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D.A. Recuses Himself from Alton Sterling Case; Is Race a Factor in Police Shooting Deaths?; Obama Travels to Dallas in Hopes of Healing Nation. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired July 12, 2016 - 06:30   ET

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

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[06:32:27] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to NEW DAY.

A district attorney in Baton Rouge recusing himself from the Alton Sterling death investigation. This as we learn more about the store owner who shot the video of that deadly encounter. That store owner is now suing the police.

Our Boris Sanchez is live this morning in Baton Rouge with more.

What do we know, Boris?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy.

That district attorney for East Baton Rouge Hillar Moore recusing himself from the case saying that essentially he is too close to the family of one of the officers involved in the shooting of Alton Sterling. He says he's simply too close to the family of Blane Salamoni. He says he's working with 400 homicide cases with his mother and that his father is part of the security detail in charge of looking out for the safety of the district attorney. He says he does not want any questions about his impartiality to color the case. So he is stepping aside for this one.

Aside from that, there are growing calls for security footage from that Triple S Mart where Alton Sterling was killed to be released. The owner of that mart is suing the Baton Rouge police department. He says the footage of confiscated legally without a warrant and that he was held for more than six hours, first in the back of a police car, and then here at the Baton Rouge police department, without being allowed to call his family or an attorney.

Very serious allegations. We've called the Baton Rouge police department for comment. They say they do not comment on pending litigation. But they say the footage is now on its way to the Department of Justice -- Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Boris. Those are important aspect of the situation. Thanks for staying on it.

We're going to go to break right now. Another important aspect you're seeing getting a lot of attention, but is it the right kind of attention. There's suggestions and statistics flying all over the internet and TV. Are blacks more criminal? We'll look at his. And are whites actually killed by cops more often?

Here's another number that shows that. We have the real numbers in context ahead.

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[06:38:19] HARLOW: The police shooting deaths of two black men in Minnesota and in baton rouge, Louisiana reigniting a polarizing debate over race and policing. Is race a factor when it comes to police shootings? How much so?

There has been so much rhetoric, we want to lay out the facts for you.

Our correspondent Jean Casarez has been digging to the numbers.

It's so important to get it right, especially when you're talking about the proportion of the population as a whole. But it's incredibly complex. Walk us through it.

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRSPONDENT: It is. Thank you, Poppy.

"The Washington Post" launched a real time database in 2015 that tracks deadly police shootings based on news reports, public records, and databases, and "The Washington Post" own reporting in an attempt to answer that very question.

It's important to note this is raw data and we don't know the full circumstances of each individual shooting. First, let's start with the shooting deaths in 2015 by race, 990 people were shot dead by police in 2015. And out of that number, more white Americans were killed than black Americans, 494 to 258.

But if you look at these numbers as a percentage of the population, a very different story begins to emerge. Blacks made up 13 percent of the population in 2015. But accounted for 26 percent of those shot and killed by police. Whites by comparison made up 62 percent of the population, but it counted for 50 percent of the police shooting deaths.

Now, this disparity also bore out when looking at victims of police shootings who were not carrying a weapon. Look at this, about 15 percent of black Americans shot and killed by police in 2015 were unarmed, compared with about 7 percent of whites.

Now, this year, 2016, there have been 515 people shot dead by police.

[06:40:06] That is roughly a 6 percent increase from what we saw in the first six months of 2015, suggesting if things don't change, we could end the year with even greater disparities -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Jean. That is a good starting point for a look at what happens, but also why. All right? The raw numbers certainly give you a sense of what happens here. But our next guest took on the question of why, and looked at the broader subject of police force and didn't limit the definition to just shooting deaths. His finding show even when police use nonlethal methods like pepper spray or a baton, an anti-black disparity, as he calls it, still exists.

Joining us now is the president and cofounder of the Center for Policing Equity and professor at John J. College of Criminal Justice, Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff.

Doc, thank you for joining us this morning. Give us what the headline is from your research. What is the reality?

DR. PHILLIP ATIBA GOFF, PRESIDENT & CO-FOUNDER, CENTER FOR POLICING EQUITY: So, thank you for having me on. Thank you for engaging with this in a serious way.

There's been a conversation for years now that we see racial disparities in law enforcement outcomes and why do we see that. On some side, they say, well, it's because of bias on the cops. On another side they say, what's really going on is there's more crime in those communities.

