tv The Rachel Maddow Show MSNBC April 12, 2021 9:00pm-10:00pm PDT
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unless of course his name is donald trump, in which case all bets are off. and the and are closing seconds for this hour, remembrance of an actual profile in courage. on this day in 1945, americans of all ages and our troops overseas we're dealing with the shock of news of the death of franklin roosevelt, the last american president to die in office of natural causes. a man who let us out of the suppression and helped to save the world from tyranny. elected to four terms before his mighty heart gave out in warm springs georgia, 143 days before the end of world war ii. and that is our broadcast for this monday night with our thanks to you for being here with us, with my thanks to my friends for filling in so i could sneak away for a while on behalf of all of our colleagues
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here at the networks of nbc news. good night. and just like that, we are back on the air and we are doing so to update you on the rolling and breaking news situation in brooklyn center minnesota. a northern suburb of the twin cities where tonight for the second night, we saw violence in the streets. we saw protesters outside police headquarters and then a phalanx of police officers using stun grenades using multiple volleys of tear gas and using at one point lines of officers in body armor. you see them there, methodically moving forward to disperse the crowd. for the most part, at around
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10:30, 11 eastern time, 9:30 or ten local time in minnesota folks started to break up and go home but we should emphasize all of this is because a young man named dante rights should by all accounts be alive today after an encounter with the police this weekends that resulted in the opposite. he is dead, a veteran officer, a 26 year veteran of the force is tonight receiving all of the scrutiny she deserves after an apparent mistake between her sidearm and a taser. here with us is jim kavanaugh, retired special agent in charge at 80 f the, explosive experts at the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms. jim, as i said the last time i talked to you we don't get to
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chat during happy times, we chat when something has gone wrong, specifically in law enforcement. you have been following this story all day, you have seen the video, this officer we now know is a white woman for background, also for background 26 year veteran of the force. she yells, taser taser taser, which is the industry standard morning you are to give to notify the subject and your coworkers that you are about to employ your taser, which should be on the opposite hit of her 9 mm, her weapon which looks different, which feels different. instead, jim, she fired one fatal shot. >> yeah, that's right brian. there's a lot of mistakes in this traffic stop and looks like officer to made money and the first one is when you've
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got the young men out of the car, you don't start trying to search him and handcuff him and frisk him right there in the doorway to the vehicle. that leaves you exposed for him to jump in and drive away, for him to jump in and get a weapon, for him to combat you with the open door. once he compliance by standing out, that's when you should step him right back to the truck, get him right back away, we had another female officer back there. so i thought that was a bad tactic to begin with and then the officer in the first hand had his both hands secure, and he was gonna put the cuffs on him. i'm not so sure why he backed off of that and then officer potter stepped up. but yes, i mean from the tape which you can watch over and over, it doesn't relieve the tragedy of the family whose this young man over this minor offense, this judgment at 20 is not so good. he decides he's going to make a run for it. but you know, police in america
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we have to rethink our history, our tactics, our training. why are you trying to stop someone even with a taser which is 50,000 volts of electricity for trying to get away? you already know the guys identity. where is he going? you know, he's not going to get on a plane to kathmandu, he's 20 years old. he's going back to the neighborhood and you know his identity and he can be caught at a later time. we have to stop this, stop them at all cost from getting away by shooting at them even shutting them with the taser. i think she clearly had a brain malfunction. i think she drew her weapon initially, thought she might need her weapon when he jumped in the car, and then she decided she didn't and she needed to taser and she didn't make the transition. in other words, i think she had this millisecond brain change from what she drew and then
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what's she had to do and that caused the tragedy but that's made to be seen what the investigators come up with. >> yeah, indeed jim. i think that is the charitable view of this and be the correct view of this. it's clear from the evidence we've been given, which is this almost instant turnaround, it's one of the fastest public airings of body camera in a disputed police case after the event that i can remember. and for anyone with a brain, anyone who has had a mental malfunction, meant to do one thing, don the other, this is the evidence were given. we can hear her, we can see her actions, we are left to believe she confused her police issued 9 mm sidearm with a much
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different brightly colored, much lighter different consistency taser which traditionally is worn on the opposing hip. jim, hold one second because i am told ron allen is with us. folks if you've been watching this network tonight have seen his live coverage out and around the protests. and ron, i'm so happy to see that intersection is almost absent any of the protesters that we saw with you earlier. >> yeah, brian. it's been cleared out. this area is now under the national guard troops are here and they have sealed this area off. the police station is in that direction, and after several hours of warnings to clear out to the crowd, the police formed a phalanx and marched down this measure third there and force the protesters down into the city. we don't know where they've gone. people just dispersed.
