San Francisco is a cautionary tale for the rest of the country due to prosecutors like Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris ‘ushered in’ California’s radical criminal justice policies: Joel Aylworth
Former San Francisco police officer Joel Aylworth sheds light on Kamala Harris’ prosecutorial record on 'Fox & Friends Weekend.'
Kamala Harris and her allies are highlighting her prior experience as San Francisco’s district attorney. She ran away from it during the 2020 primary as anti-police fervor swept the Democratic Party, but now it’s a selling point. They use it in ads to call her "tough."
This couldn’t be further from the truth.
The case of Steven Petrilli is instructive to see what type of District Attorney’s Office Kamala Harris ran.
Vice President Kamala Harris takes the stage at the 20th Quadrennial Convention of the Women's Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church on Aug, 1, 2023, in Orlando, Florida. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Petrilli is currently serving life in prison for killing San Francisco police officer Nick Tomasito-Birco in 2006.
KAMALA WAS A ROGUE SOROS-LIKE PROSECUTOR BEFORE IT WAS POPULAR AMONG WOKE ELITES
Petrilli was free to kill Officer Nick Tomasito-Birco because of Kamala Harris.
A year before Petrilli rammed into Birco with a van, he was arrested for illegal concealed possession of a firearm. A felony conviction for this charge can lead to three years in state prison.
However, Kamala Harris' District Attorney’s Office downgraded the charges to a misdemeanor from a felony. Petrilli was given three years’ probation. He should’ve been in prison and not free to kill.
THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT KAMALA HARRIS’ LAW-ENFORCEMENT RECORD
This wasn’t Petrilli’s only run-in with the law before he killed Officer Birco. In fact, in the year-and-a-half before he killed Birco, Petrilli was arrested 12 different times for a variety of felonies and misdemeanors, and yet he served no more than 35 days in jail.
The San Francisco Chronicle at the time even highlighted four separate instances in which Harris' office refused to even prosecute him.
Petrilli isn’t some outlier.
HOW KAMALA HARRIS HELPED CRUSH SAN FRANCISCO'S MIDDLE CLASS
This is part of a pattern for Kamala Harris. In 2007, the editor of the Oakland Post was assassinated by a man on probation for a brutal assault.
The issues with Harris’ tenure as district attorney go far beyond allowing ruthless criminals off with a slap on the wrist.
The vice president was on the cutting edge of "progressive prosecutor" tactics, otherwise known as turning a blind eye to crime. For example, in 2005 Kamala Harris wanted to institute a program that would allow drug dealers to repeatedly sell drugs without fear of prosecution.
KAMALA HARRIS' SAN FRANCISCO IS A DYSTOPIAN NIGHTMARE. IS THIS WHAT SHE HAS PLANNED FOR AMERICA?
Her plan was that drug dealers would only get charged for selling narcotics the third time they got arrested.
Fortunately, this proposal was not implemented due to protest from the police department. In an October 2005 letter to Harris, then-San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong wrote about the "adverse effects" that would occur due to Kamala’s plan, including that "if out of town dealers learn that they can sell drugs without consequences in San Francisco, we will probably see an influx of sales and the associated crimes that come with that."
And while Kamala Harris likes to tout a high conviction rate, she doesn’t tell the full story.
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As San Francisco Weekly reported in 2010, Harris’ overall conviction rate is "based almost entirely on plea deals negotiated before defendants accused of serious crimes proceed to trial."
When serious criminals went to trial, Harris lost often. At one point, Harris' office was securing "guilty verdicts in just 53% of its felony trials" when the statewide average was 83%.
The amazing thing is that Vice President Harris’ lies about her tenure as San Francisco’s district attorney is something of a deja vu moment. She similarly lied about her prosecutorial record when she ran for that office in 2003. Her campaign claimed in mailers that she tried "hundreds of serious and violent felonies," but when confronted about it during a candidate forum, Harris admitted she embellished her record. One reporter at the time found that it was more likely that Harris tried roughly 10 felonies.
The only thing "tough" about Harris' record as district attorney was being on the receiving end of the consequences of her policies. Just days after San Francisco Police Officer Isaac Espinoza was murdered, Harris took the death penalty off the table for his killer. Isaac’s widow Renata said she felt like Harris, "had just taken justice from us. From Isaac."
San Francisco has become something of a cautionary tale for the rest of the country due to prosecutors like Harris. Don’t let her make America a cautionary tale for the rest of the world.
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Kevin Kiley, a Republican, serves as the U.S. representative for California's 3rd Congressional District and is a member of the Intellectual Property Subcommittee.
