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Don Lemon Tonight

Sydney Siege; Manhunt in Pennsylvania; The Struggle For Civil Rights In Selma; From "Selma" to Today; Man Shot by Police in Walmart; No Indictment for Officer in Death Of John Crawford

Aired December 15, 2014 - 23:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Programming note for you. Tomorrow night we've got a live town hall event, "COPS UNDER FIRE". In the wake of protests across the country targeting police tactics, I'm gonna talk to a panel of officers who've been in shoot to kill situations. Our studio audience will ask questions, and you can be part of the conversation as well. Make sure you tweet your questions using the #CopsUnderFire.

It is 11:00 p.m. on the East Coast and Tuesday afternoon in Sydney, where a horrified nation is grappling with the aftermath of the latest deadly lone wolf terror attack. What went on behind the locked doors of a cafe full of terrified hostages and one violent madman?

And is do-it-yourself jihad on the rise? Plus as protests spread over the deaths of African-American men at the hands of police, Hollywood takes on race with a powerful big screen drama, "Selma." Oprah Winfrey has something to say about all this.

She's one of the producers of the film and you'll hear it from her tonight. Also, an African-American man picks up a BB gun in a Wal- Mart and ends up shot to death by police.

Now shocking tape is unearthed of a detective interrogating the dead man's girlfriend, accusing her of lying and threatening her with jail. Did police go too far? We're going to get to all of that tonight, but I want to begin with the very latest on the Sydney siege.

We want to go straight to Sydney now and Leah Farrall. She's a research associate in counterterrorism at the University of Sydney Sydney's United States center, and also Anna Coren, our correspondent, who is based there.

Anna, I'm going to start with you. What do you know about the victims tonight?

ANNA COREN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We know about the two hostages that were killed, 34-year-old Tori Johnson. He was of course the manager of the Lindt Chocolate Cafe, which is a block from where we are standing.

We understand from media reports, local media reports, that perhaps he was grappling with the gunman, this lone gunman, and that is when perhaps one of the shots was fired.

We heard from police that they heard gunshots just after 2:00 a.m. this morning. That is why they stormed the cafe and ended the siege. But certainly Lindt -- the Lindt CEO as well as the family of Tori Johnson have both spoken out talking about the incredible man that he was.

They describe him as a hero. He worked at that particular cafe for some two years, and obviously they are all grieving his loss. The other person who was killed was 38-year-old Katrina Dawson, a mother of three, a lawyer here in Sydney.

And once again, Don, friends and family speaking out, talking about what an incredible woman that she was as well.

LEMON: Anna, let's talk about the reaction there. Reaction to the violence especially during the holiday season.

COREN: Yes, look, here in Sydney there's a great deal of sadness. There's a real somber feeling here, people laying wreaths, laying flowers at a makeshift memorial. Flags are flying at half mast. But there's also a great deal of anger.

Anger because this gunman, man, Horan Morin, was free on bail. He had been charged with two very serious offenses, the first being 40 counts of sexual assault, allegedly involving seven victims.

The other charge was being an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife, who was found with multiple stab wounds and had been set on fire. She was found dead in her apartment in Sydney last year.

This is also a man who pleaded guilty to writing horrific letters to the families of dead Australian soldiers who fought in Afghanistan so clearly a very sick individual who should have been behind bars.

Questions now being asked as to why he was free, why he was walking the streets, why he was allowed to walk into a cafe armed with a shotgun -- Don.

LEMON: And Leah, this is a quote from the Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott. He says, understandably there's a lot of speculation but it will take time to clarify exactly what happened. My question is, Leah, are officials in Australia calling this a terrorist attack at this point?

LEAH FARRALL, RESEARCH ASSOCIATE IN COUNTERTERRORISM, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY: They're not directly. And I think there's very good reason for that, because there can be a difference between someone acting with a personal or a politically motivated grievance and undertaking a terrorist act for a political goal.

This gentleman obviously held some extreme views. And there's a lot of speculation about when he may or may not have converted some of those views. But it's important to remember that there was a very personal trigger too that took place apparently on Friday when he lost a high court appeal. So that too may have triggered this, which I think is why in part authorities are doing the right thing by looking back and examining all of the options before they do make too many official calls as to what or what this isn't.