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we were following the police at one point and we had to break off. they were going towards what's sounded like gunfire down the road ahead of them, and they told us not to follow them. and we broke off and we are waiting here now. when we're done here, we're gonna go down the road a bit. let's see when we can find out. but it's been just an incredibly intense evening that started especially at nightfall when the curfew hit here at 7 pm local time. everyone knew that the police were not going to stand by and just let the protesters stay out there, particularly when projectiles and other objects start flying from the crowd into the police compound. tear gas came back the other way. there were reports of rubber bullets. the crowd was playing sort of cat and mouse with the police all night. running away, then coming back for several hundred people
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easily. and then after a while, again, after several hours, the police clearly had enough and they just started pushing people back in arresting and grabbing people out of the crowd to try and stop this thing which they seemed to have done. however, we can tell you from talking to people all night, the people here are just angry. it's just incredibly frustrating to about what happened. you were talking to jim a minute ago. this is a traffic stop. this is a kid who is 20 years old with his girlfriend driving and the cops pull him over because he had expired plates, and then they find that he's got some kind of a warrant out, we still don't know what the war was four. the police chief earlier said it was a misdemeanor, it wasn't a felony that he was wanted for. the whole situation deteriorates and the young man who is 20 years old is deceased. and people here just find that incredibly senseless, tragic, and just awful. and for all kinds of reasons.
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and to hear the police say that this was a situation where an officer, a 26 year veteran just took a taser for a surface revolver and it's accidental it just sounds really really bizarre to a lot of people here. and they say the officer's going to get due process and is on administrative leave. people in this community want her fired, the mayor wants her fired immediately as well he said. there's been a shake up as well. the city manager has been relieved of his duties and the mayor is now in charge of the police and there is a lot going on in this little town and at the base of it all, of course, it's the loss of a life of this young man. 20 years old. we don't know a lot about him but we hope to know more about him in the coming days. the bottom line is that so many
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people in this community, across this country, help this young man should still be with us in this should never have happened because of it car, registration violation. one of the reporters or activists at the conference today brought up the fact that because of covid, the situation here at the dmv has been experiencing all kinds of delays processing these kinds of registrations and licenses, and the police chief admitted that we are aware of that so the insinuation was that because of some sort of bureaucratic delay, this young man's plates may not have been renewed. we don't know the details, but that was the insinuation. as i understand from leading reading the local press, his mother had just given him the car several weeks ago was the reporting. not to confirm all of that. she was on the phone with him, his girlfriend was in the car with him. this was just, brian. how many things have we seen across the country over the
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years? this is just really really tragic. that's why there was so much emotion out here. now you have the national guard, this whole area sealed off. and while the protesters are gone now, it will be back i suspect. this is not over by a long shot. brian. >> ron allen with our thanks for not only this but the reporting he did all evening i hope that you and your crew can get a break and indeed i hope that the calm holds in brooklyn center minnesota. to our viewers, one quick note. those tuning in to see the rachel meadow program, we will join the early addition of that in progress after a few minutes of our live coverage, we just wanted to give you a situation or around the circumstances in minnesota having been covering it all evening long. we're joined once again by carmen best, former police chief for the great city of so
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seattle. chief, indeed, i want to start with the point jim made. and that's that the police stance of take down at any cost, of using an anvil, using the upper hand of force. why are they tasing a 20 year old kid in his own car at a traffic stop when, what do we know? we already have his i.d.. it's in the hand of the officer who ultimately kills him. we have a tag number. we have a registration. he is not at risk of flight, as a 20 year old man. let him run from the scene if he must. you can pick him up later on, any of the sound familiar to you? >> it does sound familiar. it sounds absolutely right. as you said, there is no risk. there is not a felony stop, there's no major crime it's a misdemeanor. it should not end up with
