welcome back. we begin this hour with breaking news. protests are breaking out in atlanta tonight where the chief of police has resigned after another video surfaced of another black man being shot and killed by police. this is a live picture, looking at crowds gathering near the site. the shooting happened last night after atlanta police officers were called to a wendy's where this man 27-year-old rayshard brooks was allegedly asleep in his car while in the drive through lane. police gave him a field sobriety test and attempted to arrest him for driving under the influence. he resisted.

he then grabbed the officer's taser then ran away and then pointed the taser toward the officers and the officer opened fire. atlanta's mayor had this to say while announcing the chief of police was stepping down. >> while there may be debate as to whether this was appropriate years of deadly force, i firmly believe that there is a clear distinction between what you can do and what you should do. i do not believe this was a justified use of deadly force and have called for the immediate termination of the officer. >> georgia bureau of investigation is investigating the incident as the fulton county district attorney's office. joining me now a retired detective for the nypd currently the director of the black law enforcement alliance and we have the co-founder and president of center for policing equity. thanks to both of you for being

here. we have been studying this video and the information from the atlanta police department and watching developments in atlanta. there is a lot we don't know here but what we seem to know and what the police have told us is that the 911 call came in about a man asleep in the drive through lane. now that man is dead. what do you make of this? >> i think what the mayor indicated is something we really have to pay attention to and focus on and that is whether or not the level of force that was used in this interaction which should have been simple and straight forward, responding to a call in essence for assistance, someone may have called just perhaps to offer assistance with an individual sleeping but either way there has to be the level of force commensurate with the level of threat. and you can't -- a police officer, professional police officer will not use deadly physical force unless it is

being used against them. clearly based on what we've seen thus far that is not the case. it is a matter whether we'll abide by the guidelines and the use of force continuum which professional policing has anchored on to for a decade or not. i think the mayor in this particular case is operating under the minneapolis model and that is to act swiftly, deal with punishment for those individuals who appear to be working, operating outside of not only the department guidelines but the law. >> philip, this man did not have a gun on him. he did take the -- it appears from the video we're seeing that was shot he took one of the tasers from the police, gets up, runs away. is pursued by the police. turns the taser toward the police and then is shot. we got two video -- two pieces of video. this one you're looking at that was shot by a bystander and then we have the police who released the wendy's video that showed

him turning and pointing the taser at the police as he is running away and within the context of what we've seen in the last few weeks, the idea that a man as mark claxton talks about george floyd narrated his own death for us at the hands of police. one wonders, one understands the instinct to want to get away. >> yeah, you really do. we've been saying three names the last couple weeks, ahmaud aubrey, breonna taylor, george floyd. i want you to remember that breonna taylor's partner was in bed and thought police were breaking into the house, thought they were dangerous, armed intruders. he found out he was right. in that situation you have a no knock. disagreement about whether or not the police announced themselves. but increasingly in black communities especially at exactly this moment, law

enforcement are scary people with guns not there to protect us, not there to make sure that the law is followed. they are potentially weapons of people who want to see us hurt and they are themselves unpredictable individuals who can do harm, possibly with impunity. i think we'll see over the next several days arguments about, well. if he had just complied. also, why fight with police? a bad person does that. he was asleep in his car. there is no reason to bring a badge and gun in the back. he was asleep in his car. i don't care what substance he might have been on. i don't care what his day was like. i don't care what his character is. he was asleep in his car. the outcome is his death. if this doesn't make you think we need better and different resources to send to someone who was asleep in his car i don't know what is wrong with you. i really don't.

