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President Obama Speaks Out on Missouri Protests; New Info Emerges in Death of Robin Williams

Aired August 14, 2014 - 15:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Hour two. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being with me here, because let me just get straight to the sound.

We're about to play some sound from President Obama in just a little bit, because for the very first time he spoke this afternoon publicly about what one protester has described as a war zone. And it's not Iraq, it's not Gaza. We're talking about the Saint Louis area of Missouri, Ferguson.

The town of 21,000 has now endured a fourth consecutive night of violence over Saturday's deadly police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.

Witnesses say police from Ferguson and Saint Louis County -- that's the agency now investigating Brown's killing -- used rubber bullets and tear gas and overall excessive force on the people there. They also -- you see these pictures, this camera crew?

Police dismantled TV camera positions and detained and released two journalists. In all, a dozen people were arrested. Police say some protesters were throwing Molotov cocktails.

President Obama speaking just a little bit ago called for peace and calm.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There is never an excuse for violence against police or for those who would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting.

There's also no excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protests or to throw protesters in jail for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights.

And here in the United States of America, police should not be bullying or arresting journalists who are just trying to do their jobs. But let's remember that we're all part of one American family. We are united in common values. And that includes belief in equality under the law.

Now is the time for healing. Now is the time for peace and calm on the streets of Ferguson. Now is the time for an open and transparent process to see that justice is done. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let me bring in senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta, who is there covering the president for Martha's Vineyard, also, senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin joining me from Washington.

Jim Acosta, you're there, and let me just begin with you. Listening to the president a little bit ago, here we are day five really since Saturday's shooting, what led to today's public comments?

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, I think that they realized over at the White House and the traveling White House that is with the president right now that this was becoming an untenable situation.

The violence, the tensions mounting over the last several days really reached a boiling point last night where you saw police there in Ferguson, Missouri, starting to arrest journalists from "The Washington Post" and the Huffington Post who were just there trying to cover the story. And I think at that point, that is when officials in the White House decided this was just getting to be too much.

And so the president was briefed on this situation last night by the attorney general, Eric Holder, once again earlier this morning. Eric Holder, we should mention, is also coincidentally vacationing here on Martha's Vineyard.

But he's been called into duty because of what's happening there in Ferguson. And I think what you heard the president say there just a few moments ago, Brooke, is that he is trying to walk kind of a tightrope here, something you don't normally want to do on your vacation. But he's trying to really bridge the divide here between the people who are protesting on the streets in Ferguson, the people who are unfortunately looting stores and causing unrest there on the streets of Ferguson, and communicating very clearly to the police department there on the ground in Ferguson that acts of violating people's constitutional rights will not be tolerated.

Jailing reporters, arresting reporters who are just there on the scene, trying to observe the situation, will not be tolerated. And so this is once again a crisis that has crashed into the president's vacation here.

BALDWIN: There are three parallel investigations, two of which at the federal level. I mentioned the Department of Justice and also FBI investigating what's happened in Ferguson.

But, Jeff Toobin, to Jim's point, he really was walking this fine line. He couldn't quite -- obviously, he wasn't going to endorse the people breaking the law, the looting, but he had to also point out any kind of excessive use of force is unacceptable.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: That's right. And certainly most of what the president said was unobjectionable. Everybody wants peace and calm.

BALDWIN: Sure.

TOOBIN: The challenge now is to create a situation where there isn't a confrontation. You know, the job of the police is whenever possible to diffuse confrontations before they take place.

And I think what a lot of people have been struck by, and certainly I have been, is, you know, when police come in the kind of armor, with the kind of weaponry that's been displayed here, aiming guns at people, that is not the way defuse things. And, with hope, the governor will finally take charge of this situation, make the announcement that new people are in charge, and we can have peaceful protests and no looting.

BALDWIN: We're waiting to hear from the governor of Missouri, Jim Acosta, within just about the next hour, Jay Nixon. He should be commenting on something he was speaking from I looked it like a church an hour-and-a-half ago, saying that he will be announcing operational shifts or changes.