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somebody dead. that is just the bottom line here. it's incredibly tragic, really inexplicable and what happened there is the young man as you noted knows who he is, they know where he lives. his vehicle is there. if he takes up on healing toe and runs, you've got the vehicle right there. you can impound it. you can get information from the passenger in the vehicle. there's absolutely no reason that this had to turn in the way that it did with this young man needlessly in my view. killed in what would be described as a very low level defense. you really don't know with research whether or not he had purchased his vehicle tags or what was going on there. >> chief, we've heard so much about the broken window theory of policing. especially in urban areas like
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seattle where you served, or traffic stops are more rare than they are out in the american suburbs. in the suburbs like in the suburb of minneapolis, traffic stops for local police up departments are the coin of the realm. they drill and drill, and drill about them and you could argue that there is a broken taillight theory of policing that veteran officer can usually look at a driver, a vehicle, figure out something is wrong and work the odds on whether or not you're going to find something further during a traffic stop, a takedown. but this circumstance doesn't match a lot of those criteria. especially 20 year old man with family in the car and a new car that's been gifted to him and knowing the mvp has been backed up during a pandemic and people
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can't always get the new registrations. that's what makes this situation absolutely do ridiculous to look at. we've had in law enforcement, a tough week as it is. coming out of the hills of the chauvin case that's going on, and the lieutenant that was stopped in virginia. now we have another needless and senseless death. as i said before, i absolutely think there is so many good men and women in the profession. but we have to acknowledge that there are some problems. and we have to acknowledge that we need to be aware of how are doing things. that old standard of training, we're just not doing it that way anymore. we shouldn't be doing it that way anymore. a misdemeanor crime, as you know, does not take an anvil to come to deal with the situation. everything they needed was right there, and it is
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perplexing, completely perplexing how this ended up at the death of this young man. we are doing so much better training these days. with de-escalation, with pausing, with taking time, with getting time, distance, and shielding to evaluate what you have before. this just makes this more surprising. that this ended up the way it did. >> thank you for adding your voice to this conversation chief. i realize we're talking about nothing less than your lifelong pursuit. let's bring in some other guests. we spoke to in our last hour of coverage and would like to speak to again, including gianna lloyd, a managing partner with the cochrane firm in orlando. among her areas of legal expertise, cases dealing with wrongful death. and civil rights violations. professor jason johnson is back with us for this bit of coverage as well. jason, just to start where you and i left off.
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one way of looking at this tragedy, at this story, is that a 20 year old man is no longer alive after getting pulled over. period. full stop. a death should not have been the results in this case. >> yes brian. that's why people are angry. in their justifiably angry. and they're tired of excuses. and they're tired of excuses from the governments. and they're tired of excuses from police. and they're tired of being told that this is something that can simply be fixed by training and discussions. i want to take this to our larger frame that people need to understand. it's not lost on me. it's not been lost and many of us. that what we saw, the insurrection at the capitol, there's speculation, there has been analysis that upped words of 20% of the people that attacked the capital, of this country, or in law enforcement. we have problems, in the
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attitudes and belief systems all throughout law enforcement. and so when we see it at a micro level, when we see a simple traffic stop result in a 20 year old being dead, we saw sandra bland several years ago, a simple traffic stop in somehow she ends up mysteriously dying in jail. there is a legitimate reason for people to be skeptical. and the answers which have been offered through the obama administration, the trump administration, the biden administration, have not fix this problem. and that's where we need to focus. the time for discussions inside thoughts and prayers and sadness. we are beyond that. we need to talk about real solutions. what's been offered so far is not changing anything. >> counselor, i'm going to do something very unfair and ask you to fast forward to what we believe will be the trial. of this woman. a 26 year veteran of this police department. all of us have had family or friends, come up to us and they
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can't find their glasses and will say, you are wearing them. they're on your face. that is a brain hiccup. and now we're all allowed to have. that we are all allowed to do. this gets us into fatal territory. here is a woman who knows better. who has trained on both devices. who knows that in the hands, to the eye, a 9 mm is nothing like a taser. but it's why they are on opposing hips on the belt of a police officer. so counselor, how is the law, likely to approach a woman after a brain hiccup, that diminishes what she has done here. that has resulted in the fact that we have a 20-year-old who is no longer alive and with us. >> let's just talk about the broad law of police immunity. that's what's going to allow
