to his family in the next 48 hours now that all three autopsies, that's local, private, and federal, are now complete. coming up, we will hear from the police captain who is trying to extend the daytime calm into after dark as well as the woman who says she's spoken to officer darren wilson's family and is ready to tell his side of the story. but first, the presence of the national guard has done nothing to calm the nighttime violence. the cops are blaming the escalating chaos on non-ferguson residents who are looking to exploit this chaotic situation. captain ron johnson, who's heading up efforts there, says he's trying to protect the peaceful protesters who are fighting to get their voices heard, and he's advising them to come out during the daylight so folks he calls criminals can not hide behind them. 78 people were arrested overnight. a handful were from out of state. the faa is now also extending a partial ban on flights above

ferguson to provide clear air space for those police helicopters. we start now inside ferguson. we've got nbc's krcraig melvin. i know you were in the thick of things last night. this morning you had a ride-along with captain ron johnson. tell us what the latest is there. >> i can tell you that officer-involved shooting that happened in north st. louis, that's about three miles from here. word of that shooting not really affecting what's happening on the ground right here just yet. i don't know if word has necessarily travelled. that could also be because there are not really a lot of protesters yet. as you indicated there, captain johnson has called on those peaceful protesters to come out during the daylight to protest during daylight hours. i can tell you over the past few hours, we've seen very few protesters period. so it remains to be seen whether we're going to start to see some of that happen. you mentioned the ride along. i spent about 90 minutes in the

back of a patrol car with captain johnson. it was a fascinating -- we went top several businesses. businesses that had been vandalized, businesses that had been looted, businesses that had been shut down and reopened in some cases. these business owners -- one business owner in particular, tears in his eyes, begging captain johnson to restore order, restore peace, restore calm, so they could continue to operate their family owned business. it's a convenience store that's been in their family for 20 years. we also spent some time inside the neighborhoods of ferguson, talking to the people who have been directly impacted, directly affected by what has happened on the ground here for nearly two weeks. and there is a tremendous chasm. you alluded to it at the top of the hour. there's a tremendous chasm between those peaceful protesters and the folks who show up every night to just

raise hell. and captain johnson's new strategy appears to be, as we've talked about throughout the course of the day here, to try and separate those two groups. tear gas has been used here a lot. we've reported on that a lot. i asked him today about the use of tear gas. it is indiscriminate. we've seen women. we've seen children who have suffered the effects of this tear gas. i asked him about that during our ride along. he basically said there was no other recourse. if they don't use the tear gas, there's no way for these officers to defend themselves. they can't push the crowds back. they can't keep people at bay if they don't use the tear gas. we went into the neighborhood, and it was interesting to hear the residents talk to the captain about the tear gas as well. take a listen to that exchange. >> do you think that our response to try to stop, we should be doing that or we should be out here doing what they're doing?

>> you're doing the right thing. if y'all wasn't doing this, people would be dead in the street. >> y'all are okay with the tear gas? >> not so much the tear gas. >> that's a little too much. >> it goes through the house. >> i know the smoke and the tear gas seems so horrible, but how do you confront somebody with a gun? you can't expect us to walk up with somebody with a gun. i could tell you that tear gas or smoke, if it makes them run away, we'd rather them run away. i'd rather my eyes tear up a little bit and maybe your eyes tear up a little bit. but i'd rather them run away instead of having a gun battle. >> that's true. >> okay. and again, the folks that you saw there, the folks you heard there are people who live literally two blocks away or so from where michael brown was shot. one of the interesting things we heard, one of the chief complaints from people who live in this area is, you know, about 12:00 or 1:00 in the morning

when they clear this main drag, so to speak, and they flush the protesters, they flush that group of people out. they pour into these neighborhoods. the police officers, law enforcement in an attempt to keep them from coming back out, essentially have them trapped in these neighborhoods. a number of people, this morning, this afternoon have said, you know, for two or three hours it's complete pandemonium in the neighborhoods. they hear the sirens, the lights, they have these small children who can't go to sleep. and that's something that law enforcement said they're trying to figure out moving

