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Police Officer Charged with Killing Unarmed Man; Russia Hackers Breached White House Computers. Aired 7-7:30a ET
Aired April 8, 2015 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: ... in North Charleston. Through an attorney, Officer Slager described a scuffle, claiming the 50-year-old fought for his Taser, and he felt threatened. In this video, you see what could be a Taser fall as Scott takes off, running away as Slager fires eight times.
(GUNFIRE)
[07:00:16] MICHAEL SLAGER, NORTH CAROLINA POLICE OFFICER CHARGED WITH FIRST-DEGREE MURDER (via radio): Two-twenty-six to dispatch. Shots fired. Subject is down. He's grabbed my Taser.
SAVIDGE: Although he's lying face-down, the officer handcuffs Scott.
Next, Slager jogs back to where he fired his gun and picks up something, perhaps the Taser, but from this video it's not entirely clear.
Back by Scott's body, he drops the small black object. Then moments later, he picks it back up. The Coast Guard veteran and father of four dies on the scene.
Scott's family attorney contends without the video there would be no murder charge.
L. CHRIS STEWART, ATTORNEY FOR SCOTT'S FAMILY: The officer says that Mr. Scott attacked him and fought his Taser and tried to use it on him. But somebody was watching.
SAVIDGE: When asked if race played a role, North Charleston's police chief says he isn't ruling it out.
CHIEF EDDIE DRIGGERS, NORTH CHARLESTON POLICE: I think that all these police officers on this force, men and women, are like my children. So you tell me how a father would react to seeing his child do something.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SAVIDGE: Just about everyone agrees that, if it were not for that video, Chris, it would be an entirely different story, quite literally. As to the person who took the video, they remain anonymous this morning, and reportedly in hiding, fearing for their own safety -- Chris. CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, another detail that speaks to the
situation and the circumstances surrounding these types of violent actions.
Martin, thank you very much. Let's figure out what this video means for this case and others.
Let's bring in Cedric Alexander. He is the president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and he's a member of President Obama's task force on the 21st Century Policing Project. They just released a list of recommendations to change the nation's police policies. It couldn't come at a better time. I'm holding it in my hand.
Cedric, good to have you on the show.
CEDRIC ALEXANDER, PRESIDENT, NOBLE: Thank you.
CUOMO: Sorry for such tragic reason once again. Let's begin with what the video shows and then break down the moments and the aspects of this that speak to the specific case and also a trend that we're seeing and how to stop it, all right?
ALEXANDER: OK.
CUOMO: So this is the video for people at home who haven't seen it yet.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(GUNFIRE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: Now Cedric, just for the people at home, what we don't see on this video is the altercation that the police officer said spurred him to fear for his life and to shoot one time. That was his initial statement, that the police echoed. We don't see that. True.
But just from your general knowledge, Cedric, fighting over a Taser, could the police officer have reasonably feared for his life when he already discharged that Taser, and we don't know that he had reloaded another cartridge in it? Was it a reasonable fear that he would be in fear of his life?
ALEXANDER: Well, what is particularly interesting about this case -- first of all, my hearts and prayers go out to the family of this victim.
But what's important here, regardless of what occurred prior to that shooting, it is very evident to all of us who watch this horrible, horrible video, that is so disturbing. You see a man who can barely run, run away from an officer, clearly of no threat to him any longer, regardless of what occurred. Obviously is not, don't have a weapon. He could not have had a weapon, considering the fact that he's running away. He's not attempting to do any harm. And the officer shoots him in the back, firing his weapon eight times. That's disturbing. That is very hard to justify.
But here's what's clearly important, as well, too. That agency, that police agency, took immediate action. They sought outside investigators to come in. And, in this particular case, where the video clearly was very important and brought the evidence forth to all of us that we're seeing right now, was able to bring this case to a pretty rapid close.
CUOMO: Right. But Cedric, I do think it's important to check what we see as a chain of events here. Outside investigators came in, yes. But there's a big question. I don't know how thoroughly you cover it in your report that you're giving to the president from the task force. But the police echoed this cop's statement early on. Of course, his lawyer put out what he was saying. That's the lawyer's job. The lawyer actually quit once the video came out, we're told.
