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Dallas Police Chief Speaks to CNN's Jake Tapper; Police and Protesters Clash After Week of Violence; President Obama to Visit Dallas; What's Next for Black Lives Matter. Aired 6-7p ET

Aired July 10, 2016 - 18:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:01:01] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour, you're live in the CNN NEWSROOM. It is 6:00 p.m. Eastern. I'm Poppy Harlow, joining you from New York this Sunday evening.

And we begin with terrifying new details emerging about the sniper who killed five police officers and wounded seven others in Dallas. The killer left messages in his own blood in the wall. This from an exclusive interview right here on CNN with Dallas Police Chief David Brown. He described for us the killer's bizarre behavior during a police standoff on Thursday night. The full interview is just moments away.

Also, we know at least 261 people were arrested last night alone in a string of nationwide protests. Demonstrators outraged after two black men were shot and killed by police this last week.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, last night, the most violence. Protesters throwing bottles, bricks and fireworks at police, injuring 21 officers there.

And also this, President Obama cutting his overseas trip short and visiting Dallas on Tuesday where he will speak at an interfaith memorial service.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown learned about terrifying, heartbreaking pain and loss long, long before the violent ambush in his city this week. He lost his son, his partner and his very first police partner to gun violence.

In a CNN exclusive interview, he spoke with our Jake Tapper about this week's terrifying ambush in his city.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR, "STATE OF THE UNION": Chief, an investigator told our affiliate WFAA that the domestic terrorist who killed these officers was planning a much larger attack than the deadly ambush he carried out on Thursday.

What can you tell us about this larger plot?

CHIEF DAVID BROWN, DALLAS POLICE DEPARTMENT: It appears that our search of the suspect's home in Mesquite leads us to believe, based on evidence of bomb-making materials and a journal, that the suspect had been practicing explosive detonations, and that the materials were such that it was large enough to have devastating effects throughout our city and our North Texas area.

We're convinced that this suspect had other plans and thought that what he was doing was righteous and believed that he was going to make law enforcement and target law enforcement, make us pay for what he sees as law enforcement's efforts to punish people of color.

TAPPER: So, he had been planning something before the rally, and maybe even before the deaths in Louisiana and Minnesota?

BROWN: We believe so.

And we believe that the deaths in Minnesota and the deaths in Louisiana just sparked his delusion to fast-track his plans and saw the protest in Dallas as an opportunity to begin wreaking havoc on our officers.

TAPPER: Is there anything more specific in terms of what he was going to target beyond police officers?

BROWN: We -- that's undetermined at this point, but we are continuing to go through his laptop and his cell phones to figure out what other interactions and who else he might have been interacting with as a result of these plans.

We still haven't ruled out, Jake, whether or not others were complicit. And it's just the way we do things. We want to make sure we follow every lead and make sure we don't want to miss any pieces of evidence that might lead to other things that we don't know yet.

TAPPER: What else can you tell us that you might have learned from the killer's journals?

BROWN: Well, I think that this killer obviously had some delusion.

There was quite a bit of rambling in the journal that's hard to decipher. I can just add, at the scene where he was killed, there was some -- he wrote some lettering in blood on the walls, which leads us to believe he was wounded on the way up the stairwell on the second floor of the El Centro building.

[18:05:04] And where we detonated the device to end the standoff, there was more lettering written in his own blood.

TAPPER: What did he write?

BROWN: And we are -- we are trying to decipher that. But he wrote the letters R.B.

TAPPER: R.B.

BROWN: And we don't -- R.B., yes. So, we're trying to figure out, through looking, again, at things in

his home, what those initials mean. But we haven't determined that yet.

TAPPER: After the shooting, you suggested that the gunman had to have had some knowledge of the parade route. You said, how would you know to post up there?

And you also said that you have yet to determine whether or not there was some sort of complicity with the planning of this. Have you learned anything more about that?

BROWN: Yes. We had information prior to the rally that the rally would only be a static event at the Belo Gardens, and that, after the rally ended, that people would disperse and go home peacefully.

