Sen. Phil Berger announced Wednesday that he has the list of prisoners released under a settlement that former Gov. Roy Cooper's administration struck with the NAACP and ACLU during the COVID-19 pandemic — a list that was never made public. Among the names, Berger says: DeCarlos Brown Jr., now on trial for the stabbing death of a 23-year-old woman aboard a Charlotte light rail train.
Just The News reported that Berger, the president pro tempore of the North Carolina Senate and a 13th-term Republican, isn't just raising the issue for oversight. He's raising it because Cooper is running for U.S. Senate — and the body count from soft-on-crime governance doesn't stay buried forever.
"As governor, Roy Cooper let thousands of criminals out early and hid his actions from the public. DeCarlos Brown Jr., who is now on trial for murder, was one of the prisoners. Cooper's secret deal with far-left activists put violent criminals back on the streets."
Cooper's campaign says the accusation is false and that Brown was released earlier, before the settlement took effect. The campaign has not provided detailed evidence to support that claim, and the list itself — which Berger now possesses — was never released to the public during Cooper's tenure.
On February 25, 2021, Cooper's administration settled litigation brought by the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, Disability Rights North Carolina, the ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation, four prisoners, and an inmate's wife. The settlement released an estimated 3,500 prisoners.
But the Department of Public Safety had already released more than 5,400 inmates before the settlement — dropping the total incarcerated population by 16% to 28,680. The combined figure approaches an estimated 9,000 prisoners put back on the streets.
The stated plan was to release inmates who had not committed crimes against other people, who were pregnant, who were scheduled to be released in 2021, or who were on track for parole. The kind of criteria that sounds reasonable on paper, and looks very different when one of the released ends up on a viral video, stabbing someone on a train.
DeCarlos Brown Jr. was arrested a 15th time in as many years when he was charged with first-degree murder at the state level and with committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system at the federal level.
Fifteen arrests in fifteen years. Whatever screening criteria existed for that 2021 release, Brown's record should have been a flashing red light to anyone paying attention.
Iryna Zarutska was 23 years old. She was killed aboard the Lynx Blue Line light rail train at approximately 10 p.m. on August 22, alongside Camden Road near the East/West station in Charlotte.
About two weeks later, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police released the video. It went viral. And it exposed something beyond one horrific act of violence — it exposed a transit system that had hollowed out its own security.
A preliminary audit released September 30 by first-term Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek's staff found a 55% reduction in armed security staff at the Charlotte Area Transit System.
A security contract that allowed up to 219 personnel and armed guards on all 48 train cars simultaneously had 82.1% of its positions vacant. The September detail was 39 guards — down from a range of 68 to 88 under a 2018 contract with G4S Secure Solutions.
Meanwhile, the contract value told a different story. The PSS contract went from $5.9 million in 2022 to $18.4 million in 2025 — a 211% increase. More money. Fewer guards. Iryna Zarutska riding a train with virtually no security presence.
Six days after the video went viral, the Charlotte City Council voted unanimously — nine Democrats and two Republicans — to spend a minimum of $3.4 million on a Washington public relations firm. Not on security. Not on personnel. On managing the story.
That vote tells you everything about the institutional priorities at work. A young woman is dead. Armed security has been gutted while the contract ballooned. And the first instinct of elected officials is reputation management. The auditor opened an investigation into safety and spending. The City Council opened a checkbook for spin.
The fallout from the Zarutska killing drove real legislative consequences. North Carolina ended cashless bail. The unwritten moratorium on the state's death penalty was removed. Congressional pressure mounted to remove the magistrate who had released Brown eight months before the killing. These were not abstract policy debates — they were direct responses to a preventable death.
Berger is now pushing further. His statement made clear that accountability doesn't end with the legislative fixes already enacted:
"North Carolinians have a right to know the extent Cooper went to hide his soft-on-crime policies and who was released. Cooper's policies continue to endanger neighborhoods across our state."
Cooper, a four-term attorney general before becoming governor, built his career on the premise that he understood public safety. That résumé makes the 2021 release harder to explain away, not easier. This wasn't a governor unfamiliar with the criminal justice system making a naïve call during a pandemic. This was a career law enforcement official who settled with left-wing advocacy groups to empty prisons — and then kept the list hidden from the public.
The central question for Cooper's Senate campaign is straightforward: Who else was on that list? If the release was defensible, the names should have been public from the start.
If the criteria were as careful as advertised, transparency would have been a political asset, not a liability. The secrecy tells you what Cooper's team already knew — that sunlight would not flatter this deal.
Berger now has the list. North Carolina voters will decide whether a governor who quietly released thousands of prisoners, including men with records like Brown's, deserves a promotion to the United States Senate.
Iryna Zarutska doesn't get to weigh in. She was 23.