LEMON: All right, standby to both of you because I want to bring in now Juliet Kayyem, CNN national security analyst. Good evening to you, Juliet. You know, on his apparent web site this man portrayed himself as a victim a political vendetta, compared himself to Julian Assange. Is he exactly the type of person that ISIS is looking for, someone who feels like they have been marginalized in some way by society?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Absolutely. And I have to apologize for my voice at this stage after this long day. He is exactly the kind of disenfranchised alone person that ISIS gains power from because we're all talking about ISIS today.

That's essentially ISIS's success. The bar to entry for ISIS is very low and he satisfied it. He said he was a part of ISIS. And that's essentially the kind of terrorism -- we're careful with what words we use, but that's the kind of terrorism that we should anticipate.

Look, there is no shortage of sociopaths in the world and there's certainly no shortage of soft targets like a cafe or coffee shop.

LEMON: I feel bad asking you another question considering your voice, but I appreciate your expertise, Juliette. My question is, are we in a new era of terror now? Is this the lone wolf era, so to speak?

KAYYEM: Yes. It's not so new. What's new about this is that there's a formalized terrorist organization that actually wants lone wolf terrorists to act in their name. In other words, they don't want the formal structure al Qaeda wants.

They want these lone wolfs going out. They actually have demanded it. That's new. What's also new is obviously hostage taking. The 9/11 was spectacular and that's what al Qaeda wanted. They wanted a lot of people dead.

This sort of more intimate hostage taking is a new type of threat and a new type of initiative that local law enforcement is going to have deal with. In particular what's clear over the course of the day, hostages are going to behave in ways that we before did not anticipate.

Before law enforcement used to think hostages would just wait, wait it out. Not in this day and age. Every hostage is going to take advantage of an opportunity to break free, as we saw, which clearly motivated the more violent behavior in this hostage taker. So we have to adapt on the law enforcement side.

LEMON: Leah, I want you to explain this to me because you say we are giving groups like ISIS political oxygen. Why do you say that?

FARRALL: Well, with the greatest respect to my co-contributor, I would say precisely because of her feedback there and her commentary which I totally disagree with, also too, because we are attributing things to people when we don't know.

To give you a prime example, if that gentleman was fighting ISIL, those hostages would have been dead because that was the instruction that went out in September.

So there was clearly a personal motivation there for the reason being that he was trying to get hold of the prime minister and a range of other factors, which is why we need to be extremely careful attributing this to terrorism and attributing it to ISIL because we're making a kitten look like a lion, to put it very simply.

And that does exactly what my co-contributor was saying, that does attract a certain type of person to the group who's feeling weak and disenfranchised. Part of the problem is that we're doing part of their recruitment for them by the way in which we're portraying the group and we're providing comment on it.

LEMON: Juliette, you want to respond?

KAYYEM: Yes. I mean, I have no doubt that individuals will claim a sense of greatness by claiming that they're a part of al Qaeda, ISIS or whatever other group. What the difference is now is that the bar to entry to say that you are a member of any of these groups is low.

And this is what they want. So the fact that he self-identifies is irrelevant for purposes of what is law enforcement going to do at this stage, which is we now have people who are radicalizing through various means, social media, and taking hostages.

I'm not saying he is scarier than he was on that 24-hour day. I'm just saying that the nature of the self-identification is actually relatively new in counterterrorism and terrorism.

LEMON: I'm going to ask you this, Juliette, because this is happening at home. Police have launched an intense manhunt in the Philadelphia suburb today after six people were found dead at three locations.

Bradley Williams Stone is his name. He's from Pennsburg, Pennsylvania. He killed his ex-wife and her mother, grandmother and sister as well as sister's husband and 14-year-old daughter.

We know he is a decorated U.S. Marine. Can we assume that he has some sort of survival skills and will know how to continue to elude police?

KAYYEM: Yes, we have seen this in the past and we can actually assume that the good news is that because he's trained by the United States Marines they also know what he knows and the tools and training that he has had.