But they said the officer says there was an altercation over his Taser. He was afraid for his life. He had to shoot one time. OK? That really raises the question -- it's so off from what the video reveals that it does raise the question of...
ALEXANDER: Right.
CUOMO: ... should the police investigate excessive force cases of its own officers instead of an independent body investigating them?
[07:05:03] ALEXANDER: No. No. I will say, and it's in that report that you're holding there, Chris, and that is one of the many regulations along with action items that were made in that report, along with myself and ten other colleagues, as well, too. Is that it is important, and we strongly recommend that any time your agency is involved in a -- involved in a shooting, is that you seek an outside independent investigator.
I've had a couple of shootings here in my community over the last couple of months. What we have done, and what we will continue to do, to be sure that we're exposing, being transparent, being open and honest and speaking to the community as quickly as we can around these shootings. But what's really important here, we have to do is seek that outside, independent investigation...
CUOMO: Right.
ALEXANDER: ... so that people feel that there is fairness and unbias taking place.
CUOMO: But under the category of, God forbid, Cedric, this is already something that never needed to happen.
ALEXANDER: Right.
CUOMO: And a man's life is gone, and his family is ruined by that.
ALEXANDER: Right. That's right.
CUOMO: And that will never be taken away.
But God forbid we didn't have this video yet, right?
ALEXANDER: Right.
CUOMO: And the police are going along. The forensics were going to be damning for this cop...
ALEXANDER: Right.
CUOMO: ... because he discharges a weapon eight times, not once and hits him multiple times in the back at distance. After already having used a Taser that wasn't reloaded.
But imagine if the video then came out a month from now. After those had been hidden, and we saw the nonchalance of how this officer cuffs him on the ground when he's already incapacitated.
ALEXANDER: Right.
CUOMO: And doesn't even check his pulse for a while, and then drops something near him and some type of suggestion of a cover-up. It doesn't look like he dropped it out of negligence. He dropped it intentionally. You know, and they saw that.
And then they see that later on, he seems to pick something up off the scene. Maybe a second guess.
Imagine if all of these things had happened, and the neglect of the body and the nonchalance of the officers, after they had heard a narrative from police about how he had to do it, everything was followed, the community should settle down. Imagine how destructive it would be. And that's why it raises the question of should people think that this happens more often than we know, because there's no video?
ALEXANDER: Well, obviously, people do think that. And this is...
CUOMO: But is that fair?
ALEXANDER: ... the suspicion. No. You know, what is fair is this -- and here's the good part about this, Chris. There was video there, and it shows a significance and importance of having video. And that is incredibly important. And it just happens that there was a bystander who videoed this...
CUOMO: A brave person, by the way.
ALEXANDER: Absolutely.
CUOMO: Had that video not been introduced to us, we would have just gone pretty much solely on what that officer told us. Of course, we would have looked at the physical evidence that related to that crime scene. But we would not have known what may or may not have been altered. It brings a great deal of suspicion when that officer casually
walks over to that subject's body, appeared to drop something on the ground. And then pick it back up. Whatever was going on, it doesn't look good. It looks incredibly suspicious.
But here's what's important here, too, Chris. Is that that community, that local outside law enforcement investigative group, took immediate action and were able to put evidence together very, very quickly, under this particular set of circumstances. That may not apply to each and every case. It may be more drawn out; it may take more time.
But here again, if you go back to that report that you're holding, it becomes very important to keep in mind, as well, too, that inside that report, it suggests very strongly the importance of technology. Technology i.e. body cameras.
CUOMO: Do you say body cams for all cops?
ALEXANDER: Absolutely I support it for police officers across this country. Because I think it provides, one, it tells us and gives us more evidence as to what occurred to support or negate either that of the police officer or that of the citizen that becomes engaged in an altercation with the police.
CUOMO: Cedric Alexander, thank you so much.
ALEXANDER: Thank you, Chris.
CUOMO: We're going to continue this conversation, because there aer a lot of bigger issues that are going to grow out of this.
ALEXANDER: Absolutely.
