Transcripts For CNNW Anderson Cooper 360 20141118 : vimarsan

CNNW Anderson Cooper 360 November 18, 2014

Information about what happened during the brief and hotly contested incident. Well learn all of it tonight. Reporter on a day protesters marched to the st. Louis county Prosecutors Office building, missouris governor declared a state of emergency in preparation for whatever may come when the grand jury releases its decision on whether or not to indict officer Darren Wilson in the killing of unarmed teen Michael Brown. The st. Louis mayor welcomed the decision. I agree with the governors decision. This is why, first of all, we dont know whats going to happen or when its going to happen or what the decision is going to be or what the reaction is going to be. I think we need to make sure that we are prepared for whatever may happen. Reporter but the governors actions has angered some protesters who say their demonstrations have been peaceful for weeks and his decision is premature. The decision comes after these images of officer Darren Wilson were released this weekend. The surveillance tapes released to the st. Louis post dispatch show wilson entering and leaving the Police Station after the august 9th shooting. Though the images arent crystal clear, wilson does not appear to have any major wounds to his face, as initially reported to a source speaking on behalf of wilson. They said that he had no facial injuries but had slight swelling. Also released to the post dispatch, Police Radio Traffic that details the final moments before and after the shooting of brown. They reveal a better timeline, but sources say when wilson initially told brown to get out of the middle of the street, he did not know brown was the suspect in a theft of cigars. But the audio seems to reveal moments later he realized brown and his friend fit the description given by this dispatcher. Hes with another male, hes got a red cardinals a hat, white tshirt and khaki shorts. Reporter wilson is soon after heard saying this and going after brown his and friend. A confrontation then ensues at the car. The autopsy later shows two shots were fired inside the car, then more shots rang out, killing brown. But you would never know that from the Police Radio Traffic released by the department. All you can hear after the shooting is this a woman wailing and another officer calling for backup. We need several more units over here. Theres going to be a problem. Sara sidner joins us from ferguson. We havent heard any Radio Communication saying shots have been fired. Theres no word on why were not hearing that. Whether or not they gave us the entire tapes or because of the struggle at the car perhaps something happened with the radio. We just dont know the answer to that. We do not have an official answer to that. But anderson, i do want to mention something thats just come down from the governors office. He spoke to reporters s on the phone and says when this grand jury decision does come down, the Ferguson Police department will not be front and center. They will not be in control here. It will be the st. Louis county Police Department, which has pretty much taken over all the protest duties as well as the missouri highway patrol. Do we know how Many National guard personnel there are going to be and how theyre going to be deployed . Before when they were called out, they were limited to being around a command post. They werent out on the streets. They werent actually all that visible. Thats a really good question, anderson. Basically what weve been hearing from the governor and from the mayor of st. Louis, is that the National Guard will sort of be in the background. Those who will be front and center will be the Police Departments, three departments, who have all come together in a conglomerate to take care of whatever the needs are of the community both here in ferguson and around the st. Louis area, that the National Guard will sort of be in the background to assist and, if need be, theyll start to come forward, but really, it will be police who are taking the initial steps to try to keep calm here. Also, sara, do we know have they practiced crowd control at all . Because obviously, we all saw the initial you know, it was a variety of different Law Enforcement agencies early on. The previous protests, and there were a number of officers pointing shotguns, rifles at unarmed protester, peaceful protester, and that certainly didnt help matters. Yeah, theyve been roundly criticized for how the theyve responded when talking about august 9, 11, and 12. Ive been here two months and have seen a marked difference in the way st. Louis county Police Department has treated the protests. Theyve been protesting every single day for more than a hundred days now. Definitely a difference. The st. Louis county Police Department has said that, yes, they have made some changes. So have other departments. Learn from some of those earlier mistakes that were made that did, in many peoples minds, help make the situation worse, not better. Sara sidner, appreciate the reporting. Theres late word about how far officials went at the time to keep images of protesters off the air waves. Weve got an access to faa audio tape suggesting that local authority sought those temporary flight restrictions not for Public Safety but to keep news choppers away. Something to talk about with our legal analysts, Jeffrey Toobin and sunny hostin and attorney gail gear who has worked for decades defending Police Officers accused of wrongdoing. Sunny, the governor activating the National Guard, now the fbi bulletin. What do you make of all these developments . To saras point, the protests have been going on for more than 100 days. Those