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AT THIS HOUR

Police Draw Guns on Family after Child Takes Doll; A Look Back at Incredible Life of Gloria Vanderbilt; Hong Kong Defiant as Protesters Call for Leader to Quit. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired June 17, 2019 - 11:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[11:30:00] FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Up next, Phoenix police taking heat after video shows officers pulling out their guns on a family after their 4-year-old daughter allegedly steals a doll. What that family is saying now, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Both the mayor of Phoenix and the police chief are apologizing to a family after a disturbing incident with police.

[11:35:00] It was captured on cell phone video. A father, a pregnant mother and their two young daughters in a vehicle when police officers swooped in with guns drawn, threatening to shoot and cursing at the family of four.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER: Get your (EXPLETIVE DELETED] hands up. I'm going to (EXPLETIVE DELETED]

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER: Get them up!

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It doesn't open. I promise. I promise it doesn't open.

UNIDENTIFIED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER: You're going to (EXPLETIVE DELETED] get shot. Get your (EXPLETIVE DELETED] hands up.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can't get my door open.

UNIDENTIFIED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER: Get out of the (EXPLETIVE DELETED] car! Get out of the (EXPLETIVE DELETED] car right now!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER: Yes, get out now. Get out the (EXPLETIVE DELETED] car.

(CROSSTALK)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: CNN's Scott McLean joining us with more details.

Scott, the family is suing the city and talking.

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. They are preparing to file a lawsuit for $10 million unless the city agrees to settle.

Now, in these videos, Fredricka, as you saw there, police approached the vehicle carrying Dravon Ames along with his pregnant fiancee and two kids with their guns drawn. You also see police handcuffing Ames and pushing him up against a squad car and then at one point kicking his leg out from under him.

All of this was because of a report that the family had been shoplifting from a nearby Dollar Store.

Now, according to police, Ames did admit to stealing from the store and his daughter, a 4-year-old girl, took a doll. The couple were detained but they weren't charged.

Even if they were though, a lot of people wonder why police responded so forcefully considering this was such a petty crime.

Body cameras were also not worn because police officers didn't have them.

Ames said he's lucky someone was recording. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DRAVON AMES, FILED LAWSUIT AGAINST CITY OF PHOENIX: I feel like the body-worn cameras would help a lot in those communities and those officers should have had them on. It was a lot of them that didn't have them on and a lot of them stood by and just watched. So, I'm glad there was a bystander there to record what was happening because I feel like that saved my family's life ultimately.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCLEAN: Now, the Phoenix mayor called the situation beyond upsetting. She's promising to make sure all officers have body cameras by August.

The police chief said that she found one of the officer's actions disturbing. At least two of the officers, as well, are on desk duty pending an internal investigation.

The department, though, is no longer commenting because of that pending litigation -- Fredricka?

WHITFIELD: All right, Scott McLean, thank you so much. Coming up, hers was a life unlike any other. Up next, a look back at

the incredible journey of Gloria Vanderbilt.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:42:27] WHITFIELD: Our hearts go out to our colleague, Anderson Cooper. His mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, passed away this morning.

Anderson put out this statement, saying, "Gloria Vanderbilt was an extraordinary woman who loved life and lived it on her own terms. She was a painter, a writer, a designer, but also a remarkable mother, wife and friend. She was 95 years old. But ask anyone close to her, and they'd tell you she was the youngest they knew, the coolest, and most modern. She died this morning, the way she wanted to, at home surrounded by family and friends."

Here's a look at her extraordinary life as told by Anderson himself.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR & CNN HOST, "A.C. 360" (voice-over): Gloria Vanderbilt, my mom, lived her entire life in the public eye. Born in 1924, her father, Reginald Vanderbilt was heir to the Vanderbilt railroad fortune but gambled away most of his inheritance and died when my mom was just a baby.

Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, her mother, wasn't ready to be a mom or a widow.

My mom grew up in France not knowing anything about the Vanderbilt family or the money that she would inherit when she turned 21. She had no idea the trouble that money would create.

ANNOUNCER: And here's the first movie of little Gloria herself. Frightened by the curious crowd, she flees into her aunt's car. Money isn't everything.

COOPER: When she was 10, her father's sister, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, sued to have my mom taken away from her own mother. It was a custody battle the likes of which the world had never seen, called the Trial of the Century. And it took place during the height of the Depression, making headlines every day for months.

The court awarded custody of my mom to her Aunt Gertrude, whom she barely knew. The judge also fired the one person my mom truly loved and needed, her nanny, whom she called Dodo.

VANDERBILT: She was my mother, my father. She was everything. She was my lifeline. She's all I had.

COOPER: As a teenager, she tried to avoid the spotlight but reporters and cameramen would follow her everywhere.

She was determined to make something of her life. Determined to make a name for herself and find the love and family that she so desperately craved. At 17, against her aunt's wishes, she got married. She knew it was a

mistake from the get-go.

ANNOUNCER: Wedding bells at Santa Barbara's Spanish Mission. He is Pat DiCicco, Hollywood actor's agent and is 32.

COOPER (on camera): He was described as a Hollywood agent. Was he an agent?

VANDERBILT: Well, maybe at one point he was. He had been married to a well-known actress and she was -- died under mysterious circumstances. There were sort of rumors around that maybe he had killed her, you know.

