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Cop Watch Helping Protesters Monitor Police in Ferguson; Tom Coburn Says Immigration Executive Order Could Lead to Anarchy; Veterans Said He Was a Guinea Pig for Drugs.

Aired November 20, 2014 - 14:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Bottom of the hour. You are watching CNN.

Back to our breaking news. Police agencies across nation have been put on alert because the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, may be close to a decision on whether to indict a Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson, for shooting and killing unarmed teenager, Michael Brown. The plan is to give law enforcement a 48-hours heads up before making that decision public.

While police are going to be ready, so are the protesters. Demonstrations continue to hit the streets. Wednesday, five protesters were arrested and they were from out of town, not from Ferguson. You see the cameras were rolling Wednesday night. And when the grand jury decision comes down, there will likely be many, many more cameras. That's because there's a watchdog group. They have raised about $7700 to equip protesters with these small recording devices.

Let's talk about that with the co-founder of the group, Cop Watch, Jacob Crawford.

Jacob, thanks for joining me.

JACOB CRAWFORD, CO-FOUNDER, COP WATCH: Thank you for having me.

BALDWIN: It's obvious why you want to arm people who are there with ways to record, what's happening, but why actually take the steps and hand them these cameras? Why go this far?

CRAWFORD: Well, I think that, you know, for anybody that knows about Cop Watch, Cop Watch is a group and it's an idea that we have the right to watch the police. So Cop Watch is where people go out and nonviolently document the police while they interact with members of the public. In this case with Ferguson, you know, the outrage is there, and clearly people are tired of the way police have been dealing with citizens. And so the cameras, you know, we couple that with knowledge. Initially we handed out cameras to members of the community where Mike Brown was murdered, and quickly from there, it became a need, and so in September we trained 100 members of the Canfield neighborhood and gave them body cameras and Cop Watch shirts, and I got to say, the cameras are extremely useful, but the knowledge is even more.

BALDWIN: I'm curious, how many cameras have you given out at this point?

CRAWFORD: Well, we started just, you know, crowd funding and we got 200 donors and at this point we've given out 210 body cameras and a lot of hand-held cameras. Now that this is happening, and it's effective, we're getting larger donors. We received $20,000 and have a 1,000 Camera Initiative in which we're training people in the next year in St. Louis in handing out cameras

BALDWIN: You're just not handing out cameras, there's training involved, right, with the people you're giving these cameras to? Tell me what that training involves.

CRAWFORD: OK. Absolutely. We've been doing it for decades. It deals with your rights when you're stopped by the police. It deals with how to be an effective Cop Watcher. That comes down to how, to you stop and also how to de-escalate a situation from being bad. A lot of times, we find while the cameras are important just, our presence is. That's a big part of our training is getting people out in the streets and knowing they have the right and the responsibility to keep their community safe.

BALDWIN: I was wondering what you found, ultimately, to be more powerful actually the cameras themselves and whatever material you're getting or just the power of presence and documentation and accountability.

CRAWFORD: I think they are both. I think the idea that there are people out there that are concerned about what the police are doing is very, very big. I think the ability to document it and to bring it back to the masses is also very important. So I couldn't choose one or the other.

BALDWIN: You know, to your point on documents, it's also -- and I talked to a lot of police departments around the country, especially in the wake of Ferguson. They are trying to provide their police officers with those body cameras. And it's interesting, I read that obviously you believe in protesters with cameras, but you don't have the same confidence level in police officers wearing these body cameras. Tell me why.

CRAWFORD: Well, in Oakland, California, we've had these cameras for years. They handed these cameras out in 2010 and '11. If we had access to them, I would say that maybe they would be useful, but these things are pointed at people. They are not pointed at the police officers. They are not --

BALDWIN: Why would we need access? Wouldn't it be for police officers? And if there's some wrongdoing among an officer, it should be up to colleagues to punish that person? Why would we need the video?

CRAWFORD: Because they are public servants operating in public space and dealing with the public. If that's the case then we as the public have the responsibility to hold them accountable for their actions and so these cameras -- I mean, yeah. They are for the police, that's fine. They didn't sell them for. They sold them for accountability and transparency. If that's the case, we should have access to them.

BALDWIN: Thank you for your answer.

Jacob Crawford with Cop Watch. Thank you for joining me this afternoon. I appreciate it.

Coming up next, as President Obama prepares to address the nation tonight announcing he'll be going it alone on immigration, Republicans are furious, frustrated. You have Senator Tom Coburn even saying executive action could lead to, quote, "anarchy and violence." We'll discuss that and whether the president's action is, in fact, constitutional in the first place.

