Fact-checking Trump’s misleading statement that Kamala Harris ‘wants to defund the police’

Former President Donald Trump said Vice President Kamala Harris "wants to be the president for savage criminals" and that Democrats are at "war" with police.

"She wants to defund the police," Trump said during a July 24 rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, his first rally after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. "Now she's pulled back on it."

Trump’s remarks were contradictory because he said "wants" — as in present tense, but also said Harris "pulled back on it," as in a past action. He made similar remarks several times in the days following the rally. 

The movement to "defund" the police reached its height in summer 2020, following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. "Defund" is not an official legal term and can include closing a police department or diverting some of its budget to social services. 

With Harris’ new presidential bid, we wanted to examine her past and present position on defunding police departments.

Both the Trump and Harris campaigns responded to our query with multiple citations of Harris statements, and we found many through our own research. 

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told PolitiFact that Harris "ran on a platform dedicated to defunding the police" and that "there is no question that she will implement these horrible policies if she has the chance." The Harris campaign said that she does not support police defunding (as her campaign told us in 2020) and pointed to statements in which she spoke in favor of police funding. 

We did not find that Harris called for dissolving police departments. In 2020, she called for "reimagining" public safety and investing in other areas, such as education, but said that the country needed law enforcement. Many of Harris’ comments came shortly after Floyd’s murder and before Biden announced her in August 2020 as his running mate.

In a June 2020 radio interview on the New York show "Ebro in the Morning," One host asked Harris, "Where do you stand on defund the police?"

Harris said, "Defund the police, the issue behind it is we need to reimagine how we are creating safety. When you have many cities that have one-third of their entire city budget focused on policing, we know that is not the smart way and the best way or the right way to achieve safety. For too long, the status quo thinking has been you get more safety by putting more cops on the street. Well, that’s wrong."

Harris said suburban communities "don’t have that patrol car, they don’t have those police walking those streets," but what they do have is well-funded schools, high homeownership rates, thriving small businesses and access to health care. 

"This whole movement is about rightly saying we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities," Harris said. 

In a June 2020 interview with the The New York Times, Harris was asked her thinking on defunding the police. She said, "Well, it’s a concept. We do have to reimagine what public safety looks like." But she added that "We’re not going to get rid of the police. We all have to be practical. But let’s separate out these discussions."

A Trump campaign account in 2020 posted a clip on X of Harris saying that it is "wrong-headed thinking to think that the only way to get communities to be safe is to put more police officers on the street. What we have to do, and what we will do, is reimagine public safety." 

The full transcript of her September 2020 remarks shows that she said didn’t call for defunding police departments. She said safe communities also need investments in schools, health care and small businesses.  

The Trump campaign also pointed to Harris’ June 2020 comments praising Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos asked Harris whether she supported Garcetti’s proposal to take about $150 million from police and invest it in health initiatives and youth training. 

"We've got to reexamine what we're doing with American taxpayer dollars and ask the question, ‘Are we getting the right return on our investment? Are we actually creating healthy and safe communities?’ And that's a legitimate conversation and it requires a really critical evaluation. And I applaud Eric Garcetti for doing what he's done."

Stephanopoulos asked, "So, does it mean, bottom line, we need fewer police on the streets of America right now?"

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Harris said that if the country invests in communities "they will be healthy, they will be strong, and we won't have a need for militarization of police. Right? We have to stop that. We have to stop militarization of police. But that doesn't mean we get rid of police. Of course not."

In October 2020, we fact-checked then-Vice President Mike Pence’s claim that Harris would "defund, dismantle, and dissolve police departments." We rated that False. 

We found that when Harris was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, her criminal justice platform did not mention defunding police departments. Her plan called for increasing funding for body cameras, mental health professionals, and "officer safety and wellness."

In a June 2020 episode of ABC’s "The View," host Meghan McCain asked Harris, "Are you for defunding the police?"

After some back-and-forth about the definition, Harris repeated her stance about needing to "reimagine" public safety, review how public funding is allocated and invest in mental health, schools and job training. 

We also found examples of Harris saying she wants the public to have access to police.

On Sept. 6, 2020, Harris said, "I want to make sure that if a woman is raped, a child is molested, one human being murders another human being, that there will be a police officer that responds to that case and that there will be accountability and consequence for the offender."

When Harris joined the Biden presidential ticket, the campaign made it clear the running mates were not in favor of defunding.

"Joe Biden and Kamala Harris do not support defunding the police, and it is a lie to suggest otherwise," Sabrina Singh, Harris’ press secretary, told PolitiFact in October 2020. "Throughout her career, Sen. Harris has supported increasing funding to police departments and boosting funding for community policing."

Harris supported giving federal funding to local or state law enforcement agencies when she was the San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general and U.S. senator.

The Biden-Harris administration has backed funding for law enforcement. Biden’s fiscal year 2025 budget proposal called for $1.2 billion over five years to support law enforcement agencies and combat crime.

Harris has supported police reform initiatives including the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which she co-sponsored as a senator. That legislation would not defund the police; it would make it easier to sue officers and would require police to complete racial profiling training. Harris reiterated her support for that legislation following the July 6 death of Sonya Massey, an unarmed Black woman, who called 911 about a prowler and was shot and killed in her Illinois home by a police officer.

Trump said Harris "wants to defund the police."

The Trump campaign points to statements by Harris in 2020 — not in 2024. Shortly after Floyd’s murder, Harris was asked about the "defund the police" movement and called for "reimagining" public safety. While in 2020 she didn’t explicitly call for getting rid of police departments, she did state support for reexamining police budgets and lauded a proposal by the Los Angeles mayor to shift part of the police budget to community initiatives.

But one way that "defund the police" is interpreted is dissolving police departments. Harris did not go that far — she said police were necessary. She told The New York Times in June 2020 "we’re not going to get rid of the police."

Where Trump veers into territory that makes this claim inaccurate is when he spoke in the present tense, although he did follow his sentence with the phrase "now she's pulled back on it."

When he said that Harris "wants" to defund police that leaves voters with the impression that the vice president and presumed presidential nominee is now calling for defunding the police. She is not.

We rate this statement Mostly False.

PolitiFact Staff Writer Ranjan Jindal contributed to this fact-check.

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