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Seven Rochester Police Officers Suspended Over Daniel Prude's Death; Dark Money Group Tied to Kanye West's Campaign Law Firm Sends Out Misinformation on Biden with Mail-in Ballot Applications to Voters; CNN Poll: Americans Less Likely to Say That Racism is a Big Problem Now Than They Were Earlier this Summer. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired September 04, 2020 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: The mayor of Rochester, New York, suspending seven police officers with pay after the video of Daniel Prude dying in police custody went public. Police body cam video shows officers putting a hood over Prude's head and pinning him to the ground. Daniel Prude's daughter will be with us in a moment. But first, CNN's Polo Sandoval is live in Rochester with the latest. What's happening with this, Polo?

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, overnight, we did see some protests here in Rochester. Many people here, and of course, including the Prude family, many of the issues that they're bringing up has to do with the timing.

Keep in mind, this has to do with an incident that took place all the way back in March, March 23rd, to be precise. And it isn't until this week now that people are learning more about this incident. And the city here says that there's a reason for that because of legislation that calls for the state attorney general's office to investigate these kinds of incidents.

The city was asked to basically withhold on the release of any information, but obviously, the family here obtaining this video and releasing it, putting some pressure on authorities here at the city level to actually act. And that's precisely what we saw yesterday with the mayor, announcing the suspension of these seven police officers as the investigation continues.

We also heard from Mayor Lovely yesterday, saying, initially, that she was initially misled when this incident took place in March. Told by her police department that Mr. Prude died as a result of an overdose while in custody.

And it wasn't until August 6th that she was told about the police officer's questionable actions. And then of course, now, we have this action a few weeks after she learned of that, of those suspensions. So when you hear from the Prudes, they say that those suspensions aren't enough. CAMEROTA: OK, Polo, thank you very much for all of that. We thank

Polo for that. We're having some technical difficulties, as you can see. But joining us now is Daniel Prude's daughter Junera and her attorney, Frank Ciardi. Great to have both of you here with us this morning.

Junera, we're so sorry that your family has been going through this horrible experience since March. It's just terrible. And in fact, the video of your dad's death is so hard to watch. I understand that you hadn't seen it until this week. Is that right?

JUNERA PRUDE, DAUGHTER OF DANIEL PRUDE: Yes, I didn't see it until it was released to the public.

CAMEROTA: And when you saw it, what happened?

J. PRUDE: I was -- I was just traumatized. Like, I couldn't believe that I saw that -- my father died, that's how he died. Like it was -- I was just lost for words. I had to cut it off.

CAMEROTA: Of course!

J. PRUDE: I could not watch it --

CAMEROTA: I understand that not being able to watch all the way through. Even I, who was not his daughter and did not know him, had to turn away at some point before I could keep watching it. It's really hard to watch those 10 minutes unfold. In fact, you say that it's made it worse for your family.

J. PRUDE: Yes, it made it completely worse because it's like -- we kind of know what happened but we didn't know, so to actually see and hear him crying out and saying he needed help, and that he wanted his mother, it was -- it was too hard. I can't -- I couldn't do it.

CAMEROTA: Yes, I understand. As far as we know, this whole thing started with a call from his brother, your uncle, about a mental health episode that your dad was having.

[07:35:00]

He called the police because he needed help. He didn't expect his brother --

J. PRUDE: Yes --

CAMEROTA: To die, he wanted help with this. Did your dad have mental health issues?

J. PRUDE: What I know, I've never seen him have any. But I've heard that he has had a couple, like one or two.

CAMEROTA: Do you -- I can only imagine how hard it was to watch him. He was not wearing clothing. And he was in the snow.

J. PRUDE: Yes -- CAMEROTA: Do you -- have they given you any explanation for why they

kept him outside in the snow like that?

J. PRUDE: No, no one from Rochester has reached out to me.

CAMEROTA: You've not spoken to any of the officials?