>> so let's talk about that because there have been conversations about abolish, defund the police. redirect resources away from the police and a lot of police we've talked to have said there are some things people are just not good at and some of that is people inebriated, intoxicated, people with mental illness or homeless. in some areas we've seen instances where we tried to shift away from using police resources where not necessary and shifting that to social workers or intervention specialists or de-escalation specialists or nonviolent communication specialists. the issue isn't that some guy maybe shouldn't have been blocking the line in a wendy's but philip's point is correct. why is he dead if he was asleep in his car? >> well, it's a question we've been asked. you know, you can go back many different cases and have a question as to why. let me deal with the fact that there should be an expectation that professional policing is multi disciplinary and that is

to say that policing is part social work. policing is, professional policing is part psychiatry. professional policing is part health worker. you have to incorporate all of these different professions into your one profession if you're serious about it. what is going on now, we have the cusp of a reform movement and have to be clear about what the goals and objectives are and what the standards are on a national level so we can avoid these tragedies happening time and time again and we have to ask the question as to why and we have to be, talking about the law enforcement community, has to be committed to restoring the confidence of the community in which they are sworn to serve. that is the goal and objective at this point. and anything outside of that is useless. i agree with the mayor. i agree with those people who are reform minded.

in minneapolis with chief arradondo and mayor frey because the world changes by your example and not your opinion. so you have to do something and if doing something means you have to take executive action on the employment of a professional police officer, that's what you do. it doesn't counter act an investigation. it should be always an investigation that should be full transparency and accountability. we can't forget the last part. accountability is key. >> one of the things that is interesting here is the speed with which keisha lance bottoms the mayor of atlanta has moved on this. she did say that erica shields the police chief who's been on the force for two decades, more than two decades, did choose to resign but, you know, that comment she made that we don't know yet because these things have to be investigated whether it was an appropriate use of force or not but the idea there are things you can do and things you should do. part of this lack of trust between african-americans and in

fact a large part of the american public and the police is that we don't know that the right thing will happen. do we at least have a proper reaction from the atlanta mayor in some sense that this will be dealt with perhaps more effectively than it was in minneapolis for the first several days? >> we don't know. i mean, i think the mayor read the room. there is absolutely no way you can have somebody who dies, who is executed by the state for the crime of sleeping in their car and being scared of you and then allow for things to stay the same. so chop the head off and you hope the next one that grows back is more palpable to the people. chief shields was a good chief and a strong chief for reform. will the next chief be better? i hope so. i do. but i don't know that there is going to be a set of responses that will help in a low income neighborhood tomorrow when they're worried that someone might be breaking into their

house and they're thinking maybe i should call the police. maybe i'm in danger. then they're looking at this video and thinking about what's happened and thinking even if my house is being broken into i don't want to be responsible for this person dying. i don't want to be responsible for this person being executed. how do you fix that? >> this is the problem. that's the question, mark. that is the question. we're all a little confused about this. in the moment it is sort of easy to call for abolition of the police or defunding of the police but there are moments where we're going to need somebody who is a police officer, who is armed. who is in the position to take somebody down, who is a real threat to society. then you see things like this and you say, well. is that what they're doing? how do you get to that point? i know we've probably asked this 20 times in the past two weeks but how do you? >> you can't fix it.

not right now, not immediately. you can't fix it in the immediate. what you can do is to put in place those ideas and initiatives, those guidelines, those people, those policies, those laws, and really force professionals to abide by them. there is no short rescue answer here. you can't fix it right now. but hopefully, and i think there is some significant movement toward revolutionary type, holistic reform, hopefully what is being done on the legislative level, on the streets, local mu municipalities will be enough to begin restoring confidence and building confidence and establishing a high standard of professional behavior in our law enforcement community. >> how much do we need to know? you are involved in the first national data base on racial

disparities in police stops and the use of force. roland martin and i were just discussing the degree to which some of these stops are revenue generators in little places and may not be, people may not being stopped for the right thing or in the case of this man in atlanta we may be using the wrong approach to dealing with a problem that maybe the guy's car needs to be moved out of the way but this may not be the way. does it start in your opinion with the idea we still don't have shared numbers and statistics and enough information about how serious the problem is? because americans are starting to believe in big numbers that big black is a dangerous thing around the police. >> yeah. i'm a data nerd. i'll never say no we don't need more numbers or analysis. but i am going to say that we've got pretty settled -- on the question of whether or not there is bias of law enforcement. it is done. there is antiblack bias law enforcement. we are to know with that