[11:45:11] COOPER: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. So, you got married to a guy who there were rumors he killed his former wife?

VANDERBILT: Yes, yes.

COOPER: Did that not seem to give you pause?

VANDERBILT: Well, I thought all he needs is me, you know, to --

COOPER: Oh, god.

VANDERBILT: Sweetheart, I was only 17.

COOPER: OK, I know.

(voice-over): At 21, she married again and had two sons with the legendary conductor, Leopold Stokowski.

(on camera): This is what he looked like when you first met him?

VANDERBILT: Well, it's a terrible photograph of him but he was 63 when I first met him and married him.

COOPER: Was it, like, as soon as you saw him you thought --

VANDERBILT: Instant.

COOPER: Really?

VANDERBILT: Knew him for a week and married three weeks later.

COOPER: Really?

VANDERBILT: Yes.

COOPER: I didn't know that.

VANDERBILT: Yes.

COOPER: And he was 63?

VANDERBILT: Yes. COOPER: Wow. Did any of your friends think it was weird?

VANDERBILT: I don't know. I mean --

COOPER: They didn't say anything?

VANDERBILT: Didn't matter to me.

COOPER (voice-over): The marriage lasted more than a decade.

And then she met and married director, Sidney Lumet, and then my father, writer, Wyatt Cooper.

Over the course of her life, my mom was photographed by all the great photographers. And she worked as a painter, a writer, an actress, and designer.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Gloria, you're terrific.

COOPER: If you were around in the early 1980s, it was pretty hard to miss the jeans she helped create.

But that was her public face, the one she learned to hide behind as a child.

Her private self, her real self, that was more fascinating and more lovely than anything she showed the public.

I always thought of her as a visitor from another world, a traveler stranded here who had come from a distant star that burned out long ago. I always felt it was my job to try to protect her.

She was the strongest person I've ever met but she wasn't tough. She never developed a thick skin to protect herself from hurt. She wanted to feel it all. She wanted to feel life's pleasures, its pains as well.

She trusted too freely, too completely, and suffered tremendous losses, but she always pressed on, always worked hard, always believed the best was yet to come.

(on camera): You think the next great love is right around the corner?

VANDERBILT: Absolutely. Absolutely.

COOPER: Is there anyone I should know about right now?

VANDERBILT: No.

(LAUGHTER)

COOPER: I think Ben Brantley (ph) said he's never met somebody over the age of 16 who loves being in love as much as you.

VANDERBILT: That's true. I think we should always be in love. COOPER (voice-over): And she was always in love. In love with men or

friends or books and art. In love with her children and her grandchildren and then her great grandchildren. Love is what she believed in more than anything.

Earlier this month, we had to take her to the hospital. That's where she learned she had very advanced cancer in her stomach and that it had spread.

When the doctor told her she had cancer, she was silent for a while and then she said, well, it's like that old song, show me the way to get out of this world because that's where everything is.

Later she made a joke and we started giggling. I never knew we had the exact same giggle. I recorded it and it makes me giggle every time I watch it.

(LAUGHTER)

Joseph Conrad wrote that we live as we die -- alone. He was wrong in my mom's case. Gloria Vanderbilt died as she lived, on her own terms.

I know she hoped for a little more time, a few days or weeks at least. There were paintings she wanted to make, more books she wanted to read, more dreams to dream, but she was ready. She was ready to go.

VANDERBILT: Once upon a time --

COOPER: She spent a lot of time alone in her head during her life, but when the end came, she was not alone. She was surrounded by beauty and by family and by friends.

The last few weeks, every time I kissed her good-bye, I'd say, I love you, Mom. She would look at me and say, I love you, too. You know that.

And she was right. I did know that. I knew it from the moment I was born and I'll know it for the rest of my life. And in the end, what greater gift can a mother give to her son.

[11:49:51] Gloria Vanderbilt was 95 years old when she died. What an extraordinary life. What an extraordinary mom. And what an incredible woman.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: People across Hong Kong remain defiant. Hundreds of thousands of protesters packing the streets demanding the resignation of the city's chief executive, Carrie Lam, and the withdrawal of an extradition bill with China. The massive demonstration came despite Lam suspending the controversial bill and issuing an apology.

CNN senior international correspondent, Ivan Watson, joins us now from Hong Kong.

So, Ivan, what is the U.S. saying about all this? [11:54:56] IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT:

Well, the State Department said that the U.S. is monitoring what's happening here in Hong Kong. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that President Trump might raise Hong Kong in face-to-face talks with Xi Jinping expected at the G-20 meeting in Japan by the ending of the month.

So it gets to a problem for Xi Jinping, the president of China. He has cultivated a very tough-guy persona. He has cracked down on virtually any form of public dissent, whether it's in the media or in the streets in mainland China.

He's even thrown human rights lawyers in prison for the defendants they're defending and has allegedly created a system of concentration camps where he's thrown hundreds of thousands of Muslims.

The problem is, is that Hong Kong is technically a Chinese city, but because of a twist of colonial history, it has more freedom than any other part of modern-day China. And hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, have come out over the last eight days and said they don't like the Communist Party and Xi Jinping and the central government in China.

And Xi Jinping just can't do away with it. This is a thorn in his side and probably bothering the Chinese central government -- Fredricka?

WHITFIELD: All right, Ivan Watson, thank you so much, in Hong Kong.

We'll be right back.

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