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tv   Hardball With Chris Matthews  MSNBC  September 21, 2016 11:00pm-12:01am PDT

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right now. . thus we begin a new hour of coverage as we look at the standoff going on in charlotte, north carolina. we're coming out of a police-involved shooting, a disagreement between members of the deceased family who claimed he was armed only with a book and was an innocent man shot by police and police accounts which say he was armed with a gun. we will have some further demonstrative proof on that front before long. we will not see any police video released, at least not tonight. the mayor of that city, perhaps along with family members is going to view the video tomorrow. that's when we will learn more. but we've spoken to no one who has seen the imagery of the shooting itself. tim tammy lightner is on the ground
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in charlotte. you had an experience with a smash-bang grenade, the kind of blinding concussion grenade that are used in situations like this where police need to get the upper hand. whash you seeing right now? >> the protest crowd disperses and then it picks up. right now we've got a line of riot police who have been holding this line since we got out here at least two hours they've been holding this line. in the last 15 minutes, brian, as we mentioned, some of the protesters have lined up about a foot away from the riot police. as you might remember we talked to manuel a short while ago. he's outs here saying we need to take a stanltd. it's time to take a stand. we don't approve of what happened and so that's why we're here. i asked him, as you heard, are you willing to go to jail tonight for what you believe in?
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he said he was. you brought up a good point, brian. there are people in masks. there are people with bandanas around their facings, there are people with gas masks on as we walk down the line here. it's an uncertain situation of what could happen, and i think that's what makes this a tentative situation here, brian. >>. >> yeah. probably a good time to kill your mike and come back here in the studio. dr. phillip goff we've talked to all night, what do you make out of what we just witnessed? >> first of all, anybody who thinks journalism is an easy job should reconsider after watching that. >> yeah. >> the other elements of what we're seeing right now, tammy was able to give us a little bit of sense of -- aprotests in amen city. i was embedded in the denver
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police department during the dnc. it reminds me of the game of chicken that sometimes goes on. i remember walking with black officials and we started hearing chants of "no justice, no peace. kwoilts it was a number of white individuals with dreadlocks yelling at a bunch of black law enforcement. all of that seemed comic cal to me at the time until something flew through the air. and it was a wag of feces. people spitting, not just hurling epithets and trying to get personal, people not just venting their rage but actually assaulting an officer. what you want to do in that moment is you want to make sure you are not taking that personally. but that you are able to do your job with the utmost professionalism of keeping everybody safe. when i see that riot line and we're seeing a little video taking off with what they call
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the turtle gear and that makes me happy and relieved. whenever you're in that riots line, every moment, the man on the hover board or the rollerblades or whatever, that's incredibly dicey. so i want to encourage the protester manwell, to be very demon trabably nonviolent both in word and deed, because that is the power of that voice. i get very worried when i start seeing the riot gear on fl and people deciding to advance very closely, quickly, where they be reporters or protesters or anybody else. it can get very hot very, very quickly. >> this is useful to see, this live picture. these are the men and women we have been watching in riot gear all evening. the men and women who could not have guessed a day ago, two days ago that they would be in this position wearing the gear they were issued but don't ever
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assume they're going to start a shift needing. these are fellow citizens. in most cases they are facing off against. they are taking a break to high drat -- hydrate, get the heavy gear off for a home. we are joined on the telephone by congresswoman alma adams who represents this portion of charlotte, north carolina. congresswoman, where are you relative to the violence and your reaction to what you've seen in your city tonight? >> well, i'm just a few blocks away. i'm at city hall at the moment. and it's heart breaking to see what's going on and i started watching earlier today from washington. i was there in congress voting and as soon as we finished our last series i hopped a plane and came to charlotte.