I don't know if that is specific to the policing there on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. But he also did have a conversation with President Obama today.

ACOSTA: That's right.

The governor sort of got the jump on the president on that announcement. We saw the governor announce that in that church in that -- what looked sort of like an impromptu statement being made by the governor there to people who were gathered in that church.

And then the president came out a few moments later and made that statement and basically walked right up to the line of saying he had confidence in Governor Jay Nixon, calling him a good governor, and a decent man, a fine man. And so the president seems for now is, you know, throwing his support behind Governor Nixon.

But as you heard and Jeffrey Toobin has talked about this, you know, the reviews are starting to come in for Governor Nixon in Missouri, and they're not all that great. And so I think the president touching base with Governor Nixon there earlier today was an indication. It's sort of something a president always does in situations like this.

The president is going to call the governor and have a conversation with something like this that is happening on the ground. But I think the president also wants to I think hear the words coming out of Governor Nixon's mouth that they are trying to do things to change the operational control of what's happening on the ground in Ferguson, Missouri, because what was happening up until today, the last few nights, what's been happening on the ground there I think is just universally unacceptable to the vast majority of Americans.

BALDWIN: It's definitely a community on edge. And to your point, it appeared that the governor was speaking very much so off-the-cuff.

Jim Acosta and Jeffrey Toobin, thank you both very much. And as Jim mentioned a minute ago, we brought up Attorney General Eric

Holder. Eric Holder did meet with President Obama today on the Vineyard, and he has just released a statement about that meeting and has some concerns about the situation unfolding in Ferguson.

Our justice reporter, Evan Perez, is live for us in Washington. We have the picture between Holder and Obama there.

What are you hearing, Evan? That's not the right audio. Hang on, Evan. Do we have him? OK.

We're going to roll on to the tease and maybe we will get him in a second.

Coming up, the pictures coming out of Ferguson show police in riot gear, with assault rifles and military vehicles, flash grenades. Many are saying the police response was not proportional to the protests in the streets. Up next, we will talk to a police tactical expert.

And we have some news from the widow of the late Robin Williams, his wife saying that he was sober when he died and that he was suffering early stages of Parkinson's disease. More on her statement in just a couple of minutes here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: All right, let's try that again.

Let's go to Washington to our justice correspondent, Evan Perez, because, Evan, we're going to talk about -- and we can throw the picture up. We know that the president met with Attorney General Eric Holder today about what's happening in Ferguson, Missouri.

Tell me what you know about the meeting.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, this is a meeting in which the attorney general was trying to update the president on what the Justice Department is trying to do to help the situation in Ferguson.

One of the things that the attorney general is facing is obviously he wants to be even-handed, obviously, and he wants to show that obviously there is some concern about the looting and about the rioting. But at the same time, he wants to support the right of protesters and journalists to do what they need to do in Ferguson.

And so his statement that he just issued a little while ago says that the -- one of the things he raises concern about is about the police using military equipment, which he says, instead of bringing down the tensions in the community, is only sending a conflicting message. And so that's one of the big things he has to say in his statement.

There's a couple other pieces of news in his statement, though. He's saying that the Justice Department is offering and the Missouri state authorities have accepted the help of the Justice Department to try to get some technical assistance so that they don't have to use these heavy-handed tactics, they don't have to use tear gas to try to control the crowds there and the protesters.

And at the same time, he also said that the Justice Department, the FBI have now conducted the first interviews with witnesses at the scene. So he's also trying to show that the Justice Department is on the ball, trying to address the situation, while at the same time not letting the local authorities off the hook, Brooke.

BALDWIN: So the FBI, the federal authorities have talked to those witnesses. I know that there was some concerns that they had not even been spoken with or questioned.

PEREZ: Right.

BALDWIN: Evan Perez, thank you for that important detail for me from Washington.

