we're joined for our coverage by msnbc legal analyst maya wiley and mark claxton and neal katyal. first on the all, some of the most interesting things he said there was at the end, all the benefit, i've learned this from my colleagues of getting that one last question in, he leaned in and said these cases have been underprosecuted. your thoughts on that comment? and what does that mean for these four cases? >> these cases have been generally underprosecuted. i think he's exactly right and at a sad moment in time, news today -- the underprosecution in this case, they charged officer chauvin third degree murder. today, those charges were upgraded to second degree murder. second degree is a much more serious offense. up to 40 years in prison for it. third degree murder, those charges were very vulnerable, likely to be tossed out, the defense in minnesota to third degree murder is bizarrely -- i intended to harm this specific victim not randomly intended harm in general, that's a defense, the third degree murder. the second degree murder captures this. the charges of the other three,

joining me now is mark claxton a former new york city police detective and now he's the current directore law enforcement alliance. mark, i knew you when you were a policeman in new york. we've been in these battles a long time in new york. how do you view that tape we just saw? >> it really is a clear demonstration of the resilience of a toxic police culture and it really is a festering climate even with everything going on in the world and everything going on related to the criminality and people and it's a lack of situational awareness and it's a demonstration about the depth and the reach of the problems we face and it's how police build walls around their membership just to keep the realities of the world on the outside so that a police officer would actually at this day and age during this time engage in conduct that has led to the death of countless black and brown men is just unbelievable, but it also shows the desperate need we have for real, substantive, practical reform. >> and laws. i keep saying to people we are not anti-police. we are not antimost police, but where you have

mark claxton still with us, jim cavanaugh still with us. to the control room, if we can play that video one more time and i want to get mark, as well as jim's response that we're able to show that video. >> i think you've had too much to drink to be driving. i'm going to place you under arrest. put your hands behind your back. >> stop fighting. stop fighting. you're going to get -- [ bleep ]. >> hands off the taser. hands off the taser. >> what did you hear there? >> what i heard there is exactly what jim cavanaugh several minutes ago predicted we would who are, and that is routine, what should be observed, routine kind of police-style for an attempt to handcuff an individual, the mild resistance initially followed by more direct resistance and the question still remains. the question that the attorney posed early on, that jim has posed, that i'm posing. that is, why did you shoot this man? why did you kill this man? because nothing we have seen as of yet and i don't see how anything can change this or additional video can change this, the m

mark claxton. we have this news, charles, according to a tweet from minnesota senator amy klobuchar, derek chauvin is now facing a second-degree murder charge up from third degree and three other officers are going to be charged. what's your reaction here? >> well, i hope it's true. they should be charged. i was listening to laura coates and she brought up the fact that it's very possible, one or more of the other officers may have been providing additional evidence on chauvin and that's entirely possible, stronger charge, i don't know. but they should all be charged whether or not of they cooperated or not, but a strong message needs to be sent. it's the right thing. their behavior was criminal, no question about that. and that ought to be the message. held accountable. if you commit an act like that or stand by and watch it happen. this isn't something that happened in a matter of seconds. which sometimes, and it wasn't like that in this case. it was a long drawn out process that took place and n

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

joining us now is mark claxton, a retired nypd detective. mark, just take me through what may be people outside of law enforcements and outside the activism around these issues are missing? defunding the police department sounds like zeroing out budgets and making them go away. >> yeah, some of the dangers living in the social media era, where you look for a nice tag line that may not exactly what the goal of the objectives are, if you look at police funding, most people will recognize the need of the police service and what they're calling for is some reform in the manner in which police operate and there are so many questions when you talk about defunding the police. what does that entail? are you talking about city, city-state? whether you'll allow attrition, drop some of your numbers in individual police departments, that may already be understaffed, the possibility of shifting resources within the agency from enforcement-based models into more community relations projects and units, there are so many variables and questions that come up

mark claxton is still with us. former nypd defective. i want to see what you see as developments in the prosecution with the autopsy report indicating that there could be criminal liability for homicide for two other officers also compressing george floyd's body. >> i think today's autopsy reports came as support of what we saw with our own eyes and believed in our hearts regarding the death of mr. floyd. i want to touch on the movement of late and events of today. it seems as if we are squaundering a golden opportunity. when the commander in chief becomes a provocateur, we are squandering an opportunity. you have law enforcement professionals across the nation who have expressed publicly their support for some level of reform and you have a president who instead decides to provide provocation and increased mi militarization. so the failure, lack of an arrest all point towards squandering of a golden opportunity to move towards a progressive reformed agenda. >> i want to go back to the professor on that point. this story is not over. the