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i've met -- as soon as i got off the plane, actually, i went to a meeting with the local ministers here who have been very involved in trying to keep peace and to get people -- to keep people safe in that capacity and so they're very concerned about not only what's going on but the fact that it has escalated since yesterday and that there's been a breakdown from their perspective in terms of relationship between the community and the police. so we're just trying to get all the information. of course people are still concerned that the videos have not been released and we've heard various reasons why. but you know, people -- --
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people should be allowed to protest and certainly we want everybody to be safe. that's a way you can vent and at least express your feelings. and so that kind of turned in a different direction tonight as you already know and so we're just trying to piece it all together and of course it's been a state of emergency declared by the governor and some action taken there, so hopefully we can have the calm that we need to -- for this community to heal. violence is not the answer. but we do want tom answers and we want some justice, and so i'm just here -- i came back into charlotte -- i do represent this
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community. i came back not only to show my support but also to see how we might help. i will tell you that the -- that i've had a conversation with the didn't of justice before -- department of justice before i left washington as well. the congressional black caucus of which i'm a member is very concerned about the violence that's going on now. what got us to this point is really a long history of only focussing -- not only focussing on these issues or inns dependents but many throughout our country where we failed as a country to deal the pain and the anguish in the cities throughout america. and that didn't start tonight. that didn't start last night. i'm a mother and i'm a grandmother and i have -- i have a son and two grand sons, so we think about the many african-american men who have been killed and, you know, that gives me some concern as well.
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but i think we -- what we want to do is to make sure that everyone is safe. and that is -- that would be all our citizens as well as our police officers, but we hopefully people will -- that we can get this thing settled down and we'll have an opportunity to sit and put all of the issues on the table, because i don't think we have what -- we clearly don't have all of the information right now. matter of fact, chief of police indicated that from the video that he looked at, he was not able to come to any conclusions, really, but of course we know that we've not seen all of the video. >> congresswoman, should we see that video? the video's going to be viewed by the mayor and others tomorrow should it be released? >> well, i think that -- i think that's the only thing that's
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going to, i think, help, because people sort of feel, i think the families feel, many people in the community feel that there's information there that they need to be privy to, so i'm not sure what's going to happen. but i do know, at least i've heard that the mayor will be reviewing it, but i'm not sure what decisions will be made at that point. >> yeah. i just fear that the mayor's description of what she sees on video is not going to suffice in a city that has to put all its chips on avoiding a third straight night of violence. this has not been a good night or a safe night in the nation's 17th largest city. congresswoman alma adams, thank you very much for joining us by telephone. we are wishing for the best for your congressional district for the city of charlotte. dr. goff, here we are talking about the video again as being the key to the next steps here.
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what if it's not ex kculpatory r either side? >> in ferguson they examined all the evidence they had and while hands up don't shoot is a great rallying cry, that is not -- we heard those chants again tonight. >> that's correct. >> if we find out if the video is really, really clear, i don't think that resolves all of the issue. it may end up exonerating a particular officer in a particular indication, but this -- these protests are not about an individual case. they cannot be. so if the video is inconclusive, god forbid, what we're talking about is we don't have a clear path forward for accountability for individual officer who took an individual life, which has to matter.
