Mornings on the Mall

Monday July 18, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

 

5am – A/B/C

Cleveland police union asks for suspension of ‘open carry’ in wake of Baton Rouge, ahead of RNC

Cleveland, Ohio (CNN) The head of Cleveland’s largest police union is calling on Ohio Gov. John Kasich to temporarily restrict the state’s gun laws during this week’s Republican National Convention following Sunday’s shooting in Louisiana that killed three officers and wounded at least three others.”We are sending a letter to Gov. Kasich requesting assistance from him. He could very easily do some kind of executive order or something — I don’t care if it’s constitutional or not at this point,” Stephen Loomis, president of Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, told CNN. “They can fight about it after the RNC or they can lift it after the RNC, but I want him to absolutely outlaw open-carry in Cuyahoga County until this RNC is over.”

So-called “open carry” gun laws in Ohio allow for licensed firearm owners to wear their weapons in public. With the exception of a small “secure zone” inside and around the Quicken Loans Arena, residents, delegates and protesters are legally permitted to walk around the city — including within its 1.7 square mile regulated “event zone” — with any firearm not explicitly banned by the state.

Kasich, responding to the request, said: “Ohio governors do not have the power to arbitrarily suspend federal and state constitutional rights or state laws as suggested.”

“The bonds between our communities and police must be reset and rebuilt — as we’re doing in Ohio — so our communities and officers can both be safe. Everyone has an important role to play in that renewal,” he said.

Earlier, he released a video offering his condolences in the wake of the Baton Rouge attack.

Cleveland on edge as Republicans arrive for convention

Loomis also said officers here would begin ramping up inspections and oversight over anyone who is holstering a weapon entering the downtown area, where the Republican convention is scheduled to begin on Monday.

“We are going to be looking very, very hard at anyone who has an open carry,” he said. “An AR-15, a shotgun, multiple handguns. It’s irresponsible of those folks — especially right now — to be coming downtown with open carry AR’s or anything else. I couldn’t care less if it’s legal or not. We are constitutional law enforcement, we love the Constitution, support it and defend it, but you can’t go into a crowded theater and scream fire. And that’s exactly what they’re doing by bringing those guns down there.”

Tennis balls bounced from Cleveland ‘event zone’ — but not guns

The first key test for law enforcement comes Monday, as the convention opens, when Citizens for Trump and Black on Black Crime, Inc., which has marched in the past with Black Lives Matter-affiliated protestors, are among the many groups that are set to protest.

Citizens for Trump is scheduled to hold a rally expected to attract more than a thousand people to Settler’s Landing Park, less than a mile from where Republican delegates will be gathering at the Quicken Loans Arena.

“We’ve hired special forces teams for security,” the group’s executive director, Tim Selaty, told CNN last week, declining to specify who would provide that extra security. “The Secret Service is well aware of what we’re doing and they’re going to be provided with everything they need to work in tandem with the local local law enforcement.”

Alfred Porter Jr., president of Black on Black Crime, Inc., a four-decade-old anti-violence group, told CNN it would not alter a planned demonstration Monday in Cleveland’s downtown Public Square.

“Nothing has changed because I still feel the same way, our message will still be the same,” Porter said on Sunday afternoon. “We refuse to let anybody who has a simplistic or violent or hateful message stop the type of message that we have been sending out for accountability. Our message is not to go out there and start murdering police officers.”

Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson, who is not in Cleveland, told CNN, “The movement began as a response to violence and a call to end violence. And that call remains as true today as they did yesterday and it will tomorrow.”

The Cleveland Police Department did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Convention CEO Jeff Larson said that organizers remained confident in the security measures currently in place and did not expect Kasich to take any new action.

“The open carry laws in Ohio haven’t changed recently, it’s been in effect for quite some time, they’ve had a number of big events that have taken place with open carry without any issues,” he told reporters Sunday afternoon. “They’ve been planning their security around that issue.”

The union has also reached out to Police Chief Calvin Williams, asking that officers — some of whom have been positioned alone and without vehicles — be grouped together on their patrols, especially outside of the downtown security zones.

