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North Charleston Isn't Ferguson; Community Reels After Shooting; Obama and Castro Could Meet Face to Face; Masters Round One Under Way.. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired April 09, 2015 - 09:30   ET

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


[09:30:00] ROBERT WHEELER, BOSTON MARATHON FIRST RESPONDER: You know, that -- true or not, we are responsible for our own actions. The moment we stop believing that is -- it's just chaos. I mean, to say that the person who built the gun is responsible for killing the person is -- is -- you know, is foolish. You know, he knew what he was doing.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, we've lost Robert Wheeler, but, Robert Wheeler, thanks so much. Robert, I appreciate your thoughts on this difficult day.

I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: An unarmed black man shot by a white police officer after being stopped for a minor offense. It's a headline we reported in August of last year in the death of Michael Brown. And now tragic deja vu with the death of Walter Scott. But North Charleston is not Ferguson. Here's why.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CROWD: All lives matter. All lives matter.

COSTELLO (voice-over): Protesters calling for the mayor to resign in North Charleston, reminiscent of what we heard last summer in Ferguson, Missouri. But unlike the shooting death of Michael Brown at the hands of a police officer, in North Charleston we have video. Horrifying, but critical. In Ferguson, no video of the actual shooting ever surfaced, and witnesses told different stories about whether Brown had his hands up or not. We know Walter Scott was shot at eight times as he ran away.

Then there's the reaction from city leaders. North Charleston swift to make an arrest and fire the officer.

MAYOR KEITH SUMMEY (R), NORTH CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA: I can tell you that as the result of that video and the bad decision made by our officer, he will be charged with murder.

[09:35:02] COSTELLO: But Ferguson officials waited nearly a weak to release the officer's name. He was placed on paid administrative leave and a grand jury decided not to indict him. And the police response? Militant in Ferguson after largely peaceful

protests were marred by looting, arson and violence. City police held on to control for days, then leaders called in the highway patrol before turning to the National Guard. In North Charleston, the case has already been handed over to the state of South Carolina. Interactions with officers, angry, sad, but peaceful.

And where Ferguson leaders struggled to strike a sensitive tone in the days and weeks following the shooting -

MAYOR JAMES KNOWLES, FERGUSON, MISSOURI: There is not a racial divide in the city of Ferguson. As we progressively become more -

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: According to whom? Is that your perspective or do you believe that that is the perspective of African-Americans in your community?

KNOWLES: That is the perspective of all residents in our city. Absolutely.

COSTELLO: North Charleston's police chief did not mince words.

CHIEF EDDIE DRIGGERS, NORTH CHARLESTON POLICE: I - I have watched the video and I was sickened by what I saw.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: That is not to say everything is A-Okay in North Charleston. Citizens are angry. Some of them, afraid. We heard that from the man who shot the cell phone video of Walter Scott's death. With me now, Brady Quirk-Garvan, he's the chairman of the Charleston County Democratic Party.

Brady, good morning and thank you for being with me.

BRADY QUIRK-GARVAN, CHAIRMAN, CHARLESTON COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PARTY: Good morning, Carol. Thanks for having me on.

COSTELLO: Thanks for being here. Do you think that what happened in Ferguson influenced how North Charleston is handling this?

QUIRK-GARVAN: Sure. I think this is a little different than Ferguson for many reasons. You know, I think here the mayor of North Charleston took swift action and called for murder charges. The officer was arrested. And so the reaction here has been much more subdued than Ferguson. I think people have a little bit of faith that the city is handling this properly and doing the right thing, and so I think that's why you're seeing a different reaction from the community than what happened in Ferguson.

COSTELLO: Can you describe for us the relationship between the African-American community and the police force in North Charleston?

QUIRK-GARVAN: Sure. I think the relationship between the community and the North Charleston Police Department has never been stellar, to be honest. I think, you know, North Charleston is a city where they have a reputation for being a little heavy handed with their police work, and so there's always been some level of distrust. And to be honest, you know, this obviously sets that relationship back quite a ways.

So I think from here, you know, what I would expect and hope to see is the city of North Charleston take some really aggressive actions to make sure that their relationship with the community is better and improved and that there's more community policing as opposed to more heavy handed police work.

COSTELLO: I haven't heard overt calls for the police chief to step down but we have heard calls for the mayor to step down. Why is that?

QUIRK-GARVAN: I can't tell you exactly why that is, but I think there's some level of, you know, the buck stops at the top. And so I think, in cases like this, you know, people want action and they want results. And so one of the things is now that we have the officer in custody and know that he's being tried for murder, there's still some feeling in the community that this has to stop. You know, this wasn't a one-off incident. This is just a one-off incident that was caught on tape.

And so the question is, what - what is going to happen to change this systematically? What is going to happen to change the day-to-day interactions between police and the African-American community or the police and the general community as a whole? So I think what you're seeing is a lot of people who want change. They want something different, and this video is just the catalyst for making that change happen.

COSTELLO: All right. Brady Quirk-Garvan, thanks so much. Thanks for your insight. I appreciate it.