So part of this chase right now is what is he likely to do based on his training and then we counteract that. So I anticipate that it may not be a day or two days, but relatively soon he will be captured.

LEMON: What is going on in Pennsylvania? We just had the man a couple weeks ago who eluded police for quite a while and now we have this one.

KAYYEM: It's nothing particular to Pennsylvania or even to the times. I mean, we always have incidences like this unfortunately. Mass casualty events. And what we're seeing is probably more focus on it because of our heightened alertness.

And of course, the media and the capacity of people to get away for some period of time doesn't make me that nervous because I know over time they are going to sort of disclose vulnerabilities that allow them to be captured.

The scenario of the guy hiding out for three or four years is very rare in law enforcement circles. These men tend to be caught relatively soon.

LEMON: We need your voice, Juliette, so stop talking. Get some rest.

KAYYEM: I'm taking tomorrow off.

LEMON: All right. Good job. Thank you very much. Thanks to Juliette Kayyem, Leah Farrall in Australia and our correspondent, Anna Coren, as well.

When we come back Oprah Winfrey in the wake of the protest as cross the country over police tactics, she talks about the lessons of Selma and what protesters can accomplish.

Plus shocking new developments in the case of a man with a BB gun shot to death by police in Wal-Mart. Why did police interrogate the dead man's girlfriend, and did they cross the line?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back, everyone. The new film "Selma" tells the story of the struggle for voting rights in 1965 in the marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Selma" premiered last night, just one day after thousands marched in New York and Washington protesting police brutality. I spoke to some of the actors and producer, Oprah Winfrey, who talked about the lessons of Selma.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

OPRAH WINFREY, PRODUCER, "SELMA": When you see this film, I understand how strategic and how rigorous the discipline was. And how there was an intentional goal set by the leadership to accomplish the right to vote. And they were relentless in their efforts to do that.

But there was a strategy behind it. It wasn't just we're out marching, but we don't know what we're marching for. It was -- that's the beauty of this film.

LORRAINE TOUSSAINT: Ava really wanted to make sure the women of the civil rights movement were represented in this film. So often we don't hear them, we don't know their faces or what they did. CUBA GOODING JR., ACTOR, "SELMA": I think this movie exemplifies that idea that we as a people, when our voices are joined as one, it could be the most powerful tool and the powerful statement we can make to fight injustice.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: "Selma" is directed by Ava Duvernay who just last week received a Golden Globe nomination for best director, the first African-American woman to be nominated. I sat down with her to talk about the unsung heroes of "Selma."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: I want to thank you for women, bringing the women into the movement. These quiet women that would invite you into their homes and cook --

AVA DUVERNAY, DIRECTOR, "SELMA": Yes.

LEMON: And really they were on the front lines as well and Coretta Scott King's influence.

DUVERNAY: Yes.

LEMON: Why was it important to do that?

DUVERNAY: Well, you know, I'm getting pats on the back for including the women, but it would be shame on you or anyone who doesn't include the women, right? They just should be there. So that's a no-brainer.

But really I wanted to show the tapestry of women in all the wades that women helped in the movement. Coretta Scott King with her quiet dignity. You had Diane Nash who's in the trenches with the guys doing strategy.

You had something like Ritchie Jean Jackson, someone like her who opened her home and cooked for them and made sure they were comfortable when they came home at night. All of those are equally important. And the ways the women galvanized the movement is important to remember.

LEMON: What do you say to the young people of all ethnicities around the country who are marching, in peaceful protest? What do you say to them?

DUVERNAY: I say march on and I really believe that if Dr. King was here he would be marching with them. I mean, he was all about action. You know, ideas in action, and we don't always all have to agree, but to go about it in a way where we respect each other.

To make sure that our voices are heard and amplified is what he was all about. I think that this time with such unrest and energy moving around is something that we need in this country. So I'm happy to see it. LEMON: I have one more thing I want to ask you. I'm on television all the time. You say we don't always have to agree. I'm on talking with many African-Americans. Do you know Michaela Angela Davis?

DUVERNAY: I do.

