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Man Runs from Police on Horseback, Is Beaten; No Official Record of People Killed by Police; Learning More about Walter Scott; Black Parents Talk to Kids about Police Encounters. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired April 10, 2015 - 14:30   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Coming up next on CNN, a man running from police, running as in on horse back, suffers this brutal beat down when police eventually catch up with him. You'll see the video and decide for yourself if it's excessive force.

Plus, it may surprise you, but there's no official record of people killed during interactions with police. My next guest is trying to change that. Stay tuned for that conversation.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:35:21] BALDWIN: Past the bottom of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

This dramatic police chase, first on the streets of California, and then on horse back. What appears to have happened, the suspect appears to surrender. Now the police are under investigation. A KNBC helicopter captured this video of the end of this bizarre chase that started with the suspect avoiding police by car and then the suspect stealing a horse. This man, 30-year-old, Francis Pusok, is tased and appears to put his hands behind his back as San Bernardino sheriff deputies hit and kick him. You see he's lying on the ground.

In a statement, Sheriff John McMahon called the video quote, "disturbing" and said he's ordered an internal investigation to be conducted immediately.

CNN's Stephanie Elam joins me live from Los Angeles.

Stephanie, let's back up for a second. Why were police after this guy in the first place?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It starts three hours before this part you see here, Brooke. What they did was showed up at the House to serve a search warrant related to an identity theft case that was ongoing. They said at that point, he fled in a car before he ditched the car and fled on foot into this remote terrain in San Bernardino County until he came upon the people who had the horse and stole the horse. It does look like he's surrendering before the sheriff deputies begin to beat him and kick him. It seems like several people from law enforcement crowd around him. At one point, you can't even see him while he's on the ground.

When you take a listening to what his lawyer and his girlfriend have to say, they obviously think this went too far.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM TERRELL, ATTORNEY FOR FRANCIS PUSOK: This is as bad if not worse than what they did to Rodney King. This is terrible. It kept going and going. She's worried does he have brain damage, is he conscious, what's going on?

JOLENE BINDNER, GIRLFRIEND OF FRANCIS PUSOK: They beat the crap out of him. Now they're trying to do everything they can to avoid them being in any trouble.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Wow.

ELAM: And the sheriff's department saying when they look at this and the fact they tried to tase him, because he had on loose clothing, it did not work. Last we know that he was taken to the hospital with unknown injuries. We're looking to get an update on that. We have a call in and haven't heard back yet. We're following up on that one -- Brooke?

BALDWIN: Stephanie Elam, thank you.

All right. Back to those new developments out of South Carolina, the deadly police shooting there. From the just released dash cam video to cell phone footage of his final breath, the killing of Walter Scott has been recorded. That makes it difficult from the vast number of deadly encounters by police.

What's more here, despite the fact police officers are public servants using publicly purchased firearms to protect the public, the federal government does not track the number of killings by police. Did you know that?

That is where this website steps in. Fatalencounters.org is keeping count nationwide and state by state. For 2014, it found that more than 1,100 were killed by a police officer.

With me now, D. Brian Burghart, the man that founded and runs fatal encounters.org, and he's the editor of "Reno News. And also joining me is South Carolina native and contributor to "The New Yorker, "author, Jack Hicks.

Welcome to both of you.

JACK HICKS, CONTRIBUTOR, THE NEW YORKER & AUTHOR: Great to be here.

D. BRIAN BURGHART, FOUNDER, FATALENCOUNTERS.ORG & EDITOR, RENO NEWS: Thank you for having me.

BALDWIN: You got it, to both of you.

Brian, let me begin with you. The obviously question is, why not? Why is there no official recordkeeping of deadly encounters with police in this country?

BURGHART: Actually, the federal government has attempted to collect these numbers but never made it a priority to collect them and never had real punishments for the people that don't submit these numbers.

BALDWIN: So, you have been culling numbers state by state. How are you getting information? What conclusions have you arrived at thus far?

BURGHART: Well, we get our information from various ways. We do crowd sourcing which means people submit incidents from their own hometowns. We also do public records searches and we have a small team of people who hit state by state doing research on each individual state. We're about 30 percent, we think, collected. It's going to be two more years before our database is complete. We found some very interesting things. We find that people of color are represented at higher rates than they exist in the general population. We found that mentally ill people are killed at much high rates, up to 30 percent. There's just an immense amount of data in this stuff.

