Racial justice task force to take your questions Tuesday

ROCKINGHAM — The Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice, which Sheriff James Clemmons was appointed to earlier this month, will hold its first public comment session via Zoom on Tuesday.

Governor Roy Cooper organized the Task Force in June in the wake of the protests that followed from George Floyd’s death in police custody. Its goal is to recommend solutions to stop discriminatory law enforcement and criminal justice practices and hold public safety officers accountable.

The public comment session will begin at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, July 28. To sign up to speak for two minutes, follow this link: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/60b0c4baaa628a1fa7-public. Once you sign up, you will be sent a Zoom link to participate in the public session. The public comment session can also be streamed live on the North Carolina Department of Justice’s YouTube channel.

The public can also submit written questions by submitting comments through the form at this link: https://governor.nc.gov/issues/public-safety/trec-public-feedback-form. More public comment sessions will be announced in the future.

“Hearing from people across our state is critical to our ability to work toward racial equity in our criminal justice system,” said Attorney General Josh Stein, who co-chairs the Task Force, in a statement. “To my fellow North Carolinians: your experiences and input are invaluable to our work and the recommendations we will put forward to Gov. Cooper, and I encourage you to sign up to share your thoughts during this public comment session.”

The Task Force adopted three recommendations Friday which all law enforcement agencies and the North Carolina Supreme Court will be asked to implement.

Those recommendations are for law enforcement agencies to make it a policy that officers have a duty to intervene in any case where an officer is a witness to another officer using excessive force or abusing a suspect and to adopt a Use of Force policy that prohibits neck holds at the minimum. The new recommendations also include asking the North Carolina Supreme Court to enact a rule that would require an assessment of a defendant’s ability to pay prior to levying any fines or fees, according to a press release.

Clemmons spoke critically of the demands of the protesters that emerged following Floyd’s death at the Unity Walk earlier this month. He said that, as a black man, he understands the feelings the black community has towards the law enforcement, but challenged the Black Lives Matter to apply the same logic of the phrase “black lives matter” to crime that doesn’t involve police.

“We talk about Black Lives Matter because of those that have been lost at the hands of law enforcement,” Clemmons said at the Unity Walk on July 11. “Black lives do matter, but here’s where it really matters: black lives matter no matter who’s taking those black lives.”

He continued: “We know the names of George Floyd and others who have paid the ultimate sacrifice at the hands of whatever the situation that was started but it ended in death — that is unfortunate, one death is one death too many — but look at all the names that have not been called. Look at all the mothers with murdered offspring that are standing alone in the darkness when that light has not shown upon them and the ones they’ve birthed and the ones they’ve lost at the hands of those who look just like them.”

Clemmons, who is one of 19 others on the Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice, went on to say that there is injustice within the history of law enforcement practices creating a school-to-prison pipeline and treating crack cocaine with more severity than powder cocaine, but suggested that this does not negate the need for law enforcement in society.

“Prisons are not full just because officers are picking people off the street and dragging them behind bars,” he said. “See when they talk about prison reform, when they talk about justice reform, when they talk about law reform they’re not talking to the victim. Name me one victim that is willing to sit down after losing a loved one … and goes to the courthouse and says, ‘Turn that killer loose.’ These are not the the people and the voices that (activists) are listening to … so think about that when you hear the words ‘defunding of law enforcement,’ when you hear the word of ‘disbanding of law enforcement.’ What is there to take its place?”