these potential changes are joe ested from police brutality matters and former nypd detective mark claxton who's the director of the black law enforcement alliance. good to you both with us. mark, let me start with you. where would sweeping changes in police departments across the country even start with the understanding that we're not just talking about changing laws and case law and customary procedures, we're also talking about departments that have thousands of closed contracts with cities and counties and states that are in force right now that include disciplinary procedure. so where do you even start? >> well, i think you start by recognizing and acknowledging that there's a police culture that has in large part become toxic and become antithetical to justice equally applied, fairly applied justice. there's very problematic. you also have to avoid minimizing the situation as tim scott just attempted to do there where you talk about the misconduct of police or bad behavior by police as opposed to talking about criminal conduct. talk about civil and human rights violations conducted

mark claxton, i'd like to begin with you.ure to lower your high beams is not a defacto death sentence in this country? >> when you get to point where we no longer accept and we're prepared to penalize police officers who engage in conduct that is either criminal or unjustifiable and i think as painful and difficult as this particular video is to watch, it's just as familiar unfortunately. the use, the disregard of the use of force -- the chart that shows you how much force to use in situations as police officers, it's a disregard of that. the continuation of the abuse that black and the brown communities are talking about and demanding reform from. >> and professor, this is really an intersection of law and local procedure, remember when tasers first started to be a thing, they were sold to the public as a nonlethal alternative to subduing someone, presumably a violent criminal, and now we see the role that tasers play in modern american life. the probable cause standard can be such a fluid thing and so much is done under tha

joining me now are mark claxton, director of the black law enforcement alliance and captain sonia pruittf the montgomery county police department in laurel, maryland. she's the chairperson for the national black police association. both of you have worked as police, do work as police and work with police. one of the things that we've discussed, captain pruitt, is the degree to which there are good police out there. i'm going to get some angry tweets for saying it but there are. we know there are, you know there are. it is hard for them to come forward in the face of some unions in some cases in the face of that blue line. what do we need from them and how can we help them come forward and say policing is not what everybody thinks it is. >> right. so ethical policing requires some courage. it requires courage from the officers who are serving and it particularly requires courage from our leadership, our police chiefs, our commissioners, so officers can feel empowered to be those good officers that we talk about. we have a case in buffalo, new york, in 2008 she was fired from stopping her

mark claxton is a retired nypd police detective and the director of the black law enforcement alliance. take us this you the new charges today. >> our attorney general was trying to achieve two objectives. first of all, he wanted to increase the severity of the offense with which the officer was charged, and at the same time, increase his prospects of winning at trial. so he charged basically, the second-degree felony murder. the commission of another felony assault that results in an unintentional murder. so it relieved him of the duty to prove intend. the second thing he wanted to achieve was to of course charge the other officers. and the problem he faced was, in order to bring someone in under aiding and abetting, you have to share the same level of intend. by framing this as an unintentional killing during the commission of a felony, he could bring in the other officers, charge them with this crime without having to prove that they intended the death. so he achieved a number of important objectives. >> and attorney lewis, there is some difference in the language in these criminal

. >>> joining me to sdurks former assistant sdredirector at the f frank figliuzzi and mark claxton, retired nypd detective. frank, you talked to me about this yesterday. i was so happy you came back this morning because it's really important to help us understand this. when you hear the president and bill barr blame this on the work of one group, antifa, what do we need to understand about that? >> yeah, we're on a dangerous course right now, stephanie, because as tom just talked about, law enforcement is finding evidence of very diverse groups. dangerous groups within these protest movements. what tom described that organization, the bike scouts, the communications, bail money. that, to me, is the emblem of the global anarchy movement that's so effective at destroying cities and exploiting protests. that's not, in my experience, the emblems of antifa. so what we've got is a politically driven decision to single out one group that just happens to be opposed to our president when in reality, it's causing us to distract from the much larger discussion of the need for more tools to address dom