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but in addition to looking for accountability and the aftermath of a killing, i have to say when i go into communities and talk with folks and i talk to police officers as well, what they have to say is how do we prevent the next one. it's far too common and again, the script at this point, the reason we start to feel numb to it is because we can lip-synch to it. we know what's coming next. if we don't have a conversation about that at the same time we're trying to figure out how to create a policy, how do we get back to the video, i have to say, not that i don't love seeing you, but you and i have got to stop meeting like this. >> yeah. we've spent far too much time in 2016. i mean that in the nicest way. >> i understand. >> mother of a police officer, i could not see you during this conversation but i've been hold you are nodding heartily along. >> yeah, i am. the doctor is hitting the nail
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on the head. i'm not sure if attorney nelson is still there. this is about a system and the people who are out there in charlotte, even though violence is never acceptable. you know, dr. king, president nelson mandella, you name it. lots of our great revolutionaries across time have talked about meeting these situations with a righteous indignation but not violence. this is a systemic thing in america. it remind me of when you go through urban areas, you know there was a shooting that occurred somewhere because you start to see the teddy bears and the balloon and over time the balloon has lost air and the stuffed animals were not as cute and pretty as they were. everybody in this nation, everybody, should be totally outraged by this, but also the type of passion and emotion that comes time and time again. you take a knee in this country
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you're not patriotic if you're a black man. if you have your hands up. if you're on the ground. i mean, when is it? having a stalled car in this nation while black is a problem. and every time the african-american community cries out for justice in a system that is unjust towards them because as ice cube once said my skin is my sin or as i say the shadow of skin, people throw up in our face other types of violence that happens in the african-american community as if african-american communities are the only ones. murders are intra racial. it troubled me today, brian, as i heard former mayor rudy guiliani, you paint african-americans and poor people in this country as the other. povrmt r poverty has become a crime in this country. the people who feel the brunt of this are african-americans, are latinos, are other people of color and they are the very
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communities that need the police, who want to trust the police, who want to believe in the police, but we need transparency and we need accountability and we need it now. to the point you were making about that video, they have to release that video quickly, no matter what it shows, it needs to be released quickly. >> yeah. i'm no lawyer but that appears to be the answer. we have a lawyer here. janee nelson is here. >> yeah. >> you were nodding your head in agreement. >> she hit the nail on the head and then some. so many parts of this case underscore how there are really two constitutions is that apply to americans. it protects peaceful protest. it protects rowdy protest. it protects unfriendly protest. it protects impolite protest. every protest does not have to be neat and orderly.
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it cannot be violent but when people expressing outrage it doesn't always come out in a way that is polished or perfectly packaged. >> not neat and clean. >> it is not neat and clean because the situation is not neat and clean. it's dirty. it's raw and it has historical roots that are really, really deep. when you start to pull at that, you are going to see emotion and you are going to see real anguish come to the fore. we have to be prepared to deal with that. more importantly, our law enforcement has to be prepared to deal with that. they are trained to deal with this. and they have to be able to withstand the scrutiny, withstand the outpouring of emotion and there's a really delicate balance not to allow what may be a rowdy protest to then have the law enforcement make decisions that turn into an escalated situation. they have a very difficult job. i do not underestimate at all
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what they're facing tonight in charleston and in charlotte. it's a very difficult time. we have to recognize that everything's not going to be neat and clean but our constitutional rights are unwaiver an. the first e-mailed protects even black and brown people when they are upset and angry. it still protects them. >> i was going to say, as new problems arise in a modern society someone always had to go first. in the 60s it might have seen just a lunch counter the first time. it might have seemed like just a seat on the bus the first time. we know now they became much larger and the question is, what are we witnessing happening? with jenna nelson, i'm told we have lost your services for the evening but thank you. thank you so much for the contributions you've made to this contribution. >> thank you for having me. >> jim cavanaugh is standing by. jim, a dual-pronged question for you. number one, after a lifetime in
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law enforcement, anything you'd like to add or even disagree with our conversation and second, how does this end tonight? you've seen this live coverage of these two lines staring each other down in charlotte after a violent night in charlotte. how does this end? >> better said, brian, how should it end. it should end where the police should never take the position to go along with janelle's position, the police should never go to the position that you have to save face. you have to prove you're stronger than the protesters. i mean, i would like to see that, you know, the protesters, emanuel who tammy lightner interviewed, he's exercising a constitutional right. in many countries in the world, the police line would broug beirutalize a person doing that.
