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Does Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris Really Want Dirty Cops Held Accountable?
This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Omaha Steve (a host of the General Discussion forum).
Sure, Kamala Harris tonight has been the strongest vocally I've ever seen her, but do those words erase how she repeatedly protected dirty, lying cops & prosecutors in California as AG? | OC Weekly http://bit.ly/2xiSLKO @ocweekly
Link to tweet
DOES PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE KAMALA HARRIS REALLY WANT DIRTY COPS HELD ACCOUNTABLE?
R. SCOTT MOXLEY | POSTED ON JANUARY 24, 2019
U.S. Senator Kamala Harris (D-California) appeared on Rachel Maddow’s primetime Jan. 23 MSNBC show to sell her 2020 presidential campaign and, in the process, left those of us who watched her performance in one of Southern California’s biggest law-enforcement scandals astonished by her audacity. ... Noting she might sound “corny,” Harris celebrated “courage,” urged people “to step up” and bemoaned attacks “not only on the American dream, but [also] American values” in the wake of the last presidential election. ... “This is a moment that should require everyone to look in the mirror and ask: ‘What am I doing right now, and what can I do?’” she said. “This is to be a moment that has to be about what is each of us prepared to do?” ... On the off-chance Harris’ makeover is semi-authentic, her time-travel trips to the aforementioned mirror in 2014, 2015 and 2016 would result in tearful self-loathing.
During those years, Orange County was in the midst of a massive criminal-justice-system scandal. Sheriff’s deputies had spent years running unconstitutional jailhouse scams against pretrial inmates to secretly secure prosecutorial victories at trials. In return, prosecutors under then-District Attorney Tony Rackauckas looked the other way when deputies hid, doctored or destroyed exculpatory evidence from defendants; repeatedly committed perjury; and disobeyed lawfully issued court orders. Tens of thousands of pages of records inside the Orange County Superior Court, as well as at the California Court of Appeal, prove beyond a reasonable doubt each element of what became known nationally as the jailhouse-informant scandal.
So, who polices the police if top-ranking local law-enforcement officials, including then-Sheriff Sandra Hutchens and Rackauckas, work in league to protect their government agencies from accountability when they’ve been caught cheating? ... You might assume federal agents. But that didn’t happen. They were tainted themselves, having used many of the same corrupt Orange County deputies on their joint-agency task forces. ... With Rackauckas and the U.S. Department of Justice compromised on the issue, there was only one person left to step up, demonstrate courage, and defend American values of honesty and fair play in courthouses: then-California Attorney General Harris, a San Francisco democrat who gained national attention when Barack Obama praised her physical attributes.
As this state’s top law officer, Harris possessed not only the prosecutorial power to fight law-enforcement corruption, but also the moral obligation to protect our county—which, by the way, is larger than 20 U.S. states—from badged crooks, many of whom take home taxpayer-funded annual pay packages of around $300,000 or more, according to Transparent California records. ... Instead, Harris sent an unmistakable signal: Under her watch, police-agency employees in California were free to commit perjury—even in death-penalty cases, as they did in Orange County (see People v. Daniel Wozniak, People v. Lynn Dean Johnson, People v. Wendell Lemond and People v. Scott Dekraai). ... Harris can’t claim ignorance of what transpired in our informant scandal. Beginning in early 2014, she placed Deputy Attorney General Theodore Cropley inside Superior Court Judge Thomas M. Goethals’ Santa Ana courtroom for months as alarming details of the scandal unfolded. But Cropley telegraphed his stance from the outset. Day after day, he chuckled, smiled and huddled with Dan Wagner, a choir-boy faced Orange County prosecutor with a sinister streak who directed efforts to whitewash damning evidence against himself, the dirty deputies and his office.
....
R. SCOTT MOXLEY | POSTED ON JANUARY 24, 2019
U.S. Senator Kamala Harris (D-California) appeared on Rachel Maddow’s primetime Jan. 23 MSNBC show to sell her 2020 presidential campaign and, in the process, left those of us who watched her performance in one of Southern California’s biggest law-enforcement scandals astonished by her audacity. ... Noting she might sound “corny,” Harris celebrated “courage,” urged people “to step up” and bemoaned attacks “not only on the American dream, but [also] American values” in the wake of the last presidential election. ... “This is a moment that should require everyone to look in the mirror and ask: ‘What am I doing right now, and what can I do?’” she said. “This is to be a moment that has to be about what is each of us prepared to do?” ... On the off-chance Harris’ makeover is semi-authentic, her time-travel trips to the aforementioned mirror in 2014, 2015 and 2016 would result in tearful self-loathing.
During those years, Orange County was in the midst of a massive criminal-justice-system scandal. Sheriff’s deputies had spent years running unconstitutional jailhouse scams against pretrial inmates to secretly secure prosecutorial victories at trials. In return, prosecutors under then-District Attorney Tony Rackauckas looked the other way when deputies hid, doctored or destroyed exculpatory evidence from defendants; repeatedly committed perjury; and disobeyed lawfully issued court orders. Tens of thousands of pages of records inside the Orange County Superior Court, as well as at the California Court of Appeal, prove beyond a reasonable doubt each element of what became known nationally as the jailhouse-informant scandal.
So, who polices the police if top-ranking local law-enforcement officials, including then-Sheriff Sandra Hutchens and Rackauckas, work in league to protect their government agencies from accountability when they’ve been caught cheating? ... You might assume federal agents. But that didn’t happen. They were tainted themselves, having used many of the same corrupt Orange County deputies on their joint-agency task forces. ... With Rackauckas and the U.S. Department of Justice compromised on the issue, there was only one person left to step up, demonstrate courage, and defend American values of honesty and fair play in courthouses: then-California Attorney General Harris, a San Francisco democrat who gained national attention when Barack Obama praised her physical attributes.
As this state’s top law officer, Harris possessed not only the prosecutorial power to fight law-enforcement corruption, but also the moral obligation to protect our county—which, by the way, is larger than 20 U.S. states—from badged crooks, many of whom take home taxpayer-funded annual pay packages of around $300,000 or more, according to Transparent California records. ... Instead, Harris sent an unmistakable signal: Under her watch, police-agency employees in California were free to commit perjury—even in death-penalty cases, as they did in Orange County (see People v. Daniel Wozniak, People v. Lynn Dean Johnson, People v. Wendell Lemond and People v. Scott Dekraai). ... Harris can’t claim ignorance of what transpired in our informant scandal. Beginning in early 2014, she placed Deputy Attorney General Theodore Cropley inside Superior Court Judge Thomas M. Goethals’ Santa Ana courtroom for months as alarming details of the scandal unfolded. But Cropley telegraphed his stance from the outset. Day after day, he chuckled, smiled and huddled with Dan Wagner, a choir-boy faced Orange County prosecutor with a sinister streak who directed efforts to whitewash damning evidence against himself, the dirty deputies and his office.
....
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I do like Kamala and I thought she did well last night in the first debate. This is not to attack her, but I thought it was a cheap shot the way she jumped on Biden last night. She really caught him off-guard.
Senator Harris' record as a DA for San Francisco and as AG for the state shows that she helped shelter police members who were involved in violence against unarmed citizens. It's not about race, it's about quietly supporting strong police departments by not bringing charges, or by not following up with investigations even though they were called for. She also had to wade into scandals involving the criminal court system, processing of rape kits, etc. It is her record and she needs to open up about it, she needs to defend it if she can. People in glass houses, ya know.
