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CNN NEWSROOM

National Protests Continue; London's Aviation Mess; California Storms Trigger Rock Slides

Aired December 12, 2014 - 15:00   ET

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


BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Here we go, top of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Nine days since a grand jury did not indict a police officer in the death of Eric Garner here in New York, 19 days since no indictment in Michael Brown's case. You may just see the biggest protest ever tomorrow. This week dubbed by organizers as -- quote -- "The Week of Outrage" to is culminate with a -- quote -- "Day of Anger" Saturday.

Large demonstrations planned for New York, Washington, other major metropolitan areas. Right now, our attorney general, Eric Holder, is taking another step to shrink the rift between police and minorities by taking part in a roundtable sitting next to Chicago's mayor, Rahm Emanuel, there in Chicago.

Many law enforcement, other community members, leaders, and members in communities nationwide hey continue to demand that prosecutors file charges against the officers who killed Brown and Garner. Eric Garner's own daughter made this demand Thursday leading a rally. Erica Garner also tried to keep her father's story alive by putting her own self in the same spot where her father began to die on that sidewalk there in Staten Island where police, you have seen the video, placed him in that chokehold.

She says she's overwhelmed and thankful for the nationwide response to her father's death.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERICA GARNER, DAUGHTER OF ERIC GARNER: Everybody feels and thinks the same way I'm thinking. So, I'm not crazy. It's the same -- they think in the same way I'm thinking and it's a good thing. These cops was wrong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let me bring in our justice correspondent, Evan Perez, who has been all over this.

And I know, Evan, we have seen Eric Holder, what, in Atlanta, we saw him in Cleveland and now today he's in Chicago, all taking part in this roundtable wanting police and wanting communities to have a dialogue.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Brooke. These meetings he's been having, he's got a couple more. I think he's

got Philadelphia, Oakland coming up. These are all about putting more pressure on police around the country to sort of get this dialogue started, because there's no doubt there's a problem in many of these cities where you have police and communities that they're supposed to be protecting not really getting along, and you have repeated instances like the one in Cleveland, the one in Ferguson and the one in New York happening and creating really a reaction on the streets, which is not going away, as you mentioned, with this lawsuit -- I'm sorry -- with the protest over the weekend that is expected.

And in Chicago today, Holder was meeting with Rahm Emanuel, two men who didn't get along well when Rahm Emanuel was in the White House, and the two of them were speaking the same thing today, which was about making sure that the police basically get to know the communities they are policing and really have a better relationship so that these things don't keep happening.

BALDWIN: I'm wondering as we're talking though also, Evan, about some of these protests, and again we have talked to protesters. They have said tomorrow is supposed to be the biggest night we have seen so far.

Has Eric Holder made any comments, his thoughts on all of these protests, the demands that these young people are asking for?

PEREZ: He's in a tough spot, because what these people are asking for is they're asking for law enforcement, for police to be in handcuffs and for them to go on trial. He really can't do that.

It's not his place really to promise any of that. He can investigate. Most likely, the charges will have to come from local investigations. So what really he's trying to do is sort of walk the fine line where he says we're going to push local police to improve the way they train their officers, but, at the same time, you know, he wants to try to voice support for police because he's facing both sides.

He's got police now who think that he's being maybe a little too anti- cop in some of his comments, so he's facing a really tough issue for the chief law enforcement officer in the country.

BALDWIN: Let's talk local police.

Evan Perez, thank you very much.

In the wake of these protests, another update here. Evan mentioned Cleveland, the death of Tamir Rice, that 12-year-old boy fatally shot by that white Cleveland police officer, mistook his toy gun for a real one. The newly released autopsy report indicates now the boy's death officially ruled a homicide.

I talked to the Philadelphia police commissioner, Charles H. Ramsey, about really this growing divide between police and communities and Ramsey talked to me about excessive force and talked directly about the Eric Garner chokehold-related death here in New York and about why he became a cop coming from a neighborhood where that was very unpopular. Here is our conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Joining us now, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey. He has 45 years of law enforcement under his belt. He was once Chicago deputy superintendent of police and also in Washington, D.C., he was the police chief.

Commissioner, welcome. Thanks for coming on.

CHARLES RAMSEY, PHILADELPHIA POLICE COMMISSIONER: Well, thank you for having me.

BALDWIN: Well, first up, let's talk about this big job you have been tasked with.

