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Democrat Unveil Police Reform Bill, GOP Still Crafting Own Plan; More Cities Ban Chokeholds After George Floyd Killing; Trump Eyes Police Reforms While Ignoring Systemic Racism; Newly Released Video Shows How Black Man Died During 2019 Arrest in Texas; Georgian Officials Call for Investigations After Primary was Plagued By Problems; George Floyd's Death Sparks Both Political and Cultural Changes in the U.S. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired June 10, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:16]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A very good Wednesday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Poppy Harlow.

As a nation calls for change, lawmakers today will listen. Minutes from now a high stakes hearing on police reform begins on Capitol Hill. This is one day after George Floyd was laid to rest near his hometown of Houston, Texas. His brother is set to testify before the House Judiciary Committee as Congress weighs a sweeping police reform package unveiled by Democrats earlier this week.

We are already seeing tangible changes to police -- to policing in America taking place nationwide. Look at all of those cities, at least a dozen cities and municipalities including Washington, D.C. have now either banned or are moving to ban the use of chokeholds by police.

SCIUTTO: And remarkably you also have Democratic and Republican lawmakers speaking now about legislative changes. As for the president so far he is showing little interest in publicly addressing questions of systematic racism at the heart of these last two weeks of protests. CNN has learned that President Trump's top advisers plan to present him options on police reform, though, in the coming days.

Amid this, some good news on the coronavirus front. Dr. Anthony Fauci tells me that the effort for a vaccine is progressing very well. That he expects more than one candidate to be in advanced clinical testing in the coming months. We're going to have more on that story coming up. We know you're eager to hear it.

First, though, let's go to CNN's Boris Sanchez. He is live on Capitol Hill for more on today's hearing.

And Boris, I'm curious how this hearing might affect ongoing negotiations about legislative proposals moving forward. BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's a great

question, Jim. Philonise Floyd is set to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. He's one of several witnesses that Democrats are bringing up effectively to make the case that African-Americans are not treated well by police in this country. To make the case that systemic racism is real and that it needs to be addressed.

Now, you noted that Democrats and Republicans have effectively been working on two separate tracks to try to come up with some kind of police reform legislation. I want to show you now where they stand. On Democrats on Monday they unveiled their plan. It is wide reaching. It effectively bans chokeholds nationwide. It creates a national registry of police misconduct. It bans no-knock warrants as well.

The Republican side quite a bit more measured than that. It leaves things like chokeholds and that registry up to local governments. It does attach funding to the use of body cameras, though, to try to make body camera use much more prevalent in the United States. They do allow for a review, effectively a study of no-knock warrants so they're not going quite as far as Democrats on the issue.

It is still an open question what these two sides are willing to compromise on and of course President Trump will sign off on. As you noted, Jim, he has been silent about what kind of reforms he would support. In fact, he's remained steadfast on his law and order stance -- Poppy and Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes, you know, to see on the list an anti-lynching provision in the year 2020, the idea that that is necessary today is just remarkable.

Boris Sanchez, thanks very much.

So far, city and local leaders across this country are the ones making initial moves to tackle police reform.

HARLOW: That's right. Let's go to our colleague Brynn Gingras. She joins us in New York.

So all of these dozen or so cities and municipalities banning chokeholds, but then also New York state legislature with -- assembly with a major change.

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I mean, some major changes coming that way with the New York assembly, Poppy, as you noted, but let's go first to the chokeholds. We're talking about 12 states or cities, even internationally in France the entire country is banning the chokehold at this point, but a number of measures across the state, you see them there, making this a ban for chokeholds and other neck restraints maneuvers that police officers have been using in their actions.

New York state takes it an even step further. They criminalize the use of chokeholds now. This being named after Eric Garner, of course. He's the man who died in 2014 at the hands of a police officer who used a chokehold on him. So when I say criminalize that means the police officer can be charged with a felony and face 15 years in prison if it injures or kills a person while that police officer uses a chokehold.

But there are 11 bills in this state that the general assembly is considering at this point. Many of them have already passed and just need the governor's signature, just like the Eric Garner bill there. But there's a number of them that are still being considered and likely will pass and get the governor's signature.

I want to tick through a few of them, a very important one is reversal of Statute 58. And this a decades old law that basically kept police disciplinary records sealed. Now this is going to reverse that and essentially put police officers and their disciplinary records on the same plane as teachers and other state workers.