Stay with me.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: An outgoing Senate Republican has dropped a chilling prediction about reaction President Obama's immigration directives, which we'll hear tonight. I want you to listen to Oklahoma's Republican Senator Tom Coburn.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TOM COBURN, (R), OKLAHOMA: The country is going to go nuts because they are going see it as a move outside of the authority of the president. Hopefully not, but you can see instances of anarchy.

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: What do you mean?

COBURN: You could see violence. You know, instead of the rule of law handling in our country today, now we're starting to have the rule of rulers, and that's a total antithesis of what this country was founded on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Anarchy says Tom Coburn, lawlessness, violence. Senator Coburn says he sure hopes it doesn't happen but says could it.

Joining me now, our CNN senior legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin.

So, Jeff, let's begin with, put on your founding fathers cap with me. In this case immigration, the country face as specific need and Congress isn't acting what we have here, we had for 500 plus days, you know, what is the procedure?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, the president is authorized to operate in certain areas. In certain areas, Congress has preempted that for itself. And, for example, determining who gets to be a citizen. That's clearly within Congress's power. And what the president is going to announce today has nothing to do with a path to citizenship. However, the issue of deportations, who gets deported, is within the president's power and the president is going to establish certain priorities. He's going to say we're going to deport criminals, we're going to deport people who have, you know, who are caught at the border, but if you have children who are American citizens, children born here, we're not going deport you because that is not our priority at the moment. We can argue about whether that's a good thing, a good policy or a bad policy, but it does seem to me pretty clearly within the president's power to make that decision.

BALDWIN: OK. I got another question for you because I'm wondering about executive action. But if the court strikes it down, hold tight.

We have Ana Navarro joining me. She joins me from Washington. She's a Republican strategist and CNN political commentator.

We just played sound from Senator Coburn. This is a sound bite that's being replayed today because of what he's saying anarchy, violence in the wake of what the president may propose this evening. I'm curious, for you, do you share that same concern? And if not, do you think Senator Coburn should be more circumspect in what he's saying?

ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR & REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Frankly, I think we all have to be more circumspect. We have to be calmer. We have to look at what is in the order. Nobody has seen it yet. Everybody is already arguing about its legality or lack thereof, whether it's constitutional or not. Threatening lawsuits without having seen one word that is in this thing. So let's wait and see the details. I don't think there's going be anarchy. Think we have to -- look there's a lot of tempers flaring right now. No legislative body likes to see what they see as their jurisdiction authority usurped by the executive. But they want to beat Obama at this game, if they want to get out of this game, they have to pass legislation.

BALDWIN: Jeff, if we hear from the president the executive action goes through and that's a decision he makes, if and when let's say ten, 15, 18 months down the road a court does strike this down and the cat is out of the bag and you have these families, you know, already here, what happens to them?

TOOBIN: Well, I think that would be very hard to know because frankly I don't think a court will strike this down because this does seem to be well within the president's prerogative. Keep in mind one big difference between an executive order and a law is that a new president could simply undo it. So you don't have to have a court to overturn this decision, whatever it turns out to be. There's going to be a new president in 2017 and the new president particularly if he or she is a Republican could simply invalidate what President Obama did and I think there would be no legal barrier to a new president doing that.

BALDWIN: OK. And, Ana, you talk about how we need be more circumspect. If you have Republicans believing that the president is acting with lawlessness, you know, several have said including house speaker John Boehner, then will they move to impeach him?

NAVARRO: I don't think so, Brooke. I don't think anybody -- I don't think any responsible Republican in a leadership role is talking impeachment or talking shutdown.

BALDWIN: Why do they keep bringing up the word "impeachment"?

NAVARRO: No, we keep bringing up the word impeachment. There might be three, four, five Republicans in Congress that say inflammatory things and say that word and we keep repeating it. I haven't heard John Boehner say impeachment or Mitch McConnell say impeachment. We hear it in the Washington press but nobody in Congress -- there's not a critical mass in Congress that to impeach President Obama or, you know, or thinks there's anarchy. Yes, they are mad because they think this is something that is their jurisdiction and that he is stepping on their toes.

So what they got to do is put on their big-boy and big-girl pants --

(LAUGHTER)

-- and instead of saying I'm going to take my toys and go home they got to pass legislation and address the problem. I'll tell you why. Because with or without this executive action, we still have what most of us in this country, Democrat and Republican agree is a broken immigration system. There's a whole host of things that this executive action does not address. This is a band aid that gives temporary protection from deportation and work permits to a certain class of people. Not everybody, but there's many more aspects about the immigration system that need to be modernized and brought into the real world. So we still have a broken system and I think our Congress and our president owe to it this nation to work on addressing that long-standing problem.

BALDWIN: The big-girl pants, everyone needs to pull them up.

Ana Navarro, thank you.

And, Jeffrey, thank you.

I appreciate both of you for coming on.

That address, 8:00 tonight from the White House. We'll take it live. Definitely tune in.