As we head to break, here's what Walter Scott's mother told Anderson Cooper about that tape and the police officer who shot her son.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUDY SCOTT, WALTER SCOTT'S MOTHER: I couldn't really watch the whole tape. When I saw my son running and I saw the policeman behind him, I couldn't take it. I had to turn away. I couldn't handle it.

ANDERSON COOPER, ANCHOR, CNN'S "AC 360": Knowing what you know now, I mean, that not only what happened to your son, the way it happened, that it was all captured on tape, and even what seems to be pictures of the policemen picking up something, maybe the Taser, placing it near your son's body, what do you -- what do you think about what happened?

[09:40:00] SCOTT: That was not right. The policemen is supposed to protect the people, not try to frame them or get out - get out of what they've done wrong. They're supposed to be honest people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) COSTELLO: No apologies from a former Ferguson city official fired over sending racist e-mails. For the first time, city court clerk Mary Ann Twitty is speaking out since losing her job, claiming she was, quote, "thrown under the bus" after a scathing report by the Department of Justice. Asked whether she thought those racist jokes were funny, here's what Twitty told CNN affiliate KMOV.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARY ANN TWITTY, FIRED FERGUSON COURT CLERK: Funny as in humor wise?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

TWITTY: Humor wise, yes. Not because it was racist or biased, no, just funny joke wise.

I feel bad because that's not - I don't want people to look at me and say, well, she sent those racist jokes out because she's racist or biased. And I'm not.

I'm human. I meant nothing bad by it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[09:45:04] COSTELLO: Twitty claims she was used as a sacrificial lamb and says Ferguson employees made racist jokes all the time. Many have already compared the latest police shooting in South Carolina to the killing of unarmed Ferguson teenager Michael Brown. As you know, Brown's death sparking months of unrest and protests across the country.

Let's talk about this and more. Let's bring in CNN commentator L.Z. Granderson. I'm also joined by CNN political commentator and host of HuffPost Live, Marc Lamont Hill.

Welcome to both of you. Thanks for coming back.

MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning.

L.Z. GRANDERSON, CNN COMMENTATOR: Morning.

COSTELLO: As I was listening to Ms. Twitty, I was thinking to myself, seriously? She doesn't understand how that could be offensive? Marc, you want to take that on?

LAMONT HILL: I was sort of stunned by it. She said I thought it was funny, just not racist funny, just ha ha funny. I think in her mind that makes sense. I think that she's able to disconnect her own feelings around black people from her everyday practice. I think that's a problem that we see with many people. People may say racist things, may laugh at racist things, may have racist biases and prejudices but they don't see themselves as racists. They're able to separate those things. That's what's dangerous. It's not the person who is the foaming at the mouth racist who I'm worried about sometimes, it's the person who often doesn't think they're racist. Sometimes it's the white liberal who's the scariest. COSTELLO: You're right about that, sadly. You know, these e-mails

were so racist and so unpleasant that we can't show most of them, L.Z., but one of them, and I'll describe it for our viewers, just so they can understand what we're talking about. One of them showed a picture of President Reagan holding a little baby monkey and then the caption underneath read "President Obama in 1962." That's not funny. Not even ha ha funny.

GRANDERSON: No. It's -- no, it's not funny. Part of the thing that really made me upset initially about Ferguson, in addition to the death of Michael Brown, was the fact that the mayor got in front of a television camera and said that there was no racial tension in Ferguson. This is the same mayor, believe it or not, who worked in that police department at one point. So he not only knew the tensions in the city that he grew up in but he also knew specifically what was going on in the police department. For him to go in front of a camera and say there was no racial tension was absolutely incredible to me. Now you have this woman saying, we made racist jokes all the time. You're sort of going, was the mayor living in a bubble or is he just lying to the American people trying to deflect the true image of what Ferguson is or what it was, anyway?

COSTELLO: There is also a sense that people, employees in private companies, send around e-mails like this all the time, Marc, and nothing happens, but I take issue with that because something would happen at most companies, wouldn't it?

LAMONT HILL: Yes. In most companies, if it got in the right hands, but oftentimes these things get passed around and certain people don't find out. Black people don't find out. People in power don't find out. Sympathetic whites don't find out. L.Z., that's part of why I think he may have said there's no tension. No because he didn't think it was racism, he just thinks black people are stupid. He thinks we didn't know they were passing around racist jokes. He didn't think that we knew that they were saying these things. In his mind, there's no tension. Black people are happy. We're happy because we're doing racist stuff. Everybody's good.

GRANDERSON: Right. We're singing songs, we're out here singing songs and dancing.

LAMONT HILL: Right. Exactly.

GRANDERSON: Everybody's happy. The plantation is fine.

LAMONT HILL: Everybody's happy.

COSTELLO: Okay. Let's talk about the reaction in North Charleston by city officials, the mayor and the police chief. Better than Ferguson, right, L.Z.?

GRANDERSON: Absolutely, in terms of what's happened since there's been video that can't be denied has gone public. Sure, it's much better than what happened in Ferguson. But keep in mind, this was an incident that happened on Saturday and so as I said before, I'm curious as to what happened between Saturday and the video being made public on Tuesday. That's what I want to know what happened internally. I appreciate the fact that there was swift action taken once the video was made public. I appreciate the fact that the officer's personal information has been released to the media so that we can begin to dissect who this officer was. But the fact of the matter is that he said he feared for his life and the officers around him believed him and they believed the report. And they were going forward with this until the video, and that department needs to find out why.

