Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: December 29, 2015 Guest: Steve Schale, Jelani Cobb, Redditt Hudson, Phillip Atiba Goff
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN --
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I`ll be spending a minimum of $2 million a week.
HAYES: The add blitz awakens.
TRUMP: We just don`t want to take any chances. We`re too close.
HAYES: Donald Trump says he`ll begin real campaign spending for the first time, but does he even need to?
Plus, why the rest of the field continues to pile on Marco Rubio.
GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, dude, show up to work. And vote no, right?
HAYES: And protests in Cleveland over Tamir Rice as Chicago`s mayor cuts short his vacation. Tonight, a report on how police are trained to decide to shoot or not to shoot.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You drew your weapon here.
HAYES: I probably shouldn`t have.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, right.
HAYES: And how Black Lives Matter made a difference in 2015.
TRUMP: Get them out of here. Throw `em out.
HAYES: ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes.
Add this to the many things to the many things that differentiate the Republican front runner from more conventional presidential candidates. For all his ubiquity on television, from news shows like this one, we`re looking at Trump at a rally in Iowa, to late night talk shows to "Saturday Night Live" and beyond, and for all of Trump`s bragging about his vast personal wealth and uncompromised campaign war chest.
To date, Donald Trump hasn`t spent a cent to put ads on your TV. Now, he`s signaling that`s about to change. It could further upend the most unpredictable primary season in living memory. For the past half century, perhaps dating backing to Lyndon Johnson`s famous "Daisy" ad from 1964, the commercial ads on television have been where presidential campaigns are believed to be fought and won.
Jeb Bush and his allies have continued to follow that traditional playbook, pouring $41.1 million so far into ads across all media, more than double any other candidate in either party. In just the last week, Bush super PAC Right to Rise has put out ads criticizing Donald Trump for lack of foreign policy credentials, highlighting Bush`s record as a governor compared to those with John Kasich and Chris Christie, and attacking Marco Rubio for shirking his duties in the Senate.
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AD NARRATOR: Days after the Paris attacks, senators came together for a top secret briefing on the terrorist threat. Marco Rubio was missing, fund raising in California instead. Two weeks later, terrorists struck again in San Bernardino.
And where was Marco? Fund-raising again in New Orleans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: As Trump himself enjoys pointing out, all that TV advertising from the Bush campaign and their ally super PAC has had little impact. In fact, there has been up until now almost an inverse relationship between ad spending and polling numbers. With the candidates who have spent the most faring among the worst in the Real Clear Politics national average.
Just look at those stunning numbers for Trump. He is polling miles ahead of his Republican rivals and he spent just a tiny fraction what they have on ads. Only $217,000, all of it, by the way, on radio.
Now, in the old model, the more money you raise, the better you perform. As that seems to have broken down, at least up to this moment, it might come to a surprise Donald Trump now says he`s going to give the model a try.
Today, he tweeted, "My campaign for president is $35 million under budget. I spend very little and am in first place. Now, I will spend big in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina."
In our press conference tonight on board his plane sitting on the tarmac in Nebraska, Trump explained his change of heart.
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TRUMP: There`s no reason to spend but I feel I should spend. Honestly, I don`t want to take any chances. I feel I have an obligation even to myself and to the country to spend. And so, we`re going to be spending a minimum of $2 million for the first and then we`ll see what happens. If anybody goes after me, I will spend a lot of money against the people that go after me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Now, we should note, we have heard this kind of thing from Trump before. In October, he told "The Washington Post" his campaign was evolving into a more traditional operation hiring a media firm to prepare his first TV ads, ads that have as of yet still have yet to materialize.
But considering how well he`s done without spending a dime on TV, now heading into his sixth month as the Republican front-runner, the question is, what could happen if he actually puts his money where his mouth is?
Joining me now, Robert Costa, MSNBC political analyst, national political reporter for "The Washington Post", Josh Barro, MSNBC contributor and correspondent for The Upshot at "The New York Times."
OK, Robert, what is the -- the folks that you talk to in the sort of world of let`s say, the sort of Republican consultant class, what can conclusions are they drawing about the effect of TV in this cycle?
ROBERT COSTA, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: When you look at Trump`s decision to not spend money, it`s very similar to the establishment`s decision to not spend money on anti-Trump ads because the political capital within the Republican Party is simply no more driven by television. You get that capital from the galaxy of conservative media web sites, from the activists, from their organizations outside of the TV world. That`s how you get power.
HAYES: I see. So, the calculation that`s being made by Trump, which is, "I don`t need to run ads, I don`t need to spend money for ads particularly when I`m getting as much coverage as I am," is the same calculation being made by the people in the anti-Trump of wing about why they haven`t bombarded with him with that.
COSTA: I spoke to Barry Bennett, Carson`s campaign manager. And he says Facebook is everything. We want to have a personal relationship. Trump uses Twitter. He uses Instagram videos. That`s the new form of television for political advertising.
