February 9, 2025

cjstudents

News for criminal justice students

NC locks up details on police brute force

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Isaiah Bussey lies on the hot bricks at the base of the statue of Dr. Martin Luther King during a 'Lay Down to Stand Up Racial Justice Rally' at the Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Gardens on Tuesday, June 9, 2020 in Raleigh, N.C. Bussey, a student at Enloe High School organized the event that drew nearly 150 people on a hot Tuesday afternoon.

After a Minneapolis officer murdered an unarmed George Floyd in May 2020, people took to the streets demanding a full accounting of force used on citizens. Some wanted the names of officers using it. 

”We need law enforcement to participate in this conversation, to be transparent,” said Rebecca Trammel, a North Carolina community organizer who helped lead marches in Wilmington after Floyd’s death. “The more they resist transparency, the longer they are going to feed distrust.”

Their calls revealed a gap in North Carolina. No one was tracking all cases in which officers used deadly force. 

Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat and longtime prosecutor, created a task force to study racial inequities in policing in June 2020. He called on the State Bureau of Investigation to create a center to study use of force by law enforcement. 

Gov. Roy Cooper listens as Director of Emergency Management Mike Sprayberry speaks during a briefing at the Emergency Operations Center in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020. Public records obtained in 2022 by The News & Observer show what Cooper emailed about in December 2020.

The governor’s order was clear: ”promote transparency” about officers’ use of force.

Legislators, with Cooper’s signoff, did the opposite a year later. All information on events where officers kill or badly injure people will be stored in a confidential database. 

A criminal justice reform bill passed last summer protects the identities of officers reported to the database. Residents won’t be told whether the incidents were deemed justified, and if they weren’t, what discipline officers received.

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