Cooper, now running for Senate, formed task force that urged elimination of cash bail for Class I misdemeanors
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.
Brown failed to appear for a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation in late July as part of the case, court records show. About one month later, on Aug. 22, Brown fatally stabbed the 23-year-old Zarutska in an unprovoked attack on a subway train in Charlotte. “I got that white girl,” Brown said during the attack, according to surveillance footage.
Cooper endorsed the Task Force for Racial Equity’s work throughout his final four years in office. The former governor said he was “eager” to begin working on its recommendations in December 2020 after the task force first proposed eliminating cash bail for Class I misdemeanors statewide. As governor, Cooper signed at least three criminal justice reform bills into law that he said aligned with his task force’s recommendations.
The Cooper task force reported in late 2024 that its work to eliminate cash bail for Class I misdemeanors statewide was “in progress.” The criminal justice system in Charlotte, where Brown murdered Zarutska, has also been heavily influenced by two left-wing foundations that have invested millions of dollars into pushing soft-on-crime policies in the city, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Mecklenburg County thanked one of those groups, the MacArthur Foundation, in a 2020 press release for helping fund its efforts to reduce its jail population through reforming bail policy.
Cooper’s ties to the Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice have become an early flashpoint in his bid to win the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.), which the Cook Political Report rates as one of only three toss-up Senate elections in 2026. His likely Republican challenger, former RNC chairman Michael Whatley, said Cooper bears direct responsibility for Zarutska’s murder over his connection to the task force, which, according to Whatley, sacrificed public safety in the service of addressing racial equity in the criminal justice system.
“Roy Cooper handpicked a far-left task force to push cashless bail and pre-trial release into North Carolina’s justice system,” Whatley spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez told the Free Beacon. “He chose criminals over law enforcement and everyday North Carolinians—who continue to pay the price for his reckless, weak-on-crime legacy as governor.”
Other Republican senators have used the issue to paint Cooper as soft on crime. Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) last week launched a six-figure ad buy in North Carolina linking Cooper’s task force to Zarutska’s murder, Politico reported.
“The problem isn’t the number of police,” Cotton posted on X. “It’s Roy Cooper’s pro-criminal policies.”
The Cooper campaign has pushed back against Whatley and Cotton, pointing to a law he signed in 2023 that strips magistrates of the ability to set bail for certain violent offenses. The measure apparently didn’t apply to Brown when Stokes, his magistrate judge, released him from jail in January on a “written promise to appear.”
“Roy Cooper spent his career prosecuting violent criminals as attorney general, keeping thousands of them behind bars and signing tougher bail laws,” Cooper campaign spokesman Jordan Monaghan told Politico. “DC insider Michael Whatley and his Washington allies are spreading lies because they know Whatley’s support for cuts to local and state law enforcement make North Carolinians less safe.”
The Cooper campaign did not return a request for comment.