question. we haven't decided as a nation what law enforcement should and shouldn't be used for. in my example i was just talking about, somebody worried about their house being broken into the reason we keep talking about trust is because i don't know how you have safety in those neighborhoods if you don't trust the people you're going to call are going to be okay toward you or treat the other person fairly. right? it is not as much about whether there is bias. my hope is the last three weeks have settled that in the minds of everybody else because the science has been settled for a while. the question is what do we want to use law enforcement for and what other tools do we need to effect actual public safety? >> right. right. so the data helps but the data is probably not going to tell us something we don't already know. but we are a society that requires it so we'll keep getting it. thanks to both of you. mark, stick around with me because we'll get a press conference by the attorneys representing rayshard brooks' family about 8:30 eastern. mark claxton is the director of the black law enforcement alliance. philip goff the co-founder and

president of the center for policing equity in which he is working on an actual data base on racial disparities in police stops and the use of force. after years of reporting police brutality in new york, real reform is actually happening. what does it look like and why does it take so long? we'll discuss on the other side. you're watching msnbc. virtually any place. so, when you get a check... you can deposit it from here. and you can see your transactions and check your balance from here. you can save for an emergency from here. or pay bills from here. so when someone asks you, "where's your bank?" you can tell them: here's my bank. or here's my bank. or, here's my bank. because if you download and use the chase mobile app, your bank is virtually any place. visit chase.com/mobile. good morning, mr. sun. good morning, blair. [ chuckles ] whoo. i'm gonna grow big and strong. yes, you are. i'm gonna get this place all clean. i'll give you a hand. and i'm gonna put lisa on crutches!

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as protests against police brutality continue across the country calls to defund the police and reallocate the money to social services and reinvest in low income communities are gaining traction. you are now looking at live pictures which we are continuing to stay on in atlanta. that is a crowd gathering in an intersection adjacent to where a 27-year-old man was killed who died at the hands of the police last night at a drive through at a wendy's. the call came in for a man who was stopped in the drive through lane. he was asleep in his car. that is an important piece of information. he was asleep in his car. there was no call of any threat

other than the fact people couldn't get through the drive through and after a sobriety test which he, police say he did not pass, he got into a scuffle with police, grabbed one of their tasers, and ran away. ran away. he was then chased by the police and turned his taser toward the police. he was then shot by police and declared dead at the hospital. you can see a number of the police cars on the exit off the highway on top of the overpass and at the exit the police are blocking the entrance ramp to the highway, so i think they are concerned that the protesters will get on to the highway. look at that. looks like we've got armored police vehicles there. i don't know whether those are national guard or atlanta police department or fulton county police or georgia state police. we're unclear and can't see from this distance. but a large police presence is assembling in the area. protesters have gathered peacefully again. i want to reinstate that. there does appear to be some concern by the police they'll

attempt to get on to the highway and stop traffic. the concern here is why is the man dead? there was no threat. he was asleep. he did resist arrest. he did take the taser. he did again, the police released surveillance video from wendy's that showed him running from the police. the police then continued the chase. he turns his taser toward them. unclear from the video whether he fired the taser or not. police then shot him while he was running away. the police chief, erica shields, has been with the atlanta police department for over two decades. she has resigned and is laudd as a police officer, a police chief who was reform minded. the mayor of atlanta has said while the investigation needs to determine whether this was an appropriate use of force, she wonders whether it was the right thing to have happened. so that is the situation right now as we have it. there are a lot of people in the

neighborhood in atlanta. we'll stay on top of the story. in about ten minutes we are expecting a press conference being held by lawyers for the victim's family. he was 27 years old and when the call came in he was asleep in his car. part of the question here is in all these calls to defund or reimagine or redirect police resources people are wondering whether there are things that can be done that do not involve armed people coming to deal with some of these issues. new york has become one of the first states to pass a series of policing reform including making use of chokeholds by the way which killed eric garner, a felony. unsealing police disciplinary records to the public, creating a new, independent prosecutor's office to investigate police conduct. the governor andrew cuomo signed an executive order requiring police departments to work with communities to modernize their culture or risk losing state funds. >> the taxpayers are not going