J. PRUDE: No one, no one.

CAMEROTA: Mr. Ciardi, do you understand --

FRANK CIARDI, ATTORNEY: I think that's the question --

CAMEROTA: Mr. Ciardi, can you -- can you hear me? Do you understand --

CIARDI: Yes --

CAMEROTA: How this went from a mental health call to him having a hood placed over him and being kept outside with no clothes on, as it was snowing?

CIARDI: And you look at it, the video, it's almost 30 minutes, that's really ridiculous. You know, that's the question that we have for the authorities. It's also the question we have for the New York State Attorney General. And like you said earlier, why is this taking so long?

This is five months. We've seen videos come out within days of an incident. And to have the attorney general sit on this for five months, to have my client not even know what's going on for the last five months, you know, I think Mayor Warren came out and said the right things yesterday, but I hope actions now follow through, you know, that the city is taking responsibility.

I appreciate that the mayor has said her apologies to my client, but I think we need more answers.

CAMEROTA: Yes, Janura, we have that moment. Let me just play for you what the mayor says.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR LOVELY WARREN, ROCHESTER, NEW YORK: We must, as a society, as a city, as a community, face the truth. Institutional and structural racism led to Daniel Prude's death. I won't deny it. I stand before it. And I call for justice upon it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Junera, is that how your family sees it? Do you think that institutional racism led to your dad's death?

J. PRUDE: Yes, I do.

CAMEROTA: Why? J. PRUDE: Because why did they do him like that? There was no reason.

He was complying with them. When he told -- when they told him to get on his back, he did that. When they told him to put his hands behind his back, he did that. And when they put the handcuffs on him, he was still complying with them.

CAMEROTA: Mr. Ciardi, what police say -- you know, they did their own internal investigation and say that they followed all of the proper protocols. They say that when a suspect is spitting, they are free to put a hood over their head to protect them.

Your thoughts -- oh, I do -- there's something else important. They also say that the official cause of death was asphyxiation from being physically restrained and acute PCP intoxication. As a lawyer, Mr. Ciardi, will that make it more complicated to prosecute any of the officers?

CIARDI: Well, you know, you look at the video, I think it speaks for itself. You're seeing a man on the ground begging for help. You're seeing a bag over his head. I don't care what you want to call it. He's being suffocated in that bag. He's being -- he's having his head pushed down to the ground.

This is a brutal video. This is a brutal act. And, you know, as a former prosecutor, as a defense attorney, I see a vicious act that I hope the New York State Attorney General will move and act on this. I know the city has already done so. Again, I applaud the mayor for her actions, the seven officers already being suspended.

But I hope that the state starts taking this serious. It's been five months now, and it's time to take this matter a little bit more serious than they have.

CAMEROTA: Junera, what do you want to see happen? What does your family want?

J. PRUDE: I want justice for my father. I just want to make sure that the officers that did this go to jail or something. Like, this was traumatizing. I have to live with this for the rest of my life, like, I barely can sleep because of this. Like, it's horrible. Like, I just don't know.

[07:40:00]

CAMEROTA: We understand. I mean, again, it's horrible for all of us who are strangers to your family to watch this, and the idea that your family is having to emotionally process what you didn't know had happened to your dad, I think we all understand that. We'll be following the case very closely. Junera Prude, thank you. Frank Ciardi, please keep us posted as to what happens legally next with this case.

CIARDI: Thank you.

J. PRUDE: Thank you. CAMEROTA: Meanwhile, voters in battleground states are getting

misinformation in the mail about Joe Biden. CNN has just uncovered a possible tie to another candidate's campaign. We have the details, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:45:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Listen to this next story because it gets the things you have to look out for in this next election. An Ohio- based dark money group is sending misinformation about Joe Biden to voters in two states through unsolicited mail-in ballot applications.