We had no indications that anyone was planning any type of violence to our people or damage to our properties. And so, we really did our security planning around the things that we learned from the pre- planning meetings that the protesters had.

Spontaneously, they began to march. And there was no route determined before this spontaneous march began, and they just began walking. What we know now is that this suspect was in a vehicle, what is a black Tahoe, and was leapfrogging the intersections in that vehicle and stopped well ahead of the march.

You could easily see the march coming down the street they were walking, and saw an opportunity with some high-perched positions, a couple of buildings in the pathway of the marchers, and decided to take the high ground and start shooting right away.

And the vulnerability of our officers were, because it was such a spontaneous decision to march by the protesters, we had to leapfrog intersections to make sure they didn't get run over by vehicles, by traffic. So -- because we were not planning to block any streets because of the pre-planning meeting information that we received.

And we had to scramble to block intersections, which did expose our officers to this attack. And this suspect took advantage of that. And once he was in a high-perched position, officers did not know where the shots was coming from.

And we are learning some of the positions of our deceased officers, and it was -- they were in a funnel. And it ended up being a fatal funnel there. And then the suspect continued to move and shoot from different angles at -- from the high-perched position down at street level and then back up to the high-perched positions at -- really diagonally, almost triangulating our officers with his rapid fire.

TAPPER: It sounds as though his military training really enabled him to be quite deadly in this horrific circumstance.

BROWN: We don't normally see this type of moving and shooting from criminal suspects. We're convinced that the military style was a plan and that he had

practiced this. And, again, I agree with you, Jake. The military training he received, you know, did influence how he planned to do it.

I am sure he had been deployed to Afghanistan, according to his military record, and likely had been trained and taught that type of tactic.

TAPPER: There is a report out this morning that the killer said he would only speak with a black police negotiator. Is that accurate?

BROWN: That is accurate. That's not something that we would have liked our police officials to divulge at this time, until we got further into the information on the suspect's laptops, so we could fully understand the reasoning behind that. But, since that's out, I have to be honest with you, that's true.

And for a long time during the negotiation, because of the negotiator's expertise, the suspect wouldn't believe he was black, until they talked some more and -- but, during that talk, it didn't matter whether he was black, because he was shooting at us.

So, asking for a black negotiator didn't make sense to us. It didn't matter to us. And it shouldn't make sense to anyone, because that didn't lead to any type of peaceful resolution. But that is a request that did happen.

But our police sources should not reveal that. I want to make sure I'm clear on that, so that the people that leaked that information understand that you are getting in the way of us doing our job by leaking information, so stop it.

TAPPER: Three people were arrested in connection with the shooting.

[18:10:03] But the police have not immediately named them or said why they were being held.

Can you tell us anything more about those three individuals?

BROWN: Yes.

During the protest that was planned as a static event, several people, 20 or 30 people, showed up with AR-15 rifles slung across their shoulder. They were wearing gas masks. They were wearing bulletproof vests and camo fatigues, for effect, for whatever reason.

Doesn't make sense to us, but that's their right in Texas. And they marched. But when the shooting started, they began to run. And they began to run at street level across where shooting was occurring.

So, for our officers, they were suspects. And I support that belief. Someone is shooting at you from a perched position and people are running with AR-15s and camo gear and gas masks and bulletproof vests, they are suspects, until we eliminate that.

So, one of those persons, they turned themselves in because they ran and got away and we put their picture out. We interviewed them and released them because we didn't have any evidence that they were part of this attack.

One of the other individuals that was running, he could not legally carry the gun, so we charged that person with prohibitive weapon, and they were brought to jail.

One of the other suspects, a female, we released as well. She was running with those two who were armed. And officers believed that she might have been associated with that. But we -- once we interviewed her, we ruled her out as a suspect as well.

But, from our vantage point, with people carrying guns at protests slung across them, wearing bulletproof vests and gas masks, while people are killing us, they're suspects until we rule them out.

TAPPER: So, just to clarify, all three individuals have been released, and you don't believe that any of those three are complicit or involved in any way in these murders?