And then I just want to focus now on this one scene from the Ferguson streets Wednesday night. What you are seeing here is a police unit. It's not the army. And there was a reason that police in Ferguson and elsewhere are looking even more military than ever before. There is a federal program that distributes surplus military equipment to police forces all around the country.

And CNN has learned that Ferguson police have received this military equipment from the Pentagon.

So let's go to Brian Todd.

And, Brian, I guess we should point out, we don't know if anything from the Defense Department was actually used the day that 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot by police, just to be precise on that. But when we talk about this equipment from the DOD, what exactly are we talking about?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, that is a good thing to point out, because we don't know exactly how some of that equipment was used in Ferguson.

And we do have to say that according to a defense official who I spoke to, the city of Ferguson in the past couple years has only gotten a couple Humvees, a generator and trailer from the Defense Department. But what you're looking at in Ferguson is a lot of different law enforcement agencies from around Missouri are helping the Ferguson police.

That's a small police force. So some of the equipment you're seeing on the ground there isn't just for the Ferguson police. It's for Saint Louis and other jurisdictions. And what we're told, that the state of Missouri, police departments in Missouri, total, have gotten about 20 MRAPs over the last few years, MRAPs, Mine-Resistant Ambush- Protected vehicles.

Those, Brooke, are built to withstand armor-piercing bombs. You don't really need those in situations like this, but at least one observer has noticed what he thought was one in Ferguson, Missouri. In Ferguson also, you're seeing some of the police wearing camouflage, Kevlar vests and helmets, sporting assault rifles.

This is all part of the 1033 program, where the Pentagon has basically given free of charge just all of this equipment to law enforcement agencies all over the country and the ACLU is calling it the excessive militarization of police in America.

Just last year, nearly $450 million worth of equipment was given from the Pentagon to local police departments across the country. Now, police and former police are telling us they need a lot of this equipment. And they're increasingly in the line of fire. Criminals are getting more and more weaponized. They're getting more and more tactically sound and just that police are more under fire. So police need the stuff.

But there's a balance that you have to strike, and according to the ACLU, Brooke, that is not being struck right now.

BALDWIN: OK. Brian Todd, thank you so much. We will watch for more of your reporting on "THE SITUATION ROOM" coming up in a little bit.

Ahead on this show, I will talk to a police tactical expert, to Brian's point about the military equipment. Why is it necessary? Is it necessary at all? That's next.

And just into CNN this afternoon, a personal statement from Robin Williams' widow. And in it, it is a huge revelation. She writes that her late husband was suffering from Parkinson's disease. We will have more on that coming up on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

You have seen the pictures out of Ferguson, Missouri, here. Police on the streets, they're dressed in riot gear, bulletproof vests, helmets, assault rifles. The images we have been seeing, I know a lot of people are describing it like a war zone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There it goes there. They're firing onto the crowd. Ow. (EXPLETIVE DELETED) They are firing rubber bullets. (EXPLETIVE DELETED)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: And this was just last night on the streets of Ferguson. Police fired flash grenades to disperse a crowd. And images like these are making people wonder if police are the ones escalating the situation there, including a U.S. senator. She's wondering that.

She's Claire McCaskill from Missouri. She spoke out today and said demilitarizing police will help ease tensions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. CLAIRE MCCASKILL (D), MISSOURI: I know what the chief of police wants. He wants everyone to be safe. I know what these protesters want. They want to exercise their rights.

We can do that without escalating it. And when police come out and take a stand and wear and have equipment that makes it feel like that somehow the people who are protesting are assumed to be the bad guys, I don't think it helps take the tension out of the situation. I think it puts more tension in it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Joining me now, Richard Weinblatt, former police chief in North Carolina, dean of Ivy Tech Community College.

You served as a police academy instructor, a criminal justice professor. So, Richard, welcome to you. And you're really the perfect person to ask. You have been watching all these pictures from Ferguson, are police there overreacting?

RICHARD WEINBLATT, FORMER NORTH CAROLINA POLICE CHIEF: Well, you know, it's an amazing situation. And I see it from all different perspectives.