LEMON: She said this is a conversation of privilege because now we are in positions of power or high-profile positions and we can have these conversations and people aren't used to seeing a group that they think is monolith have disagreement.

DUVERNAY: That's true.

LEMON: Monolithic have disagreement.

DUVERNAY: That's true. I see you on TV quite often and I often don't agree with you, but I'm proud to see you there. I think we all need to make our voices heard. That's what this is about. That's what this country is about. All of the ideas in one pot to try to figure out what is the right thing to do. It is a privilege. She is right.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Ava Duvernay, congratulations and good luck. Joining me now is Martin Luther King III, global human rights activist and the eldest son of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Also with me is Charles Blow, CNN political commentator and "New York Times" op-ed columnist and Van Jones, CNN political commentator.

Thanks, Gentlemen, for joining me tonight. Martin, you're the eldest son of Martin Luther King Jr. I want to know what you think of the movie, and I wonder -- I think if I'm right you said this is the first time someone has gotten the essence of your father right?

MARTIN LUTHER KING III, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST: I did say that I believe it captures the essence. What perhaps is most amazing to me is the fact, yes, everyone is an actor, but when you talk about a gentleman who is of British descent.

To be able to sustain that -- to stay in character always throughout the entire movie is quite powerful, to have crescendos and everything else, so I do believe the essence is captured.

LEMON: It took 50 years to make a major motion picture about your father. What took so long?

KING: Well, I can't necessarily say what it would be. But I always believe that God is involved somehow. I mean, you know, something has to say something when you look at what's going on in our nation. And a film is made now.

It always perhaps would have had an impact. But the fact that it is going on now, I think it's going to have a far greater impact because people, young people most specifically, will be focused on what this film is saying. And Martin Luther King Jr. is reintroduced it yet another generation and another way other than what is said in a history book. It brings him -- it makes him real.

LEMON: Yes. And speaking of realness, before I get to Charles and to Van, you know, there's a scene in the movie, and you and I talked about this last night, that deals with infidelity on your father's part. And how did you think it was handled? Did you think it was necessary to put in the movie? Did it make you uncomfortable at all?

KING: Well, you know, I would be less than honest if I said it did not make me -- it made me -- it did not make me uncomfortable. As I shared last night, clearly the film showed that the FBI spent their time attempting to discredit dad, and there are so many records that historians have used, that FBI records when the FBI hired actors to enact sexual scenes.

So how do we know where the truth -- a lie meets the truth? We really don't. And I don't know that all of this is at least authenticated. But it is -- it is there. I think that people will look at the overall concept and the essence of a film and not look at one small incident and how it was captured.

LEMON: Let's come in to the present. Charles, many of the film's cast wore "I can't breathe" t-shirts last night at the premiere and at the after-party. What do you make of that?

CHARLES BLOW, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think it is -- it does bridge a certain divide, and it does capture this moment. The director was saying before she thinks that martin would probably be out marching with the protesters now.

But I think kind of the larger thing that we have to remember here about this film and about our, you know, heroes from the civil rights movement is that we have reduced these people to such a degree, we have made them like one line people.

We have made Martin Luther King the "I have a dream speech" rather than remembering that he was a complicated person, he was not simply about longsuffering, but he was also about being a revolutionary and being an agitator.

And to use a very modern word being a disruptor and making people uncomfortable and he did that quite often, and he was a strategist. And I think that we do that with all of our heroes, particularly in the civil rights movement.

You know, we don't -- we have a hero who sits in a seat and we say were her feet hurt? That's not the whole of the person.

LEMON: Van is shaking his head.

BLOW: All of his years. Years of planning and working toward the goal of having that revolutionary moment is reduced to a seamstress with tired feet. And I think we have to stop that because I think what it does is it undercuts a person's humanity and also it undercuts people's ability to identify with them and realize that you do not have to be perfect to be --

LEMON: Point taken. I want to get Van in on this because it was looking at the protests, I saw the movie the night before, and then Saturday we had all the protests in D.C. and you know, it was -- it's quite a juxtaposition to see now and then. What do you think of the parallels between the film and what's happening nationwide?

