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CNN NEWSROOM

Hillary Clinton Gives Her Reaction to Situation in Baltimore; Nepal Greatly Damaged by Earthquake. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired April 29, 2015 - 15:30   ET

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


[15:30:03] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Maybe you'll get a little John Denver in the seventh inning stretch. We are going to wait and listen for that, right?

Matt, thank you so much and Jollyn (ph). Thanks for hanging out with me and my hip. Maybe I'll give her back to you. I appreciate your time. I really do. Thank you so much.

And what's coming up next, guys? We're going to talk right now or perhaps after the break here about my interview, after the break, with this young man who grew up here in west Baltimore. And he is worried that a lot of his friends or perhaps he himself could become the next Freddie Gray.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:34:57] BALDWIN: You're watching CNN's special live coverage here in the city of Baltimore. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

And it's so important that I share this next voice with you because this is why we're here. These are the stories we need to be telling. A young man, age 24, Carnie Cornish (ph). He says he doesn't want to be another Freddie Gray, but growing up in West Baltimore, many of his friends have met a similar fate. Carnie told me that they have been killed on the streets after selling drugs, like cocaine and heroin. He decided to turn his life around, and now he works as a photographer, handling social media for a local community development program here in the city. And earlier today, we spent some time together, walked along the streets and talked.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: What have you seen in your dealings with cops?

CARNIE CORNISH (ph), BALTIMORE RESIDENT: One of my encounters with a couple of cops -- they say growing up in the city, you know, a lot of kids, they sell drugs because that's what's going on around them. It's like almost normal, which is weird.

BALDWIN: What's normal, selling drugs?

CORNISH (ph): Yes. So running from the cops isn't weird. And you know, it's like -- it's not every day that a guy is getting killed for running from the cops. But I've heard many officers say, you know, that if you guys run from us and we got to chase you down and see you hiding somewhere, you know, dead men can't talk in court. They say we come back running at them, they can say we had a gun or say we had something. That almost gives them probable cause.

BALDWIN: Reasonable suspicion. You know the lingo.

CORNISH (ph): You could get robbed by them.

BALDWIN: You get robbed by police?

CORNISH (ph): Yes, undercover cops. You can get robbed by under over guys.

BALDWIN: Has that ever happened to you?

CORNISH (ph): It's never happened to me, but I know people it's happened to. So they'll like they will come by and announce they're police. Some guy is running. They'll take what they can take. They'll take them places. I mean, they had a story about guys who are taking their to the county ahead of the shoes and stuff taken. And that's just one of countless incidents that they have.

BALDWIN: Can I back up to your point about how selling drugs is normal? How long did you sell drugs?

CORNISH (ph): It wasn't a long time. But after seeing something going for so long, it's only a matter of time until you partake in it, no matter what it is. It's like sports. If you grow up in a community where everybody is playing sports, you're likely to play some kind of sports.

BALDWIN: It's what you know. It's your community. What were you selling?

CORNISH (ph): Heroin, cocaine, light stuff.

BALDWIN: You consider that light?

CORNISH (ph): I mean --

BALDWIN: You consider that light. That's the reality here in Baltimore, here on these streets. So listen, obviously you know it's breaking the law, but in selling those drugs, did you come in contact with police? Were they familiar with you in the neighborhood?

CORNISH (ph): For the most part. We had some officers who patrolled the community. So they kind of knew us. And a lot of them weren't that brutal. A lot of them would come around, sit and talk with us. Like, you guys know what you're doing is wrong.

BALDWIN: They would sit and talk with you?

CORNISH (ph): Yes, you know what you're doing is wrong, you need to stop it. But then you got some officers who they may be with their partner one day and they maybe cool with you, but then they may be with another crew and they're not so cool.

BALDWIN: Define not cool.

CORNISH (ph): It's almost like an image they got uphold for certain people like they want to add tougher.

BALDWIN: Can you explain that near multi-second thought process when it's either bolt or deal with police?

CORNISH (ph): I mean, if you know you're doing something wrong, of course you're going to run. But then sometimes it's unpredictable what these police are going to do, especially with the undercover cops. They may take you from the scene where you were doing wrong and take you somewhere else and mix you up with something else.

I haven't had any extreme experiences with the police, but I have some friends who have. They would like pick them up for selling drugs. And sometimes they wouldn't even arrest you. But then they'd do crazy stuff like maybe drop you off in another part of town where like some guys are out and be like, hey, he's snitching and like just put you out the car.

BALDWIN: Do you feel like, Carnie (ph), for the most part in your dealings that Baltimore police are good? Is it just a matter of bad apples? Or is it worse than that?

CORNISH (ph): I think it could be brushing up against worse than that.

BALDWIN: Be honest with me.

CORNISH (ph): They aren't held to, like -- like, when they do something wrong, they don't get punished for it. But when we do something wrong, it's like we go for the whole ride.

BALDWIN: Some people in the community where Freddie Gray was shot made the point there were eight surveillance cameras from the city and not a single one caught the arrest. He was saying on the flip side if I was committing a crime, absolutely.

CORNISH (ph): There would be eight cameras against me. That's interests me because it is like these cops can get away with anything. I mean, when they break the law, it's almost like there is no law for them. They can do what they want. It's weird.

[15:40:00] BALDWIN: And all these videos, are you following all this in the news? All these videos, people now are grabbing their cameras, but the fear now is that by putting all this on TV, people are becoming numb. Do you worry about that?