to pay for a public safety function they don't trust. that's what we learned. okay. then let's actually seize the moment and let's redesign the police department. it's been 50 years in coming. redesign it for 2020. then fund it. and force the community and the police to sit down and make that decision. force the local community to redesign it and pass a law and use the state funding as a sanction to get them to actually do it. >> joining me now the speaker of the new york assembly, for the new york legislature. thank you for joining me. mr. speaker, i appreciate it. andrew cuomo has said a point that a lot of americans seem to be missing right now. whether or not you agree with defund the police or abolish the police and a lot of people think that is not a reasonable approach to take, whether or not you agree with it police are

public servants. they work for the people. and that seems to be lost on some police and some police unions. >> well, i think what many people are saying and particularly people here in new york are saying is they want to see funding for other purposes. they'd rather see money spent more on youth, more on education, more on social services, more money on mental health services. i think that is really what the cry that you've been hearing from the people in the state of new york is. and the city of new york from particularly saying that we want to reshuffle the way our priorities are and many of the interactions happening between police and people may be handled in a different way and maybe by different people. >> so what do you think when you hear that police got called to this wendy's in atlanta for a

guy who was asleep in his car blocking the drive through lane? it strikes people like me who are not in law enforcement that maybe a guy didn't have to be dead for that. >> i guess for me personally what concerns me is the fact he was running away. and you look at a situation now where this man is dead. it does bring in the question was there a different way this could have been handled, particularly when he is running away but now he is dead. i hear the mayor of atlanta wants to have a full investigation but i do think this is a situation that could have been handled much differently. >> here's the problem. i think forever people have been asking for more money for homelessness and more money for mental health and more money for sexual abuse but "the washington post" had an interesting article entitled we spend a hundred billion dollars on policing. we have no idea what works.

in it, it says the united states shells out well over $100 billion each year for public safety. we've got remarkably little idea whether that money is well spent. it is possible that any given policing tactic or technology from tasers to facial recognition systems to body cameras is a fine or poor idea but we don't really have much sense of which tactics and tools work or whether they are worth the cost. i think what people are seeing is i don't know that you proved these things work but the outcome particularly if you're black and brown in america is not good. something has to change. if the thing that has to change is you get less of our tax money so be it. >> again as i said people want to see a reshuffling of the deck, more priorities in terms of social spending on priorities, education, social work, mental health. those are the things people want

to see because the inequality is not just in how we're dealing with how police and communities are interacting but different inequities in education, in health disparities and i think those are the things people are crying for to see a change and when they are looking at the police budgets, they would like to see maybe some shifting of funding toward the other priorities. that is what they are saying in new york and i think around the country. >> the things that have come into force in new york, that the governor signed today, which of these are you most interested in? there's the making chokeholds a felony, the repeal of the secrecy laws which again nobody really understands why they exist given that these are public servants. personnel records being used to evaluate performance, special prosecutor's office independent of the police to investigate and prosecute police killings of unarmed civilians.

what do you think is most meaningful in the stuff that has happened in new york state? >> it depends i would say on the situation. if you look at the police interaction leading to an outcome that is problematic, you could look at any of the bills we've passed. if it is something that resulted in a death, having a special prosecutor is what may be what people feel is the best thing. knowing an officer's disciplinary records who may end up being part of another interaction that has a negative outcome may be what people want to see. but even on the stat act, you know, which keeps track of the low level offenses that people are often have interactions with the police department, that might be the most important one.

so it really depends on which situation that you find yourself in or as a person of color which situation have you found yourself on the opposite end of or your family found themselves on the opposite end of? i think the important legislation is really in the eye of or the heart of the beholder. >> speaker, thank you for joining us, the speaker of the assembly for the new york state legislature. as i said, we are awaiting the attorneys for rayshard brooks to speak any minute now. the 27-year-old was allegedly asleep in his car while in the drive through lane at a wendy's before being approached by police ending up in a scuffle and him being shot dead. we are going to bring that to you. they are setting up mics. i don't think they'll get to the 8:30 start which was the scheduled time. we'll bring that to you as soon as it happens in atlanta. we have our special guests to