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in america i'd like to say that our police, as a career police and federal agent, didn't do that. they stood there and let that man protest and that can be ended without the officers having to say face. in other words, the commander can say, turn that line sideways, everybody turn in a line and march offer to the sidewalk and, you know, as long as it's safe and let the thing disburse. because as a police force, you have to be strong. and there's no reason for you to save face. you have strength because the people put you there. so don't ever try to get into that kind of face saving strength. let the citizens have that. let emanuel have that. let the protesters have that. you don't -- you are not required to do it. you just have to be strong when it's necessary, but you don't have to tree to be stronger than a peaceful city zen.
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>> jim cavanaugh having started his way at the patrol level and working his way up to bomb investigation and the like in the country, one of the rebest in his field. when he speaks, we listen. tammy lightner has been at street level. the officers appear to be putting helmets and respirators back on. what would that be for? >> the bloods of jesus! >> brian, we can only assume they may be deploying gas in this area at some point if the protesters don't move back. in the last 10 or 15 minutes some protesters have showed up in masks with an anti-police sentiment. they've been chanting some things we can't put on the air and that may have been be what prompted people to put their gas masks on. there's obviously some
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concern -- we're backing up right now, brian. there's been some concern because all these riot police have put their masks on that they may be deploying some gas very soon. brian? >> thank you for that. we'll stay on this as we can. perhaps not audio, but certainly video. and remember, fatigue plays a role on both sides for protesters and for police officers. our friend eli portillo of the charlotte observer has gotten back to his newsroom at the paper. eli, tell us what you encountered along the way. >> well, it was actually somewhat unexpected coming back. we thought that we were leaving an area of protest where they will be for several hours and along the way, we encountered over a space of about eight blocks groups of people walking, seeming to be just kind of milling around, smashed windows,
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our newsroom's building has the brown floor windows partially smashed and a lot of it just appears to be much more aimless than we had seen before. we've also seen a group of protesters repeating a tactic from last night where a highway was was blocked. that looks like it's clearing up now but interstate 277 in downtown charlotte was plokd for some time by a group of protesters. i'm watching right now the state highway patrol directing people off those roads which are closed. >> yeah. we heard there was a semi that was set afire tonight. we've seen windows busted out in one really high-end high-rise apartment building downtown. and i fear -- >> that happened in multiple buildings. >> i fear that when a lot of small business owners come to work, a lot of them are watching news tonight trying to see their
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establishment in the background to see if they have suffered damage. that's one of the real tragedies of something like this when civil disobedience, when rioting takes away someone else's ability to make a living. someone who -- >> yes. we've seen some just smashed bar, bottles on the street, stuff that is not connected to a protest, apparently. >> do you have any numbers, eli, that could update us, injured, in custody, that kind of thing from the city? >> no we really don't. the major direction correction we've had from the city is that the person who was shot that they reported had died is in critical condition but is still alive. we know that three people were transported to the hospital earlier tonight and it was reported at that time by our law enforcement that one had died but that is not the case so as of right now, the best we know is that there have not been any
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fatalities but one person critically injured in a shooting and on life support. >> i'm aware this probably calls for a judgment, and in part i'm asking for your judgment based on your walk back to the newsroom, do you think charlotte has control of its streets by now tonight? >> i think it really is a block-to-block situation right now. we saw blocks with heavy law enforcement presence, people with the shields and the night sticks and lines and really keeping a lid on things. people protesting, but no violence and we saw streets where there were not law enforcement officers apparent and it was a little harder to tell if there was actually any law enforcement present on some blocks. >> eli, thank you for this report, for all the others that came before it tonight on a busy
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night for you and for our viewers who originally might have tuned in to see the political broadcast the 11th hour, quickly went through the 11th hour and out the other side. i hope you appreciate as we do here, the consistent quality of the analysis and opinion we have received tonight from the very, very top guests in their field. we so appreciate it on a night when everyone is busy. we'll take our first break and go back to the streets of charlotte live right after these messages. kwloirp who hugs a friend. who is done with treatments that don't give you clearer skin. be the you who controls your psoriasis with stelara® just 4 doses a year after 2 starter doses. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tuberculosis. before starting stelara® tell your doctor if you think you have an infection or have symptoms such as: fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough.