And in an even stranger twist, the group has connections to the effort to get Kanye West on the ballot. Connect the dots here, folks. CNN's Kristen Holmes live in Washington with more. Do we know what and who is behind this dark money group?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Jim. Well, we don't right now. And of course, this story seems to have a little bit of everything. We have money, lies, and Kanye West. Now, here's what we do know.

The group is called Common Sense Voters, and they're sending out these legitimate mail-in ballot applications. They are actual applications, in at least two critical swing states, Pennsylvania and Minnesota. And we've actually obtained a copy and I want to pull it up here so you can see exactly what it looks like. This went out in Pennsylvania, and you can see it really presents itself as a non-partisan voting guide.

But when you open it up here, you see this. Joe Biden holding up what looks to be a print copy of "Politico" with a headline that falsely reads "Biden supports sanctuary cities", and the next to it, it asks, "are these your Pennsylvania values?" And we should note that in a statement to CNN, "Politico" said that there was no print edition of its paper that day.

They also said that they never published that headline on any of its platforms. However, they did have a story online that talked about Biden veering left on sanctuary cities. Now, the mailer goes on to compare the two tickets between Biden-Harris and Pence-Trump -- Trump- Pence and it falsely states that Biden-Harris supports open borders and paying reparations, and of course, it says the Trump-Pence ticket does not.

But this is where it gets even more interesting and really even more muddy. This group was registered back in June by the same law firm that is representing Kanye West as he is trying to get on the ballot in Ohio. And as we said at the beginning here, nobody knows who is actually funding this effort, how much money they're putting into it. When we reached out to the lawyer and they declined to comment, saying that their client had not given them permission to talk to the press.

SCIUTTO: That's a fascinating story. And listen, you know, the deliberate use of what looks like a mail-in ballot, particularly concerning. Kristen Holmes, thanks for being on top of it. Well, how big of a problem is racism in this country today? We have a new CNN national poll with some very interesting findings.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:50:00]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. A new CNN national poll just out this morning shows shifting attitudes about racism in America. Even over the last several weeks, it finds that Americans are now less likely to say that racism is a big problem than they were just earlier this Summer, that after the death of George Floyd.

Joining us now to discuss the broader issues here, Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson; she's the author of a new book "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents". And Isabel, it's so good to have you on this morning, of many fascinating points you make in this book. Is this idea that when you look at it historically, the very notions of a blanket white race and black race really originate a lot in this country, right? In the early days of slave trading. Can you explain that?

ISABEL WILKERSON, AUTHOR: Yes, this idea that there are delineating categories of black and white is not something that was -- that was, you know, endemic to how humans thought of themselves centuries ago. It dates back to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and -- different parts of the world, to this country, some by choice, some by force. And then the assigning of categories as in the creation of what would become a hierarchy in which people who are the colonists were on top, and then they were -- they positioned people who were enslaved, African people at the bottom, and that's created what I call a caste system.

And this was a creation, this was not something -- you know, we often -- if you think of it, color is a fact, but race is a social construct, it did not exist, it did not need to exist when people were living in parts of the world where they were with people who looked like themselves. Only when you bring together people who do not look alike and then are assigned roles for the society that's being created to your need or was there this feeling that you needed to categorize people.

CAMEROTA: And Isabel, I mean, just to drive those points home because your book is one of these books that kind of blows your mind and changes the way -- it changes everything we thought we knew to be true. And so a couple of the headlines -- I mean, you've just said them, but I just want to drive it home. Number one, there are no black people in Africa.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Number two, being white has only existed for a few hundred years.

WILKERSON: The need to see one's self on the basis of what one's skin color was did not matter if you were in a place where you were with fellow Hungarians and you would not have identified yourself in that way. You don't need to identify yourself as black if you're around people who all look like you, an entire continent of people who look like you. So the very concept of how we define ourselves has grow out of this creation of a hierarchy that did not exist for all of human history, but it's fairly new.

SCIUTTO: Tell us, Isabel, about the moment in this country today. An outpouring like we haven't seen in decades really following the death of George Floyd. Millions of people in so many cities, people of all stripes and all colors, frankly, and all races coming out in support of this.