BROWN: Two of the three were released.

One was not legally able to carry a gun. They were charged with prohibitive weapon, which is a misdemeanor charge here in Texas, when you can't legally carry a gun.

And so, two were released, and one was arrested for unrelated gun charges.

TAPPER: Something unprecedented that happened in Dallas, the police department used a bomb robot to kill the gunman.

Take us through that process. How did you make that decision?

BROWN: I was in radio contact with the SWAT team negotiating once we had him pinned down in the second floor of the El Centro College building.

And they began conveying to me that this person was in a gunfire with them -- gunfight with them, and he was in a position such that they could not see him. He was secreted behind a brick corner. And the only way to either get a sniper shot to end his trying to kill us would be to expose officers to grave danger.

The other option was to continue to negotiate. We had negotiated with him for about two hours. And he just basically lied to us, playing games, laughing at us, singing, asking how many did he get and that he wanted to kill some more, and that there were bombs there, so that there was no progress on the negotiation.

And I began to feel that it was only at a split-second, he would charge us and take out many more before we would kill him. So, I asked right -- I was planning a press conference. Before I walked out the door, I said, I want to plan when I come back from this press conference, to end this. And I said, use your creativeness to come up with a plan to do it. When I got back from the press conference, they presented to me what

was probably a 15-minute plan they put together to improvise our robot with a device to detonate behind the corner within a few feet of where he was that would take him out.

And I approved it. And I will do it again if presented with the same circumstances.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: All right. Stay with us, because coming up next, you will hear the rest of Jake's interview with Dallas Police Chief David Brown. He talks about acts of bravery during that ambush, telling us about officers who deliberately exposed themselves to the sniper's fire just to draw him out. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:17:46] HARLOW: Welcome back. You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM and we are back with more of CNN's exclusive interview with Dallas Police Chief David Brown. This week, they will attend a memorial for five fallen officers. Those officers hunted down on Thursday night.

Brown spoke exclusively with my colleague Jake Tapper about the shooter's actions during that hours long standoff on Saturday. He said the shooter sang songs and taunted police. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Tell us more about this phone call. What -- what was he singing? What was he saying? Did he seem at all in control of himself?

BROWN: He seemed very much in control and very determined about hurting more officers.

I don't recall what he was singing or much about what he was saying. We're trying to get some of our audio transcribed from some of that conversation.

But, as soon as we do, I'm going to release that, because we just believe in transparency as much as possible of all police incidents. But I just don't have that here today.

But I can just tell you, he was clear of mind, determined to hurt more officers. And without our actions, he would have hurt more officers. So, we had no choice, in my mind, but to use all tools necessary -- and it was about a pound of C-4 -- to end the standoff.

TAPPER: I want to just ask briefly about the decision to send in this bomb robot, which you said that you would make the same decision again.

As you know, it's prompted a lot of discussion among law enforcement officials about whether or not there should be some sort of discussion nationwide about the use of this type of robot. Just to ask a question about this, could something else have been used

other than a bomb that would have killed the shooter? Obviously, in a situation like that, law enforcement has every right and ability to take out the shooter any way he can. But could, for instance, some sort of riot gas been used, instead of something that killed the gunman?

BROWN: I just don't give much quarter to critics who ask these types of questions from the comforts and safety, away from the incident.

[18:20:06] You have to be on the ground and try and determine -- I have got former SWAT experience here in Dallas. And you have to trust your people to make the calls necessary to save their lives. It's their lives that are at stake, not these critics' lives who are in the comforts of their homes or offices.

So, you know, that's not worth my time to debate at this point. We believe that we saved lives by making this decision. And, you know, again, I appreciate critics, but they're not in on the ground, and their lives are not being put at risk by debating what tactics to take.

And I will leave that to them for a later discussion.

TAPPER: Let's talk about your story, your own personal story, because it's rather extraordinary. You have lost your partner, a former partner of yours, to gun violence, your brother to gun violence.

