South Carolina, Florida police shootings raise new questions
Debate over the two videos on 'Hannity'
This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," April 9, 2015. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Tonight, another disturbing video of a police officer using deadly force. Now, yesterday, we showed you an alarming video taken by a witness of a shooting in South Carolina that showed a black man being shot and killed attempting to run away from a police officer.
And that's not all. Tonight, another disturbing video out of Florida, a dashcam video just released in the incident from February where a Florida officer killed a man who was reportedly mentally ill. Watch this video.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get on the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) ground, or you're dead! Get on the ground! (INAUDIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Put your hands behind your (EXPLETIVE DELETED) back!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Joining us, former NYPD detective Bo Dietl, Fox news contributor, Deroy Murdock, and the co-host of "The Five," Kimberly Guilfoyle, is with us.
Little different case here, not as cut and dry as the video from South Carolina. K.G., what's your reaction?
KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, CO-HOST, "THE FIVE": You know, I think this is just really difficult because you have kind of a blending of analysis. You have the two happening on such kind of close on the heels of one another, so people then are going to get a little bit of a heightened emotion, saying, "What's going on? Do we have a racial problem in this country?"
But what you need to do, and as prosecutor, you have to examine the specifics, the facts of each case on its own merits and then make a decision from there. Otherwise, we kind of aggregate them and you can just rely more on emotion than...
HANNITY: Would you agree with me that the South Carolina video is kind of cut and dry?
GUILFOYLE: It's kind of cut...
(CROSSTALK)
GUILFOYLE: ... and dry. Apparently an altercation before that, but it just doesn't justify...
HANNITY: It's irrelevant.
GUILFOYLE: ... excessive use of force during that last encounter.
HANNITY: He was not a threat, the South Carolina video, to anybody. And we can roll that tape and we'll talk about it as the night goes on.
GUILFOYLE: Terrible case.
HANNITY: Look, apparently, this person had some mental illness, Deroy. He was swinging a metal broom handle before the shooting. The officer apparently was saying, you know, "Get on the ground, get on the ground, or I'm going to kill you." You could see the officer was in a heightened state of adrenaline as he was firing, which is a natural reaction.
What is your take to the new video that was just released?
DEROY MURDOCK, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I think in all of these cases, what we really need to have is a very intelligent national discussion about police use of force, excessive force. Are there non-lethal means of taking down people like this without killing them or hurting them, et cetera?
And I think it would be a lot easier to do this and develop consensus about what we ought to do if we don't bring in the racial angle unless there's actual evidence of racism. Now, if this guy says, "I don't like blacks," there's racial animus, then absolutely appropriate to bring it up. But as soon as we bring that in, it becomes a national screaming match. We're not going to get anywhere in terms of trying to settle this on a long-term basis and...
HANNITY: I think cameras, though...
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: Body cameras will help officers, no? And help the public in terms of we're going to know what's going on.
MURDOCK: They will. Absolutely. And I think the use of police cameras on police officers...
HANNITY: K.G., you agree with that?
GUILFOYLE: Yes, I mean, look, cameras help, you know, shine a light, illuminate the situation. But I think (INAUDIBLE) absolutely right. You don't want to just all of a sudden jump and -- you know, jump on the race card and say this is something that was racially motivated or had racial animus, you know, elements to it.
You don't want to do that because then we're not winning as a nation. We have to be very specific and agree to talk about this in a controlled way that's actually going to shed some light on an issue if it exists.
HANNITY: OK, now, as we go to this new video, Bo, I want you, to the extent that you can -- the new video just released today -- and analyze it for us as the officer -- again, you don't -- you only hear from...
BO DIETL, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: You see one side of it.
HANNITY: You're only seeing one side of it, but...
DIETL: Right. And you can see -- you see the emotion of the officer when he's shooting the gun. Obviously, there's a lot of emotion there. I don't know if the guy's still standing there, swinging at him. You can't see it. Now, as far as...
HANNITY: According to authorities, they say that Hall (ph) was wildly swinging up to that moment this metal broom handle. Most people seem think that he was mentally disturbed, suffering from schizophrenia.
DIETL: Well, you know, and that's one of our biggest problems. There's a lot of mentally disturbed people that have nowhere to go. They release them. They bring them to the hospital for three days, and they release them.
But this is two different animals right now. The thing in South Carolina, me sitting here as former law enforcement, I can't condone it. He should be arrested for murder, and he should go away the rest of his life. That's one. This one here is completely different.
But Sean, my big upsetment (sic) is, last month, there was five African-American police officers killed across this country.
HANNITY: We don't know their names.
DIETL: We never heard a word. The one that really angers me is that hero cop in Boston, where there was a videotape. Why isn't it on TV? A videotape of the guy who shot two cops in 2001, comes out, and he shoots that cop right in the face!
HANNITY: Assassinates him.
DIETL: The cop never got his gun out. He gets shot in the face. And there was outrage from the black community -- "Ferguson! Ferguson!" And that's a Ferguson thing. My problem again is the thing in South Carolina is different than Ferguson, different than Staten Island!
