>> Why not a federal ban on chokeholds?
That seems to be, that's agreed upon, right?
You're comfortable with full federal ban on chokeholds [CROSSTALK] for
the best training possible.
>> But what I'm not for is what we saw there.
I don't know that any training, any band, there was no chokeholds used their,
what they did there was just continue to beat this Mr.
Nichols and so I don't know if that's the answer.
But again, we'll look at what we think makes sense to help this
to make sure they have the proper train.
But no amount of training is going to change what we saw in that video.
>> I understand that, but why not set some minimum standards so
that officers are held accountable immediately.
In this case it was because the chief acted the chief sort of acted
unilaterally here.
That we don't always see that kind of leaders, but
why not enact a federal standard here?
Look, most people don't wanna commit murder, but
we have a federal standard when it comes to murder.
>> If we can incentivize certain things, I still think you wanna keep this at
the state local level, this is a law enforcement issue.
You start getting the federal government involved in databases and federalizing
things that gets, cuz the federal government screws it up so many times.
>> Why I would have loved for him to actually be challenged on that talking
point a little more because do the needs for civil liberty, civil rights and
protections from state sponsored violence apply to some states and not other states.
Of course, it's a federal issue,
of course there should be federal standards when it comes to policing.
To ensure that they're actually doing their jobs in protecting the communities
that they were hired to protect as opposed to brutalizing people in those
communities.
And to me Jean one final thing I'll say about that, it's such a cop out,
because the fact of the matter is what the Republican Party is gonna do in the House
in particular over the next two years minimum,
is just BS investigations that are meant to be politicized.
They don't care about passing legislation,
they don't care about improving anybody's life.
So it was a cop out statement in no pun intended in my opinion.
What you think?
>> Yeah, so, look, you just saw him there reject the bare, bare minimum.
Can we at least make sure the cops are not choking people to death?
And he wouldn't agree to it, and why?
He claims states rights, the states have a better way of doing this,
you don't want a government, that is identical to the argument that Republican.
Well, to be fair Republican and Democratic legislators back in the day made
against lynchings, anti lynching laws.
So, and it was a filibuster that prevented federal, anti lynching laws,
because conservative legislators and back then it was mixed,
wanted to make sure that at the state level, they could still allow lynching.
Now, they would have excuses for, I mean, we're not trying to encourage lynching.
We're just saying that it's really important the state be able
to encourage lynching, okay?
And in this case the same thing for the chokehold and probably probably for
the exact same reason.
And he says no amount of training is going to fix this.
Well, we could try [LAUGH] and why would you make that assumption?
It's like saying no amount of training will get an engineer to be able
to build that bridge.
No, that's not true, the proper amount of training will get
the engineer to build the bridge and the doctor to be able to do surgery.
There's no reason why no amount of training will get cops to not
murder people.
What a bizarre thing to say.
>> Right. >> I mean, in fact,
it's more damning of the cops than anything anyone on the left has ever said.
>> I mean, one of the biggest things is doing away with qualified immunity.
So there's a little more consistency in punishment when
there is a clear case of police using excessive force and brutality.
In this case initially the five officers or whatever were fired, but
that was because of a unilateral decision by the captain.
And that is a rare decision that police captains make, right?
More often than not, the police will provide cover for
the quote unquote bad apples.
>> In fact, they had former Sheriff Clark on Newsmax arguing
that the the captain there did or
the head of the police department there did not protect the cops enough.
That she should have waited longer to be able to resuscitate the reputation
of the cops, and do so he said, of course they always have an excuse so
that they could receive a fair trial, right?
>> Right. >> Well, how about justice for
the guy who was killed?
No, that can wait.
>> So there are some other updates that I wanted to share with you about that
horrific instance of police brutality.
So the New York Times did its own investigation into the commands that
the five cops were shouting at Nichols as they were beating him.
And it's very clear that there was a lot of inconsistency in what they were
demanding from him.
Officers shouted at least 71 commands during the approximately 13-minute period.
The orders were often simultaneous and contradictory.
Officers commanded Nichols to show his hands even as they were holding his hands.
They told him to get on the ground even when he was on the ground.
And they ordered him to reposition himself even when they had control of his body.
And I mean, look, that's all very clear in the video.
It's clear that they wanted to beat him the way that they beat him and
he lost his life as a result of that beating.
He was sent to the hospital in critical condition as a result of that beating.
Some other details about Nichols, he had Crohn's disease and
as a result of that, he was very thin for his height, so he's 63,145 pounds.
So imagine being beaten by five cops with their weapons and
everything as a man who weighs so little,
it's just heartbreaking story, heartbreaking video.
I don't know how anyone can watch that video and provide any cover for
the cops there.
>> Well then we're gonna get to that, that's the right wing,
they're starting to do that now.
But on this one, look, the New York Times,
it's actually one of the truest articles I've ever read in the New York Times,
because as I watched the video, I thought well, he's doing what you asked him to do.