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we're continuing to follow breaking news on msnbc. in fact we'll show you some pictures out of atlanta of what is going on right now. there is a crowd of protesters it appears gathering around the scene. that is a shot of a press conference we expect to start. we were expecting at 8:30 p.m. eastern. it does look like there is a bit of a delay but we'll hear from the family of the man whose picture you are looking at. rayshard brooks, 27. he was last night apparently asleep in his car at a wendy's drive through in atlanta. people called the police. the police arrived. they administered a sobriety test on him. he apparently failed that test and they attempted to arrest him which is what you are watching right now. this is video taken by a bystander. the struggle ensues. he grabs a taser and runs away.

he does into the use the taser on police. he runs away. he is chased by the police. you'll see more video in a second which is the surveillance video from wendy's that shows him running away right there. he seems to turn as he is being pursued. points the taser in the direction of the police. he then gets shot, falls to the ground and is taken to the hospital and he dies there. this is now resulting in the resignation of the police chief of atlanta, erica shields. a 20-year plus veteran of the atlanta police department well regarded as a chief for more than two decades saying i've served along side some of the finest men and women out of the atlanta police department. out of deep and abiding love for this city and department i offer to step aside as police chief. apd has my full support and mayor bottoms has my full support on the future direction of this department. it is time for the city to move forward and build trust between law enforcement and the

communities they serve. that is erika shields. mayor keisha lance bottoms also made a statement about this in which she said that she does not know, they will investigate to determine whether it was an appropriate shooting but what she was concerned about is whether the police can do what they should do. i'm joined by a former detective for the new york police department in charge of public relations and political affairs for the black law enforcement alliance and somebody on whom we have relied heavily over the past few weeks as we have covered the death of george floyd and the protests across the country. you see him on the screen. jim kavanaugh special atf agent in charge. someone else we turn to when we need to understand these things. i want to go to you, jim, because one of the things we were talking about that's been talked about a lot in the last few weeks about what policing needs to be better at, one of those things is deescalation. we have a situation that by all accounts and there may be much

more information to come by all accounts didn't start as an escalated situation. it was a guy asleep in his car. a lot of people wondering whether this had to be the outcome, a scuffle with police and then a man dead. >> you're right. it did not. i was a uniformd police officer before i went into atf and i answered many calls like this. this is a routine police call. mark as as well. all officers and deputies and troopers have answered these routine calls. this is a bad shoot. this plan shoot is a bad shoot. there is no deadly force justification in this and let me break it down this way. when the officers arrived the man is inebriated. he has not committed any heavy crime. they'll arrest him for disorderly intoxication. he wants to fight. it is not unusual. the officers, you know, start fighting with him. everything they do in the fight, on the street, is, you know,

part of police work. sometimes you have to expect to get punched and kicked and, you know, you don't like it but it happens. he is resisting actively. then he goes from what we call resisting without violence which is not letting you put his arms behind his back which is a misdemeanor to resisting with violence which is a felony, he starts to strike you, punch you, which he graduates to and he gets the taser and runs away. you got two officers, he's got your taser. you know how far the taser deploys. you know you can get 25 feet away and he can't hit you with the taser. plus he is running away from you. so there is no justification to shoot him, to break leather in my view. it is a fight, moving across the parking lot. you have two officers.

you don't have to be a sprint runner. you get on the radio and get more officers there. you know you'll pick him up a block away when he is exhausted and he'll be charged with disorderly intoks, resisting with violence, and that is the end of the game. i don't know why they're reaching for their guns. there is no reason for an officer to reach for his gun when a man is running away. the man doesn't have a gun. if he had a firearm, a man running away can still shoot you. he can shoot low behind his back, over his shoulder, and there is plenty of video showing that but he did not have a firearm. >> jim, and mark, i ask you to stand by for a second. we are seeing some people arrive at the podium in atlanta. they're getting ready to talk. this is apparently lawyers for the family of rayshard brooks who was killed last night. let's listen in.

