Roy Cooper serves as North Carolina's Attorney General to keep people safe by fighting crime, protecting consumers and helping crime victims.

Roy Cooper is pushing for tougher sentences for child predators and pornographers and more tools to help law enforcement track down offenders. He leads a group of attorneys general who are pushing social networking sites like MySpace to stop exposing children to predators and pornography. He also started a computer forensics unit to hunt predators and offered safety guides to parents and teachers.

To help families plan for their safety, Roy Cooper launched a new website that allows North Carolinians to track sex offenders who live near them. People can view maps that pinpoint where offenders live in their community and can also sign up for email alerts when an offender moves into their neighborhood or near their child's school or daycare.

He has increased DNA testing of crime scene evidence and pushed to include all felons in the state's database of convicted offenders so that law enforcement can crack more cases and ensure that the right person is brought to justice.

To tackle the explosion in methamphetamine labs in North Carolina, Roy Cooper made it harder for criminals to get the drug's key ingredient and ensured that criminals who make the drug serve prison time, especially if they endanger children and law enforcers. With meth labs down dramatically thanks to these tough laws, Cooper's State Bureau of Investigation has stepped up efforts to fight drug traffickers and go after large operations that bring drugs into North Carolina.

Roy Cooper won laws that make it harder for identity thieves to steal consumers' personal information and easier for consumers to protect themselves. Roy Cooper also won a state Do Not Call law so that North Carolinians can choose who calls them at home. He and his consumer protection team have recovered more than $80 million in refunds for thousands of consumers.

To make our schools safer, Roy Cooper gave every school in North Carolina a Critical Incident Response Kit that helps educators and law enforcement know what to do in a crisis. He has also convened a task force to improve safety on North Carolina's college and university campuses.

Roy Cooper is helping victims of domestic violence and stalking find safe harbor through the Address Confidentiality Program. He fought for laws that make it a crime to commit abuse in front of children and that allow employers to get protective orders for their threatened employees, and he has pushed for more resources for victims of sexual assault.

Roy Cooper was born in Nash County, NC in 1957, attended public schools and worked summers cropping tobacco. His mother, Beverly Cooper, worked as a school teacher and his father, Roy Cooper Jr., farmed and practiced law in Nashville, the county seat.

He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Morehead Scholar, and after graduating from law school he went back home to practice law with his family law firm. As a result of his performance as a courtroom attorney, Martindale-Hubbell awarded him an AV rating, its highest mark.

He has been involved in church and civic activities. He is a Sunday School teacher and has served as an elder and deacon. He tutors children at a local elementary school and has led fundraising drives for the March of Dimes, Barium Springs Home for Children and the United Way. He and his wife, Kristin, have three children, Hilary, 23, Natalie, 15, and Claire, 13.