Money for house democrats. The 66th primetime emmy awards are this evening. You can catch the whole event beginning on nbc at 8 00 p. M. Thats going to do it on the that does it for way too early. Morning joe starts right now. Good morning. Welcome to morning joe. Michael browns funeral is held today and his father is praying for calm and its important as we move forward today after a brutal months there is calm. Here is what the father had to say. All i want is peace. I want my son to be laid to rest. Will you please, please take a day of silence so i can so we can lay our son to rest . Please thats all i ask. And thank you. Just let him be. I mean, this has been such a
long hot tragic summer for this country. And for ferguson. And especially august. Its been a brutal hot august. You got the protests, youve had the riots, youve had the police overreacting . A lot of cases. And youve had race. Youve also had Police Brutality. The wounds to those things ripped open on the world stage. You know what is so tragic, mika . It didnt have to be this way. I think it was a confluence of event and a lot of Different Things that led up to this moment that could symbolizes what we are seeing across the country. Yeah. It could. Obviously, the first thing, lets face it, you got to look at what happened in ferguson. And it stavertrted with the pol department. We hear about bill bratton coming on talking about Community Policing. That is when you let the community feel they are a part
of policing. Represented by it. Represented by it. When you get a place where there are 50 white cops out of 53 and only three black cops in a community that is overwhelmingly black, thats not Community Policing. That sounds more like apartheid in south africa in this small town. You know what else . A lot of conservatives are talking about culture. You have to look at the culture in ferguson. This is a welfare culture. A lot of things have gone terribly wrong and all you have to do is look at these people that are on tv every night and arent they horrible . Its a terrible culture and this is what happens when you have the federal government throwing welfare to a community. Okay. You want to have that debate, we can have that debate. Paul ryan on the other day was talking about how welfare strips away the dignity of people. Ive said it before. Lets have that debate, but if we are going to debate about
culture, then why do we debate about a Police Culture . Why dont we debate about a Police Culture . This shot yesterday was in here. Lets go over here, t. J. This shot yesterday was in the New York Times and you know what you see here . You see a bunch of young scared kids pointing shotguns at americans who are actually exercising their First Amendment rights. You can talk, not only to any sergeant, any cop in america that knows about training and about the right type of culture in america for Police Officers. You could talk deletors of troops overseas and they will tell you you never walk around with your weapons pointed like that in at other people in iraq
or in afghanistan, let alone, god help us, in the middle of the United States of america. Theres a culture problem and you know what . You know what it comes down . We read it all weekend. It comes down to the fact you got the federal government that is passing out a lot of equipment. We wrote some of this down. Military style. Military grade body armor. Mind resistant trucks. Silencers. Automatic rifles. Here is the thing. They are given with no strings attached, but, more importantly, they are giving them without training. These kids, these scared kids, they are scared for their life. They dont know what they are doing. Does that fall on these scared kids . No. This falls on the leadership and they have got a culture that was broken. They got a culture that didnt work. They got a culture that led to
this and this, this is not us even presupposing what happened that day. Because you know what . We dont know what happened that day. We dont know whether force was justified. You got people on one side saying, hang the cop by from the highest rafter and people on the other side, saying letting the cop go. There are big tv personalities saying what the cops did was wonderful, was wonderful. It was great policing. We dont know that. If he shot at point blank range because he is charging the cop and he is trying to get the gun, its justified. But if the forensic evidence comes back and the shots were from five, ten, 15 feet off, its not so clearcut. So people need to really shut their mouth until they know
exactly what happened. But we do know what happened there, mika, and there is a total breakdown. Did you see that article yesterday in the New York Times about how long Michael Browns dead body sat in the middle of the street with little kids and people taking cell phone video. Looking at this guy shot in the head and bleeding out. You know what . Every expert will tell you when you have a death like that, you go, you do the evidence as quickly as possible. The only thing you usually do to the body, one expert told the New York Times yesterday, you take photos and then you get them out of there as quickly as possible. Out of dignity, not only for the body, not only for the dead person, but for the dignity of the community. You close the block off if you have to. Or you shut but what do they do . He gets shot at noon. You dont have the first detective there for an hour and a half he is bled out in the street in a pool of blood. They dont cover him for a while. They finally cover him but dont cover him completely. You can see the pool of blood he is lying in. You dont do this even even the st. Louis Police Department said this was a terrible mistake. Yeah. But it wasnt just 15 minutes or 30 minutes. The detective comes an hour and a half later. It takes another hour for the medical examiner to come. So we are two and a half hours in. This 18yearold kid lying dead in the street with six shots in him. People crying, crowd building, anger rising. And it takes another two hours to get him checked in to the morgue. Again, we dont know if he is guilty. We dont know if he is innocent. We dont know if the cop was just i have had, but we do know, if you want to ask why this
