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Minnesota Family Speaks Out; Dallas Authorities Hold Press Conference on Shootings. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired July 08, 2016 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00] DIAMOND REYNOLDS, FIANCE OF PHILANDO CASTILE: Those were the only two questions asked.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: And what did Philando do? Did he comply with the request?

REYNOLDS: He absolutely complied to the request. He absolutely did everything that the police asked him to do up until he was killed.

CUOMO: Now, one of the things that comes across as your exchange with the police officer --

LARRY ROGERS, DIAMOND REYNOLDS' LAWYER: We need be asking what the officer was doing, what he was thinking.

REYNOLDS: Right.

CUOMO: Right.

REYNOLDS: That would be a better question.

CUOMO: Right, but I -- I can't --

REYNOLDS: What was the officer thinking?

CUOMO: I can't get that from you, though, Diamond, right? I mean --

REYNOLDS: It's really hard to keep -- I'm grieving, is I'm grieving -- I'm grieving the loss of a loved one, of a best friend, of a role model and a father figure to my child. You guys are constantly keep asking me all of these disturbing questions. And I've already made my statement. I don't want to keep reliving this moment.

VALERIE CASTILE, PHILANDO CASTILE'S MOTHER: (INAUDIBLE). Absolutely. Absolutely.

REYNOLDS: I want my justice. I want that police officer's name to go public. And I want people to know who did this to us. Who did this to our city, our state, and our country. It's not the -- it's not you, it's not you, it's not you. It's none of us. We didn't do this to ourselves. And I just want the world to know that.

CUOMO: Understood.

V. CASTILE: Absolutely. ROGERS: (INAUDIBLE).

CUOMO: Understood, Diamond, especially during your time of pain. We appreciate you coming on to talk about it.

V. CASTILE: We want -- that's all we want as a family.

CLARENCE CASTILE, UNCLE OF PHILANDO CASTILE: That's right.

CUOMO: That you want justice.

Larry, let me ask you something as the counselor for the family on this. What I'm trying to get at there is that there's all this confusion about what happened before the video. How do you think that we'll be able to find out the closest estimation of the truth of what happened there?

REYNOLDS: They're asking you that they want to know --

V. CASTILE: What happened before --

REYNOLDS: What happened before the video. How -- what would you say --

ROGERS: Well, I can answer that question.

REYNOLDS: How to determine --

ROGERS: There's dashboard cams.

CUOMO: Sure.

REYNOLDS: What happened to the police cameras that were supposed to be recording?

ROGERS: Yes, there's dashboard cams that are supposed to be --

REYNOLDS: He pulled up behind us. Two police officers came out. One on the driver and one on the passenger. So, therefore, there should have been police cameras recording.

ROGERS: We need the opportunity to get access to the information that should be public. This is a public municipality. They had cameras on the dashboard. We want the cameras. We want her phone back. It's her phone. She posted the video. You have the video. Give us that information. We want access to his background. We want -- my understanding is he's been on the force less than four years here in St. Anthony.

REYNOLDS: Yes.

ROGERS: There's a consistent pattern, if you look at a lot of these shootings. These are un --

V. CASTILE: Absolutely.

ROGERS: Inadequately trained officers -- V. CASTILE: Absolutely.

ROGERS: That are put in -- given badges and given weapons and they are -- they are --

C. CASTILE: License to kill.

V. CASTILE: Absolutely.

ROGERS: Wreaking havoc because of the inadequate training that they've received. We need access to this information. And we need to do our own investigation.

V. CASTILE: Independently.

ROGERS: And also have an independent Department of Justice investigation. That's what we're calling for right now. We hope everyone will join in that call so that everyone can see exactly what happened to Philando and we can have justice in this case.

C. CASTILE: Yes.

V. CASTILE: Absolutely.

CUOMO: Valerie -- Valerie, we do know that the police have put out at least a couple of the names of the officers who were there. We're going to learn more about them. But what do you want people to know about who your son was so that he's not just remembered for how he died, but how he lived? What do you want people to know about who was lost?