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for her and for the department to call this an accidental shooting. it gives officers the benefit of the doubt. when there is a question as to whether or not something was a mistake. that was the purpose of this police immunity. that has gotten so strong, and so entrenched, that even when there's a clear violation, we still cannot convict police officers. because the burden is so high, they are given the benefit of the doubt. in this case the chief is already come out to say this is appears to be an accidental shooting. because he says she yelled taser. he believes that from what he sees this is an accidental shooting. police immunity is something that needs to be addressed, it's being addressed all over. and because it is what allows the police officers to be immune from prosecution, when they violated someone's constitutional rights. >> counselor, you need me to the second question though, which is, is there an argument to be made, that the traffic
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stop was already too aggressive, by half. two aggressive by three quarters. that for a misdemeanor warrant, in people by the way are walking around this country with misdemeanor warrants and felony warrants for that matter every day. for a misdemeanor warrant, they were going to have that aggressive his stance, on a traffic stop. can that be an aggravating and not mitigating factor? >> absolutely. they came out of the car with force in the force level for the actual infraction, was way disproportionate. it wasn't even close. these are the things that will be looked at, and when you're seeing the video, you can see for this type of infraction, even after they got his i.d., they could've found him afterwards, they had his information, they could've gone to his home. to have this level of force where we are drawing the the weapons is a problem. it's definitely disproportionate to what it was
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the actual infraction. >> jim kavanaugh is still with us. jim, as a veteran of law enforcement, how is change, cultural change, the kind that jason johnson and others are talking about tonight, how is that going to be received, when folks at local departments, city departments, go for training and learn there's a new sheriff in town and we have got to change some of our procedures. including adequate and quote routine traffic stop. >> you gotta have chiefs and people that can open their minds and we do still have a lot of cement heads in policing, you have to listen to guys like jason johnson. who speaks from the heart in the brain. and he has a lot of intelligence around this. he has a lot of study around these topics and he's crying
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out when needs to be done. and police have to listen. we have a break in police culture. this belief that no one can get away. the chief knows, i came up the same way, i have 36 years in law enforcement as a local officer in a federal agent. we've let people get away. nobody got away. if we had to have a string of 100 police cars chase you down the street, you didn't get away. we are going to chase you. we broke that off years ago because car chases, led to many deaths that were needless. but we haven't broken that in the small arrest. in taking this, the predicate stop on this which you discussed brian and i'm so glad you brought that up, in a state where the global pandemic has affected, a delay at the dmv, we had that in my state. they've had that there.
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you would pull over, when you when i was an officer you would not pull over a car if you knew that was going on. i would see people with no valid inspection sticker and say you're stickers expired, you need to go get that fixed. if you know that's happening at the dmv, you can pull up to the guy the red light rolled on the window and say you better get a tag on that thing. yes sir i will, okay. there's a lot of ways to please the neighborhood, and you have to respect the people, you can't not respect the people. but even if the stock was allowed, in it legally, technically was, no registration or invalid registration, the tactics i think, they should've brought them into the back of the rear the car and i do think, and i haven't heard anybody else talk about, it it doesn't relieve her of culpability. but her mistake, was not i don't think drawing the weapon unless she carried a taser on
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the side of the gun, her mistake was, she pulled a gun and then she wanted to transition. she should've holstered the gun and then drew the taser and she did not do that. >> from the title of the great some changes going to come, and there will be resistance. i think at this point it's got to. to our viewers we just wanted to take these few minutes to update you on this rolling and breaking news story. to our guest, jim kafanov, ron allen, carmen best, shauna loyd, jason johnson, nothing but thanks for lending your voices to the story. so that's going to conclude our live coverage portion of the events going on, in brooklyn center minnesota tonight, obviously stay with his network for the very latest. rachel meadow continues right after a quick break. ntinues righ after a quick break. after a quick break. ...they're with me all the way through it. voya. be confident to and through retirement. vo: calling all builders, all welders, and roofers. engineers and electricians.