CUOMO: And again, the timeline, the video is so powerful for that final -- those final moments, but it's what happened before that matters just as much. What the police said, how it was investigated, when they moved on this officer. Thank you very much for your perspective -- Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: OK, Chris. Now we want to get to a developing cybersecurity story affecting President Obama. According to officials, Russian hackers gained access to sensitive parts of the White House computer system, including real-time updates on the president's schedule.
CNN's Evan Perez joins us live from Washington with the latest. This is troubling, Evan.
EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Alisyn. These -- now these Russian hackers in recent months broke into the sensitive -- sensitive parts of the White House email system. In real-time, they could even see parts of the president's schedule that's not disclosed to the public.
The hackers got in first by breaking into the State Department's email servers. Once in there, they tricked someone into giving them access to the system serving the executive office of the president.
[07:10:03] The White House last October disclosed suspicious activity in its unclassified email systems. But deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer last night on "THE SITUATION ROOM," that even a breach of unclassified email is serious.
CUOMO: All right, Evan, thank you very much.
We have -- U.S. investigators believe that the hackers were working for the Russian government. So according to officials, they pulled off one of the most serious cyber breaches against the U.S. government breach, and that's why the intelligence officials are so concerned about all this.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: You would think that the White House and State Department should be immune and impenetrable to these sorts of things. I mean, they're the very targets that are hit.
CUOMO: It does seem a little nonchalant, though. Christiane made a good point. She said this has been going on for time immemorial. Everybody hacks everybody. But it seems like it's so dangerous, and yet it doesn't seem to get the same response from the governments as they would if it were a physical attack.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to talk to Fran Townsend a little later and get a sense of how big of a deal this is and who exactly might be behind it when we say "Russia."
We have some breaking news to tell you about this morning. Gunfire exchanged involving U.S. troops in Jalalabad in Afghanistan. The U.S. embassy says it happened after a senior U.S. official held a meeting with the local governor. There are reports that three U.S. troops were shot and wounded by an Afghan soldier. CNN does not have that independently confirmed. If that is the case, that would make it one of the green-on-blue types of incidents we have seen over the years. We're going to keep our eye on that and give you more information as soon as it's available.
CUOMO: All right. Good. We also have political news back here at home.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wins re-election. He will get his second term after defeating Cook County Commissioner Jesus Chuy Garcia in the city's first-ever mayoral runoff. Emmanuel, the first White House chief of staff, of course, to President Obama, he campaigned furiously after failing to capture a majority against four other candidates in a February election. Emmanuel won with about 56 percent of the vote last night, compared to Garcia's 44.
CAMEROTA: All right. A jury heist in London to tell you about. It's like something out of a movie. At least $300 million worth of diamonds and jewels swiped from a safety deposit business. Some U.K. tabloids say the crooks got into building from the roof. They slid down the elevator shaft, cut through two rows of thick metal security bars, and disabled alarms. It's like I'm giving a how-to. Apparently, they cut through 18-inch-thick metal reinforced
doors, and they made off with the pricey goods. Sounds like "Ocean's 11."
BERMAN: Three hundred million dollars?
CUOMO: Three hundred million. Well, you know.
Is that new? That's beautiful. What is that? I haven't seen that before.
CAMEROTA: Thank you. It's just a small token that I found somewhere.
CUOMO: Did you?
CAMEROTA: All right. Back to our top story, so much to talk about with this. A black man shot dead by a white South Carolina police officer. This renews the debate over police use of deadly force. And we will analyze all of this for you.
CUOMO: All right. And President Obama is heading to a summit in Panama. Cuban leader Raul Castro will be there. But will the two meet about thawing diplomatic relations? Is there another handshake on the horizon? We'll take you through it on "Inside Politics."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[07:16:45] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANTHONY SCOTT, BROTHER OF WALTER SCOTT: I don't -- I don't think that all police officers are bad cops. But there are some bad ones out there. And I don't want to see anyone get shot down the way that my brother got shot down.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: That was the brother of Walter Scott, the man shot in the back by a South Carolina police officer. That officer charged with murder After authorities watched cell-phone video that caught the crime.
We want to bring in Brian Hicks. He's the metro columnist for the Charleston, South Carolina newspaper, "The Post and Courier"; and Joey Jackson, HLN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney. Gentlemen, thanks so much...
JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: Good morning, Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: ... for being here to try to help us understand what we see on this video.