conference of. nbc's gabe youth yegutierrez is scene. >> we're still on the corner. it's become a very tense situation in the last few minutes. the police chief has now -- is now conversing with some of the demonstrators here. they're asking a lot of questions, obviously. it brings back a lot of memories on what just happened a few mimes away. as you heard in the press conference, police say that a suspect is dead after an officer-involved shooting. two officers shot at this black male suspect. came out of a convenience store actingç erratically, accordingo the police chief. when the officers arrived, they, according to police, the suspect brandished a knife a few feet away from the officers. he even said, just shoot me, to

the officers. and that's when according to police the officers opened fire, killing the suspect. again, 23 years old. the police chief isn't releasing a whole lot more information than that. obviously it's a very delicate situation here. the investigation being led by the st. louis metropolitan police. krystal, back to you. >> all right. gabe gutierrez, thank you so much for that. for more now on the deep historic division that's fueling the anger that we're seeing currently in ferguson, let's bring in friend of the show jeff smith. jeff served as a missouri state senator representing st. louis. he's now assistant professor of politics and advocacy at the new school. thanks so much for being with us. >> thanks so much for having me. >> you've been writing about the historic factors that have brought the sort of racial and economic segregation that we've seen in ferguson and in st. louis at large. talk to us about that historic context and also how that's fueling the anger and resentment we're seeing today. >> okay. it's kind ofç complicated, but

let me start with this. st. louis city broke off from st. louis county in 1876. st. louis county is a patchwork of 90 municipalities. most are very small. but most have their own police departments and public safety apparatuses. in order to afford that, they have to sometimes really strain on their budgets. they've developed a real overreliance on revenue generated from traffic stops. as blacks have migrated from north st. louis city to north st. louis county, unfortunately, there's been an institutional lag in their ability to elect people to positions of power. and that's why you see the big disconnect between the power structure in ferguson and the actual people. and there's also a big disconnect between the police force, as we know, which is just 6% black, and the people, which are 67% black. because the towns disproportionately rely on traffic stop revenue to fund

their towns, they're constantly pulling over young black males. i used to get pulled over all the time in that area. for me, it was merely an inconvenience. formany young black males, it's a way of life. >> jeff, i want you to stick with us. i want to bring in "boston globe" reporter. the violent protesters who really are seeking to confront the police officers, as krystal mentioned early, 78 were arrested last night. some of them have been traveling from all over country just to be here. and these folks are the ones making it very difficult for everyone involved. the big question is, how do you separate these two? we've heard from captain johnson saying, you know, let's have them protest at different times of the day, the peaceful ones in the afternoon and the viabiliol ones at night. you've been there on ground in the evenings, during the worst of the worst. how difficult is it for the police officers to differentiate between these two groups?

>> i mean, i don't know that there's any real way to differentiate between the protesters. because they're all here. they're all attempting to raise their voice and get a unified message across, which is justice and a change in the system. the problem is they have different tactics and different ways of going about doing it. so folks who have bandannas around their face, who haveç hs pulled low, who have nothing but their eyes shown, it gives an indication that their way of protesting might be different than people protesting with their families, babies in their arms. when you're all in a crowd and there's lots of people together, i don't know how you separate those groups of people. >> and that's a difficulty we're seeing that faces police and reporters and others trying to make sense of the situation. we also showed some of the breaking news out of st. louis, the met toropolitan police. that looks to be a very

different scenario. initial reports are of an armed individual. many other differences as well. one of the necessary shortcomings of the breaking news coverage is you look up and see, are we seeing police dogs? that was a different news conference with nothing to do with the brown conflict. do you want to say something? >> it's also important to note whereas you have this huge inequity, disparity between the police force in ferguson and the constituency, in st. louis city itself where this incident appears to have taken place, it's about half and half black/white, the city and police >> let's get back to talking about ferguson. of course, the media has become part of the story. a lot of people, including the police, are suggesting some of the bad behavior is somehow, let's say, motivated by the presence of all that media. folks wanting to be seen acting out in front of the police. others are saying the arrest of journalists, which have