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, first, this is the best timed movie release possibly in the history of Hollywood. It's uncanny. How important it is I think for this new generation of young people --

LEMON: They said it was divine timing. Oprah said it as well.

JONES: Yes. Divine. But what I would say, first of all, that '60s generation, people forget, they were fueled by Emmitt Till, who was a young black man who was killed for racial reasons in the '50s.

Every one of those students, you talk about a Diane Nash, in February of 1960, you talk about a John Lewis in Nashville, they all will say when we were kids we saw Emmitt Till, we saw that he was murdered, it made us want to do something.

We now have a generation of young African-Americans and their allies of every color who are having an Emmitt Till experience every other week with these horrible police killings and vigilante killings.

Now, however you feel about any one killing, the impact on this generation is profound. And now this film comes out. And this film actually gives them exactly what you and Oprah were talking about.

A little bit of a context about how you have a strategy, not just a protest moment but a movement for real change.

LEMON: And I think that's what Oprah was saying last night too, that the protests are great, but you have to have a strategy. And these people were well strategized.

And also what I found interesting after the premiere is I talked to -- the screening. Some students who came up and talked to me and said they weren't taught this in school which was shocking to me.

I want to get your comments about that on the other side. The struggle is not over. Has there been a lynching of a young black man in the south? We're going to talk about that when we come right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: A lot has changed since the days of Selma, but a lot remains to be done. Back with me now, Martin Luther King III, Charles Blow, and also Van Jones.

So Martin, you heard Ava Duvernay talk about your father, says your father would be marching along with the protesters today. Charles mentioned it as well. Do you agree? KING: Well, I certainly believe that he knew and effectively utilized protest, but he also added the dynamic of public policy. The Birmingham campaign created the Civil Rights Act of '64. Obviously, the Selma campaign created the Voting Rights Act.

The Chicago campaign helped to create fair Housing legislation that was passed just ten days after his assassination. So quite naturally, yes, I would say that he would certainly be a part.

But I would also have to say that had he lived maybe we would not be at this juncture. Perhaps our nation would be a much different nation, and a nation and even our world.

LEMON: Good point. Charles, you know, in the film we see Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fight so hard against racially based voting discrimination. And when you look at the polling, you don't see that young people vote as often as many would like. Why do you think it's so low among young people and especially young minorities?

BLOW: You know, I think that there is -- that we have ups and downs, peaks and valleys, during presidential election years you get a bit of a bump, in off years you get a really deep valley.

And I think that part of that is strategic on the hand of people who want to suppress votes, right? If you get the young vote to be suppressed, you get minority votes to be suppressed, if you get the votes of poor people to be suppressed, then you can get a lift.

Basically strengthening the votes that do get cast and that strategy has worked. And I think there's a real strand out there that says that there's no real difference that my vote does not count.

That is a strategic plot by people who want to exploit youthful idealism and make sure it does not succeed and blossom and go to the ballot box.

LEMON: But as we know, every vote counts and all of the thousands and thousands of people who are out there marching, they should all be registered and get out. Everyone should vote.

Van, I have to ask you this because on Thursday Ava Duvernay who's the director became the first black woman to be nominated for best director at the Golden Globes.

"Selma" was also nominated as best drama film. We've been talking a lot about diversity, the lack of it in Hollywood, with the leaked e- mails and what have you. How important are these milestones in Hollywood?

JONES: I think they're very, very important. First of all, you do have this young generation that's trying to find its way. A lot of them, you know, they had a big celebratory moment in their lives with Obama's election.

That seems like a long time ago for us, but for -- if you're a young person, for many of the people you see out there watching, their first vote was to President Obama. Many of them feel unfortunately that maybe they didn't get everything out of that vote.

So what's the next thing? It's Occupy Wall Street. Marching around, trying to get the financial elite to be held accountable. Now you have this moment.

You see this generation trying to find its voice, trying to find its way, social media, social protests. Why? Because so far no one has been able to come forward and really give them an answer about --

LEMON: And on the Hollywood part because I want to get to this other subject. I think it's very important.

JONES: Sure. Media is so important for this generation, really for all generations. But I think these breakthroughs, we have an African- American woman who's finally been able to have a movie that everybody's talking about, she's already being recognized for that.