And just weeks after you became the leader of the Dallas Police Department in 2010, your son -- pardon me -- your son fatally shot a police officer and another man, before being killed in a confrontation with police.

How do you think these experiences have shaped the way you faced the horrific events of this week?

BROWN: First of all, I came into law enforcement in 1983 as a result of the crack cocaine epidemic in my own neighborhood.

I grew up in the poor areas of Dallas. I am an inner-city kid. And I really appreciate my experiences growing up here. And this city has embraced me as its police chief. And I have always felt a sense of urgency about delivering police service.

But I never wanted this job to be about me, then or now. I am a servant. And at my core, I enjoy serving people.

And I'm a person of faith. I am a Christian. And I believe that service is part of my direction, and loving people, despite themselves, is something I aspire to be.

I'm flawed, though, like many of us. But I can tell you right now, you know, I'm not going to have a long conversation about me on this broadcast or any others. This is going to be about the men and women in blue who sacrifice their lives every day and these families planning four funerals. So, I want to spend a lot of time talking about what I have learned

about these officers. They're brave. They're courageous. They did things that day that are just hard to describe. We're learning that officers exposed themselves to draw fire, so they could determine what floor this suspect was on, exposed themselves.

And you saw footage of officers running toward gunfire, extraordinary acts of bravery, countless officers returning fire, knowing that they're vulnerable to try to get to wounded and injured citizens and officers to get them rushed to the hospital to try to save their lives.

And just the brave men and women who have worked every day -- the day after this incident occurred, I look at the daily rolls to see who comes to work. Everyone came to work the next day.

Who does that, Jake? In the face of their lives being at stake the previous day, you would think you would have some call in and say, maybe that's not for me.

Everyone came to work that next day. And I am just proud to be associated with these people. I stay humble. And so I'm not going to talk much about me. I think you said much about my story, and I think it speaks for itself.

And I hope that I have done a good enough job to represent these brave men and women. That's been the challenge for me. Am I representing them appropriately?

So, I am really, really, really not wanting to -- any of this to be about me, Jake. And I hope you can appreciate that.

TAPPER: I can, sir.

What can you tell us about the officers who were wounded?

BROWN: Many of the officers have been released already.

One of the DART officers was still in treatment at the hospital on -- yesterday. But I believe he is going to be released today, if he did not get released late last night.

They're recovering, but they're -- not only those officers, but just looking in the faces of all of my officers when I see them coming in and out of headquarters and out on the street, they're -- they're in shock, Jake.

They're -- you know, one thing -- other thing that I have learned about this is that the conversation about policing in this country, it -- this is not sustainable to keep these officers encouraged. These officers risk their lives for $40,000 a year, $40,000 a year.

And this is not sustainable, not to support these people. We're not perfect. There's cops that don't need to be cops. And I have been the first to say, we need to separate employment with those types of cops, 1 or 2 percent. [18:25:04] But the 98 percent, 99 percent of cops come to work and do

this job for 40 grand, and risk their lives, not knowing whether they come home, get this criticism. That's just not right, and it's not sustainable.

And I am just making a plea to this country to stand up as a silent majority and show your support for these people to keep them encouraged to protect you.

And I am saying this from the heart. I hope I'm not lecturing too much. But this is -- this is really important, from my perspective, that we show these folks that we applaud the heroism and that we let them know without a question that we support you in your efforts to protect us.

TAPPER: Who specifically do you think needs to show more support to our men and women in blue? Is this something that you're directing to public officials, to any specific protesters, to the media? Who do you wish were more supportive?

BROWN: Well, you took the words right out of my mouth -- media, public officials, and our communities, how media tells the story, how you sensationalize the video, how you edit the video. Show the whole story. And when you don't know the whole story, say there is more to be determined, instead of jumping quickly to conclusions without a full investigation.

We need more people in the community to come forward. There is a silent majority out there that doesn't realize that a minority voice is loud, critical of law enforcement, without all the facts.

And our public officials, local and national, need to step up. And I am encouraged by what I have heard, but we all need to make sure that there is no question in the mind of our officers that they are supported when they do the right things.