continued through the last few days, are showing how reckless the police there are. the arrest of the getty photographer, scott olson, was a flash point. he was speaking to our andrea mitchell earlier today. let's run a bit of that. >> several times i was told that, you know, you have to be in the press pen. several times i challenged it until the last time i was arrested. my colleagues also, they've experienced the same thing. so it's just -- it's a blatant violation of the first amendment. it shouldn't be tolerated. i encourage other journalists to challenge it. >> do you feel you and the other journalists out this are free to report as you wish? >> i mean, for me personally, i feel as though i'm free to report as i wish. it's a volatile and tense situation. i think reporters have to be they have to use their head. they have to ensure we do no harm, that we're not exacerbating the situation, not

just with police but with protesters themselves. sometimes you have to provide a certain amount of sensitivity distance. just because you don't want top insert yourself in the situation. this is about, you know, justice for michael brown. this is about the issues happening in this community. it should not be about us as the reporters. >> jeff, we're fortunate to have you here because you have this knowledge of this community. but of course, you are a national person. you understand america as a professor at the new school here in new york. this is a national protest. this is a national problem with deep generational, structural roots. do you think that folks understand that this is not just a ferguson issue, this is an american issue? >> i think the attention that people are paying to this issue, i think a lot of the country is captivated by this right now. so i think it does suggest that people are beginning to recognize that. you know, it's really an issue as well of economic opportunity. in inner cities throughout this country today, you have neighborhoods just like ferguson, in many cases worse

than ferguson. much of north st. louis city is much rougher thanç ferguson. you have neighborhoods with 20%, 30%, 40% of young males of color who are unemployed. whenever you have that high a percentage of unemployed people who don't feel like they have a stake in the community, aren't tied in, woven into economic fabric of a community, it's going to be really hard to get them to understand that destroying the community is a problem. >> yet, when you say that -- and krystal, this is something we're going to continue to talk about, one frustration is a lot of times in other violent incidents, we talk about getting justice for the victim, full stop. we don't necessarily have a discussion that, to me, relates sometimes to notions of collective punishment. the idea of what else is wrong in this community? a lot of communities have a lot of problems, all kind of problems. that is the balance here. yet, as we see some of these protesters act unlawfully, that's going to generate questions about what is going on and how lawful are people. >> and i do think that's part of why this has become such a big national story. because people sense that some

of the conditions on the ground there in ferguson that you know so well, jeff, are not specific just to ferguson. thank you, both, so much. coming up, the legal angle versus the court of public opinion. the back and forth information battle. but next, howç will holder eer arrival change what's happening in ferguson, if at all? and we continue to follow that breaking news in st. louis, just three miles outside of ferguson. police officers have shot and killed a suspect they say was acting erratically and brandishing a knife. vo developments out of there as well. the summer of this. the summer that summers from here on will be compared to. where memories will be forged into the sand. and then hung on a wall for years to come. get out there, with over 50,000 hotels at $150 dollars or less.

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let's get right back to gabe gutierrez for an update on the police shooting in st. louis proper. gabe? >> hi there, toure. thankfully within the past few minutes the crowd, the tension has eased. the police chief went over to the crowd and explained exactly what happened here directly to the crowd. there was some tension. protesters, demonstrators holding up signs, saying hands up, don't shoot. obviously tensions running high here just a few days after that shooting in ferguson. as we've been reporting, a 23-year-old black male suspect shot by two police officers. police say after he was acting erratically after leaving a convenience store. you know, the interaction between the suspect and officer, that's still part of the ongoing investigation. police say the suspect walked into the convenience store, bought two energy drinks and paid for them, walked out, then walked back in and got some sort of pastries and got into a verbal back and forth with the

owner, threw the past ries outside of the convenience store. police say he walked out. several people called police. when officers arrived on scene, he wasç confronted by these tw officers. the suspect said something to the effect of, just shoot me, and brandished a knife, according to police. that is when the officers opened fire and killed that 23-year-old black male suspect. now, we don't know anything about the officers. we know they've been put on administrative leave, which is typical in these types of situations. of course, tensions running very high here in st. louis, not far from where the shooting happened in ferguson just a few days ago. within the past few minutes, tensions have eased just a bit because the police here, a different agency than the st. louis county police. the st. louis metropolitan police. the chief actually went over and talked directly to some of the