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. welcome back. you've got some members of the clermy, some ordinary citizens who have come out, most of them peaceful. they are gathered in and around where police lines are gabe
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gutierrez among our corresponds out in it. the clean-up effort has started. there's heavy police presence here in the last hour or so. we saw a couple of protesters in the area. some of the zmdemonstrators getting tense and hiding their faces and trying to start something with police.
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>> we are very mindful about the presence of our cameras and try not to let our cameras presence incite anything. we try to pull back if and where we can but you can see we're hardly the only camera and the only media. often it's not family material. gabe thank you very much. we'll go over and check with the washington post. he was a great help to us earlier. cleave, you're back off the streets, i understand. if you can sum up all that you have seen tonight in charlotte, how would it go? >> it was intense.
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i used to live two blocks away from where all of this stuff happened and i have never seen it so, on wednesday night at -- intense on a wednesday night at all. >> you have covered i presume other acts of urban violence in other places. this as we were watching this having covered other incidents in other places, this got violent tonight. this was very very tense. >> yeah, it was. usually when i cover events, in this case as the shots were fired. >> is there a way to sum up the damage we're talk about? business owners that will come to work having played no role in this controversy and find their
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ability to make a living is suspended for now. is there a way to put a must be on store fronts, number of injuries, number of arrests yet? >> i don't know if anybody has done that calculation. one of the things, it's the ritz carrolton right there. they're picking up metal chairs and smashing windows of the ritz-carlton arched trying to get in the doors, sometimes almost at random after being frustrated with the police. >> interestingly this area was the beating heart of the democratic convention and when security turned charlotte into a barren police state, but it's parts of the gleaming downtown they are very, very proud of and the banking center and all of
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that. i have to interrupt to go to tammy lightner to go to coverage. tammy, that was your camera we were looking at as people were running by? >> yeah. just in the last 30 seconds they started firing pepper balls. most of the protesters ran. some sitting there. they're not moving. we're at a safe distance, so we're able to watch from back here and give you a bird's-eye view. now some of the protesters are beginning to move back down towards the line. i'm not sure why but -- >> tammy, even if -- >> yeah. >> even if you have to do it with the help of your security consultant there, explain what pepper balls are. >> sure. can you explain what pepper balls is? >> it's like paint balls. they hit you and it burns.
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it's like tear gas, like pepper gas. >> ok. >> so brian, you heard it. i'm guessing that's the first line and then next they'll start spraying tear gas. >> they'll spray tear gas and flash-bang grenades. >> we're moving back farther to a safe distance. there are -- i don't know if you can hear that announcement but they're saying this is unlawful gathering and anybody that doesn't disburse will be arrested and they will move riot controlling agents to move everybody back. if these protesters don't start moving back, they will likely
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get hit with more pepper balls if not tear gas and most likely be arrested. >> is manuel one of the people sitting there? >> yes, i can see him. he's one of the three that's still there. we're trying to give you a look around. you can see some of the protesters have backed off. they're still here. they're not leaving the area completely.
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>> for those just joining our coverage, just to describe this, the police line has been advancing tonight in charlotte. there are three people, you see them on the pavement. arms joined. police lines have got to do what police lines do. they can't just simply make an exception and go around them and wlet them be an island unto themselves. so we presume they will on the gentler side place them under arrest in advance because you still have -- so they're advancing. there they go. >> they're advancing, brian. they just went past manuel and the other people he was holding hands with. >> they just what? >> they absorbed them. >> so they'll be arrested and now they're going to continue coming forward. brian and there's more paint balls being fired. so we'll continue backing up. as you can imagine you have covered many of these situations brian.
