North Carolina GOP targets gubernatorial task force powers
The article discusses how North Carolina Republicans are seeking to limit the power of the state governor to create task forces, specifically targeting commissions that they claim promote “soft-on-crime” policies. This move comes after a fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a North Carolina train, an incident linked by Republicans to a task force established in 2020 by then-Governor Democrat Roy Cooper. The 2020 Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice released recommendations advocating relaxed criminal justice policies intended to address racial disparities and past injustices.Though, Republicans argue that these policies fostered a lenient habitat that failed to deter crime effectively. State senate Republican leader Phil Berger and other GOP figures are pushing for new legislation to prevent governors from forming similar task forces in the future, aiming to ensure stricter crime policies.The family of the suspect in the stabbing criticized authorities for repeatedly releasing him despite his mental health issues and criminal record. The Republican effort is part of a broader legislative push to roll back what they view as ineffective or risky criminal justice reforms implemented under Cooper’s management.
North Carolina GOP targets gubernatorial task force powers after Cooper panel linked to train stabbing
North Carolina Republicans are seeking to roll back the authorities state governors hold to appoint task forces, an effort they say will keep “soft-on-crime” recommendations from such commissions from being carried out.
In the wake of viral footage depicting the fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a North Carolina train, Republicans have accused the state’s former governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, of setting the killing in motion by creating a task force in 2020 that they say encouraged policies that led to the attack.
Phil Berger, the state’s Republican Senate leader, announced in a recent statement that he plans to target powers to create such task forces. He says efforts are underway in the legislature to create a sweeping anti-crime bill, which is expected to be introduced by the end of the month.
“We can start by ensuring that [Gov. Josh Stein (R-NC)] and other members of the executive branch cannot establish any future task forces like the one Roy Cooper created that advanced weak on crime policies, that kept Iryna’s murderer on the streets,” Berger said during a press conference attended by Republicans such as former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, who has spoken out against Cooper’s actions on crime and is campaigning for North Carolina’s open Senate seat.
“Our elected officials must rescind the Cooper policies that allowed attacks like that on Iryna, and ensure that this and any criminal feels the wrath of justice and is not allowed to walk the streets free again,” Whatley said in a statement. “Don’t back down. Don’t relent. Don’t be deterred by the hate. It’s time to take our country back and dismantle the radical left machine that put us in this position. And it’s time to do it today. That’s how we will honor the memory of these young people.”
The GOP effort in North Carolina is focused on preventing the governor from establishing future task forces accused of making recommendations that are soft on crime. Possible provisions in the crime bill being developed by the legislature could bar the governor and other executive branch officials from creating commissions like the 2020 one established by Cooper that they say encourage local policies favoring perpetrators over victims.
Cooper created the 2020 Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice through an executive order. The commission released a sweeping series of nonbinding recommendations in December of that year, involving relaxed criminal justice policies that, the task force wrote, were needed to rectify how the “enduring effects of the intertwined history of race and criminal justice bear out in the racial disparities and trauma that exist today.”
Republicans have argued that the task force and laws Cooper subsequently signed into law, enacting some of its recommendations, instilled a culture in North Carolina that failed to disincentivize crime.
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The mother of Decarolos Brown Jr., the North Carolina resident with extensive mental health problems arrested and released over a dozen times before being accused of stabbing Zarutska to death, said last week that he never should have been set free from prison after his latest arrest in January.
“He shouldn’t have been released,” Michelle Dewitt told the New York Post of her son being freed on a written promise to appear for a court date.
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