And of the few that don't, we as leaders in the profession need to separate employment with them, so that the 98 percent doesn't get painted with the broad brush of those 1 or 2 percenters that shouldn't be police officers.

So, you can have both of these discussions and be clear of the people who dedicate themselves professionally to deliver police service that you support them, without painting everyone with a broad brush or the majority of the media coverage be the negativity that happens in our profession.

TAPPER: What do you say to the people who were protesting in Louisiana last night or the people who were protesting in Minnesota last night, majority African-American protesters who feel as though their lives don't matter as much to the police? What do you say to them?

BROWN: We're sworn to protect you and your right to protest.

And we will give our lives for it. And it's sort of like being in a relationship where you love that person, but that person can't express or show you love back. I don't know if you have been in a relationship like that before, Jake, but that's a tough relationship to be in, where we show our love, because there is no greater love than to give your life for someone, and that's what we're continuing to be willing to do.

And we just need to hear from the protesters back to us, "We appreciate the work you do for us in our right to protest." That should be fairly easy.

TAPPER: One last question for you, sir. What else should we know? What else do you want the American people to know?

BROWN: That the law enforcement community is hurting. We're all grieving not just here in Dallas, all over the country. And words matter. And we need to hear that you appreciate what we do for this country. Thank you, Jake.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: Jake Tapper with that exclusive interview with the Dallas police chief today, David Brown.

Straight ahead, we're going to delve into the events of this week as we look ahead to the week that begins tomorrow morning. Police and community relations, the president's role, President Obama. What will he say when he travels to Dallas on Tuesday? Also, where does the Black Lives Matter go from here?

A lot to discuss with a great panel of guests with me next. You're live in THE NEWSROOM. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:33:05] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: This week there has been a lot of discussion, a lot of talk about the need for police engagement within communities even more so. This is all in the wake of last week's fatal shooting of two black men by police officers and the murder of five police officers that were ambushed on Thursday night.

But what does this engagement really look like? What should these conversations be? How can they be effective to create real lasting change?

Let's delve into that. Former U.S. Martial assistant director Art Roderick is with me. South Carolina State Representative Justin Bamberg joins us. He's also serving as the attorney for Alton Sterling's family. Also with me is journalist and author and documentary filmmaker and producer Clara Bingham. Her work has focused on women's issues and social justice.

Thank you all for being here. And Art, let me begin with you. I want to get your reaction to what the Dallas Police Chief David Brown told our Jake Tapper this morning this specifically. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CHIEF DAVID BROWN, DALLAS POLICE: Police officers risk their lives for $40,000 a year. $40,000 a year. We need to separate employment with those types of cops, 1 percent or 2 percent, but the 98 percent, 99 percent of cops come to work and do this job for $40,000 and risk their lives not knowing whether they come home get this criticism. That's just not right and it's not sustainable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Art, your thoughts.

ART RODERICK, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: The whole interview was absolutely riveting, and that struck a chord, that phrase right there. Those couple sentences the chief put together is exactly a lot of the issues we have not only here in Dallas but all around the country. You've got 18,000 different police departments, law enforcement agencies and sheriff's offices and the pays vary all across the country obviously based on your geological area. But it is an issue I hear from chiefs of police all the time, the low pay, but still the individuals show up to do the job every day and protect their communities.

HARLOW: Yes, the fact that he said, Justin, that every single officer showed up to work on Friday, the day after the ambush.

[18:30:07] No one, no one said, I'm going to sit this one out. I mean, it speaks volumes.

I want to look at some images. Let's pull up some of these pictures. Here's one from Baton Rouge last night. We have a few to show you. And I just want your reaction to some of these images that we're seeing and what impression you think they give. And unfortunately you can't see the photos. I'm so -- I'm so sorry.

Let's have Clara address that because she can see these images with me right now. What do these images say to us about where we are?