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capacity or above. that state deals with huge surge in covid crisis. at least one michigan hospital 100% capacity as of this morning. chief medical officer there saying that when his hospital tried to transfer out some of its patients with the most acute needs, they couldn't do it. it's long delays trying to move patients out because so many hospitals are so crowded. there's nowhere to move them to. as michigan covid cases and hospitalizations continue to rise in extra bleep without any relief at all, the michigan
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health and hospital associations say that they expect the number of hospitalizations in the state to beat last falls peak, to head out higher than they've ever been before during the crisis at all. this is the daily new coronavirus cases in michigan. right now, there are dozens of states that are having case numbers spike across the country but michigan is by far the worst. still though, even in light of that the white house confirmed again that they're not planning to send an extra allocation of vaccines to michigan. that's what governor gretchen whitmer is asking for to try to get the crisis under control. the white house said they will send other resources to michigan to try to help, but not additional vaccines. >> when you have an acute situation, extraordinary number of cases like we have in michigan the answer is not necessarily to give vaccine. in fact, we know we have a
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delayed response. the answer to that is to really close things down, to go back to our basics, to go back to where we were last spring, last summer and to shut things down. to flatten the curve, to decrease contact with one another. to test the extent that we have available and to contact trace and sometimes they can't even do it to the capacity that you need but what we really need to do in the situation is shut things down. i think if we tried to vaccinate our way out of what is happening in michigan, we would be disappointed that it took so long for the vaccine to work to actually have the impact. >> well we need to do in michigan is shut things down. if we try to vaccinate our way out of michigan will be disappointed that it took so long for the vaccine to work. that's from cdc director coming just from whether she repeated her plea to surge extra vaccine to her state while they cope with this huge bias in cases.
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it's interesting, this is now a legit controversy between with the state is asking for from the federal government and with the federal governme is willing to give them. and the scientific thinking about extra vaccines could help, clearly there's a disagreement there because of the biden administration and the white house and what the state wants. but the white house is sending some additional resources, and they're serving additional vaccinators to help the vaccine capacity. they're trying to help expand michigan's testing capacity and interestingly, they said the plan to surge treatments, therapeutics, monoclonal and to body treatments, to michigan for people who are covid positive. the use of those treatments for people who actually contract covid it's something we've covered pretty intensively here on this show. the clinical data of monoclonal antibody treatments shows that they are very effective if used
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quickly enough. they're effective at reducing the risk of hospitalization and death. for people who get covid, who are a higher risk of getting very sick from covid including everybody over age 65, people over age 55 with a number of different morbidity. 's if they have serious enough morbidity's. if you're covid positive, and you only have mild or more moderate symptoms. if you can get a monoclonal antibody infusion early before you need to be hospitalized they've shown to be incredibly effective it saving lives. they're being underutilized. they're free and they bought these doses but, there's not enough awareness that they could be used and that they should be used before people are sick enough that they need to be. hospitalized. we've been talking about that about that a lot on the show. we have a lot of developments on that front. we do have the federal government essentially
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endorsing these treatments today. at the white house saying that we don't believe that an extra vaccine supply and michigan will make the difference in this spike in cases and spike in hospitalizations but treatments to prevent people who have covid from getting more sick, we will surge those. interesting. also new interest in clinical data today suggesting that these types of treatments will be more useful and be even more accessible than what is clear even before today. regeneron is probably the best known of all these therapies, one because it's the easiest to pronounce. also because it's the one given to trump when he was diagnosed with covid-19 and he went to walter reed. again, he used this to treat people who had covid who are at high risk of getting very sick from it. the infusion happens before you have to be hospitalized. it has to happen early in your infection. but today they're gonna ask if
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the fda if their treatment can be used because if it can be used to prevent treatment. according to a phase three clinical trial to people who were exposed to the virus, taking regeneron and taking this drug actually reduce the risk of getting covid, getting symptomatic infection by over 80%. the prospect that this could keep you from getting infected if you're exposed could be there could be another major use for these types of drugs the other exciting top line for this trial is for the purposes of this trial, they didn't give this drug in an iv infusion. they simply gave it as an injection. as a shot, the same when you get a vaccine. this is a much easier way to get a drug into people then getting it in an iv infusion while the drug gets slowly tricked into them. all this to say, if this further use for regeneron gets
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approved, if the white house endorsement of these therapies is a way to fight surges, matters in michigan could matter in other states. could that mean something important for overall fight against this fires an overall fight to save these lives. joining us now is a doctor at the institute for health metrics and evaluation. doctor gupta, it's nice of you to make time to be here. thank you. >> thanks for having me. >> so you've been very outspoken about the utility of the treatments against the fight against covid. i want to ask you as a practitioner if i said anything there that was wrong about them or if there's anything else that you think people should understand broadly about how these things could be used and why they should be used. >> absolutely, and it could see rachel. everything you said was exactly correct, i see the end