I think it's huge. It gives people a sense that maybe their voices can be heard not just in the streets, not just in social media, but also on the big screen, and that's huge.

LEMON: This is what I want to get to because this is a terrifying story. It's out of North Carolina. It's a mother and brother of a high school star athlete, claim that their son, their brother was killed, hanged, or killed and then hanged, a victim of lynching. Take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Do you believe your son was lynched?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

PIERRE LACY: He may either have been strangled somewhere else and then placed there or he was hung there while people were around watching and died.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: I want to know your reaction, Van, because in the wake of his hanging some wonder if he was killed or lynched because he was in an interracial relationship. Racial tension can often exist just below the surface and this is in North Carolina. It's the south. And we've been talking about Selma and the south.

JONES: Yes. Well, this is a really, really tragic case. There's simply no reason to believe this young man would kill himself. He was a very outgoing young guy. He was talking about sports all the time. He was at 17 in a relationship with a 31-year-old white woman.

That raised a lot of eyebrows. Physically it's very hard to figure out how this guy who's relatively short could get up on that thing by himself and hang himself. The belt doesn't match. The shoes are wrong. Something happened there.

And I'm very, very concerned that there was Klan activity in the weeks prior. This young man's grave was desecrated. There's something that is going on in that town and needs to be taken very seriously.

Racism is not over, even the worst kind of racisms is not over in this country, and we'd be very, very foolish to believe it is.

LEMON: We'll continue to follow as police continue to investigate there. Thank you very much, Van. Thank you, Martin III, and also thank you, Charles Blow. Appreciate all of you. You're coming back. That's right.

When we come right back, a 22-year-old black man with an air rifle shot by police in the middle of Wal-Mart. Why did police interrogate the dead man's girlfriend? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: We have news tonight on the case of John Crawford, a 22-year- old African-American man who was shot by police inside an Ohio Wal- Mart. That was back in August. The police officer who shot Crawford thought he was carrying a gun through the store.

He was actually holding a bb gun that he picked up off the shelves of that Wal-Mart. Now we are learning about the police interrogation of the dead man's girlfriend.

I want to bring in CNN's Nick Valencia joining us now from Atlanta with more on that. Nick, I understand there's news today about the Crawford case. Never-before-seen video of a police interrogation, tell us about it.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's newly released tape to the "Guardian" newspaper and in this tape, Don, it seems to show a local police detective that went just a little too far.

It shows the girlfriend of John Crawford, Tasha Thomas, being questioned by a local detective who's appearing to aggressively question here, trying to coerce her into saying that Crawford brought a gun to Wal-Mart.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You and John went into Wal-Mart. At some point as I understand it John produced a gun. You were with him just moments before that. Weren't you?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was there, yes, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tell me where he got the gun from.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know. I honestly don't know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the truth is you knew at some point, he did carry a gun, isn't it? Isn't it the truth?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, sir. I didn't know. I swear I didn't know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tasha, I'm having trouble with this. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Give me a lie detector test.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That might come in the future. But I --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VALENCIA: Very emotional interrogation. It's a total of 90 minutes and we've learned tonight that detective's name is Rodney Curd. And a part of this tape I'm about to play next, Don, he questions the sobriety of Thomas.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was he under the influence of anything?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Had he been drinking?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Drugs?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your eyes are kind of messed up looking and you seem a little lethargic at times. I don't know if it's because you're upset or not.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The only medicine I took today was my medicine early this morning and it's called Adesan. I haven't taken anything since.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have a prescription for that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, sir.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VALENCIA: Now in police documents that we received earlier tonight Rodney Kern, that detective, tries to explain himself saying that he essentially didn't have all the facts during the course of that interrogation.

He said it was only until afterwards that he learned that that gun was taken off the store shelves there at Wal-Mart and that Crawford didn't bring it in himself.

LEMON: And the family attorney was not aware that this tape even existed until yesterday. You spoke with the Crawford family attorney. What did he say? What was his reaction to this video?

VALENCIA: So I talked to Michael Wright, and he said that two months ago he asked for the Bureau of Investigation to give him all documents, all evidence related to this case.