CLARA BINGHAM, DOCUMENTARY FILM PRODUCER: What we're looking at right now are police in full riot gear and heavily armed, and it's a sight that we really haven't seen since the late '60s, I would say. This level of protest is very scary, and it looks a little bit to me like the anarchy that we witnessed in the late '60s with the Watts riots, the riots in '68, and then later the Democratic convention, the political riots. So it's very -- you know, we're right on the edge here of something that could go the wrong way.

HARLOW: I do want to push back a little bit on that, and Justin, get your take. I mean, let's talk about the '60s. All right. Let's specifically talk about the '60s. You've got '65, you've got riot in Watts, you've got '67, riots in Newark and Detroit, 1968, we see the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Are we there? Is it an accurate and fair comparison to make or do you believe it is more, as President Obama said this weekend, that yes, there are many issues that this country is facing, but we are not as divided as it may appear that we are right now? STATE REP. JUSTIN BAMBERG, ATTORNEY FOR ALTON STERLING'S FAMILY: You

know, to be honest with you, I think we do see some of the issues that we were dealing with in the '60s but not necessarily on the same level. I do want to point out that what you're seeing, for example, in Louisiana, I wouldn't even call them riots. We have citizens who are upset, who are angry, who want their voices heard, and they want justice for Mr. Sterling and the countless others who have fell victim to police brutality.

But we have to talk about this concept of de-escalation versus escalation. And when officers show up in full riot gear with assault rifles, that sends a very strong message. And it's that message that it is sending to these protesters who are hurt and who feel voiceless and powerless is, we have the power over you and you're going to listen to us one way or the other. It's just like the situation with Alton Sterling. It should have been deescalated from the beginning and he never should have gotten to the point where he was shot and killed in the fashion that he was.

HARLOW: Art, from an officer's perspective, your reaction to that?

RODERICK: Well, I mean, we have flash points right now in the country, and Dallas is one of them, although a lot of the city is in grieving right now, and we're actually getting ready for the president to visit and bury these heroic officers. But we have flash points in Baton Rouge and we have flash points in St. Paul, Minnesota. And I think law enforcement is responding in the fashion they see necessary for their particular community.

Their main job is to protect life and property, and they're responding as they see fit. Now we can criticize them for that type of response, but, you know, the community is going to do what it's going to do, and I think the chiefs of police in both those communities are working with these protesters. They have preplanning meetings to make sure that everything goes all right.

Now some people show up and they want to co-opt the peaceful demonstrations that are being planned, and that's what you have occurring in both Baton Rouge and in -- in St. Paul, Minnesota.

HARLOW: Art, Justin, Clara, thank you very much.

We're going to take a quick break and continue the discussion out of it. And we're going to focus on this. The president, who has been traveling out of the country during this horrific week of violence, is heading home. He's cutting his trip short. He will head to Dallas on Tuesday.

What can this president say to help a mourning nation, ahead?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:42:37] HARLOW: The president right now heading back to the White House after ending his trip to Spain early, but the country he returns to is hurting and it is different than the one he left. On Tuesday he will confront that as he travels to Dallas to speak at a memorial service there.

So what can he say to help heal a battered nation? Let's bring in CNN senior political analyst David Gergen and CNN law enforcement analyst Cedric Alexander.

Thank you both for being here. And David, let me begin with you. I mean, as an adviser to four former presidents, if you were sitting on Air Force One with President Obama tonight, perhaps he's drafting some of the remarks that he'll make on Tuesday, what does he say?

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, Poppy, President Obama hardly needs advice from staff at a moment like this, speaking to a grieving nation. Just remember how well he did in Charleston not so very long ago. But I would that -- to his speech writing staff that if they haven't already that they familiarize themselves deeply with three speeches given by Americans that were so healing in the past. First by Bobby Kennedy the night that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, speaking to a political crowd in Indianapolis, mesmerizing short speech, speaking from the heart, no notes.

The second, Ronald Reagan after the Challenger disaster, and when he drew us together so well. And remember the last picture we had of them as they went to the spacecraft. Brave astronauts. And the third is Bill Clinton, when President Clinton went to Oklahoma City after the bombing there. That was a turning point for his presidency because it was a healing speech. So I think the role the president plays here is unifier-in-chief, healer-in-chief.

