Andrew Kerr of the Washington Free Beacon notices the policy legacy of North Carolina’s Democratic Senate candidate.
Roy Cooper, the leading Democrat for North Carolina’s open Senate seat in 2026, says one of his major “accomplishments” as the state’s governor was the creation of a “racial equity” task force that pushed to eliminate cash bail for certain crimes. That policy led to the release of career criminal Decarlos Brown not long before he senselessly murdered Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte subway train.
A Cooper campaign website highlights his creation of the Governor’s Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice in June 2020 as one of his major “accomplishments” during his service as North Carolina’s governor from 2017 to 2025. Cooper hand-selected the task force’s 24 members as riots sparked by George Floyd’s death engulfed the nation and charged them with developing and implementing policies to eliminate systemic racism in the criminal justice system. The body issued several reports calling for the elimination of cash bail for Class I misdemeanors, the most severe in the state, except when the suspect poses a threat to public safety.
It’s that same policy that secured Brown’s cash-free release from jail in January on a Class I misdemeanor with nothing more than a “written promise to appear.” Brown, a career criminal with 14 prior arrests including armed robbery, falsely dialed 911 during a police welfare check after officers told him they couldn’t do anything about the “man made” material Brown claimed was controlling his thoughts. Brown’s attorney said he “has a long history” of mental health issues and Brown’s own family said he shouldn’t have been free on the streets given his criminal history. Still, magistrate judge Teresa Stokes released Brown from jail in January with no bond or electronic monitoring, according to court records.