(CROSSTALK)

[14:40:32] HICKS: If I could ask a question.

BALDWIN: Got for it. Please do, Jack.

HICKS: So, Brian, I've read these CDC numbers though, right? Are these real? I see these all over the place. About 2100 whites have been killed by police between 99-2011 and 1100 blacks. Are those accurate numbers? I'm asking.

BURGHART: Those CDC numbers are worse than the must best collected by the Department of Justice. In the justifiable homicides reports that you've seen for years, the numbers are about -- they average about 400 a year when, in truth, real numbers are upwards of usually over 1,000 per year. The problem with that is a lot of states, a lot of jurisdictions, don't contribute. For example, with the Department of Justice numbers, the entire state of Florida didn't contribute to them.

HICKS: Right.

BALDWIN: Wow. I don't think a lot of people realize that.

I'm glad you jumped in Jack and asked the question. There's a lot of numbers floating out there. To your point of what's real and what's not.

Let' me pivot to you because I read you're piece in "The New Yorker" two times through. I thought it was incredibly well put together. It was different perspective, that may -- and I'm a Southerner, but I wasn't expecting it. You talk about how you grew up in Charleston. You point out this story in South Carolina that maybe we haven't seen in the wake of Ferguson or what happened in Staten Island someone close to the mayor of North Charleston. Before the sun was down that day when he was killed, everyone was unified. You point out the mayor, the police chief, the governor, two Senators, even a family member. Why do you think that is?

HICKS: It's a question that needs to be answered. Within 24 hours of that video coming out, the mayor said, when you're wrong, you're wrong. The police chief met with the family. Governor, both Senators piled on to say this was a terrible thing. The police officer was fired and charged with murder. The victim's brother came out and said we advocate change, not violence, right. You have to ask yourselves, have we learned from Ferguson? We talk about public debate resolving in some way. Have we learned from Ferguson, Cleveland, Staten Island, and done it right in South Carolina? There were four shootings in South Carolina in the last three years. All the law enforcement officers were fired and charged with felony or murder charges. One is a police chief, even. So somehow in South Carolina they have taken the kind of action you saw in the last couple of days consistently over the last few years.

I say that in the context of our history, which is brutal -- South Carolina has one of the worst track records in terms of racial violence in the entire country. But there is, in the piece, a strand of fair play that dates back to early parts of the Civil War. It comes up through Judge Waring, the famous mid-20th century judge, all the way up to now. Of course, all of this could change tomorrow. It could all be crushed under foot. That would be in South Carolina's history also. And expect the demonization of Walter Scott and the hagiography of the police officer in the next few days as everybody tries to maneuver and set off the trial.

BALDWIN: Absolutely.

HICKS: So we'll have to watch the arc of this.

(CROSSTALK)

[14:44:29] BALDWIN: We'll absolutely watch. We will watch the arc. Love to have you back from the lens of a South Carolina resident.

Jack Hicks, of "The New Yorker," thank you.

And Brian Burghart.

If you want more information of his numbers, Fatalencounters.org is the website.

Gentlemen, my thanks to both of you.

Next, we are learning more about the final moments leading up to the deadly shooting in South Carolina. The mother of the police officer, charged with murder, is now speaking out about what happened. Why she has not yet seen the video of her son shooting an unarmed man in the back.

And my next guest writes about what he calls "the talk." He says every black parent has to have it with their sons and daughters about how to behave around police. Don't miss that conversation.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BALDWIN: All right. I want to continue our conversation here about this deadly police shooting in South Carolina because we can now show you this meeting, incredibly emotional meeting between Walter Scott's mother and the man that recorded the final moments. This may ultimately bring this family some justice.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FEIDIN SANTANA, WITNESS: God put me there for a reason. I'm a believer in God. He put me there for a reason.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was supposed to be there.

JUDY SCOTT, MOTHER OF WALTER SCOTT: He was supposed to be there.

SANTANA: Thank you for another son, God. Thank you, Lord.

