Newly surfaced video of then San Francisco district attorney Kamala Harris features the 2020 Democratic hopeful chuckling her way through a story about using law enforcement to combat school truancy.
She actually smiles as she describes threatening to jail parents if they don’t get their children to school.
Michael Graham writes at Inside Sources:
Video of Kamala Harris Threatening Parents With Jail Over Truant Children Sparks BacklashWhile Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) was talking to CNN’s Jake Tapper Monday night about her 2020 POTUS bid, hundreds of thousands of people were on Twitter watching a speech the former California D.A. and attorney general gave back in 2010. In the speech, Harris brags about threatening parents with prosecution–and possible jail time–over their children’s skipping school.“I believe a child growing without an education is tantamount to a crime,” Harris told the crowd at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. “So I decided i was going to start prosecuting parents for truancy.”“As a prosecutor in law enforcement, I have huge stick. The school district as a carrot. Let’s work together in tandem…to get those kids in school,” Harris said. She also bragged about the power of her D.A. office letterhead–with a large police badge logo at the top– to frighten parents and families when they received her letter outlining the possible legal consequences of truancy.
See the video below:
That sounds a bit authoritarian, doesn’t it?
Jim Geraghty of National Review adds this point:
Maybe there’s something in the water out here in Indian Wells, but am I soft on crime if I think a situation of a student’s chronic truancy probably needs a social worker, and not the state AG or local DA threatening to put the parents in jail? How much teen truancy occurs with parental consent? How many parents of truant kids are dealing with some other significant issue — drug use, an absent parent, financial pressures, unusual working hours, or some other complication that enables the truancy? In the above video, Harris gleefully tells a story of a parent “freaking out” upon receiving the letter announcing the policy. Does that . . . sound like reassuring law-enforcement judgment to you?
In another clip from the same speech, she describes how going after a working but homeless mother in this way, led to a happy ending for all involved:
Imagine an America where this woman is in charge of the IRS and government-run healthcare.
It’s going to be fun to watch the people who have spent two years calling Trump a fascist, somehow justify Kamala Harris using threats of jail to solve a problem like school attendance.
Featured image via YouTube.
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