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it's a bit chaotic and you're not quite sure which way to go. we're trying to show you what is going on and also stay at a safe distance. >> what is pair smount you keeping your eyes peeled on that advancing police line and leave yourself an out where you could run and have some place in mind and we'll deal with the camera pictures as we get it. i've heard some great euphemisms in my time but absorbing the protesters in the advancing police line is a great one. we've seen it before. it sounds like more rounds are being fired, certainly judging by the people running by this camera location. #
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>> i can tell you it sounds like what they are doing is they'll fire a few rounds from the paint balls and then they'll move a couple of feet and these protestors what they're doing is as soon as they fire a few rounds they'll take off running and then once the riot police stop they tend to go back down a little bit so it's almost a game of back and forth and police are just trying to obviously push them far enough out of the situation. >> we heard that old-time word agitators tonight, tammy. we heard members of the peaceful protest brigade locally at times blaming agitators for the violence breaking out. as you look at the crowd, what percentage of agitators versus peaceful protesters? >> we've been here all evening and we've watched this unfold
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from the beginning when it wasn't initially peaceful. there were hundreds of people out here trying to protest peacefully and maybe just a hand. of -- 5% that werable tating the crowd and that's really what got things going, brian. >> tammie continues to watch this back and forth cat and mouse presumably. jim is watching with us. jim there has to be at some point here a command to come forward and clear this block, correct? >> yeah. they're trying to do it slowly. they tonight want to get them all charged up again. that's why they're using a pepper ball. they can use a sting ball grenade. move them back and get them separated. but some of these guys want to linger until they get arrested that may be the out come of a portion of the people still on the street. when the officers are firing, the sting ball and pepper ball,
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those things hurt quite a bit, when you're still staying after that, you're pretty determined, i think, to be arrested. they're going to try to move and keep shooting their pepper ball and are going to have to come out on the snatch-and-grab and grab some of these guys if they want to make arrests and not try to let it kind of fade back into a peaceful line. they have to keep it at the moment. >> when the police line diminishes everything else diminishes as well. they have to read that first. they have to feel like that's the appropriate time. you don't want to set people off breaking windows and hurting others but they have to make a command decision and right now they feel like they have to keep that line. jim, i know there are law enforcement conventions every year and part of the displays have to do with non-lethal crowd
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control. everything is a profit center these days and there's been a lot of work and new products in this area and exactly what we're seeing here. we have gone from the days of the compact bean bags which really hurt to the other great euphemism, rubber bullets, which in some cases are just on the wrong side of the non-lethal line. they have made great strides in ways police officers can do what we're seeing here. advancing, kind of getting control of the streets back, yet letting protestors know they're coming and they mean business. >> that's right and it's designed to make you uncomfortable. tear gas will burn your eyes, pepper gas. it's uncomfortable. you don't want to be around it. a lot of people do disburse because they don't want their eyes burning and choking on the smoke. all these things tend to want to
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make you want to leave the area, not be in a comfortable position. you have to be more and more determined to stay. the point of your message sort of diminishes if you increase your violence like the reverend barber is so articulate on that and i agree with him on the way he assessed that situation. the powerful message maybe he is strong in his believes but not engaging in violence. he gets arrested but he's not striking out breaking windows, throwing rocks at the police. so that's what we have to see here. what are these other folks going to do? are they going to disperse? they can lawfully be arrested because they're failing to disperse. a lawful police order on the street so they can be arrested even if they don't engage in a violent act for failure to disperse.
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the police commanders don't really want to arrest them. they just want them to leave. >> this is very close to being over, especially when you compare it to what we've seen tonight. jim, i'm glad you mentioned manuel, this protester that tammi lightner interviewed during this silent, dramatic face-off with police. well we have every reason to believe he has now been placed under arrest while we watch the police line advance on one side of the screen, listen to what a few minutes back he said to tammie. >> what are you doing out here tonight? >> >> we're out here to send a message that we will no longer allow for people to keep being killed by police officers. we're not going to allow it and it's not going to be allowed anymore and there has to be a sense of accountability on all sides. especially from the police department and especially when there's people being killed and there's no one being held accountable for it.
