it means that a career criminal, a violent criminal, who commits multiple crimes gets two years instead of 25 to life. The prosecutor complained about this internally but it went nowhere.
When Kamala Harris became the DA after violating the campaign finance limits to out-raise and outspend her former boss, who did obey the limits, she immediately sent out mass "let's make a deal" letters to every defense lawyer with a pending murder case. These cases were almost all pled out to manslaughter or even lesser charges, and then Harris claimed these as convictions on murder cases for her closure rate. This is unheard of and set a tone of defense lawyers not taking her office seriously.
Kamala Harris’ incompetence got two
gang violence witnesses killed, by housing them just across county lines.
The bad guys found and killed them, the cases then fell apart. And scared witnesses then refused to testify against more bad guys. Rinse and repeat.
gang violence witnesses killed, by housing them just across county lines.
The bad guys found and killed them, the cases then fell apart. And scared witnesses then refused to testify against more bad guys. Rinse and repeat.
The Harris DA office’s “lack of conviction” was a widely known joke in CA law enforcement circles. And everyone — especially the criminals — knew and exploited it.
Kamala Harris manipulated the stats as DA by charging only cases that were “trial ready” in the first place — an absurd metric as most cases are built up after charging on a probable cause basis. Even so, her conviction rate was a joke.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
