there s nowhere to hide anything. the level of threat that one could kind of garner from that seems to be although there s always the possibility of a physical threat that you can use your hands or the cigarette in some sort of way. we have to get first to the idea of like, where is the assault happening on the officer? that s the biggest problematic part of this whole thing. where s the arrest? why is she under arrest and being put in this cell in the first place? i think that s where the officer is going to have his biggest problem in this. and then three days later, this woman ends up dead. now you have a murder investigation. that s a whole different cup of tea. exactly right. paul, charles, tom, thank you very much. we ll continue to wade through all these details as they come out. coming up for us, just moments ago, ferguson announcing a new police chief as the city continues to deal with racial tensions. will his background help?
month s long investigation. if you look at the south carolina case, that officer was charged very, very quickly. i want to get reaction from the law enforcement community. kate bolduan is in new york for that. kate? john, thank you so much. we ll continue our breaking news coverage as we continue this conversation. let me bring in our players and our analysts and experts who are going to be discussing this. here in studio, mel robbins, cnn legal analyst and tom verny, former nypd detective. tom fuentes is joining us from washington, former fbi assistant director and we have marc lamont hill joining us live from los angeles. a lot to digest, everyone. let s take this piece by piece. mel, first to you. we had the opportunity in that press conference it came out quick, fast and surprising these charges against these officers. we ve had a second to digest what they are now charged with.
tragic situation to get the eyes. let s disperse peacefully. we are going to show the world what kind of city we have. i am telling you, it was an emotional night and some of the stuff i saw, it was just incredibly powerful. i want to talk about this and more so let s bring in tom verny, a former nypd detective, and tom, an assistant fbi director. detective, you saw the community
the issues here, there are several. number one, how did he shoot a man when he intended to taze him? and why was this volunteer deputy out there in an undercover sting operation with police in the first place? they said he had 300 hours of training. critics including the attorney for the man who was killed said it was a paid to play situation because with donation to the police force, he was allowed to go out and be a play cop. joining us to talk about this, cnn legal analyst danny cevallos and former nypd detective and law enforcement consultant tom verny. i was unaware that such a thing existed. these volunteer deputy officers that you can donate to a police force and with some number of hours of training go out on operations like this. is this an unusual thing? i was unaware of that myself. it s a little frightening to me. here in new york, nypd has
and joining me now, former nypd detective, tom verny, and vann jones. tom, you re with me. let me start with you. so johnson s version of the story. he says he wasn t intoxicated. he says he didn t try to present a fake i.d. we should note he s a few months shy of his 21st birthday. given that we don t know exactly what happened okay? but no matter what happened does it justify throwing a kid to the ground and having his face be utterly covered in blood? can anything in this situation justify that sort of force? well it all depends on what happened before the video that we saw. it doesn t show what took place before that right? so we pick up the video where the kid is already on the ground and he s being or attempting to be handcuffed. i don t think he was completely handcuffed at the time. and we ve talked about this in other incidents, whether it be the eric garner situation or other police-involved situations across the country, that the police are authorized to use whatever for