HAYES: Josh, I continue to think that the old physics of approval ratings still apply to a certain extent. And it does seem to me that if someone really put up a big buy in say, Iowa and New Hampshire, just going after Trump negatively, you could -- you could push had his numbers down.
JOSH BARRO, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I don`t know because there`s been a lot of attacks against Donald Trump in free media. It`s not just been Donald Trump talking about himself. It`s also been his opponents having fights with him. None of those fights seemed to have had a lot of effect, even though some of the attacks seem like they ought to matter. Like he had several of business bankruptcies which should undermine his claims about being a super successful businessman.
It doesn`t seem like a lot of those attacks have had big effects. And similarly with his decision not to spend his money, I feel like the usual reason to buy TV ads is that you have a message you feel you need to get out in front of people and if you have to pay to get that out there. What message is there that Donald Trump wants to send that`s already not being sent through the free media he`s been getting?
So, I actually -- I think both of the choices make a lot of sense. I think we`ve seen campaigns have decided even in their free time not to make a lot of attacks on Donald Trump because it seems to have backfired. If you did that on TV, not only would it probably not work, but you`d spend a lot of money in the process of it not working.
HAYES: So, Frank Luntz had this focus group of Trump supporters, you were there, a bunch of reporters were there. I was looking back at the record of it and found all the attacks back fired. The one that was most successful, and even it wasn`t that successful, one of the most successful was about essentially layoffs at Trump enterprises, right? Like here`s this guy a populist champion, here`s how he actually acted.
I was reminded of this piece from the summer of "Reuters" on his guest worker hiring at Mar-A-Lago where he saw the visas to import 1,100 workers which sort of on the face of it, right, is the opposite of the thing that the guy has been talking about, right? Here he is -- he`s got American workers in his backyard and applying for these visas.
It appears to me there is an opening to go after him on that, but it would mean essentially adopting the kind of posture that Newt Gingrich did against Mitt Romney did in 2012 when he sort of attacked Romney from the left for being a vulture capitalist.
Do you see that as a possibility?
COSTA: It`s doubtful, speaking of the rival campaigns, that they`re going to go after him on immigration, because he`s taken such a hard right position on it. If you go after him about people he`s hired at his companies and at his properties.
At the same time, when I`m sitting there at that Luntz focus group, question after question, people kept shrugging off everything Luntz would say controversial statement and position because they say he`s a spokesman for the working class, he`s a spokesman for me.
It`s only when they talk about maybe some layoffs at Trump enterprises that they started to say, well, that`s not really -- he`s not a spokesman for me in that instance. But it didn`t seem to stick, and you have to come up with a coherent argument if you`re going to make that ad on television or the campaign trail.
HAYES: Josh, do you think we are I mean, Robert mentioned this about being in a post television world. Ben Smith had written this piece six months ago I think about how it`s going to be the Facebook election. And it really would represent something revolutionary in the way that we think of particularly presidential campaign if we are entering into a kind of post TV ad world.
Do you think that`s going to hold up the closer we get to actual voting?
BARRO: You know, I don`t really know. I`ve been fascinated reading all these articles saying, gee, Trump, doesn`t have the traditional operation you would expect. He hasn`t been spending money on organization, on a voter file, that sort of thing, on TV ads.
But a lot of people talking in these articles about that are the sorts of consultants who sell these services to campaigns who are very invested in this model. Now, they might be right. Not all the services they sell are useless, and it might be that Donald Trump isn`t spending on things that will come back to hurt him in the end.
But I also think, a lot of these people are really vested in the old model, and they will be out of a lot of jobs and a lot of money if Donald Trump is right it doesn`t matter any more at least for his style of campaign.
COSTA: I was at Trump Tower today. And Trump`s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, doesn`t get a cut from the ad buys. That`s different than every other campaign. Most campaigns if you`re the consultant, you get a cut of the ad buy. That`s just the model traditional Republican campaigns use.
Trump doesn`t want to spend his own money. It`s not really --
HAYES: This is the thing. This is the amazing thing.
COSTA: It`s his own cash.
HAYES: Right. That`s the other thing, this amazing shell game that`s been pulled off so far, right? Because the whole idea in the beginning, here`s a guy who comes out and says, I am Donald Trump. I have so much money. I`m going to spend my own money, I`m not beholden.
If I understand the filings the campaign has put in with the FEC so far, he hasn`t spent a cent of his own money so far. All the money has been small dollar donations.
COSTA: So, if he rolls out these ads like he says he will next week, it will be out of his own pocket. I mean, he gets millions in small dollar donations. But Trump said he has $50 million to $100 million to spend.
The question is, does he pull the trigger? He`s been reluctant so far. But I think talking to Trump himself in the last few weeks, he does sense he`s so close, he tells me in "The Washington Post", look, I got to do it at some point because now the nomination is actually within sight.