happened, youve got to start with the ferguson Police Department. And youve got to start really with a crappy response, not only on the local level, but on the state level, all over. Wi you know what the mayor is saying a week later . We dont have race problems in this country. Its impossible. It is impossible. But you read the New York Times article yesterday. Yeah. Wasnt it jarring . Look. Ive seen the video of the body and the people and different cell phone videos with peoples voices responding to it. It send three terrible messages. First of all, we dont care about this person, this human life, we can just do this, and most involved, you have all white police force and black man lying in the street dead for four hours, we dont care about africanamericans. In the middle of the day. And, john, thats John Heilemann is with us. Whether they believe that or not, Henry Kissinger said in politics, as in life, perception is reality. Thats the perception in ferguson and it was from the very beginning and it led to a lot of chaos over the next week. Certainly the case that if you run the thought experiment that we like to run sometimes in this on this set, you think about a affluent white suburban community and try to imagine what the scenario with a white rich suburban kid shot and let laying dead in the street five hours it would not happen. In america. It would be impossible. You cant even conceive of such a thing happening on the north shore of chicago or in the suburbs of austin or up in connecticut near where you live, you cant imagine that happening. Youre exactly right, where
any of us live. Not only in affluent predominantly white neighborhoods, in middle class neighborhoods. An 18yearold boy gets shot in the white suburbs of st. Louis . The Police Commissioners would if it happened, the entire Police Department would be under siege from community groups, you would have the Police Commissioner forced to resign within 24 hours. If race doesnt matter, you know, people say race doesnt matter. It does matter. In that affluent white st. Louis suburb or we could say dallas suburb or new york suburb or l. A. Suburb, if a black man shot a white 18yearold, oh, my god. Oh, my god. They would feel under siege. And then if a Police Departmentin this white st. Louis suburb had 50 africanamericans and only three white cops, holy cow locust would descend from the heavens. It would be absolutely unbelievable. You know, i got to say im growing so tired of these excuses that right wing commentators are making for this. I really salute rand paul and Eric Erickson and i even salute ted cruz. I said it. I did. You can say that, because there are conservatives that are talking about this. They are talking about how theres unequal justice. Rand paul says there are two different americas when it comes to criminal justice and there is. This is not an opinion. This is a matter of fact. Relate. You can look all the of this
stuff. But i want to talk really quickly. Thirdly, the militarization of police. Barack obama is talking about doing something about it. We need to review it. Im not saying we go back the other way and do absolutely nothing after 9 11 but if youre going to give highgrade military equipment, some of it better than what our troops had when they first went into iraq, we have got to stop giving it without strings attached. Most importantly, youve got to train the people you say you can get this, but youre going to have to do 200 hours of training so you dont have that shot that i was just showing you of those kids holding these kids holding up these guns. Again, its not about the kids that are holding up the guns. Its about the people running the Police Department. You see, we had a that horrible shot of a sniper holding a s. W. A. T. Team like focused in on
peaceful protesters. Its also the gear and where you keep it and when you bring it out. No rhyme or reason to it. These smaller Police Departments getting this incredible militarystyle weaponry with no guidance as to what to do with it. As we move forward, we can learn three quick lessons. You want to get this fixed . Community policing. If youre in a community that is overwhelmingly black and you have a police force that is 95 white, problems are coming. All right . On the short side, you better fix it fast. You need to see what bill bratton has done as far as communitying policing goes. We got problems here. You go out to staten island, lets show that picture. We have got problems here. The chokehold. It was ruled a homicide and it was ruled a homicide for a good reason. This is absolutely horrible what happened out here. There was a protest in new york but guess what happened in the
