On racial bias in policing, Kamala Harris walked a tightrope
LOS ANGELES - Kamala Harris was distraught as she stood before an audience one morning in July 2016. In the previous three days, violence involving police had rattled the nation.
Officers had shot and killed one black man in Baton Rouge, La., and another in his car outside Minneapolis as his horrified girlfriend and her toddler watched. At a protest against those shootings, a sniper had killed five Dallas police officers.
"I have to tell you, my heart is breaking," Harris said at a meeting on racial bias in policing. Her voice wavered.
"As a prosecutor, my heart is breaking. As the top law enforcement officer in this state. And as a black woman."
Harris, then California attorney general, paid tribute to officers whose families pray they stay out of danger. She also said she'd never known a black man who wasn't racially profiled or unfairly stopped.
It was an unusually frank acknowledgment of the forces pulling her in