V. CASTILE: I want people to just pay attention to the marches and the protesters that has gone on and the protests as far as where he -- he worked -- he worked. And people as a whole know him and they understand him. and they shared their independent --

C. CASTILE: Thoughts and feelings.

V. CASTILE: Thoughts and feelings for him.

C. CASTILE: He was a good man.

V. CASTILE: So, he was a good man.

C. CASTILE: He lived inside the law.

V. CASTILE: He was a good son.

REYNOLDS: He was raised very well.

V. CASTILE: And he was a law-abiding citizen. And he died by the law. That's as far as I can tell you about that.

REYNOLDS: He was the ideal man for every -- every mother would want their daughter to have someone like my babe. Every woman would want a hard-working man with no kids like my babe. Every woman would want a man to accept their child out of wedlock that was not his. Everyone would want that man to be their son, their brother, their husband. Anything. Because he was a family oriented man. He was raised by these men and this woman right here. And he would never even harm a fly. He was very happy. He was very calm. He was the most laid back, lovingest person. If you guys know anything about cancers, you guys know that we are very emotional people. We are very loving, whole hearted, sensitive people. And, yes, he may have died against his will, but we -- I and my daughter will not let his name go down in vein.

[08:35:04] C. CASTILE: We will not.

REYNOLDS: And that's all I have to say.

C. CASTILE: We will not.

V. CASTILE: The family will not let him --

C. CASTILE: That's right.

V. CASTILE: His death be in vein.

C. CASTILE: Thank you.

V. CASTILE: This is not over. We need justice. And that's the bottom line. Without balance and checks, there's only chaos. That's the only thing left. If you don't have balance and check in the Department of Justice, then there will only be chaos.

CUOMO: And, Clarence, you had said earlier that you still haven't heard --

C. CASTILE: Yes.

CUOMO: From the authorities the way that you want to going from being able to identify your nephew's body for Valerie to go in there and see her son, and you haven't heard about the state of the investigation either. Is that accurate?

C. CASTILE: That's accurate. But as I said earlier, the body has been claimed, and we will be visiting with him today. The investigation, we haven't heard anything in regards to that.

V. CASTILE: Nothing.

C. CASTILE: But we're looking forward to hearing something soon, I hope. But we'll be doing our best to get justice served after Philando is laid to rest.

CUOMO: And what do you want --

C. CASTILE: And that's what we're working on next, getting my nephew laid to rest --

CUOMO: All right.

C. CASTILE: And then we'll work on getting justice served. CUOMO: Clarence, Valerie, I know how difficult this is for you to be

dealing with a nephew and a son. We appreciate you being with us and we'll stay on the story.

We're now taking you back to Dallas. We're listening to the mayor right now with the latest on the ambush of the police there.

MAYOR MIKE RAWLINGS, DALLAS: A calm determination to make our city safe, and to arrest anybody that did us harm. I also want to thank the county, Judge Jenkins. I want to thank the FBI. I want to thank the governor. The lieutenant governor flew in last night. The president called me from Poland. And all your commentators have wished us well and are praying for us. And I want to say from -- from our -- our heart, we feel that. And so, thank you.

I am now going to tell you some not good news for you reporters. And that is, we've got a criminal investigation going on. And our number one job is to make sure the citizens of Dallas are safe. So we're not going to tell you anything about the suspects and we're not going to answer any questions on that. We will, when it's the right time. Now is not the right time.

But a lot has happened in the last five or six, seven hours since we talked. I guess it was early in the morning. And I want Chief Brown to give you an update on that.

I'm proud of him. He's been working so hard these last few hours. We've been with families and we've been trying to make sure that the city is safe this morning, and I believe it is.

Chief Brown.

CHIEF DAVID BROWN, DALLAS POLICE DEPARTMENT: Thank you, mayor.

We're hurting. Our profession is hurting. Dallas officers are hurting. We are heartbroken. There are no words to describe the atrocity that occurred to our city. All I know is that this -- this must stop, this divisiveness between our police and our citizens.