HAYES: Yes. I mean, Josh, this is where in this next month. I mean, to me, it all comes down, if you can box him out, if you`re in the sort of anti-Trump wing of the conservative movement, of the Republican Party and you keep him from winning either Iowa or New Hampshire, then that`s the first point where you can see the fever breaking.
If you don`t, if the guy gets a win, you`re hosed. Really, I don`t see how he gets out before the convention.
BARRO: Yes, I mean, especially New Hampshire. I mean, people have been putting out this idea if he loses Iowa, that will take the shine off of him and people won`t think of him as a winner anymore. But, I mean, again, there were the business bankruptcies. There are a number of things that Donald Trump has done in his life that haven`t worked out and people still think of him as a winner.
But I do think New Hampshire is really the key thing. That`s where he`s strongest in the polls. That`s where it`s least clear who the challenger who could come up and avenge him. Chris Christie is trying to be that.
So, I think New Hampshire is the place where what`s make or break for that. I`d watch for him to spend money there, especially.
COSTA: I agree New Hampshire is huge because New Hampshire is where he could maybe kick the establishment candidates to the side. I think South Carolina presents a comeback opportunity for Trump.
HAYES: Right, right.
COSTA: If he loses New Hampshire and Iowa, he`s been ahead by double digits in South Carolina by months. That`s where the media savvy, anti- establishment candidate won in 2012, Newt Gingrich.
HAYES: That`s right. God, that was such a weird moment. Gingrich was, you know, attacking vulture capitalism. The Eugene Debs movement for Newt Gingrich briefly.
Robert Costa and Josh Barro, thank you both.
All right. Still to come, why Republican presidential candidates are attacking Marco Rubio.
Plus, after a non-indictment for the police officer who shot and killed 12- year-old Tamir Rice, we have an in-depth look how officers are trained to decide when to use deadly force.
And later, the massive inarguable impact the Black Lives Matter movement had in 2015 and where it goes from here.
Those stories and more, ahead.
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HAYES: OK. If you want just a snapshot of the craziness that`s happening with the weather right now, let`s start with my home in Brooklyn, New York City, where we opened the windows on Christmas Day because it was just too hot and almost pushing 70 degrees at one point.
The same time, the record heat was brought devastating tornados in December which is now the deadliest December for tornados in over 60 years. There`s also been massive flooding in parts of the U.S., the South and Midwest getting absolutely deluged, which is also highly unusual this time of year. That`s just the last few days.
December as a whole will almost certainly be the warmest on record on the East Coast in all the time we`ve been keeping track. That brings us to the end of 2015 which, drum roll please, will go down as the warmest year ever recorded.
In fact, the ten warmest years since we`ve been keeping track with the exception of 1998 have occurred since 2000, according to NASA scientists, and to cap off all this insanity brought to you by climate change and the pumping of carbon pollution into the atmosphere, let me bring you this little nugget. The North Pole where right now at this moment, Santa is resting after working hard to meet his deadline is about to experience a heat wave at the north pole where tomorrow it will be warmer than western Texas, southern California, and parts of the Sahara with temperatures in the north pole that could reach 40 degrees.
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REPORTER: Thank you for being here I invite to you come live here. It gets old pretty fast.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I`ll basically be living here through most of January.
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HAYES: That was Marco Rubio today kicking off a three-day bus tour in Iowa greeted by a new TV ad from the super PAC supporting Jeb Bush which rips Rubio for missing hearings on national security and from missing a slew of votes in the Senate.
The fact is, Rubio has the worst attendance of any senator seeking a presidential nomination. He`s missed nearly half of the total vote since announcing his candidacy for the White House. While he`s now joking about living in Iowa for the next month, for most of his campaign, he`s barely left a footprint there.
"The National Review" earlier this month pointed out that Rubio`s weak ground game angers Iowa Republicans. And despite a recent polling bump in New Hampshire, modest but significant, he`s facing similar criticism in New Hampshire for being absent from that state.
"Boston Globe" recently pointed out that GOP activists are grumbling that Rubio has fewer staff members and endorsements than most of his main rivals and has made fewer campaign appearances in the state. Now, compare that to another candidate competing for the establishment vote, Chris Christie who "The New Jersey Star Ledger" noted has spent the last four months working to warm the chill hearts of early state voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Today, Christie took a direct swing at Rubio.
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CHRISTIE: Only in Washington could you have the guts to stand up and say I`m against something that you have a vote to vote no on and just not go, and put out a press release after it gets passed and say, this is why I was opposed to it.
Dude, show up to work and vote no, right? Just show up to work and vote no. And if you don`t want to, then quit.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Now, this line of attack`s problematic for Christie who has his own issues as attendance as the sitting governor of New Jersey.
As WNYC reporter Matt Katz tweeted, Chris Christie will spend all or 60 percent of the days of 2015, 219 days out of New Jersey.
Rubio did not let that the slip by unnoticed.
