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@THISHOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA

How Serious Is the ISIS Threat; Holder Unveils Plan to Fight Homegrown Extremism; Fine Line Between Spanking, Child Abuse; Daniele Watts, Boyfriend Detailed by Police

Aired September 15, 2014 - 11:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Many people are wondering just how big a threat ISIS is to the American homeland. Right now, the terror group seems to be focusing its fighting in Iraq and Syria, but, as you'll recall, ISIS has threatened to fly the Islamic flag over the White House.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: But some experts, including the one we're about to speak with, say the United States and its allies, to a certain extent, are overreacting, that ISIS is dangerous, but, right now, the group has its hands full in Syria and Iraq.

So with us from Washington is Audrey Kurth Cronin, an expert on terrorism and a professor at George Mason University. The professor has written that clear strategic thinking about where we are in this war is absent, replaced by hype and partisanship.

So, Professor, let's start here. Is ISIS a threat to the United States right now and, if so, how big?

AUDREY KURTH CRONIN, PROFESSOR, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY: Yes, I think ISIS is a threat, but I think it's less important a threat to the United States than it is to its immediate region and in a sort of concentric circle to those people that are closer to the territory that it actually controls. And above all, it's a very great threat to the Iraqis.

PEREIRA: You wrote a really interesting article talking about managing the threat of terrorism. You say that they can never be eliminated, and perpetuating the myth that it can, only heighten the incentives to attack us. Explain that to us.

CRONIN: Well, I think that ISIS is particularly good at using the media and using social media, the new media, to try to really alarm people. And actually it sometimes causes us to respond in extremely emotional ways. Calling ISIS the next World War III or, you know, the biggest threat ever to our national interest doesn't really help us think clearly about how best to support the people within Iraq, Syria, and within the region in order to respond effectively.

PEREIRA: So what do you think the U.S. and its allies should be doing, then? CRONIN: Well, I think that the four-pronged strategy that President

Obama put forward was strong and was positive. I do think that this development of a 40-state coalition is the right thing to do because, ultimately, you cannot transfer political will. ISIS on the ground in Iraq took a tremendous amount of territory, partly because the people who were in Iraq, the Iraqi army, ran away essentially, and because Sunni tribes that had been very involved, many of them, with us, in the Sunni awakening, aligned themselves with ISIS. So we can transfer weapons, we can train, but we can not transfer political will. And at the heart of any war is the need for those governments on the ground to have political will to resist.

BERMAN: You were speaking about the media prowess of ISIS right now. I think all of us have been shocked over the last several weeks by these awful videos, the beheading of hostages by ISIS. But do you think that the horror, the horrific nature of these videos has forced the United States and the West into a foreign policy that might not be where they were headed had these videos not existed?

CRONIN: I think there's no question that this is something that would not have happened in quite the same hyped way in terms of all of the voices on the right and the left talking about ISIS and talking about it strictly as a U.S./ISIS relationship. The videos have been absolutely horrendous. I feel extremely terrible for the people who are related to James Foley and the other folks that were beheaded. But ultimately, ISIS is using them to provoke and also to draw attention to itself. And I don't think it's in our interest to help them do that.

PEREIRA: Professor Audrey Kurth Cronin, thank you so much for adding your voice to the conversation here @THISHOUR.

CRONIN: It's a pleasure. Thank you, Michaela.

PEREIRA: Stay where you are. You don't want to miss what is ahead. We are going to explore the fine line between spanking and child abuse that landed Minnesota Vikings star, Adrian Peterson, in trouble.

BERMAN: Also ahead, an actress from "Django Unchained" finds herself handcuffed in an upscale Hollywood neighborhood. And you will not believe what was behind it. I'll tell you. She was making out with her boyfriend and she gets handcuffed. Is this a bad thing?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: We've been spending a lot of time talking about the threat from overseas terrorists, but there are homegrown extremists right here in the U.S. who want to join ISIS or other terror groups. In fact, some already have.

BERMAN: So now the attorney general, Eric Holder, today is making moves to crack down. He announced an initiative to fight the threat of homegrown terror with the help of local officials and community leaders.