spectators. as i'm standing here right now, you may be able to hear some of these demonstrators are starting to once again raise their voices and saying, hands up, don't shoot. an obvious separate autopsy. we are waiting for the release of those results. an earlier private autopsy found brown was shot six times, including twice in the head. matthew miller is a former aide to attorney general holder. he joins us now from washington with an insider's look at what

the doj is capable of in a case like this. matthew, welcome. what can the attorney general do in this situation, and how has he become more efficacious being there? >> i think his primary goal tomorrow is going to be to try to calm the waters. just setting aside for a minute what the department can actually do eventually. he's there tomorrow because obviously people are concerned not just about the shooting that happened last week, but there are years of unaddressed grievances here and a real belief that there wouldn't be any kind of accountability or fair investigation of what happened. eric holder since last week has been trying to send messages through public statements that doj is going to conduct a full, independent, thorough investigation. if the facts merit charges, they won't hesitate to bring them. i think that's why he's going to ferguson tomorrow, to send a message to the community that there will be an independent accounting of what happened.

and if there's reason to hold the police officer accountable, the federal government won't hesitate to do so. >> and eric holder proactively decided to go down to ferguson. i think that says a lot about who eric holder is. you've spent a lot of time working closely with him. give us a sense of who eric holder is and how you expect him to be received once he gets down there. >> you know, if you go back to his first days as attorney general, even before that in his confirmation hearing, he said one of the things that he really wanted to do as attorney general was to restore the civil rights division, which had really eroded in the few years before he took office. and that was both for policy reasons. he'd seen as a young attorney at doj how the division could be used. it was also his experiences as a black man in america. his speech after the trayvon martin case or after the zimmerman acquittal last year where he talked about his

experiences of being racially profiled and the tough conversation he had to have with his son. these are issues he feels very personally. and i think he'll bring his experience as the nation's chief law enforcement officer but also as the first black attorney general to bear tomorrow in trying to reassure people that, look, there can be a fair investigation here. we're going to do it. and if there are charges merited, you don't have to worry that we're going to look the other way. we're going to be tough and do what's necessary. >> and i think all of that is extraordinarily important. i understand that justification very well. i think there's a sense among folks there that there isn't a lot of trust with the local authorities. perhaps there's more trust with federal authorities. still, this has to be seen as a f fairly extraordinary step. i'd be hard pressed to think the last time a sitting attorney general decided to go physically to the place of unrest as he's planning to do in this case.

>> it is extraordinary. all of the steps he's taken so far have been extraordinary. their public announcement of the federal autopsy was if not unprecedented, very unusual. the statements from the attorney general where he has explicitly disagreed with the way the local police have handled the case, with with the overmilitarization on the streets and their selective release of information. you see those types of disagreements happen all the time, but they're usually kept behind closed doors. he's been very public in signaling that he doesn't think this has been handled correctly. you know, i think that's partly why he'll be there tomorrow. >> yeah, and you saw also your former colleagues, doj officials, that they said it would be prejudicial to release that video. local police did it. then the attorney general voiced this afterwards. to be fair about it, they've tried to intercede when it matters before these decisions then also have been transparent

and telling folks when there's disagreement. the laws that would be used here in a potential prosecution would be deprivation of rights under color of law. that would be the main hook the civil rights division has. they have to look deeply at what exactly happened, what was the mental state of the officer, et cetera. walk us through your experience working for attorney general eric holder. normally fbi investigators would work on that and have plenty of time. this is special. you have the president speaking several times a week about the case. how are they harvesting this information and being careful about it as they do that? >> well, they're clearly doing it as quickly as they can. they're acting very aggressively. the announcement they've had 40 officers canvassing the streets talking to witnesses, it's a big number for a case like this. you have the head of the criminal division inside the civil rights division who is in ferguson directly supervising the case. they're throwing every resource

they have available at this. that doesn't mean they'll be able to come up with an outcome quickly. as you said, this ultimately comes down to not just what happened but being able to prove the officer's state of mind at the time. you'd have to show that he knew he was using excessive force, and that's very difficult. >> matthew miller, thank you very much for your time. up next, eric holder goes to ferguson, and how is president obama like captain ron johnson? howard fineman on the politics of all this. that's next. if i can impart one lesson to a