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RUBIO: My time in the Senate, I have a close to 90 percent attendance record. Chris has been missing in New Jersey for half the time. But candidates as we get down the stretch, some of them get a little desperate and a little nasty in their attacks. That`s fine. We`re going to continue to campaign on what I`m going to do as president.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: All that said, if Rubio is not spending time in the Senate and not much time in Iowa or New Hampshire, what exactly is he doing?
Joining me now, Steve Schale, former state director for the 2008 Obama campaign in Florida and a current Democratic strategist.
Steve, I`m sort of fascinated by this. The donor class handed Rubio the kind of establishment crown by acclimation after the last two debates. And standing on the stage from purely sort of political talent perspective, it seemed like he had a certain amount of command, he performed well.
It hasn`t really shown up very much in national polling and also seems like, what exactly is he doing? Why -- where is he if he`s not in any of the places he`s neither doing his day job in the Senate nor campaigning in the early states?
STEVE SCHALE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Yes, it`s like that they`re kind of running a campaign waiting for the field to come to them. I mean, listen, Marco`s in a relatively good place. I mean, he has the highest favorable ratings of anybody in the Republican field, which is why you think everybody is going after him.
But I think he thinks this race is going to come to him. But the reality, I think guys like Ted Cruz will take away that mantel from him.
HAYES: Yes, that is what it seems like to me. I mean, there`s -- you know, there`s all this sort of, you get into the sports cliches at this point. There`s a certain truth to being hungry and grinding it out and working for it, and it does seem like he is getting absolutely 100 percent outhustled by Ted Cruz and outhustled by Chris Christie in New Hampshire.
SCHALE: Well, I think by Cruz and Christie, but particularly Cruz has figured out is that you win these things not by winning national polls or by being the most popular, you win them by winning delegates. And if you look at 2008 or 2012 Republican side, or earlier ones before that, these things about momentum. You know, if Cruz wins Iowa, Trump or somebody else wins New Hampshire, you go to South Carolina, Cruz is going to have a lot of momentum with that conservative base that Rubio needs to win.
And I think those guys think they can get past the first few states without a win. But history shows us you have to get the early win to get momentum, to keep the fundraising coming, to keep going.
HAYES: You know, it reminds a little bit. You mentioned 2008, the sort of delegate strategy. It was the genius of the Obama campaign particularly David Plouffe and a lot of people around him who sort of figured out that math early on. They figured out the comparative advantage in caucus states as opposed to primary states.
There also was a way in which the 2008 Obama campaign exploited some of the softness for lack of a better word of the sort of Democratic establishment class that assumed it would be Hillary Clinton. And I think you`re seeing a little bit of the same thing with Rubio. All of these people have decided, well, obviously, it`s going to be him. There`s a kind of softness to exploit there if you`re Ted Cruz or Donald Trump.
SCHALE: Well, too. I think the other comparison though is that while Obama was able to exploit it, he also won high Iowa.
HAYES: Right.
SCHALE: At this point, he was down one or two points in Iowa to Clinton, he was down 20 points nationally. So, the same comparison with Cruz and Trump.
HAYES: That is great point, right.
(CROSSTALK)
SCHALE: (INAUDIBLE) nationally, but if he gets that early win, it`s going to change the whole map.
And I think for whoever wins South Carolina, I think this race comes down to South Carolina. When you look at the states on March 1st, they look a lot like South Carolina whether it`s Tennessee, or Georgia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama, whoever wins that South Carolina primary is going to be in a pretty good place to run a lot of delegates the next week.
HAYES: What do you think about Marco Rubio -- in terms of having viewed him as a Floridian about what his play here is? I mean, I can`t quite figure him out.
SCHALE: Well, listen, I like Marco as a person. I mean, I had a chance to run an election against him in 2006, took nine seats in the Republican house in part because he took his eye off the ball. He got statewide ambition and didn`t do what he needed to do in the campaigns.
He`s amazingly talented on the stump. We`ve seen that in the debates. But again, I think he feels -- I think they feel like this race is eventually going to come to them.
I think at some level, I mean, there`s a reason to think that. I mean, he remains highly popular. He`s the one guy that could bridge the establishment and the grassroots. But at some point, he`s got to get a win. I don`t know where it comes from right now.
HAYES: Yes, that is the key. Otherwise you end up in a Rudy Giuliani situation in 2008. You keep saying the next state is the state you`re going to win. Rudy Giuliani famously with the Florida strategy, and the momentum becomes so important and it`s so kind of whip sawn. We saw it,
Hillary Clinton, she lost New Hampshire. If she had lost New Hampshire in 2008, the race probably have ended in three weeks. Because she won it, then everything went back.
SCHALE: I think there are folks on their team that think they can hold on until Florida. The problem, though, there`s about 20 contests between South Carolina and Florida.
HAYES: Yes, you can`t hold on to Florida. That`s a mug`s game.
Steve Schale, thanks a lot.
