Former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who is running for U.S. Senate in the Tar Heel State, appointed a former member of the Bloods gang to a “Racial Equity in Criminal Justice” task force in 2020.

According to The Washington Free Beacon, the former Democratic governor established the task force through an executive order after the death of George Floyd.

The task force appointee was a former “ranking member of the Bloods” previously convicted of plotting a drive-by shooting murder.

More from The Washington Free Beacon:

Cooper’s task force included a number of state officials, such as then-attorney general Josh Stein (now the state’s Democratic governor), but it also included community activists who advocated for radical criminal justice reforms. One of these activists was a convicted felon named Kerwin Pittman.

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In 2007, Pittman, a former “ranking member of the Bloods,” was convicted of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and sentenced to more than 14 years in prison. He ultimately served 11.5 years with over a year in solitary confinement before being released.

Pittman’s conviction involved the murder of Jamel Amiens Jeffreys, 19, who died in a drive-by shooting in Raleigh in June 2006.

In 2004 and 2006, Pittman had also been arrested on assault and drug possession charges. He was sentenced to probation on both charges, records show.

“I was asked to contribute to conversations about criminal justice reform because of both my lived experience and the work I was doing in communities,” Pittman told the Washington Free Beacon. “I have never hidden my past. The gang involvement and criminal conduct you reference occurred when I was a teenager and young man, at or before the age of 19. I am now 39 years old. I made decisions as a young person that had serious consequences, including spending more than a decade incarcerated.”

Cooper is running for Senate against former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley.

The former governor was asked for comment about the reporting.

“While Roy spent his career putting rapists and violent criminals behind bars and signing tough on crime laws as governor, Michael Whatley spent his appointing a convicted child sex predator who served six years in prison and spent over a decade as a registered sex offender to a top role within the North Carolina Republican Party that gave him access to events with children,” the Cooper campaign told The Washington Free Beacon.

Fox News noted:

Pittman, according to his LinkedIn profile, worked at the time of the task force’s creation for Emancipate NC, an organization which, as the Free Beacon reported, has often called for the abolition of police, writing that “maintaining white supremacy has always been the goal of policing” in a 2023 company blog post.

 

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