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consequences if we do this at scale unit position. i was down in arizona caring for a different kind of icu at the beginning of a pandemic. younger patients, those with pre-existing conditions on ventilators. and they were not asking for, they didn't know to ask for, monoclonal antibodies so we definitely and utilizing the therapy that frankly because of the band, the lack of demand for it the key people out of the hospital. that's the key here, deaths for those who have covid-19 have mild to moderate symptoms, this could potentially halt progression, halt seeing folks in the intensive care unit. >> how does it work practically? i feel like we've talked about this a few different times on the show. we've talked about it with doctor kessler who is a scientific advisers at the high level scientific adviser to the white house covid response and i still feel like the thing
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that comes up when i talk to people about this in my personal life, when i've had source conversations with this is that people just don't know what to do. let's say i'm not 65, but let's say i was 65 and i just found out didn't covid positive. if i'm 65, i technically qualified to get this treatment as a potentially high risk infection. what do i do if i want to access the antibody? if nobody offered it to me, and my doctor doesn't know what it is, how do i go about pursuing it? >> this is the intention here. this is a patient driven exercise, not provider driven. there is no paradigm here that we've dealt with in the past where a patient has to self screen and then seek out this therapy so for all your viewers out there go to combat covid dot a chest .gov and i would delineate everything in terms of all inclusion criteria if we're gonna meet them 65 and older. if you have a pre-existing condition and your 55 and older,
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anyone watching this taking an immunosuppression you would qualify. go to that website, and you would find the ability to search for the centers. for those of you in southeast mrs. shotgun see there are therapies out there and the government at a chess actually verified that hospitals have supplied and that was a big issue early on a few weeks ago, rachel. we direct them to that website and it's hard to access it because the hospital doesn't have it so they're working on that. if the green check mark is verified on that website at places that in patients and tours have been identified, call them you can get a prescription, go and, and get your therapy. this is the challenge because we're asking if the same health care systems that are trying to vaccinate and test americans to then also provide a part of their clinics to infuse patients with monoclonal
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antibodies is definitely a challenge. >> doctor van gupta, pulmonologist assistant professor. doctor gupta, thank you for everything that you've done both online and on television and all of your work as a practitioner to try to keep this issue front and center. it's an underutilized therapy that could save thousands of american lives if people really know to ask for it and we can get together. thank you sir. i appreciate it. >> thank you. >> we'll be right back, stay with us. for 36 months. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. renae is not an influencer. she's more of a groundbreaker. just look at the way she's reshaping, and reimagining, her 4 acre slice of heaven. it's not hard to tell she's the real deal. renae runs with us on a john deere 1 series tractor, because out here, you can't fake a job well done.
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unfolding situation tonight in minnesota. these are live images here in the left side of your screen. in brooklyn center minnesota, brooklyn center is essentially a suburb of minneapolis. this is the community where yesterday, brooklyn center police officers pulled over a young unarmed african american man named dante right.
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they said they pulled him over for expired registration tags, he was on the phone with his, mother he told her that they were being pulled over. for having an air freshener dangling from his rearview mirror. they decided they would arrest him on a warrant for outstanding misdemeanor related a warrant related to a misdemeanor, in the process of handcuffing him, something happened, in a brooklyn center police officer, said that she was going to taste him. she said taser, taser, taser and then she shot him with her gun. immediately saying oh expletive, i shot him. that body camera footage is released by brooklyn center authorities today, and you're seeing the aftermath of that air, with these live images on your screen. of course this is only about ten miles from the courthouse, where the trials underway for former minneapolis police officer derek chauvin is on trial for killing george floyd
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in low level, line forsman interaction, last year. there is right now, in the whole minneapolis st. paul region. there is a full county curfew in effect tonight, nobody is supposed to be on the streets. for almost two hours now. that's already been in effect, as you can see there are in the scenes we're looking at, hundreds of people here. this is outside the police station, in brooklyn center minnesota. and as you can see, people are out in force, we have seen some people shaking the fence, we have seen what looks like fireworks. we have definitely seen people in what appears to be de crump flirtation with the police. this is an unfolding situation, and the numbers we've been able to see on our screen, have been growing, over the course of this hour. while we've been looking in on this. let me ask the control room. do we have run available? okay we do. ron allen, nbc news correspondent is live for us
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there in brooklyn center, ron where are you and what you can you see from where you are? >> we are just down the street rachel from police headquarters, which is down in that direction. we can see a lot of smoke, coming from tear gas that's been fired apparently by the police. in the protesters have been firing off fireworks in the other direction. we've also seen a number of projectiles going into the police compound there are steps around it. the standup has been going on for several hours. the police have come out recently in the past couple of hours, couple of minutes, i should say, and said the crowd was in violation of the curfew and if they did not leave they would be in violation. the police have been patient, they have been waiting this out. but now it seems like their patience has run out. there are more and more people coming this way. can we go down this way a little bit guys? if you go come down here, down the street a little bit you can see that the crowd is coming this way. let's stop right there.