SCHALE: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: All right. Still to come, how police officers are trained to make the decision to use deadly force.
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ERIK SHELLEY, BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTER: It just shocks your conscience to see a little boy killed like that and have the officer lie about what he did and have video evidence of it, and yet, the prosecution -- I mean, their one job is to prosecute people and they failed in this case. If they can`t get the officer for this murder, getting any police officer for murder is just impossible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Protesters were back out on the streets in Cleveland today expressing outrage over yesterday`s announcement there would be no indictment for the police officer that last year shot and killed Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy who`d been playing with a pellet gun outside a Cleveland rec center.
The Officer Timothy Loehmann opened fire on rice within seconds of arriving on the scene. A county prosecutor said he had legitimate reason to fear for his life.
The grim parade of videos we`ve seen showing the killing of civilians by police, including the video that shows the death of young Tamir Rice as that car pulls up and opens fire has sparked national outrage. It`s helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement and prompted many to wonder how it is possible that possible police procedure can so often lead to tragedy.
But as "Slate" detailed earlier this year, police officers have their own cannon of disturbing videos, a collection of widely and much discussed field recordings in which their fellow officers are killed or gravely injured in the line of duty. Videos like this one which goes on to show the murder of Police Officer Darrell Lunsford after a traffic stop in Texas in 1991.
Such dashcam videos which are rarely seen by civilians are used quite often to train new police officers, to drum into their heads that any situation can turn deadly. That is important for officers to remember.
But such videos if they are seen over and over also have the potential to give police a skewed sense of the risks they face. As of 2008, last year data were the collected, there were 765,000 sworn law enforcement officers in the United States, according to the Department of Justice. That year, a total of 48 officers out of that 765,000 were killed by firearms. So far this year, there have been 42 officers killed by firearms. Each of those deaths is, of course, a tragedy and the intense stress and fear of being a member of law enforcement in those kind of situations is undeniable.
But those numbers show the odds of a police officer being shot and killed on the job are relatively low. Far more people are shot dead each year by police, 977 people so far this year, according to data compiled by "The Washington Post".
Earlier this year, I went to a police training facility to learn more about how police learn when and when not to use deadly force. I trained in a 300 degree virtual reality simulator meant to mimic real world situations.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: I`m going to need to you stand back there.
Whoa, Jesus.
Drop the weapon.
Stand back.
I want you to get up, get up, get up, get up and stand back.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That full report is up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Earlier this year in an effort to better understand how police make split second decisions concerning when to use deadly force, I traveled to the Morris County Police Safety Training Facility in northern New Jersey where I experienced a virtual reality simulator designed to mimic the real world situations faced by police.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And your license, please.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out. Get out of the car!
HAYES: It looked like a routine traffic stop, until Lavar Jones reached for his wallet. South Carolina highway patrol trooper Shaun Grouper said he thought Jones was going for a gun.
LAVAR JONES: Why did you shoot me?
HAYES: Jones survived and Grouper was fired and arrested, now faces up to 20 years in prison.
It was just one of a spate of horrifying police shootings caught on camera.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Move back, move back, move back.
HAYES: All I wanted to find out how police train for such situations. So we went to the Morris County Public Safety Training Academy in New Jersey where police recruits first learn how to make split second decisions not on the streets, but here inside a 300 degree virtual reality simulator designed to teach officers when they should and shouldn`t use deadly force.
Sergeant Paul Carifi Jr. (ph) runs the training.
SGT. PAUL CARIFI JR., MORRIS COUNTY PUBLIC SAFETY TRIANING ACADEMY: It`s a decision-making process whether they`re going to use verbal commands, escalate to maybe pepper spray, hands on, or move on to deadly force.
HAYES: The simulator is interactive with Carifi at the controls deciding what the actors will do and say based on how the trainee responds.
CARIFI: The actors will respond to your commands. So depending on how that goes, it could start off at a very high intense scenario. But based on you being able to deescalate it through verbal commands, conversation it now comes down and the problem is resolved.
HAYES: All right.
I was outfitted with a real gun, modified to shoot a laser as well as a can of pepper spray that mimics the real thing and an impulse device clipped to my belt, which would give me an electric shock to indicate that I had been shot.
Most scenarios begin with information from police dispatch.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: IT was reported a male suspect dumping materials out of a pickup truck into a vacate lot on the northwest corner.
HAYES: My first call is about a man illegally dumping debris from his truck.
Okay. Can you drop that please for me, that concrete block.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You want me to put the block down?
HAYES: Yes, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`ll put the block down. Yeah, I`ll put the block down.
HAYES: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh. Easy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, all right.
HAYES: Afterward, Sergeant Carifi reviewed my decisions.
CARIFI: Okay, now, you drew your weapon here.
HAYES: I probably shouldn`t have.
CARIFI: OK, Right.
Because even if he attempts to throw that block at you, how far can he throw that block? Are you able to step back.
HAYES: Step out, right, yeah.