Joey, I want to start with you. You are a criminal defense attorney. You've watched this video. How would you defend this officer?
JACKSON: I'm very concerned, Alisyn, by what I see, and I'm very concerned for the following reasons. Let's start with the law.
The first thing you look at in defending something like this would be the immediacy of the threat. Is there an eminent threat posed to your client?
CAMEROTA: And the officer says that there was. He says that they had wrestled; there had been some sort of altercation. It's not caught on video. And they had wrestled over a stun gun, and he did fear for his life, according to the officer.
JACKSON: Well, Alisyn, I'm concerned about that, because it doesn't seem -- a person can say anything. A client can say anything to me. But the reality is what I see with my eyes.
And when you evaluate that and look for the immediacy of the threat, is it immediate when someone is running away from you, when they're 15 feet away, ten feet away from you, they're going in an opposite direction, they're not confronting you at the time? And that's something you have to examine.
The next thing that concerns me from a defense perspective, Alisyn, is the issue of the proportionality of the threat. Any force you use has to be proportionate to any threat posed. So if you're not under immediate threat of attack, and you're shooting at someone running away, that's a concern.
The final thing that concerns me, and there are many others, but the issue of reasonableness. Will a grand jury and will a jury evaluate this in the context of what is he acting reasonably? You match that up against other facts in terms of him being unarmed. And the fact that that video appears to show what I see, something being placed, a weapon being placed there by the officer. And it's a very -- very much a challenge for a defense attorney.
CAMEROTA: We should also mention that his original attorney did drop the case shortly after getting it.
Brian, I want to bring you in, because it was you, you and your newspaper that originally obtained this video and posted it online. Can you give us more context about this video? What else you know about it?
BRIAN HICKS, "CHARLESTON POST AND COURIER": Not really. An anonymous person, whoever shot the video, gave it to an attorney, who contacted one of our reporters. And we saw it for the first time yesterday afternoon. Probably just a few hours before the police department did.
CAMEROTA: Did the anonymous person tell you that they witnessed anything that happened before they turned on their cell-phone camera?
HICKS: We have not been able to interview that person. I do not even know the identity of that man.
CAMEROTA: And we know that that person -- I mean, we've been told that that person is actually keeping their identity secret, because they are in fear this morning, because it's caused, obviously, such a conflagration there. What's happening in the community, Brian, about this crime?
[07:20:08] HICKS: Things are -- things are pretty calm here right now, the best we can tell. It's sad to say, but some people in the community have been saying for years that the North Charleston Police Department engaged in racial profiling and treated black citizens differently than white citizens. Nothing like this has ever happened before. And so the sad cynical thing to say is some people say, "Well, we told you so."
And that is -- and that is what I was writing about today, is that there are a lot of good police officers in North Charleston. And Slager has basically given ammunition to their critics. And it's going to take a lot of time to get over that.
CAMEROTA: Such a good point. Before I get back to Joey, what have you learned about Officer Slager? The man who's now been charged with murder?
HICKS: Well, we know that he's been on the force since 2009. He was in the Coast Guard. And as far as we can tell, he only had one prior incident in which he Tased a man at his home. He was later exonerated, Slager was.
But from what I heard -- and I hate to say this because I haven't looked at the police report. But apparently the man Tased was the victim of a burglary, not a burglar.
CAMEROTA: Joey.
HICKS: Mistaken identity.
CAMEROTA: It sounds like it. So Joey, is this another case like Michael Brown, where what happened before the shooting matters? Where there's some -- we don't see the altercation.
JACKSON: Sure.
CAMEROTA: Can the defense say something happened that was so troubling to the officer that he did fear for his life, and will that exonerate him?
JACKSON: You know, it's a very difficult argument to make. Now, Michael Brown stood on its own merits, and of course, that was evaluated by a grand jury. That was what it was.
But in this particular instance, we have a video. And certainly, there's something that puts it in context, OK? And the defense will certainly argue that there's things we don't see that occurred before that may have affected the state of mind of that police officer, what he was thinking, feeling, believing.
But still in all, if something most egregious happened -- and they'll evaluate the officer. Did he have any injuries? What occurred to him? Where were those injuries? You know, how significant were they, if any existed? But at the end of the day, the law doesn't allow for retaliation; it only allows for defending yourself and protecting yourself in the immediacy of any type of fear.