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the fastest office plant. so why wouldn't i choose the fastest wifi? i would. switch to comcast business internet and get the fastest wifi included. comcast business. built for business. in just a few minutes, president obama will depart the white house and head back on vacation to martha's vineyard with, of course, plenty of political baggage and much else. when he appeared in the briefing room monday, the president urge calm and understanding around the death of michael brown, while avoiding specifics of the case. >> in too many communities around the country, a gulf of

mistrust exists between local residents and law enforcement. in too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. >> howard fineman is editorial director for "the huffington post" and an msnbc analyst. thank you so much for joining us. one of the things that struck me, pew research came out with new polling showing sharply divergent views of the way america is looking at the events unfolding in ferguson. divergent by race with about 80% of black americans saying that the ferguson incident and ferguson eve events raise impor issues about race, while only 37% of white americans feel the same way. also sharp divisions between democrats and republicans. and it just reminds me writ large that we have become so polarized that even as events are unfolding, we're viewing them in completely different

ways. >> i don't think there's any doubt about it. i think that st. louis in the history and demographics of st. louis are emblem attic of that kind of divide. as jeff smith was saying, it's a divided city. it's a city with islands of separate jurisdictions around the county. and people who don't see each other don't talk to each other, don't know each other and who react with fear, especially when people from the black community are confronted by others. and i think that the president is not only the only commander in chief we have, he's also the only president we have. and that gives him a particular responsibility in difficult circumstances to try to be the ultimate peacemaker and arbiter here. he's not a court. he's not the congress. but as the president, he's got to be the calming influence. my sense of st. louis, and i

know it well, is that things are getting more chaotic and divided by the moment. there are six different jurisdictions involved -- six different law enforcement agencies involved, not even counting the city of st. louis, which is involved in that current incident that you've just been reporting about. >> howard, i want to throw out a thought and see if you can roll with me. i always appreciate your mind and your thoughts. i think you're going to be able to flow with this. i see some interesting parallels between ron johnson and barack obama, both of them are black leaders who came to their jobs with their race having given them extra significance. they seem to be more than just leaders. they were able to save the situations that they were entering in large part because they were black. then in the prosecution of their jobs found out that, of course, you can't be a black leader in terms of being a black person first. you have to a leader first. that constrains what you're able to do. >> well, i think it's possible to be both. i think you have to be both.

and i think if anybody can do it, president barack obama can. my sense of mr. johnson is that he can do it too. i think that somebody has to be able to surmount race even while acknowledging the deep divisions that there are. i think when president obama was elected and when he was re-elected, a lot of american people, both white and black, thought that he had the ability, the intelligence, the personality, the character to be able to bridge that divide. it's not easy. it will never be easy. we're now watching st. louis in realtime. what strikes me here is that many cities, if they were getting the kind of minute-by-minute, instant-by-instant twitter-fed, instagram-fed, vine-fed coverage of policing in their city, we'd be similarly riveted to the way we are in st. louis. st. louis is living in real time, the life of america. and that requires the

president's presence. he said eric holder went on his own, i think in order to take the burden off the president for now. but the split screen we're seeing is going to require the president in the other half of that screen in order for uses to get through and past this situation. >> yeah, and do we get through it as something where we're all debating the facts of something we just don't have a conclusion on yet and a process that, as the president and everyone on down, has said has to play out, or do we find a way to pick up on premise of krystal's question to move forward on some of these issues? you know, senator rand paul's essay about this issue, its racial dynamics and militarization got a lot of well-earned, positive attention because it was policy leadership in response to this fluid situation. you make a great point, howard, which is you put a lot of these policies under the microscope, and you see areas where we could improve them. yet, if we become too polarized on this and are only focused on

the fact that, yes, you have protests for long enough and some people will come and do bad things and they need to be arrested too if they're breaking the law, do we get side tracked from a moment where we might make some reforms? >> part of the problem here is the whole country and the whole world, especially in the age in which we live, is impatient and is not willing to wait to know what the facts really are. we have suppositions at this point. we really don't know. when we know the facts as best as we can ascertain them in a court of law and not just instantaneously via digital media, then we'll be able to come together, one has to hope. and president obama is going to have to take the lead in that. that's his job. he's got to do it. and i think he will. >> howard fineman, thank you so much as always. still ahead, another light story, what's going on in iraq. have we turned a corner in the fight against isis? but next, as new details are revealed about both michael brown and the officer who killed him, the pr case versus the court case.