HARLOW: Unifier-in-chief. Cedric Alexander, to you, you were assigned to the president's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, and I want your reaction to something that we heard from Newt Gingrich this week, the former speaker of the House. He said, normal white Americans don't understand being black in America. He said it's more dangerous to be black in America.

As you look at this from those comments, from a policing perspective, and in your role on the task force, how should that inform this country as we move forward?

CEDRIC ALEXANDER, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, he's exactly right, and certainly there are a number of African-Americans across this country that feel that way. If we certainly look back at the history and still look at many of the challenges that we have in this country today.

[18:45:03] But we got to move forward. And in regards to the president's reaction when he gets to Dallas, he's going to do what he's always done. He's going to be presidential, he's going to be kind, he's going to be caring, he's going to try to bring people together, and he's going to be loving of this country and the people who live in it. And he's going to be great support to law enforcement.

But us as a whole, all of us as a nation, we're at a very critical place in our -- in our country. And for us to move forward, we all got to do this collectively, and certainly there is a lot of pain and a lot of hurt to go around, but we still got to survive as a nation, we still got enemies abroad to fight, and we can only do that if we stand collectively, and this is a real critical time that we move forward and try to do everything we can to do that.

HARLOW: David Gergen, to you, Dan Balz of the "Washington Post" wrote a column that really struck a lot of us this week. And he talked about the Kerner Commission report coming out under LBJ and what it informed this nation of when it comes to race relations then and looking at it now. And he quoted it saying, "Our nation is moving towards two societies, one black, one white, separate but unequal." That from the Kerner report.

And then he went on to ask, "What would a similar commission say about the country today, nearly half a century later? Perhaps only to add that the country is only divided red and blue."

David Gergen, your thoughts?

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think the Kerner report was very important, but it did -- Martin Luther King was assassinated about a month later and there were over 100 riots that broke out across the country after his assassination. So we look back upon that troubled time. Hard to heal, the country hard to move forward. I do think it takes a sustained effort because this is not exactly 1967, '68 again, in part because the rioting frankly has not been as big, but the gulfs are big. They're very big. Because we thought we'd be much farther along than we are in race relations and the fairness of the criminal justice system.

And it's heartbreaking that we have so much still to do. But I do think that we have to understand that '67-'68, there were division within the Democratic Party but we were not as divided politically as we are today, so we now have racial tensions playing and mixing in to the political tensions in the country. We're heading into a campaign which sounds -- you know, really, the level of discourse has already descended to the depths. There is already serious name-calling going on.

And I think that's the fear that we are -- if we don't pull ourselves together and draw upon Dallas to seek unity and take some steps, we could really be in much worse shape six or eight months from now than we are today.

HARLOW: The political divide adding onto it.

GERGEN: Yes. Absolutely.

HARLOW: David Gergen, thank you very much. Cedric Alexander, thank you as well.

GERGEN: Thank you.

ALEXANDER: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

HARLOW: Coming up next, we're going to talk about the Black Lives Matter movement obviously known and discussed and debated in this country. Where does it go from here? We'll talk more about that with our panel of experts about how they've done so far and what is affecting real change.

We're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

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[18:52:00] HARLOW: Welcome back. Prominent Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson has been released from Louisiana jail. He was among the 125 people arrested last night in Baton Rouge while protesting the death of Alton Sterling.

So what is next for the Black Lives Matter movement as a whole? Let's talk about this with CNN political commentator and "New York Times" columnist, Charles Blow, he just wrote a column this week titled "A Week From Hell." And Ahmad Greene-Hayes is a PhD student at Princeton in Religion and African-American Studies. He's also an activist with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Thank you both for being here, gentlemen. Let me begin with you. As an activist in the movement, as someone who is studying this, is this an inflection point for where the movement goes from here? Is this week that?