“We’re going to be doing things differently (after today’s attack),” Loomis said. “Right now, the chief of police thinks it’s a good idea to have one officer without a car standing at a post in various intersections all around the city? Thirty blocks from downtown? I had a guy last night standing out there by himself without the benefit of protection of a police car. Or partner. That is absolute insanity to me. There is no reason for that. We are going to demand that the police chief — at a minimum — make sure that we have three officers working together, watching each other’s backs.”

5am – D/E    

President Obama: “It Is Up To All Of Us To Make Sure We Are Part Of The Solution,

The president comments on the shooting of six police officers in Baton Rouge, LA this morning.

Earlier today, President Obama made the following statement on the attack on law enforcement this morning:

“I condemn, in the strongest sense of the word, the attack on law enforcement in Baton Rouge. For the second time in two weeks, police officers who put their lives on the line for ours every day were doing their job when they were killed in a cowardly and reprehensible assault. These are attacks on public servants, on the rule of law, and on civilized society, and they have to stop.

“I’ve offered my full support, and the full support of the federal government, to Governor Edwards, Mayor Holden, the Sheriff’s Office, and the Baton Rouge Police Department. And make no mistake – justice will be done.

“We may not yet know the motives for this attack, but I want to be clear: there is no justification for violence against law enforcement. None. These attacks are the work of cowards who speak for no one. They right no wrongs. They advance no causes. The officers in Baton Rouge; the officers in Dallas – they were our fellow Americans, part of our community, part of our country, with people who loved and needed them, and who need us now – all of us – to be at our best.

“Today, on the Lord’s day, all of us stand united in prayer with the people of Baton Rouge, with the police officers who’ve been wounded, and with the grieving families of the fallen. May God bless them all.”

Trump Responds to Obama’s Baton Rouge Address: ‘Our Country is a Divided Crime Scene’

Donald Trump already went on one tangent about the attack on Baton Rouge police officers today, but it seems he’s decided to follow up.

Trump’s been blasting President Obama by saying that his lack of leadership has been proven once more by this latest act of anti-cop violence. After Obama spoke about the attack during a White House presser, the mogul decided to keep the ball rolling against the president.

Obama invoked similar themes from his Dallas speech today when he said that violent attacks on law enforcement had to stop, and that the country needs to show unity instead of inflamed, reactionary political rhetoric.

 

6am – A/B/C

White House responds to petition to label Black Lives Matter a “terror” group

After days of violence and heightened racial tensions in the U.S., the White House responded this week to an online petition asking the federal government to formally label the Black Lives Matter movement as a “terror group.”

“Terrorism is defined as ‘the use of violence and intimidation in pursuit of political aims,'” read the “We The People” petition, created July 6 on the White House website. “This definition is the same definition used to declare ISIS and other groups, as terrorist organizations.”

Black Lives Matter, the petition said, “earned this title due to its actions in Ferguson, Baltimore, and even at a Bernie Sanders rally, as well as all over the United States and Canada.” It asked the Pentagon to recognize the group as such “on the grounds of principle, integrity, morality, and safety.”

Because the online document received at least 100,000 signatures — at the time of this reporting, it had garnered over 141,000 names — the White House was automatically prompted to respond.

The “We the People” team noted that “The White House plays no role in designating domestic terror organizations,” nor does the U.S. government “generate a list of domestic terror organizations.”

“[T]herefore,” the response read, “we are not able to address the formal request of your petition.”

The White House then went further: Acknowledging that it was a “difficult time” for the country — and that the debate remains a “charged” one — the statement additionally prompted petition signers to consider President Obama’s words calling for compassion towards the movement.

“I think it’s important for us to also understand that the phrase ‘black lives matter’ simply refers to the notion that there’s a specific vulnerability for African Americans that needs to be addressed,” the president said last week, talking to a Washington, D.C. gathering of enforcement officials, civil rights leaders, elected officials and other activists on the issue of racial disparities in the criminal justice system. “We shouldn’t get too caught up in this notion that somehow people who are asking for fair treatment are somehow, automatically, anti-police, are trying to only look out for black lives as opposed to others. I think we have to be careful about playing that game.”

The petition came on the heels of deadly officer-involved shootings in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and after days of Black Lives Matter protests for more police accountability.

On July 7, one day after the petition published online, seven law enforcement officers policing a BLM demonstration in Dallas, Texas were shot and killed in a shower of sniper-like fire. And on Sunday, three more policemen were shot and killed in Baton Rouge.

