This is not a great look for Governor Roy Cooper.
A lengthy investigation from the N.C. Watchdog Reporting Network found that, unlike local law enforcement agencies and the public safety departments in several neighboring states, the Cooper administration won’t release state-level data that tracks deaths in custody and during interactions with law enforcement.
Since 2019, the federal government has required agencies to fill out a form to track deaths including those of inmates who die in jails and prisons or as the result of a police shooting. States collect the forms and then send the data to the federal government which compiles it in a national database to increase transparency and find ways to reduce the number of deaths at the hands of law enforcement.
But the federal government hasn’t published any of this data yet (as was mandated under the Death In Custody Reporting Act signed by President Obama) and North Carolina won’t release any of its state-level data. The Cooper administration cites a federal confidentiality law that covers data collected with the intention of improving the criminal justice system as its reason as to why not; this reasoning has not yet been challenged in court.
The N.C. Watchdog Reporting Network requested Death in Custody Reporting Act data from Gov. Cooper’s Crime Commission that is tasked with collecting it. The commission refused to release it citing a federal law governing the release of confidential data.
This stance is at odds with criminal justice departments in Virginia and Georgia, which both released records to N.C. Watchdog reporters who requested them. Local law enforcement agencies produced a mixed bag of records, including in Wake where reporters uncovered four deaths in Raleigh detention facilities that had not been previously reported.
Experts, including U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Virginia) who authored the Death In Custody Reporting Act, Dawn Blagrove, the executive director of Emancipate N.C., and Ann Webb from the ACLU of North Carolina, all say the purpose of the federal law is to create accountability to the public and that secrecy and lack of information from law enforcement agencies is problematic.
Scott, specifically, says he is not aware of anything in federal law that would prohibit the Cooper administration from releasing this information, a position a U.S. justice department attorney quoted in the piece seems to corroborate.
A spokesperson for the governor says it’s concerning if other states are receiving different advice on reporting data around law enforcement deaths and that North Carolina’s Department of Public Safety is seeking clarity on the reporting that’s allowed under federal law.
Read the whole piece here.
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