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as we continue our extended coverage of the situation in ferguson, missouri, we are going to take a look at the intersection of the law and public opinion. and like many other cases, this one has both sides trying to influence the latter to at least color the former in ferguson. it is almost fire and counter fire. in this segment, we're going to focus on last friday and yesterday. so on friday, the police chief issued the name of the officer six days after michael brown was shot and then killed. he also released this, the tape of what police say is michael brown during a confrontation with a clerk inside a convenience store, even while admitting one might not have anything to do with the other. yesterday, an autopsy done at the request of the brown family dominated the morning news cycle. even though the conclusions were few and far between. in the afternoon, this was played nationwide. it's dubbed by "the dana show"

that airs on kftk in st. louis, as the officer's version of what happened. in it, a caller named josie says she's a friend of darren wilson and details what she says officer darren wilson's significant other told her. her account starts when officer wilson says he told brown and his friend dorr yan johnston get out of the road. according to the officer, they refused. >> i believe at that point he called for backup, but i'm not sure. but i know he pulled up ahead of them, and he was watching them and then he gets the call in that there was a strong-arm robbery and they gave the description. he's looking at them. they got something in their hands that look like it could be the cigars or whatever. so he goes in reverse back to them, tries to get out of his car. they slam his door shut violently. i think he said michael did. then he opened his car again, you know, tries to get out. as he stands up, michael just bum rushes him, shoves him back into his car, punches him in the

face, and then of course darren grabs for his gun. michael grabs the gun. at one point, he's got the gun totally turned against his hip. darren shoves it away. the gun goes off. well, then michael takes off with his friend. they get to be about 35 feet away. you know, darren, of course, protocol is to pursue. so he stands up and yells, freeze. michael and his friend turn around. michael starts taunting him. oh, what are you going to do about it, you know, you're not going to shoot me. then he said all the sudden he just started to bum rush him. he just started coming at him full speed. so he just started shooting. and he just kept coming. so he really thinks he was on something. because he just kept coming. it was unbelievable. and then, so he finally ended up -- the final shot was in the forehead. then he fell about two, three feet in front of the officer. so that's why the stories are

going around, oh, he's shot execution style. i think some people saw the shot to his head. of course, ballistics will prove he wasn't shot in the back like the other people are saying, the quote/unquote witnesses. that's his version of what happened. >> so joining us now, we have attorney and former federal prosecutor caleb mason, and attorney ann bremner. anne, i want to start with you. why do attorneys feel the need to influence public opinion? aren't they just tainting the prospective jury pool? >> that's the whole idea. you know, the fact is public opinion in this case, every day there's something new coming in that could basically inform what a jury decides. jefferson said, you know, public opinion, it has to be expressed. the agitation makes the waters pure. so this course you can sport and say we're just trying to get all the facts out there for the public dissemination. >> caleb, you're a former federal prosecutor. what's it like for a prosecutor when you have the world sort of

outside your door banging for action? i know prosecutors have told me you're supposed to block all that out, but as a human being, that's got to be impossible. >> it is. it's extremely difficult to ignore the fact that cases might be high profile and a lot of people might be interested in them and might be wanting a very quick result. unfortunately, that's not the way the criminal justice system works. you're not going to have an instantaneous result. justice, if it comes, will come slowly. what prosecutors can do, however, i think is manage the flow of information in a much more effective way than it appears has been done here. particularly, you can avoid the apparent selective release of information that whether or not calculated appears to have been an attempt to what looks like smear the victim. that would be inappropriate. extremely ill advised in my opinion. >> and anne, another piece of the public perception is a generally very favorable view of