I work in a community college so I deal with the community a lot. I have been on the other side. I have been a full time law enforcement officer. I have been a police chief and trainer. And it's tough, because you see it from both sides. But I do think...

BALDWIN: Let's explore all sides.

(CROSSTALK)

WEINBLATT: Sure. And I do think the governor is taking the right tactic in saying that, OK, plan A isn't working. We know that in policing 101. If plan A doesn't work, go to plan B. Well, now they have to try plan B, because from a tactical, a public relations, and a community relations perspective, this is obviously not the right mix and it isn't working.

So they're going to try something different. But the objective of the police chief, as the senator said, is correct. They're trying to keep everybody safe. The question is how best to do that.

BALDWIN: Why do you need to dress up in riot gear with some of these, you know, larger vehicles, almost tank-like vehicles we're seeing rolling down the streets of Ferguson?

Listen, I understand, having talked to law enforcement, why this is necessary in certain communities because of new threats in this day and age in the wake of 9/11. But in Ferguson, an unarmed 18-year-old was shot and killed over the weekend. Why is this necessary?

WEINBLATT: Well, first off, as far as the unarmed teen being shot, we don't know all the facts yet. Maybe it was justified, maybe it wasn't. And so I say to people, it's not like TV, it's not like "CSI." It

takes time to investigate. Let them investigate. As far as the tactics and the stuff on the street, it's gotten -- as you and your reporters have observed, it has gotten much worse on the streets. It is very dangerous to be a police officer out there.

Now, does that mean those tactical equipments have to be used in every situation? Not necessarily, just like a gun isn't used in every situation, a Taser isn't used in every situation. They have to constantly reassess. And I think that's what the authorities are doing now. They're reassessing.

Is this working in this community at this time? And that's what they need to do. They need to reassess it, pull back, try a different tactic, because this one isn't working in terms of hitting all the cylinders.

BALDWIN: Jay Nixon, the governor of Missouri, he will be talking in about a half-hour. And maybe -- he mentioned these changes, these operational changes or shifts. Maybe that's what he's talking about. We just have to wait and see if it they will go to plan B, as you're talking about.

But I'm also curious, just from your perspective, the issue of cameras and police departments. I was reading this article from "The Washington Post" today saying that, you know, there is actually no dash-cam video, to your point about finally getting the facts of what happened Saturday. There is no dash-cam video of the shooting of Michael Brown.

And the department does not have cameras in their 18 cruisers. They actually got a grant from the Justice Department to install some of these cameras. They had just yet to be installed. So that is unfortunate timing on that end. But as far as cameras are concerned, we know of other jurisdictions where police are wearing these body cameras 24/7, always recording. Have we really come to this?

WEINBLATT: Yes. Yes.

I think it's great that we come to this. I tell you, when I was a police chief, we put cameras in our police cars and it was fantastic, because many of the times, it exonerated the officers. Sometimes, it holds officers accountable, just all of us should be. Sometimes, it exonerates officers.

And nothing does better than a picture. As you know, being in the TV business, a picture speaks 1,000 wards. So cameras are great. I think it's good. I think it's good for everybody. It's good for transparency. It's good for accountability. It's good for protection of the citizenry and it's good for protection of good law-abiding officers, of which the majority are.

They want to go out and do a good job, most of them. Are there a few bad apples? No question. And the cameras help.

BALDWIN: That's interesting. It's too bad those dash-cams -- those cameras weren't installed in those vehicles, because, to your point, visuals really do help tell a story.

Richard Weinblatt, thank you so much for your expertise, invaluable.

WEINBLATT: Absolutely. Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up, as we talk about this massive show of force in Ferguson, the criticism toward the police department for these protests, you have the governor of Missouri said earlier, yes, the people have a right to protest. As we mentioned, we expect to hear from Missouri Governor Jay Nixon in a matter of minutes to give more remarks on the situation there. We will have that live for you as soon as it happens.

You're watching special coverage here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)