And these kind of miscommunications happen all the time and
they happen on a lower level to.
There was, I mean, just the most absurd example, but at a bagel shop guy comes in,
he's gonna take his order and the guy says no you gotta pay first.
And then he gets mad as if the guy's insulting him, guys like no, it's standard
procedure and then they get into this fight just over a simple miscommunication.
But in this case, as I'm watching it, they keep saying, get on the ground,
get on the ground, like he said it dozens of times when he's already on the ground.
He clearly doesn't understand what the hell they're talking about.
And as you look at the video, it's maddening, he's already on the ground.
But I could tell after a while in New York Times said the same exact thing,
what they meant is lie flat on your stomach.
But they didn't say that until minutes into the beating.
>> They wanted to beat him at the end of the day that was what their objective was.
And I don't know man, I just what he calls out for his mom.
>> It's impossible this >> I can't, because I mean,
obviously that alone is so heartbreaking and
his mom has to see that, I can't anyway.
>> Look to give you a sense of how heart wrenching.
So she was at the press conference and
a couple of days ago before they released the video and that's where she broke down.
She said he was trying to get to me, he was only a couple of steps away and
I couldn't hear him, I couldn't hear him and they started weeping.
Look, that is so hard to deal with even Trump called it out a man legendary for
having no empathy.
The guy was tough, the mom thing was tough, right?
Yeah, the whole thing was very, very tough and that certainly was
the toughest part of it and guys, it wasn't just to get on the ground.
It was nonstop give us your arms when one cop had one arm,
another cop had another arm, and they're like give us your arms.
He said, there's nothing to do, he can't,
he's giving you both of his arms, there's nothing you can do.
And guys look, here we're talking about training all the time, Jim Jordans said on
meet the press, there's nothing you can do about the training.
Of course there's things you can do, but it's not just the training of the policy,
because a lot of times cops and right wingers fall back on that.
No, technically if you look at our hand guides here that we say don't beat people
to death.
>> It's the culture.
>> No, it's the culture and
they are trained culturally to not care about our lives.
And the most telling part of the video is not those dozens of contradictory
statements from the cops which is maddening, but
when they sit around for 20 minutes as he's dying there.
And at that point now there are tons of cops and medics around and for
20 minutes they don't attend to him cuz they don't care about his life.
And that is a cultural thing that they have been trained to absorb and
think that life is not at all important.
Our feelings are super important and we could beat people to death over our
feelings, but that life isn't important at all.
And don't tell me that cops don't have that culture, it's insane.
It's absurd to argue that they don't have that culture when we see it with our
own eyes 1,000 times over.
>> Now, the Memphis Police Department has disbanded their scorpion unit,
which is the unit that these five cops were part of.
So that is an update, important update.
And by the way, if you have a unit called the scorpion unit,
maybe rethink what that communicates to the community that.
Right now the whole thing with policing that we keep hearing over and
over again is how they want to build trust with communities.
You don't build trust with communities by referring to your unit as the scorpion
unit, number one.
The other thing is, there has now been a six officer
who has been let go, so he hasn't been fired.
It was initially reported that he's been fired, but
he's on administrative leave pending an investigation.
It is unclear whether they're paying him while he is being investigated.
So the sixth officer, Preston Hemphill, has been placed on administrative leave,
it is not clear exactly what role he played in the encounter.
He was not one of the five cops who engaged in the beating scene.
A spokesman for the department confirmed on Monday that he was placed on leave on
the same day that the other officers were suspended.
Now his lawyer, lee Gerald, said in a statement that one of the four videos
of the encounter that were released by the city on Friday,
labeled Video 1, came from Officer Hemphill's body camera.
His lawyer says that he was never present at the second scene when the brutal
beating happened, but we'll find out more as the investigation continues.
But to be clear in case you missed it, the other five cops are are facing
criminal charges and there could be additional charges for
some of the other officers who were on the scene at the time.
There were two firefighters on the scene who were also let go,
they were relieved of duty because of the way they handled the situation.
And so it's a rare instance where you see a horrific example of police brutality and
there are actually consequences for the cops involved.
I would like to see that in every instance,
the lack of consistency when these stories come up is terrifying honestly.
>> Yeah, it appears that the sixth officer is being placed on leave because he
encouraged the beatings on tape.
And you could hear him talking about it on the tape, and so
they're acting much quicker than usual on all of this stuff.
Initially, the police chief said that she would not disband the scorpion unit, but
today when she disbanded it,
she said even the ones in the unit were saying we gotta disbanded.
Because then they all took on the assumption of guilt cuz they were on that
unit they felt like.
And so it became an easy question especially when the cops say yeah,
we should disband cuz it looks bad.
But Tana's point you should have known when you named a scorpion and
you unleashed these guys.
I mean why don't you just call it, let's go beat up people,
and it would be just as menacing a name.
So it's in the culture guys and it doesn't mean every cop is a bad cop,
it doesn't mean we shouldn't have cops.
It means we should fix the culture of policing, that's all.