100 proposals coming on NC racial equity, from marijuana to policing in schools
A wide-ranging report on how to address racial inequalities in North Carolina’s criminal justice system — written with buy-in from police, Black Lives Matter activists and many others in-between — will be delivered to Gov. Roy Cooper next week.
But even though that report took months to prepare, the work is really only now just beginning, Cooper told the group Tuesday as they finalized their work.
Turning the recommendations into reality will require cooperation from all levels of government, he said. And it will have to be bipartisan: Democrats control most of the state’s biggest cities and counties. Republicans control the state legislature. And the courts are separate from either.
“I think all of them are going to have to play a role for us to turn proposals into real policy,” Cooper said. “And that is a difficult road ahead.”
The full details of the report from the Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice aren’t public yet. But over 100 different recommendations are expected to be in the final report.
They will touch on issues before, during and after people’s involvement with the criminal justice system. Police tactics, drug laws, court fees, sentencing guidelines and the “school-to-prison pipeline” have been just a few of the topics the group has tackled.
Durham Rep. Marcia Morey, a Democratic state lawmaker and former judge who’s on the task force, said some of the task force’s work brought her “almost a sense of shame.”
“Because I was a judge for 18 years,” she said. “And when I would routinely set bail on a (low-level) misdemeanor, or when I would see a 7-year-old sitting in juvenile court not understanding what was going on, or we would criminalize homelessness and poverty — I look back at how many things I wish I could change.”
‘A catalyst for change’
Not everything the task force will recommend to Cooper won unanimous support. The group’s law enforcement members thought some parts went too far, and the more activist members thought some parts didn’t go far enough. But in the end all 24 members voted to approve the report and send it to Cooper, to get the ball rolling.
“While I can’t say I agree with every aspect of every recommendation, I can support the overall work product of the task force,” said Apex Police Chief John Letteney, a task force member who is also vice president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
“We’re not all going to agree with these nuances, but we agree with the goal,” he said.
Kerwin Pittman, a Black Lives Matter activist from Raleigh who is on the task force, said the recommendations are a step in the right direction.
“We know that these biases and inequalities have been built in over years and it will take years to eradicate,” he said. “But (the report) is a catalyst for change.”
Police reforms
Cooper created the task force as a direct response to this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests.
Henderson Hill, a nationally known civil rights attorney from Charlotte who was on the task force, told his fellow group members Tuesday it shouldn’t go unnoticed “that a white Southern governor can say ‘Black Lives Matter,’ and say it with passion, and follow through.”
Early in the process, the task force adopted recommendations that included a duty to intervene by law enforcement when their colleagues are using excessive force — and a ban on choke holds, unless the officer’s or another person’s life was in danger.
The recommendations will also reach into other areas of law enforcement.
“On the law enforcement front we want to re-imagine public safety, and by that we mean unburdening police with the work that we put on them by our collective failure to adequately deal with issues such as mental health or substance misuse,” said Attorney General Josh Stein at a recent Governor’s Crime Commission meeting.
Stein co-chairs the task force with Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls. Both are Democrats.
At the Crime Commission meeting, Stein outlined some of the recommendations the task forth is putting forward.
There should also be greater accountability and transparency in use-of-force and other events, he said. Plus, body and dashboard cameras should become mandatory, he said, along with “greater access to that footage.”
And when there are use-of-force incidents, such as an officer discharging his weapons, the State Bureau of Investigation should look into it, Stein said. If a criminal referral is made, there should be an independent prosecutor, he said.
Oversight boards, SROs
Local governments should also be able to authorize civilian oversight boards to have authority to make recommendations to police departments or sheriff offices, Stein said.
Some cities already have police oversight boards. But without specific permission from the General Assembly, the News & Observer reported earlier this year, they aren’t allowed to issue subpoenas. They can also be banned from responding to complaints or making disciplinary recommendations.
Another source of contention has been school resource officers. Supporters say they help prevent school shootings, while critics say SROs too often target Black children with criminal charges for relatively minor misbehavior.
“There is a recognition and appreciation of that role of SROs, but we are concerned about this school-to-prison pipeline,” Stein said.
One of the recommendations, Stein said, is when SROs make criminal referrals from a school incidents, they would need a signature from the principal or a social worker.
Another recommendation includes raising the age in which a child can be prosecuted, from 6 to 12, Stein said. North Carolina has the youngest age for juvenile justice jurisdiction in the country, he said.
Last month, the North Carolina Sheriff’s Association released a report outlining reforms its supports, such as more consistent and better law enforcement training and improving information sharing about rogue officers. But the report rejected some of the changes that the task force supports. Those include changes to citizen review boards, SRO programs, and outside reviews of fatal officer shootings.
Decriminalize marijuana
One of the recommendations on the courts side includes decriminalizing marijuana in small amounts, as well as potentially other low-level misdemeanors.
“Which doesn’t mean we are saying these things are okay, it’s just too often we use the criminal justice system and make arrests and clog up the courts,” Stein said.
Billy Gartin, a Raleigh Police sergeant, said Tuesday he’s glad he had the chance for his fellow task force members to change his mind on that topic.
“If you had told me at the beginning of this that I’d be in support of a recommendation to decriminalize any sort of drug usage or drug participation, I’d have told you you were crazy,” Gartin said. “But as a matter of education, I have changed some of that perspective.”
Research indicates that white and black people use marijuana at similar rates, but Black people are disproportionately arrested and convicted for it.
The News & Observer reported last month that the decriminalization of weed is already making some headway regionally, through local decisions by individual prosecutors. The task force will recommend that the General Assembly decriminalize it statewide, and also study the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana, as 36 states have now done.
Court reforms
There are also recommendations related to bail reform that ensure people are only held in jail before they are convicted if they pose a threat to the broader community, not because they are poor, Stein said.
“In fact, many misdemeanors we don’t think there should be bail set at all,” he said.
Other court-related recommendations include judges considering people’s ability to pay before imposing fines and that juries should be more diverse, Stein said.
The N&O reported earlier this year that North Carolina courts have never acknowledged racial bias in jury selection, despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the issue that has existed since 1986.
The latest case came up in July, the N&O reported, when the The N.C. Court of Appeals ruled that prosecutors in Columbus County didn’t violate a Black defendant’s rights by removing numerous Black people from the jury pool — including one woman who was removed specifically for marching in Black Lives Matter protests.
Alan Thornburg, the top trial court judge in Buncombe County and a member of the task force, urged his fellow judges and others inside the system to have an open mind on the recommendations.
“Those of us who are in the criminal justice system on a daily basis need to be reminded to take a posture of humility, not of defensiveness,” he said.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Domecast politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published December 11, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
