Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign bragged on Monday that a “leading” law enforcement group had endorsed Harris, however, the organization is only a few months old and is run by a veteran Democratic political operative.
Police Leaders for Community Safety, which endorsed Harris on Sept. 23, only launched publicly on June 11, according to a press release from the group. A registration document filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) indicates that the organization is led by Gail Hoffman, a long-time Democratic staffer who worked on John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign as director of surrogates and in the Clinton administration in various high-level roles, according to a biography on her website.
Hoffman has never worked for a police agency, per her biography.
Despite the organization’s recent founding and ties to the Democratic Party, Fox News Digital, which was given an advance copy of the endorsement, initially described the organization as a “leading law enforcement group,” language that the Harris campaign later used to tout the group’s backing. Days after publication, Fox changed its headline and removed the word “leading,” noting that “Police Leaders for Community Safety is comprised of former law enforcement leaders and not a leading group.”
The Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest law enforcement interest group, took issue with framing Police Leaders for Community Safety as a “leading” organization in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Prior to Police Leaders for Community Safety announcing their endorsement earlier this week, we were totally unfamiliar with the group,” a Fraternal Order of Police spokesperson told the DCNF. “We are very active, and aggressive in fact, in our interactions here in Washington [D.C.] and we’re present at basically every law enforcement-oriented meeting that happens here and we have never crossed paths with this organization nor are we familiar with its goals and objectives.”
The Fraternal Order of Police endorsed former President Donald Trump on Sept. 6, according to a press release. Police Leaders for Community Safety claimed to be “the only national police leadership organization that endorses candidates for political office” when announcing its support of Harris.
Police Leaders for Community Safety defended its status as a leading law enforcement organization, with a spokesperson telling the DCNF that it had been informally organizing since 2022 and filed registration paperwork with the IRS in 2023, with June 2024 representing the group’s public launch. The organization lists a few dozen law enforcement members, virtually all of whom are retired, on its “national advisory board.”
The Fraternal Order of Police, by contrast, had approximately 377,000 members as of this month, per a press release.
A spokesperson for the Harris campaign would not say whether or not it was accurate to call the Police Leaders for Community Safety a “leading” organization, instead pointing out that they had used the same language as Fox. The campaign did not respond to a follow-up inquiry after Fox changed its headline.
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 23, 2024
Police Leaders for Community Safety justified its nonpartisan bona fides in its statement to the DCNF, claiming that it is “comprised of Democrats, Republicans and independents” and that its endorsements are “based on issues of concern to law enforcement leaders, not on parties.”
All five of the people sitting on the organization’s board of directors, which includes Hoffman, are either Democrats or have a history of making liberal statements. Despite this, Police Leaders for Community Safety describes itself as a “nonpartisan national advocacy organization.”
David Mahoney, the organization’s treasurer, ran as a Democrat to serve as sheriff of Dane County, Wisconsin in 2018, ultimately winning the office. Susan Riseling, the chair of the organization’s board, meanwhile, uses social media almost exclusively to support Democrats and oppose Republicans, sharing posts from left-wing fake news operations like the Palmer Report as well as other large Democratic-aligned accounts like Occupy Democrats and MeidasTouch.
“Now I am a Democrat [because] the Republicans have no ideas beyond hate,” Riseling wrote on Twitter in 2021. “I can not understand any veterans voting Republican,” she said a year later.
Police Leaders for Community Safety vice chair Rick Myers, meanwhile, has used his LinkedIn account to advocate for expanded gun control, calling AR-15s “weapons of mass destruction,” and describing the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot as an “insurrection.”
“Despite the fact that our Founding Fathers had black powder muskets that could only shoot one round without reloading, and fashioned our unique Constitution and its Amendments to ensure our freedoms such that freedom to bear arms was designed for ‘a well regulated militia,’ we continue to allow unfettered weapons of mass destruction among our own citizens,” Myers wrote in 2021, reacting to a mass shooting in his area. “AR-15[s] are killing machines.”
Cynthia Herriott, the organization’s fifth board member, was a registered Democrat as of at least 2021, according to public records.
Herriott, Riseling and Myers are all retired police chiefs.
“Police Leaders for Community Safety is the only national police leadership organization that endorses candidates for political office, and this is the group’s first endorsement,” the group’s endorsement of Harris reads. “This and future endorsements will be based on candidates’ alignment on issues vital to law enforcement.”
Harris praised the defund the police movement multiple times in 2020.
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