[09:05:10]

So that's big one. And that was one that was called for in protest after Eric Garner was killed. Another one, criminalizing false race- based 911 calls. Now this is in response of course to that recent incident that happened in Central Park where a white woman called 911 on a black man who was watching birds in Central Park because he asked her to leash her dog. So that was quick reform here.

Another one, New York state police will be mandated to wear body cameras and there are specific situations that those cameras have to be turned on. Now these are three of them that have passed the general assembly. Again, the governor has to sign them but a number of other measures still being considered and it's possible even by this week we could see the governor signing these bills which is a big step.

New York saying they want to lead police reform all over the country and we are seeing that here, guys.

HARLOW: Brynn, thank you very much. Major changes and ones coming quickly. We'll see what happens on the national level, though.

We are learning that the president may unveil his own police reform goals or initiatives as early as this week. Top advisers planning to present the president with options in the next few days.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Interesting to see what lines up with Democratic proposals, where this goes.

Let's get to CNN's John Harwood for more.

I imagine consultations with senators. Exactly how far do we believe the president is willing to go here?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I suspect, Jim, he's going to go as far as Republican senators are willing to go. We saw what Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and Jared Kushner on the Hill yesterday consulting with Republicans as they worked up their proposals, but we've seen a pattern in the past.

We certainly saw it after mass shootings when the president would come out and say, OK, I'm for X, Y and Z and then we would see that if Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans said no, no, we're not doing X, Y and Z, the president would back off and drop it.

So now we've seen after a very bad 10 days for the Trump White House and the Republican Party that Mitch McConnell is motivated. He's assigned Tim Scott, the lone black Republican senator, to work up some proposals. They did that as Boris was explaining earlier. They're less proscriptive than the House proposals but they're talking in some of the same territory which suggests that there is room for compromise.

But we don't know exactly what the president is going to be willing to sign because we haven't heard from the president lately. After this very searing period where he's seen his poll numbers drop, his approval rating drop, he's significantly behind Joe Biden, he has not engaged with the press. He has stuck to Twitter mainly. We saw that very counterproductive tweet he did yesterday.

The ridiculous tweet about the 75-year-old man suggesting -- in Buffalo who had been attacked by police, suggesting he was part of Antifa. The president has been a little bit more low key on Twitter this morning. So far as I have seen, last couple of tweets I saw before getting in front of the camera he was tweeting about the economy, the stock market. He had been watching "FOX and Friends" and complaining that New York state was hurting small business.

So he has been chastened. We'll see when he begins to publicly re- engage and send more concrete signals of exactly what he's willing to support even though his instincts are to division and get tough rhetoric.

SCIUTTO: Yes. I have been thinking, John, it's a good point about the comparison to prior moments following mass shootings. Various proposals, they go to the president's desk. There's all these discussions, they go nowhere. You know, of course you have the NRA opposing in those situations. There's similar constituency here. We'll watch this.

John Harwood, thanks very much.

We are now hearing from the family of a black man who repeatedly told police, uttered these words which have become sadly familiar, I can't breathe, before he died during an arrest last year in Texas. Javier Ambler died in Austin, while in police custody. This in March 2019. The body camera footage of that arrest was just released this week and it is -- well, Poppy, it's alarming to watch.

HARLOW: Very. Ed Lavandera brought us this reporting this yesterday then he subsequently has sat down with Javier's parents. He joins us now from Austin.

Good morning, Ed. What did they tell you?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Jim and Poppy. You know, what is staggering here is that none of this would have come to light had it not been for local reporting here in the Austin area that brought -- that broke the story of this video and the case of Javier Ambler which didn't generate a whole lot of headlines when he died in March of last year. And when we spoke with the family it was stunning to hear them talk

about how little information they have received in more than the last year as they continued to wait for answers. Maritza and Javier Ambler, the parents, sat down with us. We talked extensively about this case. They told me that it was just last week that they learned that all of this stemmed, that the traffic stop that led to their son's death, was over him driving toward cars with -- and not dimming his head lights.

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They were stunned to hear that that was what led to all of this and this is a chase that started in Williamson County, just north of Austin, Texas, and ended here in the Austin city limits. And it was the body cam from one of the Austin police officers that responded to this scene that brought this video to light. And this is a little bit more about what the parents had to say about the video that they say they refused to watch because it's too painful.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAVANDERA: You guys haven't watched it?

