Vice President Kamala Harris called for removing police officers from schools in 2019 to address racial disparities in student discipline.
Vice President Kamala Harris called for the removal of police officers from schools in 2019 to address racial disparities in student discipline, according to remarks she made during her first presidential campaign.
In a 2019 interview during her initial run for the presidency, then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) argued for eliminating on-campus police presence to address racial inequities.
In a recently resurfaced clip of the event, Harris voices her concerns about the disproportionate rates of suspensions and expulsions among black and brown students, calling for a reevaluation of how discipline is enforced in schools.
“What we need to do about demilitarizing our schools and taking police officers out of schools. We need to deal with the reality and speak the truth about the inequities around school discipline,” she says. “Where in particular, black and brown boys are being expelled and or suspended as young as … in elementary school.”
Her comments came during the Presidential Justice Forum at Benedict College in South Carolina where she outlined her vision for criminal justice reform, including reducing juvenile incarceration, which she described as “traumatic,” and ending solitary confinement for minors.
