North Carolina Democrat Senate candidate Roy Cooper signed an executive order creating the “task force for racial equity in criminal justice” in June 2020 and appointed then-Attorney General Josh Stein and state Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls as co-chairs.
The 166-page report lists 125 recommendations aimed at weakening public safety.
“North Carolina can reimagine public safety,” the authors wrote in a letter to Cooper, adding their recommendations “provide a framework for meaningful change, but this report is not the first nor final word on what can and should be done to address racial equity in our criminal justice system.”
In the executive summary, the reports says, “We often hear that ‘tough on crime’ policies are necessary to protect black communities because these policies protect victims, a majority of whom are black. It is true that Black Americans have a history of disproportionate victimization… but, the story does not end there. Involvement in the criminal justice system does not fit discreetly into a single category.”
The summary then says the task force “was formed to address racial equity in the criminal justice system. However, it is impossible to divorce racial equity in the criminal justice system from racial equity in our larger society.”
The recommended actions target law enforcement and the judicial system.
In the section titled “Racial Equity and Law Enforcement Recommendations,” the manifesto says its goal is to reimagine public safety and reinvest into communities.
The first action listed is a call for more social workers and fewer police officers.
“Emergency response strategies should emphasize that law enforcement is not the best fit for every type of call for services and instead focus on providing needed services and support,” the report states. “Models such as CAHOOTS (Eugene, Oregon) and STARS (Denver, Colorado) that provide for the dispatch of non-law-enforcement personnel to appropriate calls.”
Continuing, the report says the state should “promote diversion and other alternatives to arrest,” writing that law enforcement and prosecutors, “should consider the impact of collateral consequences of a criminal record” and encourage citations and summons in lieu of arrests.
The report even targets the role of school resource officers.
“It is critical that communities proactively examine and define the role of SROs to minimize the use of harsh disciplinary tactics against black and brown students,” noting that data showed in 2018-19 black students were 48 percent of school-based delinquency complaints yet represented only 25 percent of the state’s public school enrollment.
Another recommendation tells law enforcement to “peacefully facilitate protests and demonstrations.”
“When law enforcement overreacts to peaceful protests, it can cause deep harm to the relationship between law enforcement and the communities that they serve,” the report says.
This recommendation is especially troubling as it was revealed in May 2026 Cooper and his family were evacuated from the governor’s mansion during the George Floyd riots in the state capital that caused over $2.2 million in damage.
North Carolina’s General Assembly wisely went the other way, strengthening penalties for engaging in riots in after Cooper vetoed the original bill in 2021.
In the judicial system, the report begins by writing, “implicit and explicit bias in the criminal justice system and the courts disproportionately harm black people and people of color, particularly those who are accused of or are victims and survivors of crime.”
The first recommendation in this section is the implementation of restorative justice initiatives. In practice, restorative justice means excusing criminals for their own behavior and ensures they don’t face consequences for their own actions.
The big changes listed deal with the laws themselves. Many of the judicial system recommendations center on allowing lesser charges for serious crimes.
This includes widening prosecutorial discretion, decriminalizing marijuana possession, shrinking the criminal code, reducing misdemeanor charges, and ending cash bail.
Cooper’s legacy in the judicial system is the elimination of cash bail policies, which led to a revolving door of arrest, release, and rearrest cases culminating in the murder of Iryna Zarutska on the Charlotte light rail system.
Her alleged murderer, DeCarlos Brown, had been arrested at least 14 separate times yet was set free each time.
North Carolina’s state legislature passed Iryna’s Law in 2025 to address the proliferation of cashless bail policies in local courts – all of which were encouraged by Cooper’s manifesto.
In each year following the initial 2020 report, state leaders updated a color-coded tracker with the implementation progress of the recommendations. The updates stopped after Cooper left office at the end of 2024.