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Ten Candidates Selected for First GOP Debate; Clinton Quick to Pounce on Bush for Unscripted Comments on Planned Parenthood; Jonathan Ferrell Shooting Death Trial; Sheriff's Office Defends Officer in Handcuffed Boy Video. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired August 05, 2015 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:32:49] MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: The lineup is set for tomorrow's first Republican presidential debate. Ten candidates making the cut, based on the average of recent polling.

They are, here's your lineup -- Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Chris Christie and John Kasich. The seven who missed the cut will have the option to participate in a pre-debate forum.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Hillary Clinton blasting Jeb Bush over the battle to defund Planned Parenthood. A Twitter war broke out after the former Florida governor said he's, quote, "not sure we need a half billion dollars for women's health issues." Of course, he says he was talking Planned Parenthood, not women's health. But Hillary Clinton didn't take it that way. She said women's health is clearly not a priority for her Republican rival, and that Bush is, quote, "absolutely, unequivocally wrong".

The Bush camp insists their candidate meant to say, again, that he was talking about Planned Parenthood, and that money should be redirected to other women's health clinics. But, certainly, there are two ways to look at it.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Controversy growing around that video of a child with ADHD handcuffed above the elbow, crying and screaming in pain. The sheriff's office in Kenton County, Kentucky, now defending the officer involved.

CNN's Martin Savidge joins us live with the very latest.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

It's amazing how fast this video and reaction to it has spread. One thing is very clear. Everybody may be talking about it, but not everybody sees it in the same way.

So, to that point, counter point. Let's begin now with the mother of the 8-year-old child. She is speaking out through her attorney. She explains why the lawsuit was brought.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KENYON MEYER, FAMILY ATTORNEY OF HANDCUFFED CHILD: The mother of this child was absolutely devastated. She loves her son very much. No child, as we all know, is perfect. But, nobody ever expects that when they drop their child off at school, that the child is going to be disciplined by law enforcement officer with adult handcuffs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAVIDGE: The keyword there is discipline, because that's where this debate seems to be falling now. The ACLU is saying that this child was being punished for something they couldn't help, which is the medical condition that this child had.

[06:35:03] Meanwhile, if the sheriff's department is correct, they would say, no, no, no, it wasn't punishment, they were restraining the child to prevent further harm to the child or other children. And to that end, the sheriff now has come out in full support of Deputy Kevin Sumner, that's the man with the handcuffs.

And here's the sheriff had to say, quote, "I steadfastly stand behind Deputy Sumner, who responded to the school's request for help. Deputy Sumner is a highly respected and skilled law enforcement deputy and is an asset to the community and those who serves."

One last thing, a day to remember, August 19th. That's when classes resume in the Covington Independent School District. Both the children were told they are going to be in respective schools in their classrooms, as well the sheriff's deputy. And you can imagine how difficult that could be for all involved -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: We are going to talk about this more coming up on NEW DAY.

Martin, thank you for that.

SAVIDGE: You're welcome.

PEREIRA: A little bat boy with a passion for baseball was honored last night at a Kansas college league game. Kaiser Carlile's dad, overwhelmed with emotion following the tragic death of his son.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHAD CARLILE, FATHER OF KAISER CARLILE: Out here at the ball field, of course, honoring Kaiser, so, it's a tremendous -- something that I would have never dreamed of.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: A moment of silence was held for the 9-year-old. Still, Kaiser's boisterous spirit filled the stadium. The player's uniforms donning the boy's initials, KC, baseball cards commemorating Kaiser also were given out. His little sister even honoring her big brother, oh my getting choked up, by throwing out the first pitch.

Kaiser died over the weekend after being accidentally hit in the head by a batter on the team. You can imagine that player is racked with pain knowing.

CAMEROTA: It's just an accident.

PEREIRA: It is an accident.

CAMEROTA: In a moment how life changes.

PEREIRA: Yes, yes.

CUOMO: All right. Let's take a little break. There are new photos that could make a difference in a big case we are following. Jonathan Ferrell killed by a police officer. There are pictures of the scene in the trial. What do they say about the Charlotte, North Carolina police officer who was there and what was happening? What kind of altercation might there have been before the fatal shots?