PEREIRA: Michael Balboni joins us now. He was Homeland Security director for New York State and is now a senior fellow with the Homeland Security Policy Institute.

And you're the right man to talk about the efforts Eric Holder is undertaking and the importance of reaching into the community. It certainly seems like we're reporting more about these homegrown terrorists since 9/11. It's not just the appearance. This is on an increase.

MICHAEL BALBONI, SENIOR FELLOW, HOMELAND SECURITY POLICY INSTITUTE & FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY DIRECTOR, NEW YORK STATE: It is. It's always been a concern right after 9/11. And when you think about the advent of the Internet images, the constant 24-hour news cycle, there's so much information out there and imagery that can really illicit a very strong response. We saw this in the Boston bombings. We see it all over the place. And what we refer to it as is inspired but not instructive. So what the attorney general is doing is reaching out to local communities and saying, how can we help this situation? What type of things can we do? The challenge here is, how do you not have a police state? And now you go into surveillance. Going into the mosques, everyone says, "Wait a minute, talk to the imam first, why don't see what's going on in the mosques." And if you're really dedicated to doing something bad, you know where you won't go and talk about it? In a mosque, because that's where the surveillance is. And working with communities, working with the Islamic centers throughout the United States. This is a population of folks who've come here, hardworking immigrants, and yet this has been, since 9/11, a horrific issue for this nation.

BERMAN: Michael, Michaela alluded to something. There's a lot of hype right now about the threat of ISIS here in the homeland, the threat of homegrown terror as a result of ISIS. But is it, in fact, worse than it was two years ago, at the time of the Boston Marathon, or 10 years ago, a little after 9/11, or eight years ago? Is it worse now than it has been?

BALBONI: Well, when you see a trend over years, when you look at the cases, and the way to find the information is to go to the Justice Department cases and look at the prosecutions they've brought, and you kind of see a drum beat that began right after 9/11. But then has kind of went down a little bit but then has spiked up. The challenge, of course, is that you don't know when someone who is truly homegrown, radicalized, when that switch is flipped. You don't know when they suddenly decide one day I'm going to be -- I'm concerned, I'm going to take an active role. And, you know, the other scary thing is that there's so much information on the web as to how to build a bomb. And people don't pay attention to that. And we've seen a lot of attempts to do that. Faisal Shahzad (ph), the guy in Times Square, how he was able to construct that device. So this is a real challenge for law enforcement but you can't do it from the federal level only. You have to be out in the communities. But, again, you can't go and demonize a community.

PEREIRA: Absolutely.

Michael Balboni, thanks for coming in to talk about it with us. We'll be watching it along with you.

BALBONI: Thank you.

BERMAN: Next up for us, some people say spanking a child is acceptable. It happened to all of us when we were growing up. So why shouldn't it happen now? Others say it's going too far. We're talking about Adrian Peterson. What he did, was that too much? How about regular spanking? We'll break it all down.

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BERMAN: NFL running back, Adrian Peterson, hit his four-year-old child with a switch -- that's a tree branch -- leaving cuts and bruises on the backs of his legs. Now people are asking, is that too far? What about regular spanking? Is that too far? It's a discussion a lot of people are having today.

PEREIRA: So Saturday, the Minnesota Vikings player turned himself into police. He was released on $15,000 bail. Now, he could actually face a two-year sentence if he's convicted. Peterson's lawyer says his client was just doing what he had experienced as a child growing up in east Texas, doling out the same punishment he had had.

Joining us, our commentator and legal analyst, Mel Robbins, and mom I should point out; and CNN digital correspondent, Kelly Wallace, also a mother.

Mel, I'll start with you because I know you feel that Peterson went too far and that you don't believe that kids -- parents should be hitting their kids at all.

MEL ROBBINS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST & COMMENTATOR: Yes. That's true because if you think about it, the only person you can hit legally, in the United States, is a child. And that's absurd. If you hit your domestic partner, it's domestic violence. If you hit another adult, we call it assault. But if you hit your kid in the name of discipline, we call you a loving parent. And I think that has to change.