COSTELLO: Well, other public officials want to find out why, too, because the governor, Nikki Haley, came out and said justice will be served. Senator Tim Scott said he will be monitoring the situation very closely. He had very, very strong words. So I would take it that South Carolina is serious about getting to the bottom of this, Marc.

LAMONT HILL: They're serious at getting to the bottom of this but this, again, is low-hanging fruit. I can't applaud their -- I'm glad they're doing the right thing, but I think we have such a low legal and moral and ethical bar in this nation if we're sitting around applauding people for arresting an officer who was caught on tape murdering somebody and we're saying, oh, we'll probably get a victory -- a guilty verdict here. The fact that we need a videotape, literally a smoking gun on tape, to get a guilty verdict also says something about how low our bar is and how unpersuasive and unimportant black witnesses when these things happen because a black witness says that this stuff happens every day. Black witness says -- not that people get murdered everyday, but the police behave inappropriately on a regular basis. As a result, we need tape in order to prove it. That's a problem for me. So the bigger picture for me is not what they do right now in this individual case, but how we can stop black people from dying beforehand, how we can install mechanisms of justice so that police don't move with impunity when these types of things happen. That, for me, is important. So yes, great job, South Carolina, arresting a guy caught on tape murdering somebody, but let's see what we can do beyond that.

[09:50:51] COSTELLO: Marc Lamont Hill, L.Z Granderson, thanks as always. I appreciate it.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, there is nothing like breaking the ice with the whole world watching. President Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro could meet face to face this week. We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SETH MEYERS, "LATE NIGHT WIT SETH MEYERS, NBC: A new poll in Cuba shows that President Obama is more popular than Fidel Castro. Then again, so it putting your whole family on a raft in the middle of the night.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHTER & APPLAUSE)

(END Video Clip) COSTELLO: All jokes aside, President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro could indeed meet face-to-face this week. The two leaders are scheduled to attend the Summit of the Americas in Panama. White House officials say President Obama plans to interact with Castro in an effort to improve U.S.-Cuban relations. This as the State Department recommends removing Cuba from the state sponsors of terrorism list. An official announcement could come from the White House as early as today.

Let's bring in CNN's Patrick Oppmann. He's live this morning from Havana. Good morning.

PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. This will certainly ease away to that interaction or encounter that President Obama and Raul Castro have in Panama. This is one of the major stumbling blocks. It's been three months since the shift in policy between these two countries. There's still not been a resumption of formal diplomatic ties, there's still no U.S. Embassy in Havana. This is going to ease the way for that. But of course, there's still a lot of issues between these two countries. Just a few days ago, we talked to one of them, a man named Charlie Hill, who is accused of killing a police officer in New Mexico. He's accused of hijacking a plane 43 years ago to Cuba. He says that he's not a terrorist, but he also tells us that he's hoping to go back to the United States.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLIE HILL, U.S. FUGITIVE LIVING IN CUBA: I want to accomplish that people understand that I'm not a criminal, that I'm not a terrorist.

OPPMANN: Are you a cop killer?

HILL: No, no. I never killed cops. I never did that. I am a Vietnam veteran. People don't ask me did I kill Vietnamese? That was authorized by the American government.

[09:55:05] OPPMANN: You miss your country?

HILL: Of course. Of course, I miss my country. I miss my family. I would like to go back to where my grandparents were born, where I was born.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OPPMANN: So, of course, this is one of the issues that needs to be resolved. U.S. officials tell us every time we meet with their Cuban counterparts, they bring up these issues. Cubans, of course, brig up the fugitives they live in the U.S. that they would like brought back to Cuba. So we'll see if this comes up in the next few days. It's really one of the top issues that Cuba and the United States still need to work out, what happens to people like Charlie Hill? Do they stay in Cuba or will they be sent back to face the American justice system? Carol?

COSTELLO: Patrick Oppmann reporting live for us from Havana. Thanks so much. I'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Round one of the Masters now underway. The first group of golfers teeing off just about an hour ago. One of the biggest headlines, Tiger Woods returning to action for the first time in two months.

Andy Scholes has more in this morning's Bleacher Report. Hi, Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS: Hey, good morning, Carol. You know, Rory McIlroy is the favorite this year. He's trying to win his third straight major, "The Rory Slam," as they call it. Now Tiger, on the other hand, his odds to win, 20-1. Not very good. Most of us really just like to see Tiger actually finish a tournament. He tees off later this afternoon at 1:48 Eastern. Now yesterday for the first time since 2004, Tiger played the Par 3 contest. He had his daughter, Sam, his son, Charlie, and girlfriend, Lindsey Vonn tagging along. And on the 8th hole, Tiger, he nearly gets the hole in 1. He really wanted it, drops to his knees after it just misses the hole. He'll let his daughter putt that one in which actually disqualifies him from the Par-3 contest.