This case just got more complicated. We'll tell you why, ahead.

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[06:41:15] CUOMO: There was really significant testimony in day two of the Jonathan Ferrell case. He, I hope you remember, is a Florida A&M football player shot to death by a police officer after he got in a car wreck and he went looking in an unfamiliar area for help. Photos of the crime scene were shown for the first time. Now, they're very graphic, they are so much so that Jonathan's mother was forced to leave the courtroom.

Prosecutors say Ferrell was surprised by the officers and took off running for his life. But attorneys for Officer Randall Kerrick say Ferrell charged him, and there was testimony that the officer had injuries consistent with being punched in the face. Now, these are new elements.

So, let's figure out what they could mean. We have attorney and radio personality, Mo Ivory, and we have CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney, Danny Cevallos.

Thanks to both of you for being here.

Danny, do you believe that presented at this trial, you now have the stuff of something happened before the shooting that could have motivated the officer's actions?

DANNY CEVALLOS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: You have the beginning of those facts, because you look at the list. You have a 911 call that has officers on the scene prepared for at least some kind of home invasion. That's what's going on in their mind. And remember, officers are trained constantly that everything is a potential threat. Officer's safety is a mantra. But then --

CUOMO: But do you think you have the proof that he was hit?

CEVALLOS: Yes.

CUOMO: It's going to come down to that.

CEVALLOS: You're absolutely.

CUOMO: Not what he thought --

(CROSSTALK)

CEVALLOS: He must have that reasonable apprehension of imminent, serious, bodily harm.

So, if you create that with -- even -- now, you may look at red marks on the face and say, those are minimal. Those are not a big deal. But at the same time, we know that there are things like closed head injuries that don't show any sort of serious blood or abrasions or lacerations. And those can be serious, too.

So, it's going to still turn on officer testimony, creating that put the jury in that moment and have them in that reasonable fear of very serious, bodily harm.

And while you don't need abrasions, cuts, those are certainly helpful. They go a long way towards establishing the officers and corroborating a story.

CUOMO: When somebody is dead, especially, and, you know, you don't seem to have any strong motivation on the other side to be a threat, right? Which is that's what created such outrage here.

So, Mo, if it is true, OK, if it winds up rising to the level of evidentiary sufficiency, you know, at trial, that it is impressive to the jury, that something happened, this blow to the guy's face seems real to them, that there seems to be the mixing of DNA between these two men that shows some type of altercation, what does that mean to you in terms of where the analysis goes?

MO IVORY, ATTORNEY & RADIO PERSONALITY: Well, Chris, what it means to me is that Jonathan was still unarmed. I simply think we need to see the video.

I think, you know, what a lot of people have forgotten in this case, there is an actual video of what went on. Both sides are saying that the video will tell the story of what happened.

So, before I jump to any conclusion that, oh, the officer was attacked and felt he was in grave danger, bodily harm, or even of being, you know, attacked by Jonathan, I just simply want to see the video. I don't know -- I don't know for sure that those injuries came from Jonathan. So, before I can say that, that's what I would like to see.

CUOMO: All right. So, here is why I'm setting it up this way because I hear you. I agree with you. We want to see the video. The dashcam hasn't been released, yet, at the trial. In all likelihood it would be because both sides say it works for them

IVORY: Right.

CUOMO: Remember, if this is the situation where the cop shoots the man in the back as he's clearly running away from him, you don't go to trial in so many of those cases. That it's so obvious.

If this winds up is some kind of weird angle off the dashcam and you can't really tell, you are still going to wind up back at what do you make of the evidence?

[06:45:06] IVORY: Sure.

And what is under this poor kids fingernails and what's on the guy's face. That is going to be relevant. It can't be just that he's unarmed. A lot of people that get shot are unarmed.

IVORY: Yes, absolutely. And so, you do want -- and remember, there's a reason why the video hasn't come out, yet. Obviously, the defense is trying -- as many police departments try to do, which is what we need more legislation for is the immediacy of release of those videos.