>> with my partner, justin miller, mike roth, josh palmer, diana lee in the back. we proudly represent the family of rayshard brooks, and we sadly represent the four children that will never see their father again. we just literally landed a few days ago from the funeral of george floyd where we represent his youngest daughter gianna. days before that, we were here fighting the ahmaud arbery case where we are georgia counsel. i could go on about deandre philips another murder down here which involved apd which still has not been decided or resolved. i could talk about devin marrow which still has not been resolved here in georgia.

i could go on to alton sterling which years later still has not been resolved. all of the other cases and what it boils down to, black, white, hispanic, whatever you are, are you not tired of seeing cases like this happen? we'll see from the protesters, we see from the people in the streets of all races now, that people are sick of watching black men murdered. before we even get into what happened last night, the one thing that nobody can disagree with is that it shouldn't have happened. but it did because the value of african-american lives in the inner city or wherever doesn't mean too much to officers nowadays. and it's sad. because we look at things not just for the emotional effect of

how horrible it is but legally. in georgia a taser is not a deadly weapon. that is a law. that is what the cops are trained to do. it is not a deadly weapon. i've had cases when officers use tasers on victims and they argue with us in court that tasers aren't deadly or harmful. that is the case law here that tasers are not deadly weapons so before we even hear from their lawyers who will say the same old thing they always say you cannot have it both ways. you can't say he ran off with a weapon that could kill somebody when you say it is not deadly. you can't say you don't have other options. where is it going to go? he was barely jogging away. you could have boxed him in. support came and i think in two minutes he would have been boxed in and trapped. why did you have to kill him?

was the officer involved that he got his taser taken? let your pride linger. don't pull your gun quickly. was he upset he lost a little scuffle and out of fright he shot? we don't know yet. but the one thing we do know is he had other options than shooting a man in the back. we don't want to hear anything about he even pointed it backwards because it is not a deadly weapon according to police officers and case law. he wasn't close enough to harm you with it. you could have run him down but instead he got bullets in the back. a man that earlier that day was celebrating his daughter's 8th birthday at the arcade. who has three little girls 8, 2, and 1 and a step son 13. who we sat with today and watched them play and laugh and

be oblivous to the fact that their dad was murdered. a scene we keep repeating as we watched gianna floyd play in houston oblivous to that her dad was knelt on and murdered. how many more examples do we need? the cameras aren't doing it. you all filming it isn't doing it. covering it isn't doing it. people protesting isn't doing it. what is it going to take? how many more examples are we going to get? i actually thought we were going to get over all of this. i thought this would finally start ending with all of these changes. we saw the police chief resign today. we don't have the exact reasons why. i can theorize that maybe it is because she even realized what more can i do training wise?

they know they shouldn't have done that. do we need to start over and rehire all of the officers to retrain them? what other options do we have? the problem is they've been given leeway to use lethal force for all too often and too long. this is what we're left with. and as we are just getting this case, the details are just getting more horrific because there were multiple witnesses out there. we talked to some witnesses today who said that the officers went and put on plastic gloves and picked up their shell casings after they killed him. before rendering aid. we counted two minutes and 16 seconds before they even checked his pulse. and people wonder why it's bad.

just watch the video as he lays there dying. the officers stand around. one kicks him and flips him over. and then the witnesses tell us that which we can't see on camera but they filmed it, they went and picked up the shell casings. i wonder why, so all of you can't know how far away he was when they shot? so you can't find their positions when they use that weapon? they appear to be covering more about covering their tracks than providing aid that could have saved his life if allegedly he was taken to the hospital and died in surgery. they didn't get that to him. so we agree with the mayor saying the officer that fired should be -- the officer that fired his weapon should be terminated and should also be prosecuted. the family met with paul howard and they've opened their investigation and i can say we want justice but i don't even

care anymore. i don't know what that is and i've been doing this for 15 years. i don't know what justice is anymore. is it getting him arrested, getting somebody fired, a chief stepping down? i know that this isn't justice what is happening in society right now. you know, it's just not much more we can say or do as a society. so people that are refusing change and not understanding why the time is now for complete, systematic change, take a look. then compare it to all of the videos online where it was a white individual that had a deadly weapon that wasn't killed. which we've also been looking at today trying to understand why didn't they get shot? and why did rayshard have to when he is running? and that answer i don't have

