It is Kamala Harris.
Presumptive Democratic Nominee Joe Biden has picked California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate.
The first woman of color in history to be chosen for such a position.
Biden chose Harris even though as a candidate she attacked him for being a lead architect
of the modern criminal justice system.
She was the one that took it to him. The senator criticized the former vice president's record on race.
I am proud of the work we did performing a criminal justice system and cleaning up the consequences
of the bills that you passed when you were in the United States Senate for decades
The irony of Biden's decision to select Harris particularly in the wake of  widespread protests
against police misconduct and racial injustice
is that she has her own troubling record on criminal justice issues which also came up on the debate stage.
She had a police department when she was there that in fact was abusing people's rights.
The bottom line is Senator Harris when you were in a position to make a difference and an impact
in these people's lives, you did not and worse yet, in the case of those who were on death row,
innocent people you actually blocked
evidence from being revealed that would
have freed them
until you were forced to do so there is
no excuse for that
i want joe biden to win it is about
everything about
criminal justice reform and what we're
trying to do in terms of reforming
policing like biden harris deserves
credit for endorsing vital reforms even
at this stage in her career but it's
worth setting the record straight about
her priorities over the course of her 16
years in public life
before criminal justice reform became
front and center for the democratic
party
i am proud of that work of being in the
position to use the power that i had to
reform a system that is badly in need of
reform
harris's record is that of a 1980s style
drug warrior
a defender of dirty prosecutors and a
political opportunist who has made life
more dangerous for sex workers
harris's political rise has been
propelled by a years-long
high-profile campaign against alleged
sex traffickers what she's
actually done is throw women in jail for
having consensual sex
while trampling on the rule of law to
advance her own political ambitions
ignoring the pleas of sex workers and
human rights advocates for
over a decade she's fought against
campaigns to decriminalize consensual
adult prostitution in california as
attorney general she created a statewide
program to get truckers to report
suspected sex workers to police
these policies didn't stop traffickers
but they did land plenty of sex workers
behind bars
one of the greatest defenders is
backpage.com harris fought to destroy
backpage.com a classified site that sex
workers used to find and screen their
clients
even though she publicly admitted that
the site's founders michael lacy and
james larkin
were protected from prosecution under
federal free speech laws
but tonight a groundbreaking arrest but
a month before election day in her
senate race
harris went ahead and had them arrested
anyway parading them before the cameras
on
pimping charges which were then promptly
dismissed by a judge
when harris got to congress she kept up
her crusade becoming a big proponent of
the 2018 law known as sestafasta
one cannot cowardly sit behind a
computer
committing their crime quite the
contrary
the result was that many sex workers had
no choice but to return to the streets
where soliciting clients
is considerably more dangerous because
you don't know who's going to pick you
up
there's more pimps and there's more guys
out here meanwhile harris declined to
intervene
in a real underage sex trafficking
scandal that involved dozens of police
and other local authorities in the bay
area
america has a deep and dark history of
people using the power of the prosecutor
as an instrument of injustice i knew
this history well
of innocent men framed of prosecutors
hiding information that would exonerate
defendants yes and during her time as
california's top cop
harris contributed to that history
repeatedly by going to bat
on behalf of dirty prosecutors her
office appealed the dismissal of the
case in which a prosecutor had
fabricated a confession to secure a
conviction and fought an appeal
in a case where a prosecutor had lied to
the jury during trial
in 2015 harris tried to stop the removal
of the orange county district attorney's
office from a murder trial
after it repeatedly failed to turn over
evidence to the defense
her office even tried to keep a man in
jail who had been wrongfully
incarcerated for 13 years
after a judge ruled that he had proven
himself innocent just because the man
hadn't delivered that proof
quite fast enough and as san francisco
d.a harris hid
known misconduct by a crime lab
technician who admitted to deliberately
tainting evidence
did prosecutors working under you know
about the concerns
about that lab which is what the judge
alleged did not know about it at least
said they did not know about it the
debacle has since led to the dismissal
of
hundreds of criminal cases something
else it's past time we get done
is dismantling the failed war on drugs
starting with legalizing marijuana
your opponent ron gold has said that he
is for the legalization of marijuana
recreationally
your thoughts on that
i that he's entitled to his opinion
harris is a former drug warrior who is
now refashioning herself
as pro-legalization that's a positive
shift but not a reason to rewrite the
past or
ignore the patterns it reveals in her
judgment four years after the cultural
tide had turned in favor of criminal
justice reforms
harris continued to support lock-em-up
policies that disproportionately hurt
minorities
as california attorney general harris
opposed marijuana legalization as late
as 2014 promoted civil asset forfeiture
without a conviction as a way to fight
drug rings
and sought to more aggressively police
prescription drug use
in her 2019 book the truths we hold an
american journey harris reveals that her
drug warrior mentality hasn't changed
we also need to reinstate the dea's
authority to go after the major
pharmaceutical manufacturers and
distributors and we need to invest
resources in law enforcement efforts
to cut off the supply of fentanyl from
china
let's believe in a more perfect union
without mass incarceration of
african-american men
we put more people in prison than any
country on earth
for no good reason yes we do and once
these people were in prison
harris saw to it that they'd have a hell
of a time getting out i
absolutely believe there should be
severe and serious consequence for
violent crime which is why i prosecuted
those cases
and will always seek the highest
sentence as a prosecutor in law
enforcement i have a huge stick
so i decided i was going to start
prosecuting
parents for truancy before her recent
about face
harris chose not to endorse proposed
sentencing reforms on the california
ballot
in 2012 and 2014 and she defended the
constitutionality of cash bail
until 2016. harris's office also fought
an order to reduce california's prison
population
after the supreme court determined the
conditions amounted to cruel and unusual
punishment
although she later claimed to be shocked
by what they had done
harris's attorneys argued that
non-violent offenders should stay behind
bars because the state needed the cheap
labor they
provide we are part of a longer story
and we are responsible for how our
chapter gets written
as she tries to convince voters to put
her a heartbeat away from the presidency
kamala harris is trying to rewrite her
last chapter but her record
is yet another reminder of the terrible
choice voters face in the 2020 election
i think you can judge people by when
they are under fire and it's not about
some fancy opinion on a stage
but when they're in the position to
actually make a decision what do they do
