(José Niño, Headline USA) Roy Cooper, the Democrat who once governed North Carolina and now chases a Senate seat, put a former Bloods gang member onto a criminal justice reform group he formed in 2020, according to a Fox News report.
He created that Racial Equity in Criminal Justice task force through an executive order shortly after George Floyd’s death, a move first detailed by the Washington Free Beacon.
Cooper put then-attorney general Josh Stein, who now sits in the governor’s chair, in charge of running the group. The lineup blended state officials with community organizers, one of whom was Kerwin Pittman. Court records obtained by the Free Beacon show Pittman was found guilty in 2007 of plotting a murder and spent fourteen years in prison as a result.
Legal filings from a separate murder trial involving fellow Bloods member Michael Contrez Jones describe Pittman as holding a leadership position within the gang. The Free Beacon also connected Pittman to a 2006 drive-by shooting that took the life of 19-year-old Jamel Amiens Jeffreys.
Pittman answered the renewed scrutiny by pointing to how young he was when those events occurred. He told the Free Beacon, “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.” He went on to say, “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.”
He also reflected on the weight those early choices carried, adding, “I made decisions as a young person that had serious consequences, including spending more than a decade incarcerated.”
Around the time the task force formed, Pittman’s LinkedIn page listed him as working for Emancipate NC, a group the Free Beacon noted has repeatedly called for eliminating police departments. That organization stated in a 2023 blog post that “maintaining white supremacy has always been the goal of policing.”
Cooper is squaring off against former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley in the Senate race, and his campaign used the Free Beacon story to turn the spotlight on his rival. The campaign told Fox News Digital, “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.”
Neither Pittman nor the Whatley campaign responded to requests for comment from Fox News Digital.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