President Obama has appointed you as this chair of the Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Can you tell me what specifically he's asked for you to do?

RAMSEY: Well, it's quite an honor, first of all, to be tapped for this very important job, especially at this time in our history.

And, basically, we have 90 days to develop recommendations, my co- chair and I, to present to the president regarding some reforms in policing. We're going to focus on training and education, establishing trust in communities, use of force policy review, things of that nature.

So we don't have a lot of time, but I think the task is doable.

BALDWIN: I want to ask you about solutions and reforms and training in just a minute, but because I have you and you have such a keen law enforcement eye, at the center of the protests most recently, I know you have seen it, the takedown of Eric Garner in Staten Island. We know Garner died. The officer wasn't indicted. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC GARNER, NEW YORK: I can't breathe. I can't breathe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Commissioner, it appears Garner was resisting arrest. I would love to hear your opinion on how these officers reacted to that.

RAMSEY: Well, first, let me say that whenever you have a situation where an individual is resisting arrest, it's not a pretty sight. It just isn't. Force is used. The question is always, how much is too much?

Certainly, when you look at the video like that, knowing that a death occurred as a result, it's always troubling. But my understanding is the grand jury was given a lot of material beyond just the video. I don't know what that material was. I have not had a chance to review it.

But one thing I do know, Bill Bratton is one of the best chiefs in America and he will deal with the situation and he will have all of the facts in front of him.

BALDWIN: Many of the young people protesting believe that police officers nationwide are out targeting African-Americans. And in your near five decades, Commissioner, in law enforcement, I'm curious, when's the last time tensions were this high between police and the community they serve?

RAMSEY: It's been a while.

I remember when I first started my policing career in the late 1960s, early '70s, there was a lot of tension, but we were in the middle a civil rights movement. You had the Vietnam War going on. You had a lot of protests taking place. I have really not seen anything with this amount of intensity since then.

Certainly, there were some protests after Rodney King and certain other high-profile events, but this has been going on for a period of time now, which really highlights a problem that we have in our society.

BALDWIN: Do you think if you weren't a cop today, weren't a police commissioner in the great city of Philadelphia and you were in your 20s, would you join those who are marching? Do you understand where some of them are coming from?

RAMSEY: I understand where they're coming from. I think we have to really reach out.

The only issue I have during this entire period of time is the way in which it's kind of being generalized that all police officers are using excessive force, all police officers are engaging in biased practices.

That's simply not the case. But I do think that there is an issue here. There's no question in my mind there's an issue. It's a longstanding issue.

BALDWIN: I want to read you part of a piece. This was written by a 25-year-old African-American police officer from New Mexico who was writing this letter essentially to some of these black protesters. This is part of the piece.

He writes: "When I take my badge off at the end of my shift, reality quickly sets in. Walking past white women on the streets who clutch their bags and are being followed around the convenience stores are part of the many frequent reminders that I am just another black man in America."

Commissioner, just as an African-American man in this country and perhaps in your younger years when you weren't as recognizable as you are now, could you relate to that?

RAMSEY: Yes, sure.

I think most African-American men can. But we also have to deal with what causes that perception to exist in the first place. I have seen some of the signs and protests, black lives matter. And I couldn't agree more. But they matter irrespective of who may take that life.

And 80 percent of my murders in Philadelphia involve African-American people, male, female, and the offenders are almost exclusively African-American as well. So we need to deal with the total problem and not just parts of the problem. And then you start to erase the perception that leads to people behaving the way they behave.

BALDWIN: If young African-Americans feel that police need to change, are they motivated to become police officers themselves? And if not, why is that?

RAMSEY: You know, I don't know. That's an interesting question. I came on in the 1960s and becoming a policeman was not the most popular thing I could have chosen to do as a young black men growing up in Chicago.

BALDWIN: Why did you do it?

RAMSEY: But Englewood -- I grew up in Englewood, which has been highlighted by your network quite often in terms of violence taking place in that community.

I did it because I had no personal grudge against police. And I thought it would be interesting. And I wound up, of course, making it a career. But I have always kind of thought for myself. But I understand how, you know, the situation we find ourselves in now is a turnoff for many people to come into law enforcement, and that's a shame because real change comes from within.

BALDWIN: Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey there in the city of Philadelphia, you got a big job there where you are and an even bigger job tasked by the president of the United States.

Thank you so much. Let's keep this dialogue going.