Black Lives Matter protesters condemned the massacre in Dallas, and prominent members did the same after Sunday’s Baton Rouge shooting of police officers.

One public voice of the movement, DeRay McKesson, urged peace after news of the Louisiana deaths broke.

“I’m waiting for more information like everybody else,” McKesson told the New York Times. “I have more questions than answers.”

“The movement began as a call to end violence,” he said. “That call remains.”

6am – D         Donald Trump Shifts on Muslim Ban, Calls for ‘Extreme Vetting’

by ALI VITALI

Donald Trump is once again shifting the parameters of his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, calling Sunday for “extreme vetting” of persons from “territories” with a history of terror — though not explicitly abandoning his previous across-the-board ban.

In an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, Trump zeroed in on people from suspicious “territories” as those who will receive deep scrutiny when trying to enter the United States. He did not directly repudiate his previous call for an outright ban.

“Call it whatever you want,” Trump told CBS when asked if he was changing his previously released policy.

“Change territories, but there are territories and terror states and terror nations that we’re not going to allow the people to come into our country,” he said.

Trump continued: “We’re going to have a thing called ‘extreme vetting.’ And if people want to come in, there’s going to be extreme vetting. We’re going to have extreme vetting. They’re going to come in and we’re going to know where they came from and who they are.”

Syrian refugees, however, appear to still be on Trump’s list of those people not allowed into the country. The presumptive Republican nominee, who heads to the convention this week for his official coronation, remained consistent on his calls to “not let people in from Syria that nobody knows who they are.” This ban appears more country-based than religious-based.

Trump’s initial proposal for a ban came in December of 2015. He called for a temporary yet “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” The 2015 policy proposed a blanket ban on Muslims based on what Trump called “hatred” of the West he said was innate in Islam.

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Pence to ’60 Minutes’: Our Styles Different, Our Vision Exactly the Same

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence gave their first joint interview Sunday, appearing on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” to emphasize that despite their contrasting styles they both have a common vision on how to lead the nation.

Trump said he chose Pence because he gained respect for him while campaigning in Indiana during the primary and said he has done a great job in revitalizing the state’s economy.

He also stressed that he picked Pence because of his individual traits and not as a means to strengthen his chances with a particular sector of the population, although he said the positive reaction to his choice shows that it was a unifying move. Trump suggested Pence’s different personality means he won’t expect his running mate to go on the attack in the same style he uses.

When asked about instability and violence around the world that is threatening American interests, Pence said that “One of the reasons why I said yes in a heartbeat to run with this man, is because he embodies American strength, and I know that he will provide that kind of broad-shouldered American strength on the global stage as well.”

6am – E

INTERVIEW – SCOTT MCLEAN – Correspondent in Baton Rouge

Baton Rouge Police Shooting: What We Know and Do Not Know

Three police officers were shot dead and three others wounded in Baton Rouge, La., on Sunday morning. The gunman was killed, the authorities said. The area where the shooting took place has been the scene of protests in the weeks since the police shooting of Alton B. Sterling on July 5.

What We Know

• Around8:40 a.m.on Sunday, the police in Baton Rouge were responding to a report of a man with a gun dressed in black walking near the Hammond Aire Plaza shopping center on Airline Highway. In a confrontation that lasted less than 10 minutes, three officers were killed and three others wounded, officials said.

• Kip Holden, the mayor-president of East Baton Rouge Parish, identified the gunman as Gavin Long of Kansas City, Mo. Mr. Long was a former Marine who had served from 2005 to 2010, and he had been deployed to Iraq in 2008, according to military records. He had received a national defense service medal and a reward for good conduct.
• Mr. Long is believed to have been the only gunman, the police in Baton Rouge said at a news conference, despite earlier reports of two others being at large. Col. Mike Edmonson, the superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, said there was “no active shooter scenario going on in Baton Rouge.”

• The slain law enforcement officers were Montrell L. Jackson, 32; Matthew Gerald, 41; and Brad Garafola, 45. Mr. Jackson and Mr. Gerald were with the Baton Rouge Police Department; Mr. Garafola was an East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputy.

• According to the authorities, a 41-year-old sheriff’s deputy was in critical condition; a 51-year-old deputy was undergoing surgery for injuries that were not life-threatening; and a 41-year-old Baton Rouge police officer was hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening.
• At the time of the shooting, a plot against the police had been under investigation after a burglary suspect said he wanted to harm officers.