Next, a Marine who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, earning the Purple Heart, locks himself inside of his apartment and turns a gun on himself. But it's what happened before that day that has his mother and father visiting the White House this afternoon asking for one thing. They join me next. Please don't miss this story.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Clay Hunt was a Marine. He was a sniper. Received the Purple Heart. Just 28 years old when he took his own life, weary from his long battle with invisible wounds of war. Hunt ended his life while struggling with post-traumatic stress. He locked himself inside his apartment and turned the gun on himself. Hunt was, as we mentioned, this decorated veteran, got the Purple Heart for his time in Iraq, fought the Taliban in Afghanistan. And his heartbroken parents vowed their son's suicide would not be forgotten. So this week, his mother provided emotional testimony on Capitol Hill. And the mother and father met at the White House today with top advisors.

Clay's parents told me their story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN SELKE, MOTHER OF CLAY HUNT: They had been in Iraq for three weeks, I believe, when his bunk mate was killed in an IED explosion. And that was his first, you know, his first experience of losing someone very close. I think a couple of weeks later another one in his platoon was shot right in front of him. And then two days after that, Clay was shot through the wrist by a sniper, aiming for his head. And that injury ended up bringing him back home. He was beginning to have trouble with panic attacks, difficulty sleeping.

RICHARD SELKE, STEP-FATHER OF CLAY HUNTER: We were focused on recovery of his physical wound. And at that point, we understood that he was having anxiety, but even at the point in time when PTS was first mentioned, we had no idea what that meant. We did not know -- we just weren't educated.

SUSAN SELKE: Clay used to say, "I'm a guinea pig for drugs. They put me on one thing, I'll of a side effects, and then put me on something else."

It wasn't until March 15th, Clay was able to see a psychiatrist. But after the appointment, Clay called me and said, "Mom, I can't go back. The V.A. is way too stressful and not a place I can go. I have to find a vet center or something." Just two weeks after his appointment with the psychiatrist at the Houston V.A. Medical Center, Clay took his own life.

BALDWIN: I'm hearing all the different frustrations piling on. It's like the medical issues piling on. We've done entire investigations on the V.A. here at CNN. He was trying to move along right with his own personal life and you have a beautiful set of parents trying to cope with how can we help, what can we do? He takes his own life.

And you join me from Washington because to bring this entirely full circle you want to help other families and I want to you tell me about the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention bill that you so badly want this Congress to pass.

SUSAN SELKE: Our hearts are with all the veterans out there, active duty service men and women and all the veterans. We can't bring Clay back. But what we can do, hopefully, is use that experience that he had and what we've been able to learn about it to try to, to get the mental health care piece that they need if they need that from the V.A. to have that be something that they can access, state-of-the-art care. Just as the V.A. can give them state-of-the-art care for their physical injuries, we hope very much that they can get state-of-the- art care for their mental injuries as well.

RICHARD SELKE: Clay, like thousands and thousands of other men and women, voluntarily signed up for the Marines. He risked his life. He was given the best training he possibly could receive. He went on two tours, one in Iraq, one in Afghanistan. He came back. He was told that the V.A., the U.S. government would take care of him. And he believed that.

You can't see this type of trauma that happens emotionally to him because of PTS and because of traumatic brain injury and other experiences. You don't see that.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You know this. College tuition is skyrocketing while U.S. student loan debt has topped $1 trillion. Students in California are furious over this possible tuition hike that may rise costs 28 percent over the next few years. Police in riot gear -- look at this -- holding off protesting students in San Francisco. Students tried to take over a school building over all this. In Berkeley, California, one student was arrested for trying to incite a riot. Dozen of students are vowing to hold sit-ins until their voices are heard.

Tonight, CNN film is called "Ivory Tower," and it asks is college worth the cost?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do I think college is worth it? Yes. For me, it really kind of helped me get my foot in the door with employers. So the job that I have, you know, following graduation that I secured was because recruiters were on campus.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was worth it at some point but now I don't see it. A lot of my classmates have taken huge loans to come and study here with the hope of finding better employment opportunities, you know. They are gambling.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's definitely worth it if you have the money. My partner is just finished school, he has $36,000 in debt and no one will hire him and he's worried about just paying his rent.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm finding what I'm learning really interesting, but I'm taking out a lot of loans. I have a job on campus, getting a lot of financial aid, but still not enough. It's something I'm going to be paying back for a long time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the responsible thing to do. I think people are definitely picking majors for the practicality in the real world. I've fallen victim to that. I do, I worry about my major every day.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If you're a liberal arts major, probably not worth it. I think in another 20 years, you won't see many more philosophy majors or English majors. That's just won't be a thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Make sure your join us in watching the CNN Films special presentation, "Ivory Tower," tonight 9:00 Eastern right here on CNN.