And it was only this weekend that police sent him this documents, but as you know, Crawford's family and mother were at this rally, this justice for all rally in Washington, D.C.

They didn't look at this evidence until yesterday. He said the first time he heard about it officially was from the "Guardian" newspaper when the reporter called him. He says he's livid, he's angry, and it shows that police bungled the case.

He says tomorrow he plans to file a lawsuit against the police department. He's not very happy. The police department we've reached out to them we should mention, Don, and they've still not gotten back to us.

LEMON: They waited until the very end to tell her that he was dead.

VALENCIA: Yes, that's another thing. At that point when she's being interrogated by the police detective, she has no idea that her boyfriend had died.

LEMON: Nick Valencia. Nick, thank you very much. We understand that -- Nick, before I let you go, are they planning legal action against the department?

VALENCIA: Yes, the attorney, Michael Wright, I spoke to him earlier. He says he plans to go forward with this lawsuit. They're going to have a press conference tomorrow morning. He says that this case is far from over -- Don.

LEMON: All right, Nick. Thank you very much. I want to bring back in now Charles Blow and Van Jones. Charles, newly released video show police harshly interrogating the girlfriend that you saw there who was with him at that store. What do you make of that?

BLOW: Well, it's really hard to watch, right? I mean, she's just lost her boyfriend. According to her, they just came to the store to get ingredients to make s'mores for a cookout. And you know, he winds up shot and killed.

And as you mentioned before, it seems like this detective is trying to make her confess to something that simply is not true and is incredibly aggressive, incredibly, you know, indelicate about his approach to her.

And if at some point he knows -- I mean, I think there's a point at which he comes to know during the course of his interrogation that the boyfriend has in fact died. But if he is continuing to press with that knowledge, I think it's really callous. I think people look at that and think that it's really callous.

LEMON: Van, you're an attorney. As you look at that interrogation video, is it out of the ordinary?

JONES: Well, unfortunately, it's not out of the ordinary. One of the thing we're going to have to stop doing is excusing the inexcusable. Why are the people out here marching in the streets? Is it really just because, you know, one kid they never met died in some town they've never been to? No.

It's because it is a growing sense of a pattern and practice of just a disregard for the humanity of some parts of our population. That young man, by the way, was I understand an open carry state. Had he been walking around with a gun, a real gun, he was within his rights to do so. He hadn't threatened anyone.

He wasn't doing anything and he actually had basically a toy bb gun. They came in. There was a big fight about the video earlier. When the video was released, it turned out that what the cops said about the incident wasn't true. The video disproved it.

So you're now in this weird moment now where video keeps showing that what the protesters are saying is true, that there is some disconnect between what we hope our officers are doing out there every day and what too many of them are actually doing when they come into contact with certain parts of our population.

And we've got to begin to stop excusing the inexcusable. That kind of harsh interrogation of people who are grieving, let's not forget, the mother of Tamir Rice, who had seen her 12-year-old boy gunned down, was then stuck in a police car next to the officer that shot her son and apparently that was a very traumatic experience.

We've got to -- I think law enforcement can be retrained to be more sensitive to the humanity of people before, during, and most importantly after some of these events where they do things that make things so much worse.

LEMON: We're having a town hall tomorrow with a live audience with police officers. So make sure you tune in to that. But stick with me, gentlemen. Coming up, with protests over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, will the killing of John Crawford add to the unrest in our streets? More on that next.

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LEMON: Welcome back, everyone. Michael Brown and Eric Garner' deaths have led to protests all across the country. Grand juries in both cases as well as John Crawford's death decided not to indict the officers who killed these men.

That's led to some people asking this. The court system, is it failing the black community? I want to bring back Charles Blow and also Van Jones.

Charles, I want to ask you both again, the grand jury in the Crawford case, white police officer, grand jury deciding not to indict them. Do you think there are parallels with this and Eric Garner and Michael Brown?

BLOW: The obvious parallel is the racial dynamic involved. The obvious parallel is that the grand jury chose not to indict. And I'm always telling people to push back from the individual cases and look at the data set as a whole, not the data points.