But, you know, this is part of the problem. We don't know the video won't be altered. We don't know that it hasn't been tampered with. There's so much we don't know.

But let's just say, Chris, from what you are saying, that there was some kind of an altercation. We still know that Jonathan was shot 12 times, even after he was already down in a pool of his own blood. He was shot again. And then when he began to crawl away, he was shot more times after that.

So, I mean, I understand that there could be the idea of him having some kind of altercation with the police officer. But what we know for sure is that he was shot several times, even after he was down. Then, he was kept from getting any kind of help when the medics got there and they asked if they could turn him over to find a pulse.

And the officers said no. Don't turn him over. They didn't try to save his life.

So, he could have been an injured, unarmed person getting out of a car going to a woman's house. But instead, now he is dead.

CUOMO: Now, look, no matter how it goes out, we are at trial. We know there are facts with the officers here.

IVORY: Right.

CUOMO: That's why they are at trial, right, because you don't go to trial if the facts are in your favor. Most likely, certainly as a police officer.

But how do you handle the aspects that Mo is laying out here on the defense side?

CEVALLOS: There are two ways of attack -- two ways of approaching it. One side, the prosecution is going to say that police officers shoot and assess the threat. So, shoot and assess, shoot and assess. So, it can be said that for each one of those bullets, this officer must justify each firing in turn.

On the other hand, if you are the defense, you're going to make the argument as is often made in these cases, which is that a person can cover 20 feet in a split second so that when that officer is firing, even though there are many shots in a row, during that time, he may be shooting and assessing the threat in that split second, then saying he's still coming at me, he's still coming at me. Humans can close yards and yards of space in split seconds. That's going to be key. He is going to have to put the jury there and have them in the exact same fear of his safety as he felt at that moment.

CUOMO: All right. To be continued, because Mo and Danny have done a good job of saying where the questions lead you in the trial, but it's always about what the evidence that comes out next. Certainly as Mo laid out, and as you certainly agree, this dashcam video.

So, let's see what happens next. Those are the questions raised that certainly take a turn in the trial.

Mick?

PEREIRA: All right, Chris. A lot of questions about this disturbing video of police handcuffing a young boy. What does the incident say about the training of officers on how they interact with special needs kids within the school system? We are going to discuss that, next.

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[06:52:22] PEREIRA: You have likely seen by now the video of an 8-year-old handcuffed by a deputy at a Kentucky school. It is sparking all sorts of outrage.

Discipline in schools is now under scrutiny. Should police training be re-evaluated especially when it comes to children with special needs children in the school system?

Joining me now is Lisa Thurau. She's the executive director and founder of Strategies for Youth. It is an organization dedicated to improving interactions between police and youth.

And, Lisa, I want to get to that portion, the interactions in a minute. But, first of all, we have to address this video, so hard to watch to see this fellow in such -- frustrated. He's having a meltdown, he's agonized.

What kind of long term psychological effects on a child that young could something like this have on him?

LISA THURAU, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, STRATEGIES FOR YOUTH : Well, I'm not a psychologist, but I work with many psychologists. It's clear that this interaction is going to traumatize that child and make them very fearful of police. I don't think that's the outcome that we desire here.

PEREIRA: So, we know that some of the schools, some schools are using, they are used often in Kentucky, the school resource officers or SROs. They are being used in elementary schools in a way to sort of do, when we were going to school, what the vice principal or principal would necessarily do. It seems like they are being relied on to discipline students.

What is your concern there?

THURAU: Well, there seems to be much confusion in the United States about what's the difference between discipline and punishment in Kentucky. It's been made very clear that using restraints such as handcuffs is against the law. It is not allowed in the public schools.

And across the country, we see lawsuits like this because officers are using this kind of restraint, sometimes at the request of a schoolteacher, sometimes at the request of a school principal. And, usually, the attention is solely on the officer. But it's a system's response to children who are not behaving well and it's disproportionately used on children with disabilities and emotional behavioral disabilities, and children who suffered a lot of trauma and can't self-regulate in their classrooms.

(CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: This is what we know about this young fella this point because they are keeping his identity private for obvious reasons. We do know that he has ADHD. We understand from what the family is saying that he suffered previous trauma.

[06:55:00] So, the question here is, do these special resource officers, school resource officers, are they trained? Is this just sort of sheriff's deputies plunked into the existing school system or are these people that are trained specifically to deal with the population of elementary school aged children and then potentially a group of children that have these special needs?

THURAU: In our experience, they are not trained. The school districts don't require them to be trained. In Kentucky, the state Department of Education regulations require them to be trained.

I would guess if this officer had been trained, he wouldn't have used these tactics. We travel around the country training school resource officers. We find they haven't learned anything about normative development, anything about mental health issues, children experience or how trauma exposure affects their behavior in school environments. They know nothing about learning disabilities and behavioral disabilities.

And they are completely unaware of the legal protections to which these children are entitled.

PEREIRA: Right.

Well, you can almost imagine that, because I know this officer has been vilified. But he seems to be taking his training with adults and adult criminals and sort of using it on this child.

So, here's what the concern is and I know it's the kind of work you are focusing on, is the effect it is going to have on children to have -- this is often their first interaction with law enforcement, right? And it's that important first interaction that sort of, I don't know, it lays the pavement for how future interactions will go, correct?

THURAU: Well, across the country, we find that officers are getting about 1 percent of time of the total training academy time to learn about juvenile justice issues. In Kentucky, not an hour in the training academy, which is 754 hours long, is spent on how to work with children.

So, Kentucky is not doing a good job to equip and train its officers to work with young people. This, in turn, leads to them using adult approaches on children and youth. And we know adult approaches don't work with children. That's why we have pediatricians and why we treat them differently and why they have special protections under the law.

Law enforcement is lagging in this way. We have been pushing and legislation pushing and requiring SROs to be trained so that you can avoid this kind of incident.

PEREIRA: OK.

THURAU: This is harmful to the police, too. It undermines their legitimacy --

PEREIRA: We have to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate this.

Hopefully, we'll be able to continue this conversation another time. Ms. Thurau, joining us here on NEW DAY.

We are following a lot of news today. So, let's get to it.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The stage set for Republican debate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Much of the attention on one candidate, in particular.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: People are tired of incompetence. If I have to bring up deficiencies, I'll bring up deficiencies.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's going to win any confrontation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They don't want just a fighter, they want someone that can fight and win.

CAMEROTA: Jeb Bush drawing fire.

JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm not sure we need a half billion dollars for women's health issues.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I guess it's not a priority for him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Another controversial video is adding fuel to the fire.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Planned Parenthood is actually willing to sell fully intact fetuses.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are seeing attacks on people's ability to get health care.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wreckage home is going to be from a Boeing 777.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A lot of hopes and fears resting on today's investigations. Is it MH370?

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota and Michaela Pereira.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to your NEW DAY.

The top ten Republicans revealed for tomorrow's first GOP presidential debate. Who will share the stage with surging Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, and how will they and those left on the sidelines handle Trump?

CUOMO: So, you have the intrigue and you have the issues. Planned Parenthood has caused a stumble by Jeb Bush, and an opportunity for Hillary Clinton. But she has a new problem of her own -- a new FBI investigation into the security of her private e-mail system.

So, we have team coverage on all of this. Let's begin with CNN political reporter Sara Murray live in Washington -- Sara.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes, good morning, Chris.

The wait is over. We now know which candidates will be on the stage. But the big question is, what's going to happen with Donald Trump? Is he going to go on the attack? Is he going to be respectful of his fellow candidates?

Let's take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MURRAY (voice-over): Donald Trump riding high in the polls on the eve of the first GOP debate.

TRUMP: The poll numbers are not only good, I mean, they are phenomenal. You know, we just got numbers from South Carolina which are through the roof. Iowa, New Hampshire, not only the national number. So, I'm very honored by it.

But what it really shows is that people are tired of incompetence.

MURRAY: The billionaire presidential candidate will take center stage in Cleveland Thursday planked by nine rivals.

Last night, it was announced who made the cut and clinched a coveted spot in the prime time debate.