mark claxton, retired lapd detective is director for the black alliance.e has experience as an officer and on the civil rights side of this he can waigs. joining us is nyu law professor melissa murray. good evening to both of you. mark, i'll start with one of the questions we have been charting all day, an unusual day to be sure. can you ever think of a time where police officers have been indicted for felony murder in the first place? >> yes, there have been indictments for felony murder. don't ask me to recall it right off the top of my head. but the indictments -- the charges themselves although significant are just one piece of a larger puzzle and one step toward ultimate justice that i think the protests -- >> but i want -- and i want to get you on all of it, but before we jump ahead, given that three officers were hit with felony murder today, when we checked we found this to be relatively rare. this is very rare. this is a charge that typically is used against drug dealers, gangs, people who are involved in the commission of what you might call a mo

it was brought up by mark claxton.hat is after having seen george floyd's video or whatever other videos that you've watched in the last few years there is a fear amongst some black men about what happens when they go into police custody. so there is an added element here when we're talking about deescalation of the fact that the act of arresting a black man for a nonviolent crime has people worried. there may be some instinct there to run, to get away, to say -- i mean i heard people telling me tonight and today, and i've heard this from others who exist in positions of prominence in society to say that nothing feels like the feeling of about to be arrested if you're a black man. and the worry about what that means. how do we figure out how the police can have empathy for that perspective that says this guy wants to get away because he actually fears for his life? >> you know, i don't even think you should be -- the first two weeks of the police academy you ought to know the history of america. we can go up to a polic

. >> you know, mark claxton, i think about in new york city, police officers marching against david dinkinsecause he wanted them to do more community policing and rudy giuliani saying you have a free hand, do whatever you want, the free attitude then we they came back and sort of rewarding donald trump in the same way. i think people who are being policed particularly black people this seems like an unfair bargain because it means we're seeing the kind of brutality we have seen during the protests and there's no oversight. >> yeah, without a doubt. what's interesting about the union resistance to defunding is let's be real. it's only residual impact to any police union. what is being defunded are the departments, the agencies themselves. residually what tends to occur is that membership is down so they focus on the power behind the numbers of their members. but police unions are notoriously and historically against any progressive movement. anything that involves further restrictions or limitations on their members they'll be against it. it's a reflex action for unions. it will always be th

is joyce vance, and retired nypd detective and president of the black law en forcement alliance mark claxton. good to have you with us. and mark, let me start you with. the claim of outside groups disrupting protests. i have covered protests before in oakland, where we have seen that there were arrested people who came from way outside of california. just to come to oakland and break stuff. so it's not like this is unfounded historically. but now, that there's talk about antifa and bugaloo boys and many groups that the american people are hearing about for the first time, from a law enforcement perspective, what do you do? >> first of all, you have to accept the fact that there has been a shift in the culture, and that it is no longer a straight-up protest, or individual, singular, organizations, that have a primary focus, who work towards that one goal. there are opportunists who have infiltrated these organizations, and these events, and they are extremists, and i think it is undeniable, the intelligence information that's been released publicly, can validate and verify that, they are in o

mark class acti marq claxton is with us, the director of to black law enforcement alliance. and marq, because we're coming off a video of a police tactic there that we just saw where these two officers knock a man to the ground, his head immediately begins to bleed, i want to get your reaction as someone who has been there, someone who has been on the street in situations like this. someone approaches you, starts to talk, how does it become this? how does it turn into we're knocking him to the ground? >> what you just witnessed to what the video shows is what many refer to as a toxic police culture. you start with the unified police presence marching in unison. that's the us, marching towards some protesters. obviously peaceful protesters. that's the them. an interaction occurs where a police officer uses an excessive amount of force, violating the use of force continuum, which basically says you want to meet equal force with equal force. the use of force continuing, shoving an individual down, and then a sense of humanity kicked in automatically from that police officer. he

marq claxton, he's a former nypd police detective and the director of the black law enforcement alliance. and, mark, let me just start with you. as a police officer looking at the tactics, looking at the way this situation develops, what do you see when you look at all of this video? >> an absolutely avoidable death. you know, beyond a tragic death, an absolutely avoidable set of circumstances that ultimately leads to the death of mr. brooks. and, you know, i see the mayor's reaction and the reaction that so many black and brown people have about the empathy about recognizing and acknowledging humanity of people, about prioritizing ourselves. in law enforcement, i think too often there is a lack of priority in human life, especially as it pertains to black and brown people. and what's most painful and what's most troubling, what the mayor expressed and other people have expressed, i have expressed is that in the video of the interaction with rayshard brooks, i recognize my own vulnerability and vulnerability of the black and brown people in my family. my son's vulnerability, the community's vulnera