police officers in society at large. talking points memo interviewed a former federal prosecutor who said, it's really hard to convict a police officer. they get a super presumption of innocence. we don't want to believe that the people we hire to protect us could be the people who want to harm us. so we give them a huge benefit of the doubt. that's a challenge here as well. >> exactly. and another quote she had is there's two trials, one outside the court and the one inside the court. we all have the presumption of innocence. they may start out ahead, but there's cases that say police officers have civil rights too. so in a lot of ways, you know, they're looked upon as door mats. it's kind of a mixed bag. in a case like this, we want to believe in cops. i've defended cops for 20 years. i've seen jurors over and over and over again agree with the police officer in every use of force that i've seen. >> right. and the use of force, when it does occur, is a police action. people look to the cop often not only as credible for the reasons you said, but also as the

expert. because they know protocol. a lot of other people don't. that's something that often comes up. caleb, we just played something there from local radio that some people are looking to as a potential argument for the officer. we haven't independently confirmed whether that caller actually knows the officer. we'll have to wait a long time before we find out directly from the officer, direct evidence on the real side of the story in full. and yet, we do know systemically i'd like you to speak to the difficulty when das are asked to deal with these kind of cases, we're not there yet, a grand jury is going to look at this, but if a da is asked to prosecute an officer, they often have to turn around after doing 99% of the cases where police work and the local cops get them their convictions, they now have to turn it around and antagonize that very local police force, which can be difficult. >> that's right. that's why every prosecution agency in the country from doj on down to county district

attorneys have specialized units that prosecute police officers and other law enforcement agencies. i think the biggest difficulty that's going to be facing potential prosecution in this case is the apparent lack of an audio or video record of what happened. as many other people i think have commented in recent days, the availability of technology to record what police officers see and hear in the course of their shifts would largely a lot of public outrage here and certainly make the decision about whether to prosecute and if so how to prosecute a lot easier. what we have right now are apparently conflicting eyewitness accounts. it would be great to have some definitive or at least more definitive video or audio evidence of what happened. >> absolutely. caleb mason, anne bremner, thank you so much. we'll be back after this.

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breaking news, you're looking at live pictures out of rarz where a rescue is under way to free people trapped in a flooded home. this sort of rescue has been happening nonstop throughout the day after heavy rains near phoenix. we will of course continue to monitor the situation. >> more breaking news. out of the middle east where long-term cease fire talks appeared to have collapsed

today. they were ordered home after a barrage of rocket fire from gaza, the israeli military retaliating with air strikes, which you see there. it will leave cairo tomorrow. the only goal now, extending the broken temporary cease-fire. the month-long violence killed 2,000 palestinians and nearly 70 israelis. a possible turning point in iraq now where today iraqi forces emboldened by u.s. air strikes launched a military operation against isis to retake the city of tikrit. this comes after they fleed from the mosul dam, littered with destroyed vehicles and weapons and kurdish flashed victory signs and that is where the president called on the iraqi government to step up politically, even as the u.s. role seems to expand bo--

>> a new broad based inclusive iraqry government, one that develops a national program to address the interests of all iraqis. without that progress, extremists like isil can continue to prey upon iraq's divisions. >> nbc's eian williams is live, tell us what you know and how much of this relgts to the u.s. role. >> reporter: that offensive seems to have stalled, ground to a halt this afternoon. iraqi forced launched the assault first thing this morning at dawn, clearly encouraged by the victory at the dam monday. by this afternoon, a military spokesman was saying they ran into challenges and difficulties as he put it, mines and roadside bombs and snipers slowing them down. that doesn't disinstruct from the fact that there is a great deal more optimism here than

we've seen before. but it's been a real -- the retaking the dam. to do that they had close air support from the u.s., some three dozen strikes over the course of the weekend and monday. that was not available to the iraqi troops who were closing in on tikrit today. also today, another offensive, this one a humanitarian effort, huge effort by the u.n. to bring much needed aid to the estimated half million refugees displaced by fighting in the northern part of iraq. they are bringing in tents and blankets and food by land and sea and air, all over the course of the coming days. one of the biggest efforts they have ever launched they say. but clearly huge needs and hope that both on humanitarian front we could well see a turning point here with a u.s. role critical. >> back to you guys. >> thank you for your reporting. former army captain in iraq,