And the Supreme Court ruled on this, Alisyn, and it said if you're a fleeing felon, the reality is you can only be subdued and deadly force can be used if you're posing a danger to the officer or others. That does not appear, from the indication of the tape, to be the case.
CAMEROTA: Brian, do we know anything about the past and the background of the victim, Walter Scott?
HICKS: He has a very minor criminal record. And most of it is nonpayment of child support. And he may have had an outstanding warrant for that right now. We're not sure. He certainly didn't have any felony. He was not a fleeing felon. That's for sure.
CAMEROTA: Brian Hicks, Joey Jackson, thanks so much for trying to help us walk through all of this.
HICKS: Sure.
CAMEROTA: Let's get over to John.
BERMAN: Thanks a lot, Alisyn.
So Hillary Clinton, she has not officially announced what she's going to go for the next year or two. But that is not stopping Bill Clinton from talking about his role might in a campaign. John King brings you the latest, "Inside Politics."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[07:27:38] CUOMO: A white cop in South Carolina is behind bars, facing murder charges for shooting and killing a black man. No grand jury, no real delay. Why? The video you're looking at right now, taken by a bystander, showing the officer shooting at an unarmed 50- year-old who was lumbering away at the time after a traffic stop went wrong.
Officer Michael Slager and the police department had been saying he had to shoot Walter Scott, because Scott had taken his stun gun, and that he shot once. But the video obviously shows much more, and not just the alleged murder but also Slager dropping the stun gun near Scott's body after the shooting.
Scott's family is now planning a civil lawsuit.
CAMEROTA: The Russian hackers behind a sophisticated State Department cyber-attack apparently also gained access to sensitive parts of the White House computer system. The breach reportedly included non-public details of President Obama's schedule. A national security official maintains the attack only affected the unclassified system and that government workers are advised not to share sensitive information there. BERMAN: This morning, investigators trying to figure out what
caused a private plane to crash, killing all seven people on board. The plane was returning to Illinois from the NCAA tournament in Indianapolis when it went down. Among those killed, Illinois State University basketball coach and a number member of that college's athletic department.
CUOMO: Hey, so you lose a GoPro at about 10,000 feet? Because I think we found it. This is a skydiver's GoPro camera. It slips from the helmet -- talk about trippy video; it's the right word for it. It plummets 10,000 feet to the ground.
CAMEROTA: Then what happens?
CUOMO: This is what that experience would be like, by the way, if you were the camera.
CAMEROTA: Oof.
CUOMO: The camera remains intact.
BERMAN: Wow.
CUOMO: It hits the ground; it's OK. The man who found the GoPro lives in Sweden, by the way. Trying to track down the owner to return it. The footage is believed to be about four years old.
BERMAN: That looks like Saturday night to me. That is my Saturday night.
CUOMO: Is that it?
BERMAN: That's what -- my memories of Saturday night, like that right there.
CAMEROTA: Your memories of it. That needs to be a commercial for GoPro. It's indestructible.
CUOMO: If it was a GoPro.
BERMAN: Takes a licking, keeps on ticking.
CAMEROTA: OK, whatever camera that is, they need to use that in their advertising.
CUOMO: It lasted a fall from 10,000 feet. J.B. can do that.
BERMAN: Thank you.
CUOMO: You fell from, what, 8,600 feet?
BERMAN: Not quite 10,000. Just below.
CAMEROTA: That's a great segue. Let's bring in John King with "Inside Politics" on NEW DAY. Good morning, John.
JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT/ANCHOR: I'm kind of tempted, Alisyn, to go inside Berman's Saturday night after that.
CAMEROTA: It's a scary place.
KING: But we'll just leave that -- we'll just leave that where it is.
CUOMO: Parcheesi.
KING: Good morning to you all. We'll be back in just a few minutes on a busy day. To go "Inside Politics" with me to share their reporting and their insights, Margaret Talbot (ph) of Bloomberg, and Jonathan Martin of "The New York Times."
Let's start with the big announcement yesterday. Rand Paulo, the No. 2 candidate in the race. We all know the big challenge...