BERMAN: And, Mel, in this case with Adrian Peterson, he used a branch. Left welts and drew blood. I think the law, a lot of analysts think, is fairly clear on what he did. But state to state, as a nation, what is the law? What is allowed? How much is too much? You can spank your kids everywhere, right?

ROBBINS: Pretty much. There aren't any laws that I could find that make it illegal to spank or discipline your child using corporal punishment and this is the problem. So unless a community of your peers finds it unreasonable, you haven't crossed a line. So a lot of parents who resort to spanking do it because they're frustrated, they're angry, they're lost control of the child, and so they start hitting the kid. First of all, study after study has shown that it's not only ineffective as a disciplinary measure but it has negative long-term impact as well. And regarding the law on this, you can basically get away with hitting your kid with whatever you want as long as you don't leave a bruise. It's ridiculous.

PEREIRA: Let's talk to Kelly, because we have to talk about culture and peers and generational differences because I think all of us, the four of us having this conversation, likely had a belt or wooden spoon or whatever, go out and pick your own switch in the backyard. But things have changed. And the conversation now that I'm hearing -- I don't have children -- but I hear from our colleagues is most of them feel like you don't spank children.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, the conversation has changed and as you said, many of us -- I was pinched. My mom would say --

(CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: You were pinched?

WALLACE: I was pinched.

PEREIRA: My mother flicked?

BERMAN: That's so passive aggressive. I never heard that before.

WALLACE: I know. She said it worked. And trust me, there have been times I've been tempted, but I don't do it. In part, because I'm aware of the studies that Mel has talked about to show it doesn't work and that it might lead to more aggressive behavior than leaving kids to behave in the first place. But it's important to note there are geographical differences here, right? You know, the people in the South, where people might have more conservative religious beliefs, potentially more likely to spank. If income level is lower, more likely to spank. Is that because of their financially stressed and feeling --

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: -- the stress? Exactly. Education level? The lower the education level, the more likely to spank. So there are some -- and in cultural -- when you talk about cultures, African-American communities, more likely to spank, studies have shown, than whites, Hispanics and Asian-Americans. So there are real differences, you know, in families in cultures in terms of spanking even based on all the information we have.

BERMAN: Every human being I've spoken to of our age, I say, were you spanked as a kid, everyone says yes. It was 100 percent.

PEREIRA: And we turned out fine.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Debatable.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: In my case -- in my case only.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: But it's interesting. I've asked parents our age also, do you spank your kids, and the answer I get is, no, but I have -- which is a weird way of denying it.

WALLACE: Right. So they're saying they don't do it as a regular discipline approach, but there have been times they have been so pressed to do it, I guess.

PEREIRA: Mel, here's the question. This is one of those discussions and debates where it's not going to go away. Spanking is going to be parts of many different parts of this country, many different cultures here. What would you like to see happen that can happen? What kind of clarity do you want here?

ROBBINS: Well, OK, I mean, for me, personally, I'd like us to be the 33rd country in the world to ban physical discipline for children because I think it's absolutely absurd that we're advocating and making violence against children. And it is violent. If you slap, pinch, hit, kick, whoop, whatever a kid, you are committing an act of violence. So I'd personally like to see the laws change. However, short of that, there needs to be more education. What a lot of parents don't understand is that, particularly for toddlers and young kids, they're going through developmental stages where they're driven by curiosity. They're driven to experiment with things to learn. So they may not be being disobedient. It's part of their biological wiring to be testing limits so that they can learn. And here you are hitting them for it. So short of laws changing, the only thing that will change is more conversation about educating parents about other things that you can use in your toolbox so you're not trying to hit your kid into next week because you're angry. But that you're taking a deep breath and doing something different.

PEREIRA: Parents will often say, "Use your words." Maybe adults need to use their words as well. Even words can be damaging.

Mel Robbins, Kelly Wallace -- we're just getting word actually -- tell them what we're learning about Adrian Peterson.

BERMAN: We're hearing that Adrian Peterson will be able to participate in practice this week. And he is expected to play next week against the New Orleans Saints. So Adrian Peterson was forced to sit out this weekend, but will play next weekend. The only person you can hit legally in the country right now, your kids.