michael green, who heads the truman national security project. thanks for being with us. >> good to be back. >> maybe you could talk me down. what i remember was the president saying we have a humanitarian intervention, have to present genocide and go into those mountains and then broke the isil siege and seeing continued air strikes. maybe that's good policy, maybe, but it certainly seems from my understanding in reading about this and nbc reporting in iraq, to be a different policy than strictly a humanitarian intervention. >> we've always had a clear national security interest in helping iraqis and regional partners deal with isis. it's easy watching violence in the middle east for the better part of a decade, but get that not everybody is focused on it and easy to be numbed by the violence. isis is different and more dangerous than anything we've seen since 9/11. they control more resources and territory than any extremist

group -- >> it's not humanitarian, right? >> it's a big part of it. when you have a group executing children on youtube, it's very easy to see a humanitarian moral imperative and security interests come together. the president has been clear all along and i thnk he's right, what we've seen recently is all of the right things, we're seeing a transition of power in baghdad towards the a leader we hope can be more inclusive and bring the sunnis back in. we've seen the sunnis respond, over 25 sunni tribal leaders have said we'll follow this new leader. it unprecedented. kurdish and iraqi military forces, that's something we haven't seen before and isis can be beaten on the battlefield. that's major. prior to that they looked like an invincible force and now they are on the run. and thanks to u.s. leadership and hard work and cooperation by iraqis. >> just a week ago the iraqi government is taking more

control of the situation in large part with our help. do you see this as a real turning point? do we have to do the future looks pretty bright from here? >> i think this is far from over. if you look at the history of isis, they want to carve out a geographic caliphate. once you killed a child and videotaped the act and post it on youtube, it's hard to imagine how you retire from your line of work. they can never stop fighting basically ostracized themselves from the rest of the human race. >> michael, many people are saying that there is no military strategy, we have to create a unity government where sunnis feel they are getting more from the iraqi government than they get from the islamic state. >> i think there's no u.s. only mystery strategy, that's critical. it takes a united iraq, more of

these hopeful signs, a unified and represented iraq that fights on behalf of all iraqis, supported by a region that supports the fight against isis. this is a threat that's so bad that you're seeing a normally completely divided middle east come together in recognition that they've got to pull together and hang together or hang separately against isis, it takes continued u.s. leadership and politically especially both in the region and within iraq to continue the progress we've seen. i don't see isis going quietly. it's got to take not just political report but military work to push them back and eventually stop them. >> michael, you're the head of a progressive national security organization, a lot of progressives were deeply opposed to the iraq war to start with, is it a tough pill for progressives to swallow to be going back in essentially to iraq even now with just air strikes?

>> i think it's a difficult pill for me to swallow, absolutely. when you have a clear national security threat like this and when you have a clear moral imperative, let's not forget it's very rare you can point to real progress in the middle east where we can feel good. 40,000 yazidis were going to last week and they are not now. that's progress. >> thank you for your expertise and time. that does it for our show. "now" with alex wagner starts right now. another shooting in a community already on edge. it is tuesday, august 19th and this is "now". >> we've got to bring calm to this situation. >> national guard isn't stopping the violent protests in ferguson. >> tenth straight night of violence. >> the anger boiling over. >> tried a new tactic, new curfew. >> the peace here hung by a

string. >> police fired several rounds of tear gas. >> police say they were targeted by a small criminal element using the protest as a cover. >> it's hard to identify exactly who is criminal and who is a protester. >> almost at times seemed like there were two fergusons. >> the city and county has mishandled this from the very beginning. >> patience is in short supply. >> we want to see some type of justice. >> at what point does the town of ferguson say enough is enough. >> justice will bring peace. >> will the officer involved in michael brown's death face criminal charges? if. >> fz there no arrest, we don't get to find out anything that happened. >> it may be weeks and months. we have toably calm to our community. >> we need to keep the focus on michael brown jr. a police shooting that left one man dead in st. louis this afternoon is raising fears of another night of rioting in missouri as a group of protesters began to gather and shout outside the scene of the