Hello Governor Cooper, It is neither cynical nor partisan to ask how your decisions contributed to the environment in which this happened. In June 2020, you created the Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice (TREC) through Executive Order 145. That task force issued 125 recommendations. Recommendations explicitly sought to reduce use of cash bail for misdemeanors, downgrade certain criminal offenses to infractions, and expand diversion programs. The stated purpose was to address racial disparities, but the practical effect was to lower barriers to release for repeat offenders. Since then, your administration highlighted “successes” such as: 🔹 Establishing the Juvenile Sentence Review Board to shorten certain sentences. 🔹 Expanding violence prevention programs and restorative justice initiatives. 🔹 Formalizing Victim-Offender Dialogue policies as alternatives to punitive outcomes. You argue that critics “supported cutting funding to law enforcement.” But these facts show under your leadership, the state itself redirected focus from deterrence and incapacitation toward leniency and diversion. Magistrates, operating within that climate, released Brown without bail even after multiple dangerous encounters. That’s downstream of leadership which prizes symbolic equity reforms over public safety… starting with you. If you want to honor Iryna Zarutska’s memory, confront that your policies contributed to a culture where a man with a long record of violence and instability was repeatedly released until he killed an innocent young woman. Set an example. Do the very bare minimum of disbanding the task force. My guess is you will not even take that tiny symbolic step. Prove me wrong.