AHMAD GREENE-HAYES, BLACK LIVES MATTER ACTIVIST: I think It's important first to really sit with the way in which the media is focusing so specifically on the Dallas shooting, right, in this way in which we're not actually talking about the lives of the black folks who -- that have been taken, right, in this last week.

HARLOW: You don't think we -- you don't think the media as a whole is?

GREENE-HAYES: No, I think we have completely overlooked the lives that we've lost. So even to ask black activists in this moment, how do you feel about Dallas without any kind of regard for Alton Sterling or for Philando and all the other black folks that we lose all the time I think is telling. I think the other point is --

HARLOW: What do you think it says?

GREENE-HAYES: I think it says that we value police lives over black lives. Even the proliferation of the Blue Lives Matter Bill and the Blue Lives Matter propaganda is a complete co-optation of the Black Lives Matter movement in that it also sanitizes the movement's kind of stance against police brutality. And now this has completely been turned into an anti-police thing and Black Lives Matter activists are out to kill cops, but we're not focused on the black lives that we have lost this week and the black lives we have lost this year and the black lives we continue to lose each and every year of this long continuum of the black liberation movement.

HARLOW: So, Charles Blow, to you, do you agree with him? And why can't it be both at the same time? As we heard the president say hours before the Dallas ambush, all lives matter, and that it's not to say that black lives do not matter. He emphasized all lives matter. And hours later the ambush.

CHARLES BLOW, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Right. So I think this idea -- you know, I always defer to people who are part of this movement. I am not a part, I'm not associated with it.

HARLOW: Right.

BLOW: But I do kind of -- I kind of cheer for the idea that people are engaged in the process, putting pressure on establishment power principles and wanting to see a change. They're not trying to be outside of that process which you -- I've seen a lot of black liberation movements in my life. This is not what they're saying. They're saying we believe in the perfectibility of the system in which we live and we are going to put pressure on that system until it changes.

I think that is -- there's that patriotic thing. And I think we can't overlook the idea of that and how that fits into the American narrative and what we want American citizens to do.

[18:55:07] But number two, more specifically, to what you're saying, this idea of pitting people who live in black and brown skin against people who wear blue uniforms kind of bypasses the other people who benefit from what police do. The police are basically just the kind of forward edge of what society desires, right? And so people who are not part of the blue or black or brown, somehow believe that this is somehow a struggle that is -- is separate from them.

And it is not. They're doing what society wants them to do and the moment that they stop doing what society wants them to do, what society says this is not what we want, it will stop.

HARLOW: And, Ahmad, just quickly to you, on "STATE OF THE UNION" this morning the police chief of Dallas said to Jake Tapper, words matter. We need to know that you appreciate what we're doing. You said people are skipping over the fact that the Black Lives Matter movement in many ways is in support of police officers as well.

GREENE-HAYES: So what -- so two things. The first thing is there are many different avenues to black liberation. There are many activists who have different political ideologies concerning the police. I do believe that the system of policing as we currently have it needs to be abolished. I actually think that we need to really interrogate what does it mean to embody the blue. What does it mean to see black folks as criminal. What does it mean for police officers to be afforded such a great level of authority over black people in this country.

And then you do have activists who are on the other side who do think that we should work with the police and that the police should have a role in our communities. But what I think needs to be stated is that I'm born black. Police officers choose to put on blue. So we really need to interrogate what does it mean to carry that blue in a world that loves the blue but does not love black people.

HARLOW: I'm getting the wrap. It's an incredible important conversation.

BLOW: Can I just --

HARLOW: We both continue --

BLOW: Can I just say this one last thing? There's a moral argument and there's also a legal argument. And I think that we have to deal with this legal part. This -- the fundamental piece.

HARLOW: I have to leave it there.

BLOW: Because as Martin Luther King says, the law may not make you love me, but it can stop you from lynching me. And that is important to have as part of this dialogue.

GREENE-HAYES: Right.

HARLOW: Charles Blow, thank you so much. Ahmad Greene-Hayes, thank you so much.

We'll be right back.

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HARLOW: 7:00 Eastern. You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Poppy Harlow joining you in New York this Sunday evening.