School Shooting Victims' Families Criticize VP Harris over Comments

This week, Vice President Kamala Harris's past comments from 2019 resurfaced, causing outrage among the loved ones of students who were killed in school shootings. Harris had expressed support for removing police officers from schools.

JT Lewis, a school safety advocate, posted on X that his younger brother, Jesse Lewis, was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting due to liberal policies like the one Kamala is pushing here. Lewis wishes there had been a police officer present to protect his brother. He believes students require more protection, not less. Jesse Lewis was six years old and was among the 26 children and staffers who died in the 2012 shooting in Connecticut.

In 2019, footage of Harris supporting the removal of police officers from schools was discovered, which led to Lewis' reaction.

In 2019, while serving as a California senator running for president, Harris spoke about the need to address the inequities in school discipline, particularly the disproportionate expulsion and suspension of Black and Brown boys as young as elementary school.

In October 2019, Harris participated in the 2019 Presidential Justice Forum at Benedict College in South Carolina before dropping out of the 2020 presidential race and being named Biden's running mate. During the forum, a college student inquired about Harris's plan to expunge the records of juveniles, including those with a criminal offense, not just marijuana offenses, in order to enable them to attend college.

Harris acknowledged the need for reform in the juvenile justice system, stating that she has seen it firsthand and has a plan of action for criminal justice reform in her 2020 campaign.

I will put an end to the solitary confinement of juveniles and establish guidelines for reducing the incarceration of juveniles. This includes discussing and committing to less incarceration, as children being incarcerated for even a few days can be traumatic, let alone the weeks, months, and years that many are currently experiencing.

The Harris presidential campaign did not respond to Planet Chronicle Digital's inquiry about her stance on removing police officers from schools.

The dads who lost their teenage daughters in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018, along with other family members of school-shooting victims, joined Lewis in condemning Harris' 2019 comments.

Kamala Harris wants to make schools less safe, according to Petty, who lost his 14-year-old daughter Alaina Petty in the 2018 shooting.

The shooting of my daughter Meadow Pollack was a result of insufficient security at Parkland. We need to increase the number of school resource officers, not decrease them. Pollack made this statement on X.

Harris' comments supporting the removal of officers from schools were made prior to the 2020 summer protests and riots that occurred following George Floyd's death during a police interaction on Memorial Day. Floyd's death sparked calls from activists to defund the police, which led to a domino effect across the country as liberal cities reduced their police budgets and school boards severed ties with police departments.

In 2022, Education Week discovered that at least 50 school districts had removed officers from school campuses or reduced their budgets for school officers between May 2020 and June 2022. However, many jurisdictions quickly reversed their plans when violence erupted on campuses after students returned to classrooms following the pandemic and its lockdowns.

In response to incidents of violence, such as a shooting at a Denver high school and repeated fights in the Alexandria, Virginia, school district, education officials across the country have reversed their decision to remove officers from campuses, inviting them back to curb crime.

Harris was officially nominated as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate in Chicago last week, following President Biden's withdrawal from the race due to concerns about his mental health.