As Vice President Kamala Harris continues her campaign, avoiding direct interviews and carefully selecting debate settings, questions about the authenticity of her support base are growing. The latest example is the endorsement from a group called “Police Leaders for Community Safety,” which Harris’s campaign and media outlets touted as a “stunning endorsement” from a group that typically backs Trump.
However, scrutiny reveals that the group is far from a major law enforcement organization. USA Today notes that “Police Leaders for Community Safety” was only formed in 2024, describes itself as representing “dozens of police officials,” and is led by Sue Riseling, a former chief of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department. The group is primarily composed of former law enforcement members, many of whom lean left politically.
The newspaper explained that “as the group has only been around since June, this marks the first endorsement for Police Leaders for Community Safety, with the group throwing their support for Harris.”
The group’s announcement to Fox News, however, failed to share that information:
The organization – which says it is led by a diverse group of prominent police professionals who have been at the helm of numerous major national law enforcement leadership groups – highlights that its mission is to champion “policies to make communities and the people in them safer, improve and evolve policing, and safeguard the rule of law.”
“This endorsement reflects Vice President Harris’ track record and unwavering commitment to public safety and the rule of law,” Sue Riseling, chair of Police Leaders for Community Safety, said.
Police Leaders for Community Safety board member David Mahoney, a former Dane County, Wisconsin, sheriff and past president of the National Sheriffs’ Association, said that Harris “spent her prosecutorial career protecting people, supporting victims and holding accountable those who have harmed others and betrayed the public trust. As a lawmaker, she has fought hard for the critical law enforcement-backed policies needed to fight crime and protect the public.”
Critics have accused the Harris campaign of astroturfing, creating a façade of grassroots support by highlighting endorsements from groups with little influence in the law enforcement community. This comes in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s endorsement from the National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the nation’s oldest and most influential law enforcement organization, which has supported Trump in the last three elections.
FOP President Patrick Yoes emphasized the importance of public safety and border security, stating that Trump’s policies align with the values of law enforcement officers across the country.
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