[07:55:00]

And yet, you have a president, you have the Attorney General, the top law enforcement official in the country saying, there is no systemic racism. Is this a fleeting moment or is there something different about this moment in your view?

WILKERSON: Well, you know, I would say that this is really part of a continuum when you look at American history. You know, enslavement which is the basis of the hierarchy that I'm describing lasted for 246 years, that's 12 generations before there was even a United States of America. And it was there that the devaluation of black life became codified and just part of how the country functioned.

And so we're living under the shadow of that as we can see what video after video, every heart-breaking instance that we see. You know, when we look at Kenosha, when we look now at Rochester and Minneapolis before that. I mean, we are seeing before our eyes, things that have been part of our country's legacy but are now visible to everyone around the world.

So I would hope that we're -- you know, on the cusp of an awakening, a recognition of the challenges that we're facing and of how people truly are being treated differently based upon their perceived value in our society.

CAMEROTA: You know what? I just want to read a portion of your book because I think it also speaks to something that you hear Democrats say a lot, which is why? Why do working class white people vote for leaders or politicians, particularly Donald Trump, who say that they're going to take away some of the very things and protections and safety nets that these voters need like the Affordable Care Act, like environmental regulations.

And so your book addresses it. It says "what they had not considered was that people voting this way were in fact, voting their interests, maintaining the caste system as it has always been in their -- was in their interest.

And some were willing to accept short-term discomfort, forgo health insurance, risk contamination of the water and air and even die to protect their long-term interests in the hierarchy as they had known it." That's just really helpful insight.

WILKERSON: Well, when you look at a society on the basis of inherited hierarchy, something that none of us created, none of us alive created the world that the colonists devised -- that were created. You realize that you hoped. then gained an investment in their position in a hierarchy that we don't even talk about them. I talk about this as in some ways, it's like -- it's an old house and you don't see the studs and the joists and the beams that hold the house up. And yet, they are there to keep the structure in place. So it's almost an invisible structure that we've inherited.

We're not necessarily aware of it, we don't have a name for it. And yet, when you have an investment in that hierarchy -- and especially if you have very little -- if you have less to rely on to make sure that you -- to have -- to be secure, less education, less in the way of job security, you might find that you would be even more reliant on the -- what I would call inherited ranking that comes from a caste system such as ours. And so, the less -- the less that you had to rely on in other ways to feel better and more secure, the more you will rely on inherited ranking that -- which is what I'm calling a caste system.

CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh, your book is just so --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

CAMEROTA: It's so enlightening. Go ahead, Jim.

SCIUTTO: It is -- no, I was just going to say, I mean, part of your story you tell here right is a deliberate effort to maintain that caste system. And I wonder if you see elements of that in efforts to suppress the vote in this election. Deliberate efforts, taking people off voter rolls, making them more difficult, et cetera. Is that iteration of this?

WILKERSON: Well, I do think that -- I think it's -- I think it's necessary to recall that in 2008, there was an announcement by the census that by 2042, the country's configuration of (INAUDIBLE) would no longer be the majority. And I believe that, that set in motion (INAUDIBLE) for really everyone in the country because this would be a configuration that none of us have ever seen, the country's always had the configuration that it has, and so this has created an existential crisis, that means that people have to figure out how will things move going forward?

What will happen when you have a majority that does not look as it always has been in a country that values majority rule. So these are questions that the country is grappling with, whether we speak of it openly or not. And it really gives us an opportunity to define who we are as Americans. What our country is and could be. How we can embrace and encompass all, and really find a way to create a country that is truly fair and just for everyone.

CAMEROTA: Isabel Wilkerson --

WILKERSON: Or we could choose another path, but this is -- this is an opportunity to embrace what is and what is being projected, and to rise to our higher level, you know, to our better angels and to --

CAMEROTA: Yes.