New video angle scrutinized in Minneapolis shooting (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: We have new footage from a second angle, and I want to warn viewers that they might find this disturbing, but we want to bring as many of the facts possible for viewers as we can. Let's take a look. Okay, so that's that was the guy that you just saw pushed. That is that is Alex Preddy, and the camera's going to go back to him. There he is. There he is. We have a new analysis on some of the video that we've been showing you. CNN's Josh Campbell joins us now. Josh, tell us more.

[00:01:05] Speaker 2: Well, Jake, this is critical new information coming from our CNN Investigates analysis of different angles of this incident that we've seen where you actually see the fatal shooting of this Minneapolis man. What we're learning from looking at these different angles, it appears at one point as Alex Preddy is being held down on the ground. Officers are trying to take him into custody. He does appear to be resisting, but at one point it appears that a federal immigration agent actually steps forward into that scrum, reaches towards his waistband, and appears to disarm him, appears to pull a firearm away. So there hasn't been a dispute, I don't think, by anyone that he actually had a firearm. The Minneapolis police chief said that he was a licensed gun owner, but it appears that that agent then pulls the weapon. He steps away. Just about one second after that agent steps away, then you hear gunfire, and it's unclear which agent actually, you know, fired the first shot there. It's also unclear whether that agent who appeared to remove his firearm from his waistband actually signaled to others around that he was removing the gun. But that is critical information because there is this question about what type of threat did the agent who fired first actually perceive. You could hear audio from agents saying he's got a gun, he's got a gun, but there's no indication in any video that we've seen to date that he was brandishing the weapon, that he was pointing it at any of the officers. And I can tell you, you know, as a former law enforcement officer, by policy, agents are trained that you can only use deadly force when there is an imminent threat of death or serious physical injury to yourself, the agent, or someone else. Merely someone having a firearm on them does not in and of itself justify the use of deadly force. That person has to pose some type of threat. So that will be the major question here about what that agent was perceiving when they opened fire. The other critical thing I want to point out, and I've looked at, you know, different angles of this video, it appears that there's this first set of shots, about one or two shots, but then you can actually see on one of the videos, Jake, that an agent then fires multiple times after Alex Preddy is still on the ground. Again, we know from the video that he had been disarmed at that point. There's this concept in law enforcement that's called sympathetic gunfire. And what it means is that if one person opens fire, say you're a law enforcement officer, if your partner opens fire, sometimes other officers will start shooting. It's just that response, that sympathetic response. They saw a threat, let's shoot. That's something they train you not to do. You have to avoid it. Every single agent has to understand what the threat is before they open fire. So a lot of questions here, Jake, and as I've been saying all day, and as you've mentioned, a lot of this really flies in the face of what we're hearing from the federal government. Objectively speaking, the head of the Border Patrol team there, Greg Bovino, said that it appeared that Preddy was trying to massacre these agents. No indication on that video that that's the case. So again, there will be a question raised about what type of investigation is even done when it appears law enforcement, the senior officials, are already clearing the agents involved here.

[00:04:10] Speaker 1: And Josh, just as a matter of policy, when there is what people in law enforcement call an officer-involved shooting, which means a law enforcement officer has killed someone, when there is that type of situation, that kind of tragedy, is it normal for the likes of Kristi Noem, the DHS secretary, or Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander, or the president of the United States, is it normal, is it standard operating procedure, is it responsible to come out and say, this person was X, this person did Y, this person was going to do Z? Our officers had no choice but to do what they did.

[00:04:56] Speaker 2: It's historically abnormal for anyone at senior levels like that to essentially pre-judge an investigation. And one thing that I think is really concerning, again, I don't care where people come down on the immigration debate, this is objectively speaking, when Greg Bovino made that statement that this person looked like he was trying to massacre the agents, a reporter pressed him and said, well, did he point the weapon at those agents? Did he brandish it? What happened? And he quickly clammed up and pivoted to, well, there will be an ongoing investigation to look into all of that. You can't have it both ways. You can't pre-judge from the beginning and say, we think the agents were right, this person was a domestic terrorist, as White House advisor Stephen Miller described it, while also saying, well, we're going to have an investigation and expect the public to actually believe that that investigation will be done credibly. Does anyone watching right now believe that any of those senior officials in government are going to contradict what the president has already said and these other senior officials based on what this investigation may come out with? So it's really a crisis of confidence right now when we see this pre-judgment of an investigation. And then, of course, there's a major question about whether this will be the federal government only, whether local law enforcement will be involved. Interestingly, Jake, the chief of police told me earlier today after this event happened, his officers responded. Federal government agents tried to prevent his officers from even accessing the crime scene. He said, no way. He ordered his officers to stay there as part of procedure to preserve that evidence. So we're seeing the tension between local and federal law enforcement. There'll be a big question about the credibility of what this in federal review looks like.

[00:06:29] Speaker 1: Josh Campbell, thank you so much for your reporting. John, what was your reaction when you saw the videos?

[00:06:35] Speaker 3: Well, my first reaction is the video is very confusing and not quite clear because what you miss there is the beginning and the beginning is going to be really important. Jake, this is a big gap for us. What we want to know is how exactly did this begin? Let's give us some choices. Number one, an agent detects a bulge that he thinks is a weapon on a person who's moving around the agents on the set or his jacket blows back and he sees the gun in a waistband or the individual brandished it. We have no information as to what brought them to this individual, Mr. Pretty, in the first place. And it may have been none of those things. It may have been that they tried to stop and question him for some other reason. And as we have learned from these, they are using extraordinarily broad discretion in that regard of who they stop and why. And when he struggled, they might have spotted, seen or even felt the gun when somebody else gun when he's on the ground. All of this is important to understand, and we've gotten no detail on that. And it may be because they don't understand it yet either. There's protocol about interviewing each of the agents who are involved in trying to get him into custody, pinning him down. Obviously, the shooting agents, we don't know if there were one or more that fired shots. So a lot of gaps here. Now, is it different from the case of Rene Good? Yes, because there is a weapon introduced into this scenario in the hands of somebody who's not an agent. That is a bit of a game changer, but it doesn't really mean anything till we have those other facts.

[00:08:22] Speaker 1: John, what do we know about the FBI investigation into the incident? What would be the first steps if we were in a normal world where there was going to be a thorough, vigorous, fair investigation?

[00:08:35] Speaker 3: You know, I've been involved in literally dozens, if not hundreds, of investigations of officer involved shootings, both in New York and Los Angeles, especially the part that unfolds on the scene and the review at the end. There are protocols for this. And it's important to point out if you've seen one officer involved shooting, you've only seen one officer involved shooting. Each one is different in its particular fact pattern, not just as to what happened, but as to what was going through each officer's mind who might have been involved or fired shots, as Josh Campbell very aptly pointed out. In a normal world, to get to your question, the agents would be separated from each other so that they wouldn't be comparing notes or stories. They would be interviewed separately. Body cameras would be reviewed, although we are seeing that most of the people deployed in Minneapolis don't seem to be operating with body cameras. They might go over what's on the body cameras after the interviews or before the interviews with the agents so that they could have a clearer picture of what happened. And this would be an investigation that would likely go in front of a grand jury to decide whether or not the shooting was legally justified and so on. As we saw in the Rene Good case, which is, you know, with the absence of a gun being involved, perhaps even more controversial than this one, although both are lightning rod controversial, you see that the deputy attorney general of the United States said, listen, we've decided that the agent's actions were justified and the criminal investigation is into other people, not into the agent or the shooting. We're not crystal clear here on whether there is an investigation into this shooting that is a criminal examination of the agent's conduct.