But the data set and look at the trends that represent themselves across the cases. And when you do that, it is really hard to argue that there is equity in the system in terms of justice and how it is meted out and who is believed and who is not believed.

And whether or not you can transpose the racial identities of the people involved and still believe that the cases will turn out exactly the way that they did in those particular cases, would the person still be dead if they were dead, and you knew who did it, would that person not at least get an indictment if not go to trial?

And if they went to trial, might they be convicted? If you cannot transpose the racial identities of people and still believe that you would get the same outcome, then it's really hard to argue that there's equity in the system.

And I think that is what you're seeing in the streets, is people are saying I can't transpose it in my mind and see it come out the same way.

LEMON: So I have to ask you this, Van, because as he said you have to look at the broader picture rather than just the individual things. But if a white person or a black person or whomever is walking around the Wal-Mart wielding a gun, can you just do that and not suffer some consequences? That's the question.

JONES: In that state apparently so because my understanding that's an open carry state where you actually are allowed to carry guns. But more importantly, I want to make a very conservative argument on behalf of the protesters. This is not a liberal thing.

When you're a parent and you're raising your kids, you say listen, if you do something wrong, there needs to be consequences, otherwise you're going to keep doing the same bad thing.

The problem we have right now is that there apparently are no consequences for police officers going way outside of their training, way outside of common sense, and sometimes violating what a lot of people look at, at least on video, and say that seems to violate the law.

Impunity is something that the United States says to countries around the world you don't want to see in your security forces, your police forces. What does that mean? There are countries where things get so far out of whack that security forces just simply are above the law.

We have never wanted that in the United States. We want everyone to obey the law including the police. So I'm making a very conservative argument here. We seem to know be in a place where police and prosecutors are just simply not able to police themselves.

Therefore, we should have more federal oversight. We should have more checks and balances. So that if you don't have a good officer looking at a bad officer getting away with bad stuff day after day, at some point the whole morale and the whole professionalism of law enforcement can start to sink. And that's a danger for everybody, not just black people.

LEMON: I've got 20 seconds left, Charles. People are raising serious questions about the fairness of the grand jury system. Is it time to look at alternate ways to look at police behavior?

BLOW: Well, you can look at alternate ways, but I think the idea of having an independent prosecutor is actually a really smart way to deal with that. And also I think we have to get down to the gut of the bias involved in -- grand jurors are actually human beings that come out of the population to go into those grand jury rooms.

They bring whatever biases they have with them. So who believes someone is wielding a gun? As you said before, that Wal-Mart is covered with cameras. Show me him --

LEMON: And Wal-Mart sells guns.

BLOW: But show me him threatening someone. Show me the 12-year-old in Cleveland threatening someone with the gun. We are now basically --

LEMON: I've got to go, Charles.

BLOW: -- taking what people say and saying what they say is true. I want evidence.

LEMON: Thank you, Gentlemen. We'll be right back.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just feel so proud of everybody involved. It's just amazing.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Tell me about the idea. When did you first come up with the idea for this organization?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was in a supermarket when I finished my tour. And I was like, I was getting mortared and shot at two days ago, and now we're shopping. What did I leave behind? And you can't forget about it and I wanted to do something more.

COOPER: Was the idea initially to reunite soldiers with the animals they had met?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This dog with a stumpy tail was wagging away and happy to see me. Normality in this place was crazy.

COOPER: Bringing an animal back the met while they were there, it helps with their transition, too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of them have said, when he came back from Afghanistan, there was an a little bit he didn't bring back. And when he takes the dog for a walk and comes back, he's the old guy I used to know. COOPER: Do you know what you're going to do with the money? There was $25,000. And now you're getting an additional $100,000.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Over 1,000 Afghan kids die each year because of rabies. We're trying to humanely control the stray dog population. So this $100,000 is going to go a long ways helping kids to avoid being bitten by a rabid dog in the first place.

COOPER: Congratulations.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you so much. This is absolutely amazing. Thank you, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: I'm Don Lemon. Thanks for watching. Our coverage continues now with John Vause at the CNN Center in Atlanta.