PEREIRA: That's a sobering thought when you think about it.

BERMAN: Very, very interesting. So much to discuss here.

Let us know what you think. Visit our Facebook page, send us a tweet. We want to know your opinion.

PEREIRA: This one's going to generate conversations as well. Police detain a Hollywood actress for what? They thought she was a prostitute. She said we was merely making out with her boyfriend. We're going to hear from her, and from her boyfriend, along with audio from the incident, right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: It is a case pitting an L.A. actress against police. Daniele Watts says police detained her because they thought she was a prostitute. Why? Because she was making out with her boyfriend when someone called police. She refused to give her I.D. Police handcuffed her.

Listen to the audio from the police conversation.

(BEGIN AUDIO FEED)

UNIDENTIFIED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER: Somebody called the police saying that there was lewd acts in the car.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER: It doesn't matter. I have to I.D. you.

DANIELE WATTS, ACTRESS: We're not doing anything.

UNIDENTIFIED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER: Somebody called.

(CROSSTALK)

WATTS: -- and this is my boyfriend.

UNIDENTIFIED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER: OK. I want to see your I.D.

WATTS: -- in a public place.

UNIDENTIFIED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER: Somebody called, which gives me the right to be here, so it gives me the right to identify you.

WATTS: Do you know how many times the cops have been called just for being black? Because we're black --

UNIDENTIFIED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER: That is not --

(CROSSTALK)

WATTS: I'm just being really honest.

UNIDENTIFIED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER: Who brought up a race card? Why?

WATTS: I bringing it up because --

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER: I said nothing about you being black.

WATTS: -- I have every right to be here. (END AUDIO FEED)

PEREIRA: Watts' boyfriend believes they were racially profiled. I spoke with both of them earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA: Let me frank. Were you two doing something you shouldn't have been doing?

WATTS: In my opinion, it's not a crime to be fully clothed showing affection on a public street in our own car. If we're fully clothes, it doesn't matter how passionately we're making out.

BRIAN JAMES LUCAS, BOYFRIEND OF WATTS: It made me feel like I was a client and she was a prostitute. The questions he was asking and the way he was doing it, and then, throughout the whole experience he kept on doing it. Towards the end, he told her, do you want me to call paramedics, throwing out the innuendo that she was crazy. Just things like that were just like very displeasing.

PEREIRA: Many of us wonder, do police have the right to ask you for I.D. In California, the police, if they have reasonable suspicion, they are permitted to detain an individual for a reasonable amount of time in order to ascertain the person's identity. You heard the police officer even saying, look, if you had just given me your I.D. 15 minutes ago I could have gone.

LUCAS: Yeah.

PEREIRA: Do you regret just not handing him your I.D. now, or do you feel strongly like you didn't have to?

WATTS: I still feel strongly like I didn't have to. I feel that it raises awareness. I'm thankful for the experience, not to say that I feel like I have to go through it again. But it's causing a lot of discussion. I feel that's the purpose of the media and artists and actors and celebrities to talk about things and raise awareness so that we can all decide what kind of society we want to live in.

PEREIRA: Put yourselves in the shoes of an officer, and they encounter a situation, how would you have done it if it were you?

WATTS: Well, I've actually played an officer before and I thought a lot about this. I think it comes down to seeing the humanity in another person and having empathy and awareness for what your actions are and the repercussions of your actions. So when the officer came up, he didn't ask me for my I.D., he asked Brian. So he didn't give me the respect of telling me what happened. For me, if he had come to me and said, "Excuse me, ma'am, you seem like a respectable person, but someone made a call, can we just talk to you for a second," the whole situation would have been different.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA: Here's the response from the LAPD. Quote, "It was a call generated by a citizen. There was an indication on the radio call that a male white and female black were involved in a sexual act inside a Mercedes -- with the vehicle door open. Two people were briefly detained, but it was revealed that no had been committed."

My goodness. What a situation.

BERMAN: Decide for yourself.

PEREIRA: That's it for us @THISHOUR. I'm Michaela Pereira.

BERMAN: I'm John Berman. "LEGAL VIEW" with Ashleigh Banfield starts now.