RAMSEY: OK. Will do. Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Well, there's another police chief who is drawing a lot of attention for this picture. Have you seen this? A guy with the sign #blacklivesmatter.

Coming up, we will talk to an officer in that very department about how they are successful in connecting with their community.

Also ahead, a major technical failure affecting London airspace. We have an update now on how far the impact is spreading after this quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BALDWIN: A technical glitch, this is how they're phrasing this, at a

control tower at one of the world's busiest airports here raising some serious concerns about the vulnerability of these systems at airports all around the world.

Flights at London's Heathrow Airport are still restricted. See all those yellow planes sort of hanging out here after this computer failure grounded planes across the British capital, causing a backlog of delays and cancellations, far, far beyond.

Jim Boulden is live at London's Heathrow Airport for us

Jim, we're just now hearing here there was a possibility of maybe, maybe there was a hack of the systems, but that's now quickly been ruled out, correct?

JIM BOULDEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

The hacking theory, which was a valid theory, I think people wanted to know could the system have been hacked because it went down for over an hour? But the NATS, NATS, who controls air traffic control around the London region, has ruled out hacking and they also said it wasn't a power failure. Some people were saying computer failure.

Now they are saying technical hitch. I can tell you the passengers who are stuck in this airport are not calling this a hitch. It's caused major chaos. Of course, Heathrow, Gatwick Airports, Stansted, these are major airports that not only handle flights coming in from the U.S. and going out to the U.S., but also they have a lot of flights that go over London that were restricted.

There is going to be a massive amount of chaos tonight and tomorrow throughout Europe. We have heard from passengers who have not been able to get on planes and others whose planes have taken off without them because their luggage couldn't get on. We just heard from someone at Heathrow, terminal five, who said that there is lots of luggage stuck there, that it would take too long to get their luggage, so they are leaving the airport waiting for it to be delivered.

There's going to be a massive amount of disruption. A lot of airlines already canceling flights tomorrow. So, if you are flying anywhere into Europe, I would strongly suggest you check, because this does have the ability to just knock on flights, knock on problems elsewhere because you might have planes in the wrong place, you might have crew in the wrong place.

But I have to say, we are seeing planes landing now, not as many as we would normally see, and some takeoffs. However, it will be a very long time, I would say, well into tomorrow, until you see would things getting back to what you would call normal in this busy airspace -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: No fun at all for these people wanting to get in or come out. Jim Boulden, thank you very much in London for us.

As we mentioned, fallout of this computer glitch being felt right now backlogging flights not just in the London area, of course, but the domino effect of all of this affecting flights all around the world.

Miles O'Brien, our CNN aviation analyst, pilot, and "PBS NewsHour" science correspondent, joins me now here.

Just coming off of what we were just hearing out of London, Miles, this could take, what -- when you think of all of the planes up in the air, how long could this take to get this straightened out?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: As you well know, Brooke, it's kind of a intricate ballet every day what happens in the skies all over the world, and it doesn't take much of a disruption to have a ripple effect all throughout the system.

It does help that there aren't as many flights overnight and that will allow the system to sort of absorb it and get people reconfigured and get -- those airline dispatchers will earn their money as they try to match equipment and crew and put them in the right place. But give it 24 hours and it will probably get back to normal.

BALDWIN: So if we're now hearing that a spokesperson for NATS has told us that any idea that their systems were hacked has been ruled out completely, that seems awful quick to me. How could they rule that out so fast?

O'BRIEN: I think they probably want to allay general concerns that might exist over this.

But they also have ruled out a power failure. I think what you have to really look at here is the fundamental nature of air traffic control system there as well as here. The foundation is really 1960s technology. They have built a system on top of it with some computer capability and in the case of the United Kingdom, it's a public/private partnership.

This has been privatized. A company has been trying to develop it to make it more high-tech, but you are basically are trying to build the airplane while it's in flight to use that metaphor here and create a new system while allowing for safety every day and a system that grows every day. It's a difficult challenge to have this combination of old technology kind of with baling wire and duct tape attached to -- with an overlay of more high technology.

This particular center has been problem-plagued, behind schedule, over budget, and has had a series of outages as they have tried to improve the system there. Improvement is not so easy.

BALDWIN: What about us? We know that the FAA is saying so far there's been no impact of flights here in the United States. But what about our systems and our technology? Could this happen here?

O'BRIEN: Well, it already did happen not so long ago at Chicago O'Hare.