To update you on what's transpired since we last spoke, let me walk through the standoff that had occurred -- that was occurring at El Centro on the second floor of the college there in downtown Dallas. We cornered one suspect and we tried to negotiate for several hours. Negotiations broke down. We had an exchange of gunfire with the suspect. We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on the -- its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was. Other options would have exposed the officers to grave danger. The suspect is deceased as a result of detonating the bomb. The reporting that the suspect killed himself is not accurate. We have confirmed that he's been deceased because of the detonation of the bomb.

[08:40:28] Our hostage negotiator did an exceptional job getting this suspect to talk before he died during the hours of negotiating that eventually broke down.

Now I want to share with you some of the comments from the suspect.

The suspect said he was upset about Black Lives Matter. He said he was upset about the recent police shootings. The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers. The suspect stated he will eventually -- that we will eventually find the IEDs. The suspect stated he was not affiliated with any groups, and he stated that he did this alone.

The suspect said other things that are part of this investigation so that we can make sure that everyone associated with this tragic event is brought to justice. So as the mayor said, we won't expand on any further on what other suspects we have interviewed or looked at or their status until we get further into this investigation and get closer to a conclusion of what and who are all involved.

But let me just say just some closing comments about Dallas police officers and DART police officers. Some of the bravest men and women you'd ever want to be associated with. You see video footage after video footage of them running toward gunfire from an elevated position, with no chance to protect themselves and to put themselves in harm's way, to make sure citizens can get to a place of security. So please join me in applauding these brave men and women who do this job under great scrutiny, under great vulnerability. Who literally risk their lives to protect our democracy.

We don't feel much support most days. Let's not make today most days. Please, we need your support to be able to protect you from men like these who carried out this tragic, tragic event. Pray for these families.

I spoke with the families of the deceased and the injured. They are not having a good time trying to deal, absorb this, trying to understand why, and they need your prayers. So please join us in helping us comfort the grieving officers' families. And I trust that soon, because we're working very diligently in processing the crime scene finding -- to find evidence to bring any other suspects to justice that were a part of this, but please pray for our strength through this trying time.

Thank you.

RAWLINGS: I want to add that there are public safety officials that protect our cities and our institutions all across America every day that aren't police officers. And we lost one of those last night. A DART officer was one of the victims.

[08:45:10] And I want to just take a moment and say the professionalism of the DART organization was great. And I appreciate better school police officers, campus, college police officers, standing shoulder to shoulder with our police officers. And that's the way we work.

Chief Brown told the victims' families last night and the police officers that he was a man of faith. And I am a man of faith too. And that we need prayers and prayer is good. So today, at 12:00, at Thanksgiving Square, a leadership group of interfaith ministers will be leading us in that prayer. I would ask that if you're at your home or at your office or at your school join us today at noon, in that spirit of prayer, to bring our city together and our country together, to heal wounds, not create them.

Thank you.

Any, any questions that were not off limit?

(INAUDIBLE).

RAWLINGS: Yes.

BROWN: The injured officers have -- most of them have been released. There are some that will need follow-up. I'm not going to go into any detail of what types of injuries. Their families are being very private for obvious reasons right now. But again -- excuse me. What's the question? I'm sorry.

RAWLINGS: (INAUDIBLE) critical.

QUESTION: (INAUDIBLE).

BROWN: Yes, they're doing better. Some have been released. Some -- some -- some of their status is, they're still needing more treatment. But they're being very private about any further details about their health.

QUESTION: Chief, you have worked, and your department has work with the community, have good relations. Can you speak to that, and to the fact that something like this, you know, could happen?

BROWN: So we have to be right 100 percent of the time in the way we police this city. Suspects like this have to be right once. They don't have to work very hard to do cowardly acting like this, to snipe at our officers from elevated positions and to ambush them from secreted positions around corners. All of that hard work is not for naught. This city has shown great support for this police department, this may and council. The city manager's office have supported this department and these officers, and we expect that to continue. And this community, I'm born and raised here. Dallas is a great city. Our officers will continue to put themselves in harm's way to protect these great citizens. So it's worthwhile.