HANNITY: So -- let's be clear because we have two -- the new Florida tape that was just released today. But in South Carolina, there's no...
DIETL: There's no defense.
HANNITY: There's no defense. You don't -- look, I've been trained in use of a firearm. You've been trained. Tactics, police tactics, techniques -- you don't shoot somebody that's running and not a threat to anybody else!
DIETL: Sean -- Sean...
HANNITY: It's not justifiable!
DIETL: Sean, you know what you do with them? You chase them...
HANNITY: Tackle them!
DIETL: ... you tackle them down, and that's it.
HANNITY: Right.
DIETL: You got to remember, I did my whole career without shooting anybody. I was hospitalized 30 times. I was shot at, stabbed and all. So I don't shoot my gun. My point is that cop should have ran after him, grabbed him...
HANNITY: And tackled him.
DIETL: ... tackled him down and...
HANNITY: And it gives cops a bad name. And every cop I talked to today, they're angry because people have this perception that all cops are like this.
DIETL: Right! And now, all of a sudden...
HANNITY: That's not true.
DIETL: ... you got your friend over there, Al Sharpton, jumping up and down like this is such a widespread thing. But again, where was the outrage with five African-American cops...
HANNITY: It's a great point.
DIETL: ... in one week killed?
HANNITY: All right, let me ask this question. What do you do in the case when you know somebody is mentally disturbed? That makes it a harder issue because he does represent a threat to himself and a threat to the police officer. Do we need to think about another option? I like the idea of a taser. I like the idea of anything other than just killing the guy, like in this case, but the officer didn't have the -- the equipment to do that.
MURDOCK: Tasers are one idea. Perhaps nets would be another. I mean, it sounds a little bit harsh, but it's certainly better than killing somebody, maybe, you know, darts that you'd used with some anesthesia in it or something, kind of knock people out...
DIETL: There should be some other weapons, I agree.
(CROSSTALK)
GUILFOYLE: Non-lethal means.
DIETL: Let me tell you, I was talking to cops at Penn Station where there's a lot of EDPs down there, and I'm talking to the cops specifically about this, the MTA guys, and I says, Guys, I said, you ever think about, you know, when you have an EDP with a weapon or something like that -- because we're taught one thing, shoot at the body, at the mass.
HANNITY: Body mass.
DIETL: Right in the body mass. What I said to them -- and I'm laughing about it because I said, Try and shoot the guy in the thigh. You know, let him go down. But my whole point is that's not how you train. You train for...
HANNITY: You train body mass.
DIETL: You're using deadly physical force. But in my mind, is if you could always be a Monday morning quarterback and rethink it, a lot of things would be different.
HANNITY: Yes. K.G.?
GUILFOYLE: Yes, I mean, look, there's a lot of room for improvement, sure. But again, we can't operate from the premise that police officers, anyone who wears a blue uniform is, you know, seeing color or race, and that's what motivates some of these situations. The facts and statistics don't bear that out. So we also have to be responsible in the way that we cover these stories.
HANNITY: All right, let's talk about -- there's a political side of this, and you know, considering everybody agrees about the South Carolina shooting, I want to bring up comments that were made by South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, literally blaming, you know, people for the shooting that weren't responsible. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JAMES CLYBURN, D-S.C.: This so-called American legislative -- whatever they call that group -- ALEC -- (sic)
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST, "HARDBALL": ALEC.
CLYBURN: ... legislative exchange council -- they have been drawing up these legislations, pieces of legislation like "stand your ground." That legislation gives a license for people to be vigilantes.
The climate that's being created is not a good climate. And that's why you have these rogue police officers feeling they have license to do what they want to do and there will be no consequences paid for it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: My question is, everybody agrees that what happened in South Carolina is wrong, and he's politicizing it! "Stand your ground" has nothing to do with it. ALEC has nothing to do with it. I'm trying to -- where's that coming from?
MURDOCK: No, it's really despicable. Look, this man, Walter Scott, I don't think has even been buried yet, and here's Congressman Clyburn trying to make political hay of it. In fact, pointed out the American Legislative Exchange Council promotes voter ID laws. So somehow, this is tied into voter ID laws. I mean, Nigeria had an election. They had voter ID at the polls. Is that because of anti-black racism? That has nothing to do with this, and he ought to -- he ought to...
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: ... when I went to Democratic National Convention, and Kimberly was there, as well, you needed a photo ID to get into the DNC convention or any of the presidential debates.
MURDOCK: That's right.
HANNITY: So -- and K.G. should get in because it's her.
(LAUGHTER)
HANNITY: And maybe Bo you keep out.
DIETL: Sean, you know what? Sean, like I said, again, there's no question about this. I don't think anybody is disputing what we saw in South Carolina. But the point is we got cops out there now risking their lives...
HANNITY: Yes.
DIETL: ... and they have to be able to react, otherwise, we're going to have more dead cops. We'll probably reach 100 dead cops this year across America.
HANNITY: All right. Scary stuff. Guys, thank you all. Thanks for being with us.
GUILFOYLE: Thanks, Sean.
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