CARIFI: Also, what are some of your other options you have on you?
HAYES: Pepper spray.
CARIFI: Pepper spray. So would you be -- this guy is going to attempt to throw this block at you. Could you have pepper sprayed him?
HAYES: Yeah.
CARIFI: Yes, you could you have used that.
UNIDENTIIFED FEMALE: Caller informed a male suspect yelling at a female in a vacant lot on the northeast corner.
HAYES: My next call dispatch says a male subject is yelling at a female in a vacant lot.
HAYES: Turn around. Hold on a second.
UNIDENTIIFED MALE: Hey, man, everything`s cool. Don`t even worry about it. I got this. I`ll take care of it.
HAYES: Hold on a second. Can you please tell me your name, ma`am.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, man. I said don`t worry about it. I`ve got it. She`s with me. I`m going to take care of it.
HAYES: Hold on one second. Take a step back right now. I`m going to need you to take a step back.
Ma`am, can you tell me your name? Do you need any medical assistance?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look, partner. I`m taking her home. Is that a cop? You supposed to fight crime. Ain`t no crime here. Take off, thank you.
HAYES: OK. I hear what you`re saying. Step back.
Ma`am, I`m going to ask you if you need any medical assistance.
HAYES: At this point, the man runs away leaving me with the woman.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What`s (inaudible).
HAYES: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Leave me the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) alone.
HAYES: OK.
Calm down. All right. Are you okay? I`m going to ask you to put that needle down, please. Put the needle down. Thank you very much.
CARIFI: Do you feel that this would be a deadly force, that this would warranty deadly force?
HAYES: No.
CARIFI: No, it would not. It`s only a little needle. You know, yes, if you were stabbed by it, depending on what could be on that needle, but could you get away.
HAYES: You no he what`s also.
CARIFI: You have pepper spray. You have many other options.
HAYES: You know what`s also also interesting is the way that you perceive threat between a man and a woman. Like, that dude seemed more threatening a guy with a big cinder block, even though frankly like that wasn`t that much more threatening than her there with a needle. But it felt -- seemed a lot more threatening.
CARIFI: And one of the things that when we train the officers in especially new recruits is a woman can hurt you just as much as a man can.
HAYES: Right.
I ran through a number of additional simulations, usually arriving upon a scene of disorder with the possibility of violence always lurking.
Whoa, Jesus Christ.
The training conditions you to remember that anyone might have a firearm. They may take it out at any time and try to kill you.
UNIDENTIIFED FEMALE: We have a restraining order against her. Get that creepy thing out of here.
HAYES: OK. OK. I`m going to need to you stand back there.
Whoa, Jesus. Drop the weapon. Stand back. I need to you get up, get up. and stand -- in the vast majority of real situations, of course, the suspect does not pull out a gun.
I ask Carifi how he could train recruits for the worst without creating a police force that is too ready to shoot first.
CARIFI: We instill in them that listen, you need to train for these things should they happen, but the majority of the time it`s not going to happen.
I`ll bet you that if the media, if these people reporting on this were to actually go through that training, they would have a whole different perspective on what a police officer has to go through in that split second timing they have to make that life or death situation, that decision.
HAYES: I did just that. I definitely came away with an appreciation for how hard the job is. But also an appreciation for just how easy and how dangerous it is to come to see everyone you encounter as your enemy.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: Over the past two years, the Black Lives Matter movement has grown to be a major force reigniting a discussion about civil rights and policing practice that has moved to the center of the political conversation.
When we come back, we`ll look at what 2015 has meant for the movement and where it goes from here. That`s ahead. Don`t go anywhere.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: One of the central themes of the activism we saw this past year has been a sense that we do not actually live in a nation of equal justice under law. And one of the shining examples of that has been this Texas teenager: Ethan Couch. He killed four people in a drunk driving crash in 2013, but whose lawyers famously argued he suffered from, quote, "Affluenza" saying he was too spoiled and influenced by his privileged upbringing to know right from wrong.
The judge seemed to accept that defense sentencing the then 16-year-old to ten years probation and no jail time.
Couch returned to the headlines three weeks ago when he and his mother went missing. After a Twitter video was posted that appeared to show Couch at a party standing by a beer pong table potentially violating his probation.
Last night on the same day we learned there would be no charges brought in the fatal police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. There`s a big development in the Couch case.
Couch and his mother were found in a resort city in Mexico, adding insult to injury for those felt justice had not been properly served the first time, Couch went before the law authorities, announced that the teen even enjoyed one last party in Texas, a going away bash, before heading south of the border.
The hearing has been scheduled for next month to transfer Couch`s case from the juvenile to adult court which could result in prison time. And he may face additional charges for fleeing.