protest for this terrible tragic unnecessary death. Protesters went out there. There were a lot of people that had nasty signs but you know what . There were no arrests in the protests and al sharpton went out there and you heard what al said. He said we are not here to commit violence. We are here because violence was committed. Al also said something, ill quote it here. I kind of liked it. Dont piss on our party. That is one way of putting it. This is here about a man who died. Dont piss on our party. Let us celebrate no, im just saying. Im quoting what he said. Youre quoting. Thats fair. By the way, last point. You know what . Anywhere al sharpton goes, suddenly, its bad and republicans are criticizing al sharpton. It seems to be the argument. Ive attacked al in the past. I even put a resolution on the house floor condemning him, all right . Is al perfect . No. Am i perfect . No. But you know what . Everywhere ive seen al go, hes gone for two reasons. One, he has gone because the community has asked him to come. Two, the families themselves have asked him to come. I think the family of the dead 18yearold boy have a right to can who they want to ask to come in and if al sharpton is going down there and telling everybody it better be peaceful, then i think right wingers, your argument is about 12 years old. And im not saying that because i work here. Because i say a lot of crappy things about people i work with, all right . Thats number one. And ill tell you the other thing is they say, well, what about black on black crime . What if they ever talk about black on black crime . Blacks kill a lot of whites. Cops do. Guess what . They do. Al does. He goes to chicago and barack obama goes to chicago and eric holder goes to chicago. The first lady went to chicago twice. All talking about black on black crime. S so lets strip away the excuse. Lets get Community Policing as ive said before and review the militarization of local Police Departments and liberals can agree on here. Finally, the third thing, meek, i said it last week. We got to put cameras on cops. Yeah. Because cameras on cops protects these people, whether they are black or white or hispanic, that feel like the police are brutalizing them. Cameras on cameras protect good cops. The only people that cameras hurt on cops are bad cops and we need to get them the hell out of the police force. Well done. In a few hours, the community of
ferguson, missouri, will say goodbye to Michael Brown. A funeral will be held today for the unarmed black teenager who was shot and killed by a Police Officer more than two weeks ago. Three white house official are expected to attend the service and there will be two overflow rooms where the funeral will be streamed to the mourners in attendance. Craig melvin is joining us live from st. Louis. Friendship, Temple Missionary Baptist Church is where we are right now, a church in north st. Louis and seats 4,000, we are told. They expect their church to be filled when the funeral starts at 10 00 a. M. This morning and they are expecting a number of celebrities and dignitaries. I spent some time yesterday with the brown with Michael Browns parents and the parents of Trayvon Martin as well. One of the things that Michael Browns father said, one of the things that got him most worked
up, so to speak, during that interview, was the idea the thought you guys talked about his sons dead body lying in that street for hours on end. That was one of the things that he wanted to talk about a great deal yesterday. No doubt that the funeral today will be emotional. Its expected to last several hours here. Michael brown will be laid to rest at a cemetery nearby. Nbcs craig melvin, thank you very much. Craig, craig, i mean craig reporting on what the father said. Thats it, right there. Can you imagine to lose a son. And then insult. Then the absolute disrespect shown to him. Early on, you see cops Walking Around the dead body, just Walking Around. No go get something and put it over him they did, but no. But it took a while. Show dignity by the way, regardless, regardless of who it is, you got
an 18yearold young man dead in the street, its not that hard to do. Its unspeakable. Other news to cover. The biggest earthquake to shake the bay area in 25 years has sent more than 200 people to the hospital and left thousands without power this morning. The 6. 0 magnitude struck in the dead of night near napa around 3 21 sunday morning. When the sun finally came up it revealed homes split and shaken from their foundation and the blacktop badly broken up. Joining us live from napa, california, richard lui. As you described, almost to the minute, 24 hours ago, is when that quake hit about six miles outside of napa. The center of the wine country we know so well, this is what happened. 10 to 20 seconds of shaking and buildings like this reinforced and unreinforced masonry coming
down and 16 remain uninhabitable. When you think about the wine country, this important space, its valid as some estimate, according to stone bridge research, 50 billion for our economy. The locals here they understand that. This is the way they reacted to what happened yesterday. It was like a Roller Coaster ride from hell. Considered. I was in bed and it just tossed the whole place around. And it lasted for maybe 15, 18 seconds maybe. It felt like forever. I mean, you know, you see it in a horror movie but you think, this isnt going to bother me but, boy i tell you we grabbed each other and just held on. It started shaking and stuff fell on us and we took off out of the aisle. The earthquake was shaking the whole store. Ceiling coming down. Reporter those are the layers of history you see there. Insulation 2x4s and stone. 1875 is when this building was built and oldest of its type in this town. When they look at this, locals, as well as those in San Francisco here, they are keeping one eye open because unlike tornadoes and hurricanes, the sleepless nights are not before, they are after. We have already had some aftershocks and expect many more. Richard, thank you very much. An American Writer is free this morning after being kidnapped nearly two years ago in syria. Qatar helped negotiate the release of Peter Theo Curtis and still uncleared what triggered the release but curtiss family said money did not change hands. The 35yearold was held captive by a group affiliated with al qaeda that is fighting syrias government. British officials, meanwhile, say they have identified the Islamic State militant they believe beheaded american journalist james foley. The suspects name has not yet been released. They found out his name, he