We realized what vulnerability we had there. In that case, you had a disgruntled employee who knew where the Achilles' heel was in very short order. (CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Oh, yes.

O'BRIEN: One of the busiest regions in the United States.

What this points out is, the reliance on computers is good so long as they work. Let's be reminded of one thing that's really important here, though, both in the case of O'Hare and in the case of the Heathrow, U.K., incident. Nobody got hurt. No planes bumped into each other. The system has layers of redundancy. It's inconvenient, but it's not necessarily unsafe. Big difference there.

BALDWIN: We will take inconvenience over nefarious any day of the week.

Miles O'Brien, thank you so much for hopping on the phone with me. Appreciate it.

O'BRIEN: Yes.

BALDWIN: I want to move to the stunning torture report that was released by the U.S. Senate Intel Committee this week. Some lawmakers quick to say this isn't America. But my next guest says, actually, yes, it is.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Want to talk now to someone who is definitely not mincing any words about that Senate torture report and what it says about America, at least according to him.

A lot of people out there are saying -- and the president is among them -- they're saying, we're better than this.

And my next guest says, no, we're actually not.

Peter Beinart, no stranger to controversy, joins me now. He's a contributing editor with "The Atlantic" and also a CNN political commentator.

Nice to see you.

PETER BEINART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Nice to see you.

BALDWIN: So, let me go straight to your piece though out of "The Atlantic."

You are basically say: "Imagine someone beating you up and then when confronted with evidence declaring that I'm not really like that or that wasn't the real me."

Is that the issue? That's incorrect, even though we're saying, yes, we are. We're better than this.

BEINART: Right. A country is like a person. We are what we do. I understand the

inclination to say, we're better than this, we're not like this. What I think Obama should really say is, we want to be better than this. But the truth of the matter is, this is what we did. And, in reality, America has tortured in other moments in our history too.

And I think owning it, recognizing that this is who we are, at least who we were while we were doing this, is part of the struggle to make sure we don't do it again.

BALDWIN: You bring up the Vietnam War. You go all the way back to slavery as evidence with torture.

More from your piece in "The Atlantic." He writes this: "Being a successful American politician today means declaring that America is different, blessed, exceptional. Thus, when other countries torture, it reflect their basic character. When we torture, it violates ours."

So, to take it one step further, it's sort of like other countries saying they can torture, they can produce their own justifications, but isn't the same with us? Isn't it just justifying?

BEINART: Yes. My president is that I understand the inclination to say that America is special. But it's important to remember that we are also human beings. We are the same sinful...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: We are. We're not exceptional?

BEINART: Well, no, my point is, if we want to be exceptional, if we want to act better, we have to start with the recognition that we're just as capable as any other collection of human beings of doing terrible things, because all human beings have that capacity to abuse power.

If you recognize that, then you have a better chance of avoiding it.

BALDWIN: Doesn't that tarnish our reputation around the world?

BEINART: Quite the contrary. I actually think, if there's anything that people admire about the United States, is that we created a system of law domestically based on the recognition that our government is fallible and that you can't allow people to have unconcentrated, unchecked power because they will abuse it.

The best thing about our political system is when we have those checks on power. I think what people would admire would be if America said, you know what? We screwed up in a big way. We are going to reassert some of those limitations on the CIA, on our unchecked federal government so it can't do this again.

BALDWIN: Do you think from a world view perspective the fact that we threw out executive summary, the 600 pages of the big kahuna, which was the 6,000, that in the end how many other nations around the world will basically say, here we are, this is what we did, we can be better than this?

BEINART: There are some other nations that have done that. I think it's a great thing that Senator Feinstein, who is my hero of the month, actually fought -- remember, there were a lot of people who didn't want this to come out.

But I think the question is not only that it's come out, but are we going to learn from it? What are we going to do? Historically, when America -- during a time of war and stress and fear, America often goes overboard like this. Can we build in the restraint so that next time we can be better?

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Peter Beinart, thank you.

BEINART: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Thank you. Thank you.

Talk about being better, let's talk about this hack at Sony. It has exposed some pretty shocking e-mails, details among high-level executives saying some pretty nasty things about celebrities. But it may even be more sinister than that. This hack allows and shows how easy it is could be for someone to take down something like a power grid or even your water supply.

We will look at that next.

And a lot of rain pushing mud and muck and rocks into all kinds of homes here in California, rocks -- look at this picture -- piling up on rooftops, backyards. We will take you there live coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)