demonstrations, i like to call them, have been peaceful. Theres been a real change in how the st. Louis county Police Department is handling this. Governor nixon calling out the National Guard seems to me to be an escalation of this military style approach which didnt work in first place. You actually think its a provocation. I do. So im surprised that he did that. I understand needing to be prepared, but youve got three Police Departments that are prepared and have, in a sense, gotten to know this community, gotten to know the protester, so why escalate it. A lot of people on twitter and in passing are saying that must mean that he knows there isnt going to be an indictment here. I think there could be something to that. When you hear that argument being made, what do you think . Our thoughts are really for all the people who are concerned about what happened there, and i think Everyone Needs to practice something thats difficult for us today and that is patience. This is a process as we go through the next few days, well learn ways in which to deal with each other and to deal with, really, quite a difficult problem, and that is, when these events occurred, we must exercise patience and let the process continue. But gayle, specifically, gayle, to those who say the governor coming forward, activating the National Guard at this stage, the fbi putting out this bulletin, do you believe its a wise, practical maneuver at this point . Well, quite frankly, their job is to make sure the public is protected. They have information that perhaps you and i do not have, and with that information, what theyre trying to do, i would assume and expect, that is to protect the public at large and to make sure that those who wish to protest have the ability to do so. Jeff, in terms of the video of officer wilson leaving the Police Station, i mean, does it make any difference at all . Does the fact that to some they look at that video, grainy, as it is, doesnt appear to have a serious injury on the video. Does it tell you anything about how the altercation could have gone down. You know, its one piece, but there are so many pieces here and, frankly, there is so much we still dont know. Theres so much evidence we have not seen. Sure, it is one part of the mosaic, but its just a small part. I wouldnt draw any conclusions one way or the other about it. It is remarkable, for all the discussion about this, when you realize the whole incident took maybe 90 seconds. Police officers have an extraordinarily tough job. In 90 seconds for all this to have transpired, whatever you think of this, whoevers side you want to be on, if you want to view it as taking sides, its a very quick, quick interaction. And they usually are. Police shootings are usually very quick. All shootings are usually pretty quick. It cuts both ways, right . On the winn oone hand people wi this happened so quickly that officer wilson had to go with what he thought at the moment. So of course, if he felt threattoned because of whatever happened at the car, then perhaps his actions were appropriate or justified. On the flip side people will say this is a Police Officer trained to have to be able to make these snap judgments, to be able to make these quick decisions and we now know that Michael Brown, it was broad daylight, unarmed with shorts and a tshirt. That reaction, shooting someone seven times, is that really justifiable . So really im going to disagree with jeff. I think the video is important. Because when this stuff first came up, we know that officer wilson said that he feared for his life, right, because of this tussle. Early reports people were saying that he had a significant injury to his eye. Now were hearing what may be not so, how did this end up with someone being shot seven times . Well, i actually am going to disagree with sunny about something else. I actually think 90 seconds is a pretty long time. Look at your watch some time at 90 seconds. We all work in television. We know 90 seconds can take up a lot of time. Think how long that is. Think how much time you can spend thinking about whether to shoot someone in 90 seconds. That does give officer wilson a considerable amount of time to reflect about what hes doing. So you know, if this had been a 10second or 5second incident, which is entirely normal for a police shooting, then maybe you could say it was a snap judgment. I actually think 90 seconds is a lot of time. We dont know how long the alleged tussle at the vehicle and witnesses said there was some sort of tussle at the vehicle. We dont know how long that went on, how much time that ate up. We dont know the breakdown of exactly if you break this down into elements of the initial interaction, the words that were exchanged, the tussle at the vehicle and then the you know, the walking away or running away, whatever exactly happened that ended up with Michael Brown being killed. Right. But the core of officer wilsons claim is that Michael Brown rushed at him and he had to shoot because this big guy was coming at him. Actually, 90 seconds gives you a considerable amount of time to reflect on a situation. So i actually think the fact that its 90 seconds hurts officer wilsons case rather than helps him. Gayle, what do you think . Well, i think just listening to the exchange, we can quickly see why people get confused in trying to make a judgment on this. We do not know enough. And here we have people speculating that were not walking in the shoes of either Michael Brown or officer wilson. And so here we have people, without information, speculating on what was going through the mind of either of these people particularly in this case Michael Brown officer wilson as he had to make that split second decision. And