JAVIER AMBLER, FATHER OF MAN WHO DIED DURING 2019 ARREST: I don't want to watch it. I'm not prepared to watch it right now. I trust what people call and told me -- they saw this and they saw that, but I can't. It's -- it's tough.

MARITZA AMBLER, MOTHER OF MAN WHO DIED DURING 2019 ARREST: I just want some justice. I want these people to suffer exactly, you know, go to jail. You know? Be responsible for what, you know, your actions. They have been hurting people, killing people and just getting away with it. And they use their badge, they use their gun. They use their position to try to overcome people and it's not right. So as I say, if there needs to be retraining in how they're supposed to arrest people, they know they need to do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAVANDERA: So, Jim and Poppy, on that video you can hear Javier Ambler plead for help, say that he's not resisting, that he couldn't breathe several times. Ambler suffered from heart issues and in all of this, the Williamson County Sheriff's Office says that the officers that responded to the scene acted within the guidelines of the department -- Jim and Poppy.

HARLOW: Ed Lavandera, thank you so much for bringing us the words of his heartbroken parents.

Still to come, complete meltdown. And that is how the Atlanta general constitution has described primary voting yesterday in Georgia. Extremely long lines, frustration, outrage. Could this be a sign of what to expect in November?

SCIUTTO: Some people had to wait four to five hours. Will that be necessary in the fall? And promising news on the hunt for a coronavirus vaccine. Three

potential vaccines, testing for them will be funded by the government this summer. A development that Dr. Anthony Fauci describes as good news in the overall race for a vaccine.

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[09:15:00]

HARLOW: Chaos, confusion and very long lines. Georgia officials are calling for an investigation after multiple issues led to extreme delays for voting in Atlanta and across the state of Georgia yesterday. Among the issues, reports of voting machines just not working, a shortage of trained poll workers and voters standing in line for hours in 90 degree temperature.

SCIUTTO: Well, we're watching this story very closely and you should too because of -- in particular, implications for November. In Georgia, voting was extended more than two and a half hours in places that had issues after polls were scheduled to close. CNN correspondent Dianne Gallagher, she's been joining us from Atlanta. Diane, there's a lot of blame being shouted around here from state to the county level, et cetera.

But there were warnings in advance of this about introducing this new system without much training or time in advance. Tell us what happened here.

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim, I mean, look, this is the second time that primary had been postponed due to the pandemic, and anything that could have gone wrong at least here in Fulton County did. We were talking about the shortage of poll workers, and part of that was because so many of the people who work the polls in this country are older Americans, they're vulnerable to COVID-19.

So in some counties, like Fulton and nearby DeKalb County, they were still recruiting people the day beforehand. So it is inexperienced poll workers who were trying to operate a brand new system that requires a lot of poll-worker participation. So when you add in that inexperience, complete with the social distancing measures which reduce the number of machines that were inside the building, and made people stand further apart, it also consolidated the number of polls.

And that's been a problem in Georgia for a while, reducing those number of polling places that people have to go to. That always extends the line. Now, the Secretary of State warned because of the pandemic protocols that people were probably going to have to wait in line, that those wait times were going to likely be very long.

But Jim, we talked to people who waited five, six hours yesterday to vote in a primary election. Now, Georgia did do a robust vote by mail program beforehand. They've sent out absentee ballot request forms to everybody, that a lot of people in this particular county never got the absentee ballots they requested. So they weren't planning on voting at the primary, Jim, but they had to show up anyway, and we saw people waiting hours just to exercise their right. HARLOW: Yes, and good for them for waiting through all of that, to do

--

SCIUTTO: Yes --

HARLOW: That. Dianne, thanks very much. Let's talk more about the significance of this. As you said, Jim, come November -- our political correspondent Abby Phillip is with us, good morning, Abby. If you could speak to that issue of what this portends potentially for November, and then specifically some of the reporting on delays, disproportionately impacting minority and Democratic districts.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Jim and Poppy. I mean, this is something I've been talking to election officials about for weeks now. And a lot of people have said the same thing, which is that if states are going to try to expand absentee ballots, and they're doing it at the last minute, they might experience problems with volume.