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>> and i notice that you have been standing here about two feet away from the riot officers with your hands behind your back. what message are you sending? >> it's not about violence. it's about standing and letting them know that we will not back down. i will not give an inch. the moment they say we need to leave the vicinity, i'm not taking a step back. >> are you prepared to be arrested tonight? >> yeah. >> because that may be what happens. >> that will be what happens. >> we have every reason to believe that is exactly what happened and when we last left the camera location, obviously the safety of tammie and her crew is paramount. let's go back to the live picture at street level. and here they come. to jim cavanaugh's point and to get very brass taxes about it, this is the city's tax base. this is the city's revenue base. this is tourism, this is business. if this part of the city isn't
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open, cleaned up and ready for business, charlotte, north carolina which ranks 17th largest u. s. city, a center of banking and commerce suddenly loses business. you lose business, you lose revenue, you lose interest, the outside world. doctor, you've been watching this with us. nodding all the way. >> yeah. i'm really glad that you're bringing up the financial element of this. >> i hate to but it is germain. >> i'm glad about it not because i take any kind of joy in financial suffering. we want america to be doing well in all of it's spaces, especially it's urban centers which are the drivers of our economy but that this is what makes this a very different kind of space. when we were looking at baltimore and ferguson and people in their own neighborhoods. these are the residents of charlotte and this is the downtown area and this is not where many of these people live so there will be an absolute economic consequence to
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this. another thing as i have been checking my phone and you have been seeing messages coming in, people are saying, well, wasn't there another way, and at some point, doesn't this really just become a distraction? it's really important to get, nobody is going out there, you see the images of people smiling, no one is going out there because this is a good time. no one is going out there because this is what their friends were doing and they went along with it. if people thought they could vote and it would change, they would vote and it would change. in the same way, i have to say as good a job as law enforcement seems to be doing in advancing and disarrange this, many of the issues that have been aflikting these communities for so very long we should stop making it policemen and policewomen's
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job. when you have folks clearly mentally distressed we should stop having that be police officers job. too often that ends in the tools they have which is arrest and force when we're talking about schools and crisis. it should not be a police officer's job to manage it. we're looking at charlotte here. >> the chief in dallas was so brilliant on this topic. >> exactly. you have chiefs saying let us do one job which is to keep people safe from physical harm and track down property when it's taken but don't make us be therapists. don't make us be emissaries of the cdc and your school. let us do our job. the problem is in these distr s distressed neighborhoods, police have every job. as a result you end up with folks that can't possibly be trained to deal with adolescents and mental health issues as well as violent crime and keep themselves safe while responding to too many calls. >> as we remember after that mass killing in dallas the police chief famously said join up. join the effort. change the city from within and if you join i'll let you patrol
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the neighborhood you grew up in. more on that in a moment. our coverage continues, if anything happens to bring us back here to our live coverage, we'll jump out of this break but please one more break and our live coverage will continue. 6
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. we are back. the picture here on the screen is live street level. charlotte, north carolina where it ended up rolling over our normal 11th hour program summation of the day's campaign news. this will very quickly take it's place. already has in the presidential campaign. we should mention donald trump for one was going to do a town hall tonight and that was perhaps very smartly put off until tomorrow evening. most of the cable networks attention and the local stations in this region have been squarely on this. these are charlotte police officers in full riot gear as they have been much of the night. this is a stand down stance compared to what we have seen for most of the night. we have reason to believe the shift that's been on has been held on the late night shift has come on to perhaps relieve them.
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we've had a enough of arrests. we've had a number of injuries. we had one falsely reported fatality. a civilian on civilian shooting apparently. a person is clinging to life in critical condition but happily not a fatality. wesley lowrey is with us. covers law enforcement. justice, race and politics. a winner of the prize for his work collecting data on misshootings. tonight it's included what we have watched play out on live television and wes, what do you make of what you have seen? >> thanks for having me. we see another city here where there's anger in the streets, pained people, traumatic people, officers in riot gear facing off with anger demonstrators and again it's such a similar story playing out.