• The White House said that President Obama had been briefed and that federal officials were in touch with the local authorities. In a statement, Mr. Obama characterized the shooting as a “cowardly and reprehensible assault.”

7am – A         INTERVIEW – JOE DIGENOVA – legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia

TOPICS: 

>> Baton Rouge Police Shooting: What We Know and Do Not Know

>> Freddie Gray case: Verdict expected for highest ranking officer

Baton Rouge Police Shooting: What We Know and Do Not Know

JULY 17, 2016

Three police officers were shot dead and three others wounded in Baton Rouge, La., on Sunday morning. The gunman was killed, the authorities said. The area where the shooting took place has been the scene of protests in the weeks since the police shooting of Alton B. Sterling on July 5.

What We Know

• Around8:40 a.m.on Sunday, the police in Baton Rouge were responding to a report of a man with a gun dressed in black walking near the Hammond Aire Plaza shopping center on Airline Highway. In a confrontation that lasted less than 10 minutes, three officers were killed and three others wounded, officials said.

• Kip Holden, the mayor-president of East Baton Rouge Parish, identified the gunman as Gavin Long of Kansas City, Mo. Mr. Long was a former Marine who had served from 2005 to 2010, and he had been deployed to Iraq in 2008, according to military records. He had received a national defense service medal and a reward for good conduct.
• Mr. Long is believed to have been the only gunman, the police in Baton Rouge said at a news conference, despite earlier reports of two others being at large. Col. Mike Edmonson, the superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, said there was “no active shooter scenario going on in Baton Rouge.”

• The slain law enforcement officers were Montrell L. Jackson, 32; Matthew Gerald, 41; and Brad Garafola, 45. Mr. Jackson and Mr. Gerald were with the Baton Rouge Police Department; Mr. Garafola was an East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputy.

• According to the authorities, a 41-year-old sheriff’s deputy was in critical condition; a 51-year-old deputy was undergoing surgery for injuries that were not life-threatening; and a 41-year-old Baton Rouge police officer was hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening.
• At the time of the shooting, a plot against the police had been under investigation after a burglary suspect said he wanted to harm officers.

• The White House said that President Obama had been briefed and that federal officials were in touch with the local authorities. In a statement, Mr. Obama characterized the shooting as a “cowardly and reprehensible assault.”

• The police planned to hold another news conference at1 p.m.on Monday.

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Freddie Gray case: Verdict expected for highest ranking officer

By Farida Fawzy

Updated 6:17 AM ET, Mon July 18, 2016

(CNN)A Baltimore judge is due to issue a verdict Monday morning for Lt. Brian Rice, the highest-ranking police officer charged in the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who suffered a broken neck in a police transport van on April 12, 2015.

Gray’s death ushered in a resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests across the country. The recent deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile have popularized the movement once again.

Rice was one of the three officers on bike patrol the morning Gray was arrested, and he was the officer who put Gray into the transport wagon after he was shackled — failing to fasten his seat belt, according to the testimony of other officers.

Rice faces several charges, including:

– Involuntary manslaughter;

– Second-degree reckless assault/reckless endangerment, and;

– Misconduct in office for failing to secure Gray with a seat belt inside a police vehicle.

Same judge acquitted Nero, Goodson

Opting for a bench trial over a jury trial, Rice’s case will be heard by Judge Barry Williams — the same judge who acquitted Officer Edward Nero and Officer Caesar Goodson on all charges related to Gray’s death.

Of the six officers charged, Goodson faced the most serious charges — including second-degree depraved-heart murder. Legal experts have said Goodson’s acquittal could set the tone for the four officers still awaiting trial.

7am –B/C  INTERVIEW – MATT SCHLAPP – President of American Conservative Union

>> Pence Veep pick — was Pence a good choice?

>> Thoughts on the GOP coming together for the RNC — will we see party unity?

7am – D/E     INTERVIEW: Scottie Neil Hughes

Topic: The latest on Donald Trump

 

8am – A/B/C INTERVIEW: Greg Harris – President of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame

8am – D/E INTERVIEW: Vince Coglianese – executive editor of the Daily Caller