And so, we wanted to know whether or not crime was a primary or sufficient explanation for the racial disparities that we see in use of force across the board. Not just deadly force. So, what we did was we controlled for crime, right? For arrest, which is the best racial demographic data that we've got by demographics.

When we controlled for all offenses in the BJS data set, Bureau of Justice Statistics, we find a persistent racial bias, right, a racial disparity that doesn't favor black people.

CUOMO: And -- so let's tick off some of these notions. Well, the reason that you have more incidents with blacks is because blacks commit all the crime, 70 percent, 80 percent of the crime are blacks and that's why. It's just the number of contacts, not any other factor. Your take.

GOFF: Right. So, that's exactly the argument that we were trying to figure out. And in doing science when the data are as raw and as sort of preliminary as they are right now and frankly sometimes so poor, it's way easier to say, hey, that's not a sufficient explanation than to say this is the one explanation.

So, that's what we were looking at, is crime a sufficient driver. And it turns out just no in the simple that we had. Now, we in this particular report looked at 12 cities, but they were a fairly diverse range of city. So, we had transit police, we had county, we had city, we had some police departments that were majority white, some that were majority black and Latino, some that had no majority. And across every one of them, literally every one, when we control for all offenses, right, all the different crimes somebody might commit in that area, it turns out crime is not sufficient to explain the disparities that we see. So, when we're having these conversations about what's causing the

disparities, you know, contact has got to be one of the issues, because it's much more likely to happen that you have contact with law enforcement if you're black, but it's not sufficient to explain everything that's going on. And that's what we're finding in our report.

CUOMO: Is there anything statistical to support the notion that blacks resist more than whites?

GOFF: It's a great question. And the answer is unfortunately, and I hate to be a social scientist about that, we just don't know yet. And the reason is, you could have information about resistance that sometimes is recorded. Many departments do that. But it's always recorded after the fact and it's not recorded in the same context of -- well, I put my hand on my gun or I started using verbal judo, or speaking aggressively or directively to that person and then they got an attitude with me, you don't have a time course to it.

The data are not set up to have a good sense of what does resistance men and what did the officer that might have provoked it, or might have tried to escalate it. These interactions are really complex. They're dynamic. And without better data, in fact, the body cam images are going to be the best that we got. Without that, it's really difficult to get a good sense of who might be resisting more and if they're resisting more. Why?

CUOMO: And, Professor, a conversation for another time is why don't you have better data, and that is part of the sin of policing in this country, is that we do not track data there and the government loves to track data, but why not here. Conversation for a different day.

Dr. Phillip Goff, thank you very much for helping us understand a complex problem a little bit better.

GOFF: Thanks, Chris.

CUOMO: No question that this is a time for looking at the numbers, it's a time for protest, but also for leadership, and not just from politicians. We have two men coming up who've been speaking out about police violence for decades, rappers, thinkers, advocates. Q-Tip is joining us in our 7:00 hour to talk about what we all need to do to come together.

[06:45:00] And rapper Chuck D. is going to join us in our 8:00 a.m. hour to talk about the realities and what he sees as solutions.

HARLOW: Those are great discussions ahead.

All right. Police in Dallas, combing through evidence right now, interviewing witnesses to that deadly police ambush on Thursday night. Coming up on NEW DAY, we will speak with the deputy police chief about the investigation. That's at the top of the hour right here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) HARLOW: Terrifying moments at a courthouse in southern Michigan. Police forced to shoot and kill an inmate there. This all happened late yesterday afternoon when officials say the man grabbed a deputy's gun, shot and killed two bailiffs. After shooting the officers and another woman, the inmate tried to take hostages. Other bailiffs then shot him when he tried to run. The deputy whose gun was taken was also shot. He is, though, expected to recover.

CUOMO: British Prime Minister David Cameron is set to resign tomorrow after holding his final cabinet meeting this morning. Home Secretary Theresa May now gearing up to become the U.K.'s first female prime minister since, of course, Margaret Thatcher. Now, May says she is humbled and pledged a successful exit from the European Union.

HARLOW: In today's "New Day, New You", researchers discovering a secret weapon to fighting obesity -- water. I think a lot of us know that drinking water is good for you. Well, what they found is that obese people and people with higher body mass indexes are more likely to be dehydrated. They studied 10,000 adults and found that those who stayed hydrated and drank more water, water-loaded fruits and vegetables as well, they were able to manage their weight a lot better.