yet. other than that it's just tiring. i'm sure everybody is tired of seeing it. we're so concerned about trying to find vaccine to the coronavirus, the world is pitching in millions and millions and millions of dollars. scientists from around the world are trying to help find a vaccine but nobody is trying to find a vaccine for civil rights abuses. it is something we're told to wait for. it'll come. nobody is trying to find a vaccine for why officers pull the trigger so quick on african-americans. there is no flood of money or scientists or top experts or leadership in this country trying to end that epidemic. i guess that is because it doesn't hit close to home for the people that care. once again and i'll say it as the millionth time you've seen

me fighting one of these cases we'll fight for justice, trying to get the cop arrested or whatever it may be. sue the city. see if they'll settle. i don't know. we're just tired. and if you don't understand that because you may be a different color, you may be a different gender, you may not be from georgia, then you may be the problem. i think the word that encapsulates everything that chris just said to you is empathy. this is all that all of these families are asking for. and that we're asking for as representatives of these families. just a little empathy. if this officer today had been a little more empathetic and a bit

less scared, then we probably wouldn't have a dead client and we wouldn't be here talking to you like we are right now. there are a lot of things, systemic things wrong with policing in this country. and i think that over the past few weeks we've talked about a lot of them. you've seen a lot of them on tape. and like chris said, we're tired. i mean, we will keep doing this as long as there is a need, but we don't want there to be a need to do this anymore. the first failing that i saw when i saw this tape was training. because just as chris said, if a taser isn't a deadly weapon, then it is not a deadly weapon when i have it. it is not a deadly weapon when an officer has it. it is not a deadly weapon when anyone else has it. when my client has the taser they are going to say it's a deadly weapon and it is not.

there were two officers one of him and their training failed. that is number one. number two, leadership failed them. and i don't want to see anyone lose their job, but maybe the police chief needed to resign because whatever they are doing from the top is not reaching the bottom. and if they are doing it correctly from the top and that's what they are trying to get across to their officers, then it is not working and it needs to change immediately. because this can't happen again. policing in this country and this city needs to change something to something more empathetic, more community based. police are necessary. but the way that they are policing our communities is wrong. it's causing death. and we're not going to stand for it anymore. obviously, you see that the people are not going to stand for it anymore.

i think a lot of thing and a lot of these minor changes are happening because people are scared. and they are scared for their i think so this. they a -- their things. they are scared for a building, a store, they are scared for a restaurant. but the lives of these people, of our people, of americans, of black people, of human beings, in my opinion, are more important than any store or restaurant that is in buck head or bank head or anywhere else. that's number two. and the third thing i would say is fear. listen. i don't know those two officers personally, right? but just from watching the tape i could tell that they were scared. and it is understandable. that is a hard profession, policing. but if you have fear, you don't need to be a police officer. if you do not understand the community that you are policing

in, you do not need to be a police officer. if you are not comfortable with black people, white people, brown, yellow, whatever people, you don't need to be a police officer. a police officer is as much of a counsellor as they are anything else. and i believe that if we go back to the leadership and the training that i spoke of earlier, you will see that these officers aren't taught that. they are taught to crack heads. when they can't crack heads, they are taught to shoot. that's resulting in death. we can't have that anymore. and we won't have that anymore. so i don't think this is going to end any time soon. and frankly, i want everyone watching and everybody here, you know, to understand we're not asking for protesters not to go out and protest. we need to keep pushing. we need to let everyone know that this is unacceptable and we are not going to just move on to the next tragedy.

this probably won't be the last tragedy. and that's a sad thing. but we are going to treat every single one like it shouldn't have happened. we are going to go as hard as we can for this one like we are going for george floyd and his daughter, and like we are going for ahmaud arbery and his mother, and like we are going for alton sterling, and every other single case and single person that should be here today that's not here with us. because, he tend of the day -- and this is what we get back to. if you look around our firm we are white, black, asian, brown, yellow, green -- it doesn't married. we are all people. so if we can see that, we don't understand why the police can't see that. and there are some people who have now opened their eyes and woken up and now they see that. and we think that's great. but we want you to put pressure

on the police. put pressure on the mayor. put pressure on your governors, put pressure on everyone to let them know that you will not take this anymore, you are going to stand up. and this is not just black people. because we have been dealing with this our entire lives. and this is for everyone else who hasn't been dealing with this who is dealing with it now. stands up with us, push with us, fight with us. when you see us in minnesota, fight with us. and when you see us here in atlanta and brunswick, fight with us, because our fight is your fight. this is -- this is united states of america. we are coming up on july 4th. and this is going to be a very weird july 4th for a lot of people. very different. because people are come to the realization that america doesn't many america for all americans. and that's a problem. so keep pushing, fight with us. and hopefully, we'll get some change and this will be the last time we have to have a press conference about a dead black man, killed by police for no reason. thank you.