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there you go. all night, the crowd has been coming and going but it has been many people throughout the night. they are angry, frustrated, they don't like the explanation that the police have given about how an officer who is now been identified, a 26 year veteran i believe it is. who says that apparently she was she mistook a taser for a service revolver and fired, killing mr. right, dante wright who is 20 years old. the crowd is angry and they want the officer fired immediately and earlier today we heard that police chief say that the mayor said he supported firing the chief immediately. they're saying that dante, of course, did not get any due process so why should this officer? things are settling a little bit. it seems that the area right in front of the police department
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has been vacated and there are not as many people in the street now as there were hours ago, but people are still out here. they are not going home and over in this direction, if you walk over here you can see at this dollar tree store over there in this distance, please give me just a second, okay? >> over there you can see people going in and out of that store. can you get that shot? can you see that? that store has been looted now for the past couple of hours. we have seen people walking through the parking lot with carts full of stuff and you can see people going in and out but let's focus back there on the police department because people are going to come in if we're seeing this happening over there. so over there, you can see the police after hours of being patient, i guess you could say, they started firing tear gas. the crowd is now dispersing but they are not going home, rachel. they are still here in the streets. they are still here. they are still here. easy, easy, easy.
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>> what's happening? tell me what happened. >> the police are now firing on homes, that are just across the street that have nothing to do with anything. >> i will kick. you >> i'm gonna go, but report all day nbc. >> no. >> no -- >> okay, okay, okay take it easy please. okay. take it easy, okay. folks, easy. you want to tell the world what is going on out here, okay? >> please. >> don't put your hands on a woman. >> [inaudible] >> tell me what you want to see happen. i don't think so, no. no, no, no. no no. what do you want to see happen
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out here? >> we need the police to stand down. we are peaceful protesters. we are here to talk about the fact that dante wright was murdered. murdered in our community. >> so what do you think the explanation they gave, that the police officer mistook his taser for a gun? >> i've shot a gun. i've held a taser. i'm a beginner shooter, and i can tell the difference between the weight of a gun, the trigger of a gun versus the trigger on a taser? the sound is different. the feel, the weight is different. the weight is different, anyone who has held a weapon and shot a weapon knows what a weapon is. that is the first thing you learn when you shoot a gun. you understand what it means, with the responsibility that you're carrying. if the police are telling us that it is that easy to mistake a gun and a taser? >> are you going to stay out here all night or what's the plan? >> i'm gonna do what needs to be done. be here for my people. however long that takes.
