Arrested by Kamala: A Black Mother’s Story

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By Joel Gilbert

Kamala Harris’ recent boasts about her tough-on-crime record as California Attorney General have brought back into the spotlight her arrest and prosecution of single black mother Cheree Peoples in 2013, a tragedy I recount in my new short documentary, Arrested by Kamala: A Black Mother’s Story.

There is a three minutes only version of the interview on You Tube as well, Arrested by Kamala.

 
The story is also told in a riveting rap song of the same name: Arrested by Kamala.

In no small part, Harris ascended to power on the backs of minority women, women like Cheree Peoples, a victim of Harris’s crackdown on truancy. At the time, Harris was not shy about explaining the rationale for the crackdown.

California schools are funded according to average daily attendance, at the time about $30 per student per day. Harris, whose supporters included teachers’ unions, spoke openly about the need to increase school attendance in order to obtain more money from the state and federal governments.

In addressing this issue, Kamala once declared on camera, “I want money!”

Harris instituted a program in San Francisco beginning in 2007 to threaten parents with arrest and a year in jail if their children missed school. When she became California State Attorney General in 2010, Harris took her “arrest the parents” program statewide. She openly laughed on camera about mailing parents letters that threatened jail time, and boasted about sending her most vicious prosecutors from gang and homicide units to intimidate and prosecute parents who had been arrested.

Cheree Peoples paid little attention when the crackdown was announced. Although her daughter Shayla missed considerable school time, Shayla was handicapped. She was born with the debilitating disease Sickle Cell Anemia. She spent many painful days in the hospital receiving blood transfusions and frequent emergency medical care to manage her pain.

Then too, all of Shayla’s absences were excused by her school by way of doctor’s letters from Children’s Hospital. In addition, Cheree Peoples had a “504 Agreement” with the school district which excused Shayla’s absences due to her severe handicap and frequent hospitalizations.

Despite Shayla’s well-documented condition and documentation received by her school, Cheree Peoples was suddenly arrested on orders of Kamala Harris at her home in Buena Park, California, on April 18th, 2013. Among the charges was “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” and others that made Shayla out to be a gang member.

The media, tipped off in advance, photographed Cheree being humiliated as she was “perp walked” in handcuffs to a police car to be booked and fingerprinted at the Santa Anna police station. The degrading photo of the arrest appeared in the local newspaper.

Cheree spent the next two years in court resisting Harris’s crack prosecutors who pressured her to plead guilty. She could not afford a year in jail with Shayla in need of constant care. However, due to the constant court appearances, Cheree could not take care of Shayla and maintain a job. As a result, she lost her apartment and became homeless, moving into a motel with Shayla.

Under all the duress of her mother’s prosecution, Shayla suffered a stroke at only 12 years of age, resulting in permanent paralysis of her right arm and right leg. Because Cheree bravely fought the charges and refused to plead guilty, Kamal Harris’s prosecutors finally just dropped the case against Cheree in 2015.

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kamala hasn’t learned her lesson from those days, either.
She (and joe) are still sending officials to the homes of “her enemies” to try to intimidate them into compliance with her agenda.
Back then it was the $$$’s per day the teacher’s union got when students were present in school.
Now it is the “right” of teachers to be lording it over children and parents to keep quiet about their loss of authority.

What happened to this particular mother is really sad.
Her daughter and she were targeted improperly but STILL no apology.
Still no righting that wrong.

The Demo-Rats are still using Blacks to serve them