RAWLINGS: I want to -- I want to brag just for a second for -- for -- if anybody hasn't heard us say this. This police department trained in de-escalation far before cities across America did it. We're -- we are one of the premiere community policing cities in the country. And this year, we have the fewest police officer related shootings than any large city in America. So we are working hard to improve, and there's always room for improvement, but we are best in class, we feel.

BROWN: Well said.

QUESTION: Chief, (INAUDIBLE) talking to a, you know, (INAUDIBLE) suspects. But the people in Dallas watching at home, are you confident (INAUDIBLE). BROWN: No, I'm not going to be satisfied until we turned over every stone. We've got some level that this one suspect did do some of the shooting, but we're not satisfied that we've exhausted every lead. And we're not going to be satisfied until every lead is exhausted. So if there's someone out there that was associated with this, we will find you and we will prosecute you and we will bring you to justice.

QUESTION: As of right now, it's a total of four suspects?

BROWN: We're not counting or expanding on who or how many. We're going to keep these suspects guessing.

[08:50:05] QUESTION: Chief, can you talk about the -- I know your first focus right now is on the officers and the investigation, but can you or the mayor talk about the impact this would have on the way protests or demonstrators (INAUDIBLE).

RAWLINGS: Well, I -- I'm going to let Chief Brown make any strategic decisions. But I think it's important for citizens to realize that we want to give everybody their freedom of speech. We've been through several protests in the last five or six years and they've all gone in a safe manner. But the chief makes decisions at times that people could be critical of, deescalate it too much. Do you put too much body armor on? If we're all being critical of those things, just think about today. This is what you're risking if you don't do it right.

And so from a policy standpoint, we are -- we believe in the right to protest peacefully, and these were peaceful protests until this happened. But we also have to believe in keeping our police officers safe. And I know I'm going to redouble my efforts on that.

QUESTION: Chief, how does this change (INAUDIBLE).

BROWN: Again, I just want to expand on the mayor's comments. Police officers are guardians of this great democracy. The freedom of -- to protest. The freedom of speech and the freedom for expressions. All freedoms we fight for with our lives. It's what -- it's what makes us who we are as Americans. And so we risk our lives for those rights. And so we won't military our police standards, but we will do it in a much safer way every time, like -- like we chose to do at this time.

We had an adequate amount of officers at this scene. And we were blocking traffic and doing all the things to protect people's right to protest and their free speech. We are not going to let a coward who would ambush police officers change our democracy. We're not going to do it. Our city, our country is better than that.

QUESTION: (INAUDIBLE).

QUESTION: Can you say at all that (INAUDIBLE) having some mental stability problems and just looking for an opening to react, or is this something organized? Can you talk about that?

BROWN: All of those questions are -- would just be speculation to answer. We can't get into the head of a person that would do something like this. We negotiated with this person. They seemed lucid during the negotiation. He wanted to kill officers. And he expressed killing white people. He expressed killing white officers. He expressed anger for Black Lives Matter. None of that makes sense. None of that is a reason or legitimate reason to do harm to anyone. So the rest of it would just be speculating on what his motivations were. We just know what he said. That's what he said to our negotiators.

RAWLINGS: Hey, guys, thank you. We still have a lot of work to do. We're going -- we're going to take off.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, let me recap what you just heard there. That was a news conference from Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and the chief of police, David Brown. We learned a lot of new information about what developed overnight in the murder of five Dallas area police officers, five Dallas PD, one member of the Transit Authority.

Number one, there is a suspect dead. How he died? We learned that he was killed with an explosive device. An explosive device on a robot that law enforcement used to neutralize him. There had been a standoff for hours and hours.

CUOMO: There was an understanding that he may have killed himself. The mayor told you and then they repeated at the press conference that they believed that this robot was the safest way to deal with this man during the standoff, and that's what took his life.

BERMAN: And that's what killed him.

We also learned that Dallas police, at this point, this man told him he was the only one involved in the shooting. He also said a number of other things, including that he's been upset about Black Lives Matter. That was the exact words used by the Dallas Police chief, upset at white people, wanted to kill white people, wanted to shoot white police officers specifically.