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be here for my people. >> to any of you know the dante or the family very well? >> no i don't. >> let's get out. >> rachel, you heard all of that some of it rational, some of the very angry and passionate. but the bottom line here is that people are still out on the street. they are not going anywhere. and the police have stopped firing tear gas. they are still behind that fence perimeter that's been built up. >> -- the police. >> -- the police. >> what do you want to see happen? >> i want to see -- >> i got it. >> i want them to stop killing black people. >> we're just gonna cut in and we have a responsibility in terms of the language and i just have to cut in. there are certain things we can
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broadcast and there are certain things we can't. obviously, this is live footage and we do apologize for the language that you just heard there. but what ron is testifying to there while he is doing live reporting and trying to watch his own back out there in the middle of it and trying to get people to speak in ways that get the message out that they want out is the rawness and the anger. the footage that you see here zooming in there, that is the police station in brooklyn center minnesota. we have, in this situation right here, a curfew in place. the police have been given warnings that they would clear the streets because nobody is allowed to simply be out by virtue of the curfew. while ron is talking about the ebbing and flowing of the course of this hour, the numbers that we are able to see in the streets are considerable and it doesn't seem like it is thinning out overtime, and clearly this is an agitated and
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confrontational moment in this place and we don't know with the overall place or response is going to be. they have been using gas, you have been seeing them give warnings. we've been seeing people throw fireworks and other projectiles. the national guard has been activated. we are not seeing signs of that in our camera view right now but that does not mean they are not there. we are trying the best we can to figure out whether the national guard presence is something that may appear tonight in the streets in a more visible way. megan fitzgerald is also covering the scene with us. we spoke with her earlier on camera, we're gonna join her now by phone. megan, are you still here near the police station where we were earlier? >> we are just outside of the city limits of brooklyn center. shortly after we got off air we were rushed out of the security team because there was some kind of gas deployed. this is what we have seen throughout the night as it gets darker outside. as things go out, whether it's the fireworks or something from
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within the crowd or something coming from law enforcement, we are seeing the crowd run and go right back. we also saw looters at the nearby stores going in the dollar tree which is not far from where we were. at that point, it was a free-for-all. as we have seen before, we saw people carrying handfuls of things out of the store and now we're seeing this protest take a different turn. these are the people who showed up for a different reason, right? we talk to the people on the ground, our colleagues. ron talking to people there who are here because they want justice. but as night falls, as it gets later and later this is where we are starting to see things take a turn for the worst. rachel. >> megan, one of the things that appears to be concerning just from our camera angles is that we are seeing not only police, and in some cases
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police lines, police masked in a formation that is designed to protect the perimeter. we are seeing essentially chaotic movement of protesters but we are also seeing people driving amid the protesters which itself can be dangerous. people have used their cars and ways against protesters that have resulted in deaths over the course of the past year. can you tell anything from where you are in terms of the overall dynamic? the, i guess the scale of the perimeter here and whether any of this is under control? >> rachel, that's a great question and you know it's a good observation as well. we saw that cars that are being used to block the protesters, i think that was another thing that our security team were concerned about because at some point there you could be stuck in that perimeter because it seems that protesters or rioters are using their cars to kind of keep people within a certain radius. so that is certainly concerning. but it doesn't seem as though it's under control. people are able to kind of go
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do and do is they wash and as i was telling you, we were watching these people looting as we were getting ourselves out of the situation as it continued to get more tense. there was no law enforcement present and as we saw by our cameras there, we were looking at the perimeter around the police department. those police officers are behind that gate, so they have not made a move yet which is why if you have the fence that at any moment now things could certainly escalate. once police officer leads that gated area where they are, but at this point from what we were able to tell, officers remained right there on the ground at the police department, rachel. >> yeah, and we are seeing in our footage here officers shoulder to shoulder. some of them appear to have shields and other crowd control or riot gear and it's hard to grasp the dynamic in terms of
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how the kinetic activity is happening between these protesters and police officers at the brooklyn center minnesota police station. we will be back with you as the situation can you ten used to unfold. ron there as well. we have several correspondents and crews there. i do apologize for the language you heard earlier when ron was speaking with protesters live, but as you can see this is a fluid and fast developing situation and we're just trying to give you the best look that we can on the ground and that does include talking to people, angry people, when we can and when it is safe to do so and so sometimes the language will go south. i will also follow up on something that ron mentioned a moment ago just within the last few minutes. the state has actually released the name of the officer who discharged her firearm in the
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dante wright incident yesterday in brooklyn center, minnesota which resulted in mr. wright's death. he was killed by a gunshot wound to the chest. we have seen the body cam footage from the officer who says taser taser, taser. and then shoots mr. wright and says oh bleep, i shot him. that officer has been identified, her name is kimberly potter she is a 26 veteran of the police force. she has been put on administrative leave. the mayor of the brooklyn center has called for her to be fired but as of yet, she has been on live and has not been we are watching this tonight. relieved of her job. we are watching this tonight. there is a curfew in effect, there is there has been a curfew that has been called in there is a curfew in effect, the counties and that much route politan area but it hasn't done anything to keep this increasingly tense there is there has been a curfew that has been cold in the counties and that much brooklyn center from unfolding. route politan area but it hasn't done anything to keep our live coverage continues this increasingly tense brooklyn center from unfolding. now with the last word, our live coverage continues now with the last word, lawrence o'donnell hosting. lawrence o'donnell hosting. good evening lawrence. good evening lawrence. >> thank you rachel, we're going to continue the live coverage and we're go to ron >> thank allen in just a minute. you rachel we're going to continue
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