When we come back, we will look at the American justice system under trial.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: It`s one thing when Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel appears in a front page article above the fold in The New York Times which states that he was just named to GQ`s list the worst people of 2015. And when yesterday his office announced the mayor would indeed return from his vacation in Cuba three days after another deadly police shooting is tearing Chicago apart. And when, also today, protesters in Cleveland took to the streets again following a grand jury`s decision not to indict the Cleveland police officer who fatally shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice.
That`s just the past 48 hours.
The formidable power of the Black Lives Matter movement has been on full display this year. There`s now full fledged coverage of various police shootings across the country. The Department of Justice investigated the Ferguson Police Department issuing a scathing report.
Black Lives Matter protesters have disrupted candidacies in campaign events of liberal democratic candidates to push them towards laying out a concrete civil rights agenda.
Black Lives Matter is now front and center in Democratic debates, part of candid discussions behind the scenes. It is recognized by the president of the United States in the face of those who might choose to twist the very meaning of its name.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SANDERS: Black lives matter.
And the reason those words matter is the African-American community knows that on any given day, some innocent person like Sandra Bland can get into a car and then three days later she`s going to end up dead in jail or their kids are going to get shot.
CLINTON: You can get lip service from as many white people as you can pack into Yankee Stadium and a million more like it who are going to say we get it, we`re going to be nicer. OK? that`s not enough, at least in my book. That`s not how I see politics.
OBAMA: The reason that the organizers used the phrase Black Lives Matter was not because they were suggesting nobody else`s lives matter, rather what they were suggesting was there is a specific problem that is happening in the African-American community that`s not happening in other communities.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: And now not only is a top cop in Chicago gone, there are calls for the resignation of one of the biggest Democratic figures in the country mayor Emmanuel who is right now hanging on to his political life by his fingernails.
Joining me now Jelani Cobb, staff writer for The New Yorker and director of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut, Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff a co-founder and president at the Center for Policing Equity, and that is Redditt Hudson, former St. Louis police officer and co- founder of the National Coalition of Law Enforcement for Justice Reform and Accountability.
Let me start with you, Jelani. You`re at the table. I mean, what I felt I saw from a lot of people yesterday was exasperation, a kind of deja vu, a kind of here we go again. In some ways the decision by the prosecutor and the grand jury have been so far telegraphed in advance it wasn`t a surprise.
But I think it does leave people with, OK, what are we doing here? I mean, what is improving and what is not? What systematically are the places to apply pressure to sort of address the problem that is indisputably at a higher level of salience but maybe is not being addressed yet.
JELANI COBB, UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT: So it`s interesting one of the things that you hear like the left is always at war with itself in one way or another. And one of the things that you heard earlier in the year was this question about disruption. And how valuable that was as a political tactic when you saw Bernie Sanders disrupted multiple times and the attempt to disrupt Hillary Clinton`s rallies and so on.
And some people began to say well Black Lives Matter do anything except disrupt?
But when you look at what happened yesterday, what happened with Sandra Bland about ten days ago, a little bit less, and the kind of trajectory that we`ve seen over the course of this year, it becomes clear that if you`re simply relying on the mechanisms of kind of bureaucracy to function on your behalf, it`s not going to happen. It`s unlikely for that to happen.
And so being outside of the system and being disruptive and causing protests and being in your face and kind of being in the airport when you want to fly out and those kinds of things actually become much more crucial than they would be otherwise.
HAYES: Dr. Goff, you work on this full-time. You work with folks that are police departments and training police. I mean, do you feel like things have changed? There`s this question right now, you know you start to hear these things about, oh, body cameras or changing policing or independent prosecutors. All of which, many of which sound like good ideas, but also seem like they`re sort of attacking around the edges of the huge problem which is a country that has the largest criminal justice system in the developed Democratic world.
DR. PHILIP ATIBA GOFF, PRES. CENTER FOR POLICING EQUITY: Yeah, so I think you`re hitting on exactly the right thing.
I think that things are changing. It`s not necessarily the body cameras, but definitely people`s cell phones are changing the game. Since 2005, there have been about 54, roughly, officers who have been charged for their use of force. But this year there were 17, right, that`s more than twice the number on average. And most of that, the uptick is the result of cameras.
But we`re talking about 54 or 17, that`s a small number compared to the 900 or so folks who are killed by law enforcement this year.
And the reason why Black Lives Matter has been such a successful phrase, the reason it resonates in so many of these communities is because we have a system that while it is devoted to keeping people safe, it often feels as if it`s certain people and if that system isn`t changed in terms of the mission and the resources that are made available to keep all folks safe, but particularly black folks, then you`re exactly right.
We`re going around the edges of a system that has been set up to not care about folks coming from certain places and more importantly to deal with the problem of social disorder and the problem of crime by taking people away as opposed to giving those people the resources to empower the community and make it unnecessary to engage in those behaviors in the first place.
HAYES: Reddit, this gets to something I`ve heard. I have spent a lot of time talking to police in the last year and a half. And they really do feel a lot of them really do feel under siege. They feel it`s similar in some ways to what I hear from teachers when they talk about the sort of political environment, hat essentially everything`s been laid at their feet. It`s you`re problem. You`re failing at your job. You`re not doing the job. They feel like they`re sort of encountering problems that are much bigger than policing can solve.