>> another thing. you know, that some of the witnesses said is they didn't do a sobriety test. there was no count to 100 or whatever, walk this line. they said they were just talking and it seemed to be a decent conversation. and then all of a sudden one of the officers grabbed him and told him he's under arrest. so this started from nothing. this wasn't a bank robbery in progress or anything violent. they just told him he was under arrest. and now i see that they are reporting oh, he was a suspected dui or he fell asleep blocking the line. he wasn't blocking the line. and they didn't even no a sobriety test from what the witnesses right there said. so why was he even under arrest? do you want to know how this could have been avoid examined all of the protests that are going to happen and all of

this -- talk to him. talk. hey, buddy, you fell asleep in line. you okay? why don't you pull your car over there and call a uber and then you walk over and he can leave. why is that so hard for police officers? a conversation. he wasn't doing anything crazy or violent or harming anyone. hey, buddy, i think you have had something to drink, maybe, i guess they didn't feel like doing a sobriety test. pull over, call an uber. i guarantee you that happens hundreds of times a night in college towns with young white kids, or other places in america. we don't get that benefit of the doubt. so not only do officers like that destroy the image of policing, which i have always held in a high standard even

though i am always going against the officers. but y'all are even starting to break me. and most of you all know that i will get up there and i will say i have respect for officers. and you know, policing. but jesus, y'all, even i'm starting to lose hope. and that's hard. but have y'all got any questions? >> the resignation of the police chief, how does that sit with the team? is that a step in the right direction. >> i don't care. >> chris, today -- the eyewitness video, and the surveillance video, and one of the things they. [ indiscernible ] >> i mean i think they were just

releasing the full surveillance video of the parking lot. i am sure there is more video. like i said, witnesses have video. some of these horrific actions. in the video that gbi released you can see how long he laid on the ground before they tried to help him or even assist him. the video is helpful for us. it is also helpful to show that they were far apart when he's running and you know, pointing it backwards. but the case law in georgia, a taser is not a deadly weapon. they can't say he was running off with a gun. it is not a deadly weapon. i lose cases against officers who use it on my clients because it is not a deadly weapon. and i am saying that you know, they shouldn't have done it. you can't have it both ways in this. if it is not a deadly weapon, his life was not in immediate harm when he fired that shot. just was not.

it wasn't. i have watched one of the most conservative police chiefs commentating today, and even he said that there were other options he could have done and that a taser isn't a deadly bep. ask taser is a taser a deadly weapon. i promise you they are going the say no. >> what did you mean the more you ask the more you get? >> the witnesses. we didn't know they picked up their shell casings before gbi got there to investigate the scene. before -- i don't know. >> chris, i haven't seen the video. is there concrete audio of any of the conversation between law enforcement and mr. brooks? >> we haven't gotten all of the audio yet. i think the district attorney's office is also talking to all of these witnesses. so -- >> he did run, mr. brooks. [ indiscernible ]

>> there can be a thousands reasons for someone running from the police, right? just imagine that if you are sleeping in your car because you are trying to drink something off and you get officers knocking on your window hard. right? the current climate of police officer and blake male interaction is not the best. right? so that might scare you at that time of night. goechk. i'm joshua johnson at nbc world headquarters in new york. we are watching a news conference of the attorneys of the family of rayshard brooks, the 27-year-old black man who was shot and killed by officers last night in a fast-food restaurant drivethrough line. let's listen. >> getting away from a situation that could be detrimental to you also turned into another situation that was detrimental to you. it is a no-win situation. you can't get out of it. that's p