But you've got family in Charleston right now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:49:51] BALDWIN: While the Scott family continues to grapple with the lose, it seems like the one I'm about to show you is probably playing out among African-American parents across the country, parents sitting down with their black sons and daughters, the TV screen blares "White officer kills unarmed black youth, no indictment."

That image in illustrated in the drawing called "The Talk." The artist behind this drawing, Michael Diansporno (ph), wrote this, "I doubt Dr. King dreamed in 2015 African-Americans would still need to warn their young sons about the dangers of being black."

One author and blogger who came across this drawing felt compelled to it, scripting how he saw that conversation playing out, is Derrick Jaxin, who grew up in Enterprise, Alabama.

Getting similar warnings from your mom, I understand.

Derrick, welcome. Pleasure to have you on.

DERRICK JAXIN, AUTHOR & BLOGGER: Glad to be on.

BALDWIN: Read for me, read the caption you wrote and tell me what inspired you to write this.

JAXIN: I don't have the caption in front of me, but I wanted to transcribe the sentiments of a lot of black families where parents have to explain to their child, as a child, you come with a different set of terms and conditions other than your non-black counterparts. And if you violate those terms and conditions, it could mean life or death, as in the case of Tamir Rice.

BALDWIN: How old were you first, Derrick, when your mother sat you down? JAXIN: My talk came in the form of many years of -- you know, if you

get stopped for a speeding ticket, make sure hands are in plain sight. Don't move. If you say why? My mother looked me in the eye and said because it won't be good. Time and time again, we can't go out certain places, not because bad guys are out there but because of police officers. We have to make sure that we -- even if we don't understand the situation at hand, that we don't make the wrong move.

BALDWIN: But not all police officers are bad guys. I'm not sure if you have police officers in your family. You know?

JAXIN: Absolutely. It's not about vilifying police officers. When there's bad decisions made, there needs to be accountability. Otherwise we encourage actions that took place with Walter Scott and other people.

BALDWIN: Let me ask you this. One of your pieces is entitled I no longer want to be a good, strong, black man. What do you mean by that?

JAXIN: It's addressing the fact default as a black man. I need adjectives to say my life matters. For instance, when somebody is killed, we have to bring up their clean criminal record or the fact they wanted to go to college and all these things. You've never heard anyone say a good, strong white woman or good strong white man. Default gives me the doubt I'm human. Otherwise you're making my life less valuable.

BALDWIN: Back to the talk and the times that your mother would sit you down and say, Derrick, if you're pulled over, keep your hands ten and two. When people have seen this video of Walter Scott in South Carolina, one camp is saying he didn't do what the police officer instructed. Instead, he got out of the car and ran. Why not do what the officers tell you?

JAXIN: What we can't allow to happen is to let say police records or reports take the place of due process. Even guilty deserve their day in court. Unless an officer's life is threatened, there's no need to kill him. We look at him in the vacuum and say that black man was killed doing something wrong. That affects their family. He's not just a black man. She's a father hoping to walk his daughter down the aisle one day, to go to his son's graduation. Is that worth crippling that family? You can cripple an entire community. Is that worth it because he didn't obey police commands and he ran? Absolutely, not.

BALDWIN: Derrick Jaxin, thank you.

JAXIN: Thank you.

[14:54:17] BALDWIN: Just ahead, an interview you cannot miss. I'll speak live with the man who just left prison after 30 years on death row. He is now a free man after a new revelation. He'll get candid about being scared of forks, the mall, and what he thinks of lawyers and police that put him there. Stay with me.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [14:59:03 ] DR. ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Last year, Americans spent $2.5 a billion on commercial weight loss programs. Well, if you're going to spend a lot of money, you need to make sure you're getting a good program. Researchers took a look at studies on commercial weight loss programs. Here's what they found out. They found the number one program in terms of long-term weight loss is Jenny Craig.

Let's take a look at some of the numbers. The dieters started out around 200 pounds. After a year, the folks on Jenny Craig lost about 15 to 22 pounds. Compared that to people that had counseling and education alone, they lost about two to six a year.

Another program that did well is Weight Watchers. Now, it's important to remember, sometimes these can be expensive, like hundreds of a month. Not everyone can do them.

Let's think about things you can do if you want to lose weight without having to spend all that hundred. Let's take lessons from what's worked in these programs.