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phil goff was saying earlier on the air, talking about the idea that if you just look at the names and the hashtags. this is a predictable script. it is so similar to what we saw in ferguson and baltimore and now we see it in charlotte, previously in tulsa. again it's unfortunately a sense of deja vu. . >> if these pictures were of the west bank, we would kind of shake our heads and say something about the ongoing violence in the middle east. this is charlotte, north carolina. at civilians, this is charlotte, north carolina as i keep saying one of the real, of the younger cities in this country, the younger meaning downtown development, one of the real glittering skylines, a lot of
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bank money and a lot of big company money there. it's kind of unbelievable in a way. >> of course. i think that the mistake that sometimes we make when we watch these things play out is we say well that is that place and that could never happen here. where ever that happens to be, right? that might have been folks in charlotte a few years ago saying i'm glad we don't have those problems they have over at ferguson. it might have been people in milwaukee or tulsa saying i'm glad we don't have the problems they have in baltimore. what i think is there time and time again as we revisit this it seems almost on the calendar once a month here we are having this conversation. it's this idea that this is a problem or this is a tension that we all live with whether we believe it or not. issues of race and justice and policing and equity are not just things and there's things that
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are playing out in our own backyards and in our own neighborhoods. that's not to demon ice police or demonstrators but it's this idea that these are real things that are impacting americans across the nation and not just in one or two places, not just in a ferguson or a baltimore, but this is part of the american story, these tensions, these historic tensions between black americans, minorities and police, law enforcement. >> you'd think it would be a great time to have a conversation about this because we happen to have this presidential campaign going on. >> and what is interesting is that in many ways our two candidates not weighing in on either of them but the two candidates represent our most polarized stances on this. i do believe having covered this
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for a long time that people's views on police and law enforcement and justice can be as equally polarizing. if not more polarizing than our affiliations. you have a candidate donald trump that called essentially for a national stop and frisk program. called for racial profiling and policing. the democratic nominee, clinton, has called for a national ending of the stop and frisk program, so you're seeing these two polls very often and i also think that type of polarization is important for people to remember and understand in the context. where you have many people in the united states of america because of their experiences and because of their background that instinctively and naturally believe the police, no matter what they say but you also have a group of people who based on their experiences do not believe the police so when you look at something like the shooting in charlotte these conflicting stories, did he have a book, did he have a gun, right?
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and you have a large section of the populace that thinks he had a gun. and another portion of the populace who believe fundamentally this man must have had a book because they don't believe their police, and i think that deficit of trust and understanding is caused by a difficulty drama tiezed and they don't believe they're police. but i think that that deficit and trust and understanding someone of the reasons we have such a difficulty in this conversation. we live almost in different worlds. >> wesley lowery thank you as always. it does strike me that the last time that you and me, the three of us on television was an urban act of gun violence and they keep coming. wesley lowery of the washington post tonight. this story in many ways mirrors the lyrics of american skin by bruce springsteen. a song about an incident here in new york city that has proven quite unpopular with some members of law enforcement.
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. certainly. brian, thanks for having me, but again, i think you're right, this idea that unfortunately, this is dallas. we have them after baton rouge. we have them in ferguson. we've had them in baltimore. and the question is not only what will happen in charlotte. will we see the video? what will happen tomorrow. what will happen to the young man who was hurt tonight. but the other lingering question is what will be the next city? when will be the next time that we're on the phone or on the air together. where will that be? will that be in my back yard or will bit in yours? what we know is there will very likely be another one of these conversations. >> our viewers have been listening to wesley lowery of "the washington post." wesley, thank you. we have bridged the top of another hour. the first minute of that new hour as we look at the station. not so much a standoff as a