i think because we dont have that and because we live in the world really of twitter and facebook and everything has to come to conclusion quickly, we want either the right or the wrong side. So im not in disagreement im not in agreement with anyone making a snap decision. Im going to go back to this. We have some mighty good coaches across the country. We have particularly one good coach in alabama that says, process, be patient. I would ask those who protests and express their views, those who come to a snap judgment and speculate, i would ask them to respect the process. We have a grand jury, a process. If it should go with an indictment. Thats been three months. Thats a pretty long process. Thats a lot of time. Jeff, final thought. Weve been pretty patient. Yeah, i mean, yes, theres a process, but if theres no indictment, the process is over. And then it is entirely appropriate to make judgments about whether that was a good process or not. So yes, process is good, but when theyre over, its appropriate to evaluate. You must respect a grand jury. Thats our government. Gayle gear, jeff toobin and sunny hostin as well. Another country does it differently. Thank you. Up next, the growing number of sex abuse allegations against bill cosby, more women now speaking out. Details on that. Later, would you write a check to save an abused, abandoned child. Most people would say yes. This school raised mls of dollars from people who did just that, but theres one problem. The schools abused, abandoned fundraising poster child, he does not exist. Thats not all we discovered. Were keeping them honest. Introducing. A pm pain reliever that dares to work all the way until. The am. 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Medicare open enrollment. Youll never know unless you go. I did it. You can too. Tonight bill cosby is maintaining his silence even after more women are speaking out about his sexually assaulting them. Hes not been charged with any crime. We want to make that clear. The 77yearold actor and comedian has built his career on wholesome image, getting laughs and jokes, the huxtable clan on the coz bsby show. Daddy, hes coming to pick me up in five minutes. Maybe best known for that sitcom, but hes been prolific, writing, books, doing standups, hes received emmys and the president ial medal of freedom. His public image is once again under attack. Gary tuchman reports. Reporter the details of what bill cosby allegedly did to numerous women are graphic and disturbing. Barbara bowman alleges she was raped by cosby when she was a teenaged actress. It was a very controlling and man ip lattive environment. It was very controlled, very isolated, and there were twisted things. Reporter she said nobody believed her a quarter century ago when cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her on a number of occasions. He was dr. Huxtable. He was americas dad. Everybody loved him. I loved him. Nobody would believe me. I was so broken down and had gone through so much of having this my mind completely manipulated. Reporter another woman who spoke years ago has now written an essay. I was sickened by what was happening to me and shocked that this man i idolized was now raping me. Of course i told no one. Bowman and tarshis are one of 13 women who have come forward with similar allegations since 2004, when a woman who worked for Temple University accused cosby of drugging and fondling her. She settled out of court in 2006 but not before another woman, tamara green came forward with similar allegations. She spoke on the today show in 2005. I told him that he would have to kill me, that if he didnt kill me and he tried to rape me, it would go badly. Im furious and throwing things around. So he i guess it was inconvenient at that point. I had not been crushed successfully into submission. Reporter bill cosby has never been charged. His attorneys have always denied the allegations. The latest statement reading, over the last several weeks decadeold discredited allegations against mr. Cosby have resurfaced. The fact that they are being repeated does not make them true. This weekend cosby and his wife were on npr being interviewed about her decision to donate some of their art to the smithsonian. This question gives me no pleasure, mr. Cosby, but there have been serious allegations raised about you in recent days. Youre shaking your head no. Im in the news business. I have to ask the question. Do you have any response to those charges . Shaking your head no. There are people who love you who might like to hear from you about this. I wanted to give you the chance. All right. Reporter nbc, which was the home of the cosby show has been developing a new sitcom with him. Despite calls to pull the project, is network is not yet saying what it plans to do with the show, which nbc has hoped would be as squeuccessful as th last cosby show. I want to bring in our legal analy analyst, mark geragos and sunny hostin who has prosecuted a good number of sex crimes. Mark, as i said, you defend a lot of highprofile people. What do you make of all this . The probably most disturbing thing i think has to be the numbers. When you have a similar story told by a number of people, thats what makes it incredibly resonates and why theres so much attention focused to it. Having been on both sides of this, we say theres a presumption of innocence, but i will say when you hear these stories and you hear people talk about being drugged and things the of ha nature, its very disturbing. The silence, mark, or the nonresponse. If youre an attorney representing someone who is accused of that, is that the best defense in a situation like

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