[06:50:09] So, that's why Chris drinks copious amounts of water.

CUOMO: Yes, to deal with my weight problem. Thank you, Poppy, for making comment, consumption for everybody.

All right. President Obama is going to Dallas today and it is going to be another hard, hard day, a mission of comfort. He's had to do this nearly a dozen times after just mass shootings alone. Who can really help a city and a nation that is divided in these situations to heal? We have a Dallas pastor joining us next.

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HARLOW: Today, President Obama and former President George W. Bush will honor the five fallen police officers killed in that ambush in Dallas. The community is heartbroken. The nation is trying to grapple with the shooting deaths of those officers and the deaths of two black men at the hands of police in just the past week.

[06:55:06] Let's talk about all of this. It is important, it is complex. The pastor of the Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Pastor Tony Evans, is with me.

And, sir, so our viewers know, not only is your church in Dallas. The police chief, David Brown, is a member of your church. And I just have to ask you, on Sunday, as you were preparing your sermon for him and for all of your congregation on Sunday, what went through your mind? What was your message?

TONY EVANS, PASTOR OF OAK CLIFF BIBLE FELLOWSHIP IN DALLAS: Well, we wanted to do a number of things. First of all, we wanted to express our heartfelt pain at the loss that took place and the lives of so many people and the devastation of families. We called all of our policemen and women forward, almost 75 or so, and we applauded them.

We also had to affirm the fact that in any bunch of apples, you can have some bad ones, but we need not vilify or generalize the police department when so many, almost all, are doing a marvelous job. So, we wanted to affirm them. But we also wanted to give from developing a message context, a theological reason for why our culture, country, and even our city is in the condition that it is in.

So, as I was working on my thoughts, giving that theological foundation is critical to understanding the sociological, racial, political and even economic realities that we're dealing with.

HARLOW: So, let's talk about that, because you wrote a fascinating opinion piece in the "Washington Post" about this. Let me read part of it for our viewers. You wrote, "Unless the Church," the church as a whole, not just church, "unless the Church steps forward collectively to fulfill its God-given role of influencing the conscience of our culture, our country will keep spiraling downward into the depths of fear and hate."

You know, this as the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump said that he believes the division will get worse, that we are leading into a very angry and divisive summer. What is the conscience of our culture right now?

EVANS: Well, we -- we are living in the devolution of the spiritual. That has opened up a vacuum for all these other things to occur. You know, Second Chronicles 15:3-6 says, "In those days, there was no true god, no teaching priest, no law, afflictions happen to everybody in the land, city rose up against city, state rose up against state, nation rose up against nation."

Then it closes with this phrase, for God troubled them with every kind of distress. If God is your problem, only God is your solution. That's why the emulsifier to bring these together this divergent, orientations, views and conflicts has to be the spiritual. And that's the job of the church.

So, our failure has contributed and we kind of been co-conspirators to the void that now needs to be filled by the spiritual dimension and the return of the divine value system.

HARLOW: So, how does the president help this nation get there? The religious, those are that do not consider themselves religious. We are all America across the board, how does he bring us there with his remarks today, as well as what we will hear from former President George W. Bush. What do you want to hear from both men?

EVANS: Well, first of all, we want to certainly comfort the families. But in addition to that, there has been a loss of values that are commonly shared. Those values you don't need to make up on your own. They are resident in our bible and also resident in our Constitution. So, when those values are being taught and trained in the home, in the school, and they're consistent for everybody, then we're operating on a consistent modus operandi. But when people are making up their own rules along the way, when

family breakdown doesn't transfer those rules and guidelines and value systems that emanate from a true and holy God, then, you cannot but expect the kind of chaos. So, I think a call to a commonly held spiritually based value system that will produce the kind of love and respect and honor and equity among people, that method needs to come across.

And if it comes across strongly, and if the spiritual community, the church community grabs it, walks with it, and disseminates it, we can do something and make a difference.

HARLOW: Pastor, thank you so much. Our hearts are with you all today. We appreciate it.

We're following a lot of news here this morning. Let's get right to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PROTESTERS: No justice, no peace! No racist police!

JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Institutional discrimination doesn't just exist in policing.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This is not how we want our communities to operate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police are moving in, guys. Police are moving in.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: It's time for the hostility against our police to end.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: There is too much hate. There is too much violence.