And there`s also this question of how you talk about risk in a way that both keeps officers safe, but doesn`t put into their heads the idea that every single person they encounter is going to shoot them dead in the next second.
REDDITT HUDSON, FRM. ST. LOUIS POLICE OFFICER: Well, I`ve had the training that you just showed. All the officers in St. Louis get that same simulated kind of training.
And nothing can really train you as far as how to respond to a deadly force situation. They can just expose you to what it`s like to be in that situation. It still goes to your own judgment, your own gut instincts and your own assessment and ability to do that.
But having the largest criminal justice system and the largest criminal justice prison industrial complex in the world is a problem for us now because it is operating entirely at a moral deficit.
The United States criminal justice system is operating at a moral deficit and that deficit is built on the institutional racism that is at its foundation.
Let me give you an example of what I`m talking about to weave that into what you showed the viewers earlier and show you what I mean.
In the entire 50-year history of blacks being significantly involved on the St. Louis metropolitan police department, almost half a country, I can`t name a single black officer that has ever shot at an unarmed white person. I can`t name a single black officer ha has ever shot at a white person period.
So restraint is possible.
HAYES: Right.
HUDSON: Even in dangerous situations.
Even when you face risks that you`ve been trained in simulated environments to face. Restraint is possible, but it is black lives that are freely discarded in our process. And it is black lives that get triggers pulled on them whether it`s warned or not with zero expectation of accountability, and that is what`s going to change I think in the powerful movement that you`ve seen young people build out around the nation a new development that you can anticipate because I`ve been a part of conversations around it is that blacks and hispanics and people from marginalized communities who work in the criminal justice system, including police officers prosecuting attorneys, defense attorneys, corrections officer who work in that system will join together to collectively make an effort to remake it, not reform it, because I believe that the system is functioning exactly as it was meant to be.
HAYES: Well, this is -- and I want to talk for a second about how this connects to safety, which is the fundamental thing at the heart of this, right, is that we want people to be safe. We don`t want them to be subjects of violence, whether it`s police violence, the violence of fellow citizens, and a lot of talk earlier this year about the fact that the quote so-called Ferguson effect, we now have the data. I want to talk about that and what it means. Stick around more for this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: So despite talk of a Ferguson effect in which protests over police brutality supposedly had a chilling effect on police doing their jobs, we now show some facts about this year. A drop in crime in New York City and new analysis at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law finds that in the largest 30 cities, crime rates are on track to decline 5.5 percent.
Still with me, Jelani Cobb, Dr. Goff and Redditt Hudson.
Jelani, I mean the flip side of this, you know, there`s this sort of cynical what about black on black crime thing that you get in the face of this. But there is a very real issue about Black Lives Mattering as victims of crime, as people -- as young black men who are killed in homicide. And as the criminal justice system actually taking that seriously and valuing that in ways that show some sort of societal commitment to those lives mattering?
COBB: Right.
One of the things that`s interesting, one, is that African-American men die at rates that are astonishingly high, about 34.5 per 100,000, which is the highest of any group, higher even than police officers.
So, being an African-American in America you have a higher likelihood of dying violently than if you are a police officer. This is just a demographic reality we have to grapple with.
The other part of it I think though is that it`s equally important to recognize when we`re saying that black lives matter, we`re say saying that the violence that people talk about in terms of so-called black on black violence is a product of this same dynamic. There are people who are here to be victimized.
HAYES: And Dr. Goff, I mean, that gets into this idea of policing equity. Like imagining some policing system that really did represent equal justice under law.
GOFF: Yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, Jelani hit it right on the head, if we`re living in a country where it`s more dangerous to simply be black than to have a job where you get trained to deal with people shooting at you, then we`ve simply not given communities the resources that they need to make things happen.
Remember that policing can only ever happen effectively by the consent of the people. But the consent of the people in the communities that are most sort of feeling besieged by law enforcement can only be gained when they have a hand in keeping themselves safe.
I don`t hear enough conversations around giving communities those sets of resources to move forward.
HAYES: And Redditt, is that consent a possible thing to obtain?
HUDSON: Say again, Chris? The consent relative to what?
HAYES: Right. I guess that`s -- that`s the question.
HUDSON: Well no, I`ll say this. I agree with what the two gentlemen just said now. And anyone describing to you, Chris, a Ferguson effect, anyone in law enforcement talking about a Ferguson effect is really indicting the system because what they`re saying is if you pay attention to us and you expect to hold us accountable when we do our work we can`t do our job.
HAYES: Right. And they`re indicting a sort of constitutional system of protections as well.
Jelani Cobb, Dr. Atiba Goff and Redditt Hudson, thank you, gentlemen.
That is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show starts right now.
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THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END