That's what happened in Georgia. There were record numbers of people who chose to use absentee ballots, and state officials told me they were simply overwhelmed especially in Fulton County where there were delays in processing those ballot applications, and then people reporting delays in actually receiving those ballots. That's a huge problem for states.

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One of the issues is that time is of the essence. Some states are waiting, holding their breath to see if coronavirus is in fact resurging in the Fall, they may not have that luxury. And then, there's the issue of what's happening in person. I've talked to a lot of activists who make it very clear that particularly among minority voters, many of them prefer to vote in person, and they need to have that option still available to them.

And what we saw in Georgia was when you consolidate polling locations, you end up with massive lines. Long lines. And when those lines impact African-American communities, you see this disparity unfolding. Now, you know, we can't say it with a 100 percent certainty that this is the only place where those things happen. But many of the reports do seem to show that these long lines were in places where many black voters were voting, and that has been a problem all along.

States cannot simply rely on mail-in voting. Many people want to vote in person. Many people, if they don't receive their ballots will have to do that anyway. And I think that that's what we're seeing. The warning essentially here is, if you're going to make changes, you've got to do it early, and you cannot wait until the last minute.

SCIUTTO: Abby Phillip, let's be frank here. Consolidation of polling places has been used as an effort to deliberately limit voter access. We shouldn't mince words about that.

PHILLIP: Yes --

SCIUTTO: Is there evidence that in the state of Georgia, that was deliberate?

PHILLIP: You know, we are still looking into that, but Jim, you're absolutely right. That there have been historically efforts to consolidate polling places. But one of the things that's happening with the coronavirus is that in Georgia, in Fulton County, we were told that some of these polling locations, maybe they were schools or churches, those facilities actually did not want to host polling sites because they feared contaminating their facilities with the coronavirus.

And then on top of that, if they had polling workers who pulled out at the last minute because they got sick or because there were elderly or they were afraid of getting sick with the coronavirus, that exacerbated an already existing problem. So, one of the things that a lot of activists are looking out for are attempts by election officials to do those kinds of consolidation --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

PHILLIP: Because they know that it has a disproportionate effect on minority communities.

SCIUTTO: No question. Hey, listen, it's not just a question in Georgia and other states where there are voter ID laws, et cetera, and folks, we've got to keep an eye on this as November approaches. Abby Phillip, thanks very much. Still ahead, George Floyd laid to rest in the city of Houston where he grew up. The emotional service filled notably with calls for change. So we're going to speak to a voice -- Martin Luther King III, that's next.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AL SHARPTON, ACTIVIST: God took the rejected stone and made him the cornerstone of a movement that's going to change the whole wide world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Thousands of people in Texas bid final farewell to George Floyd yesterday. His death sparking now really a worldwide movement. Friends and loved ones say they hope that his funeral is just the beginning of real change. Joining me now to discuss is global human rights leader Martin Luther King III. Mr. King, thanks so much for joining us this morning.

MARTIN LUTHER KING III, HUMAN RIGHTS LEADER: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: You tweeted in recent days that "as my father explained during his lifetime, a riot is the language of the unheard." As you've watched protests around this country, also a new poll founding that 67 percent of Americans believe the criminal justice system favors white people over blacks. Do you believe that this time, protesters are being heard? KING: I do think that the climate has been created and that the

voices of blacks and browns and others who have been saying that there are problems within our system, I believe the entire nation and really the world has spoken on this issue, so yes, the answer is yes. The question really is, what will those changes be? And it is clear that our nation is poised for change and responsible change.

Obviously, you cannot change institutional racism overnight. It is a process. It's going to take some time, but it has to be responsible time this time.

SCIUTTO: House Democrats as you know -- as you know, have introduced a bill that has a number of concrete changes. I'll run through some of them now. A national ban on choke-holds by police. National police misconduct registry, that way police who are accused of abuse of power, that data stays with them in effect, other incentives for racial-based training, et cetera, stopping the use of military grade equipment.

As you look at those proposed changes, and now you do have some Republicans interested in some of those proposals, which do you think are most urgent, most necessary right away?

KING: Well, all of those that you just mentioned are most necessary and urgent because we -- what we do not know is the incidents that are not chroniclized because of someone missed that incident. Even though there are smartphones that are capturing these incidents. My imagination is there's probably more incidents that are being recorded. Now, that does not mean that policemen are bad.

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