[08:55:19] So there's a lot to discuss on this.

CUOMO: Right.

BERMAN: Joining us now is Charles Blow, former NYPD chief of police department, Philip Banks, Jeff Gordon and Harry Hauck, Van Jones joins us as well, as well as Evan Perez.

CUOMO: Right. Now, look, Charles, when we were listening to them, there was a very -- it was a very mixed bag there, right? There was a call for unity. There was a clarifying that Dallas is, you know, one of the best police forces of a major city in the country in terms of community relations and homicide rate. There was a request that we don't make this day like most other days, and there's an emphasis on unity. Then there was this information that is going to go right into the teeth of people's fears about who did this and why, which was, maybe one, maybe more people who are motivated by anger against police.

CHARLES BLOW, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Absolutely. I mean what you got from that press conference was that they were identifying this guy as a terrorist who also was a motivated by racist kind of beliefs. He was targeting specific people. He was targeting white people. I mean that -- that is the kind of very definition of terrorist and racist, right? And you can't gloss over that. But what you have is a person who has basically co-opted a cause. And that doesn't help anybody. He said, you know, the police chief said he specifically said that he's not identified with any group. So he's not necessarily -- he may not be identified with Black Lives Matter, but he was, according to the police chief, sympathizing with the concept around it. That doesn't help anybody. It doesn't -- it actually does -- you know, and I just keep -- I keep wanting to come back to the idea. I have kids too. These people have families at home. It doesn't bring anybody back. It doesn't bring those officers back. It doesn't help. It doesn't help the families who are seeking justice.

CUOMO: But is it proof that the talk is too hot, that police are targeted, that they are painted with a broad brush when these excessive force cases come up and this is the result.

BLOW: I think that what we are doing right now in America is we are all living with some ambient level of terror. That people feel like there are people in minority communities who feel like they are victims of that ambient terror. I believe that police officers can legitimately make the case that they are also -- feel some ambient level of terror. And that is, I think, what we as Americans have to kind of step back and say, we don't want a society in which everybody is living with an ambient level of terror. And that has to stop.

BERMAN: One of the key questions is, is Dallas safe this morning? Were there more people involved? The Dallas police chief seemed to indicate that the suspect said he acted alone, and right now they have reason to believe he may have been the only one to fire shots, but they're leaving no stone unturned.

CUOMO: They have other people in custody.

BERMAN: Let's get to -- let's get to Evan Perez right now for the latest on that.

Evan, you've been working your sources. What are they saying about the idea that this man acted alone?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think, John and Chris, that I do think that the -- it' increasingly clear that there was only one shooter. I know last night, obviously in the chaos and in the early parts of this investigation, understandably, and given the cophany (ph) of the sounds of the shots, that people thought there was two or perhaps more shooters who were carrying out this attack. But, really, a lot of this just doesn't make sense overnight. I think I said that to you guys over the last couple of hours. And it really does look like it was one man who tried to -- who carried this out.

Obviously, the Dallas Police are not going to rest. They're going to try to see if there's anybody else who might have supported this, might have known about this and whether or not there's anybody who provided the weaponry, and any -- any -- has any responsibility for what -- what was perpetrated there. CUOMO: Well, Evan, what about the people in custody? Are your sources telling you that they were suspicious at the time but maybe not connected?

PEREZ: They were suspicious -- they were suspicious at the time and, obviously, the Dallas Police have not released all of them. And so with there -- those -- that questioning is still ongoing, Chris, but it does appear that this man did not have any ties, certainly to international terrorists. There's no ISIS relationship yet that has been uncovered by the early parts of this investigation. And really he may have just been what he said there. He was obviously deranged and he was motivated by hatred. A domestic terrorist, if you will, but he was motivated by his hatred of white people, apparently a hatred of police officers, and felt inspired by this Black Lives Matter movement. Obviously, we don't know that he had any ties at all to this group or to this march that was taking place last night in Dallas.

[09:00:00] American, was speaking there, and he said that police do feel under a lot of pressure. He said, we don't feel much support most days. Don't let today be most days.