CORNISH (ph): I feel a little numb to it, just seeing all of the police brutality and stuff that's going on.

BALDWIN: Have you had any --

CORNISH (ph): It's weird. People run now because it's like you see videos of cops killing people. It's not like, you know, this guy got hurt and he died by mistake and the cops owned up to it. They're just killing people now at this point. If the video of the guy getting shot, the guy that was running away from the police and getting shot. Like, what could that guy have done if he was running away from you? And why didn't you use your taser? Then you got incidents like the Freddie Gray situation where guys are in handcuffs. How much can you do if you're in handcuffs?

BALDWIN: What needs to happen now? How does this get -- this whole situation improve? Because not all cops are bad.

CORNISH (ph): Hold these officers accountable for their actions. If I were to hurt you here right now, I would go to jail. I wouldn't go on vacation with pay, none of that. I wouldn't go back to work. I would be sitting in a cell until they decide what they're going to do to you, what they want to do to you, whatever.

But these cops are just -- it's like they got a bit of freedom right now. It's weird. That's the numbing feeling. Like, they can get away with it. People just feel -- that's why people are scared of cops. You don't know what's going to happen. Am I going to be the next Freddie Gray if I come in contact with a cop?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Just want to thank him so much for speaking with me. And again, reiterating, it's one story, it is one young man, and one young man's experience.

Coming up next, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton weighing in today on race, the justice system, and police body cameras. More on that after this quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:41:15] BALDWIN: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has now officially offered her very first reactions publicly to the death here in Baltimore of 25-year-old Freddie Gray and to the unrest that ensued.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My heartbreaks for these young men and their families. We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: We also can tell you that Hillary Clinton called for mandatory police body cameras and an end to mass incarceration in this country.

Let's go to my colleague, senior political correspondent, Brianna Keilar, who is there at Columbia University and heard Hillary Clinton herself.

Tell me a little bit more about her comments, Brianna. BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: She said, Brooke, that

when you look at what's happened in Baltimore, she said it should tear at our souls. And she did, as you mentioned, address the issue of race. She said that African-American males -- she stated statistics that they're more likely to be stopped and searched, charged, and face sentences that are longer than their white counterparts. She said this is unmistakable and an undeniable pattern. And she talked about some policy prescriptions for that. She talked about economic opportunities and building those up in communities like bat Baltimore. She talked about doing a better job providing mental health and substance abuse treatment. And today, this was it, really for her, the first real policy outline. And she was calling for criminal justice reform. This is some of what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: It's time to change our approach. It's time to end the era of mass incarceration. We need a true national debate about how to reduce our prison population while keeping our communities safe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And as you mentioned, Brooke, she called for body cameras for police to be mandatory in departments all across the country. What she said was for every tragedy caught on tape, where he was talking about Eric Garner and Walter Scott, she said there are many that remain invisible.

And it's also important to note this is a rather complicated issue for Hillary Clinton. Because when she was first lady, she lobbied personally on behalf of her husband's crime bill in 1994. And that was one that critic says actually led to this increase in incarceration. It sort of in an indirect today it seemed like she may be talking to that which she said that and acknowledged that really the justice system is out of balance. That's how she put it.

BALDWIN: Brianna Keilar with the fact that Hillary Clinton is now weighing in on what we've been discussing for our while, this national conversation of race and specifically the death here in Baltimore of Freddie Gray.

Brianna Keilar in New York, thank you so much. Quick break. We're back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:53:06] FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: Hello, everyone. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. We will take you back to Baltimore in a moment. But first, I want to update you on what is happening in Nepal.

New pictures just in to CNN of the moment the earthquake hit. It shows people shaking off their bikes and a building crashing to the street. Today amid the devastation, a ray of hope. A man pulled alive from the rubble where he was trapped for four days. And then these pictures just emerging of the moment a 4-month-old baby

is rescued right there, surviving after 22 hours all alone. But for many others, the situation remains perilous.

I want to go live to our Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN chief medical correspondent.

So Doctor, what are you seeing on the ground there, including the types of injuries?

DOCTOR SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, there's obviously a critical period that is happening right now, Fred. People who can still be saved, people who can still be rescued. We're outside of this 72-hour period.

These rescuers here know the likelihood of survival goes down after there. But there are still these rays of hope as you mentioned. And being here, walking around some of these devastated villages, you start to really understand people's stories, who they were, what their lives were like. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (voice-over): We know the official death toll here in Nepal went up by at least one today. Neighbors watch from nearby windows, still clinging to hope. After all, this 4-month-old baby was rescued after more than 22 hours under the rubble, alive with no apparent injuries. This man was buried for roughly 80 hours. Rescue workers administered oxygen and an IV drip while they spent ten hours digging him out.

There is hope everywhere you look and there are reminders of the people who once lived and breathed in this tiny village. A child once happily sipping on this bottle or seeking comfort with this teddy bear pillow. A notebook, pictures of family, a pair of shoes. They were carpenters, mechanics, jewelry makers. And there are the survivors, old and young and ridiculously cute.

Just looking around this small little town outside Katmandu, you get the idea of the type of people that lived here, the pride that they took in all things around them. This five-story temple built in the 17th century stayed standing when so many of the surrounding buildings tumbled to the ground. These lovely smiling faces saw that as a blessing. Yes, a blessing even while the earth shook from its core.

Last Saturday at 11:56 a.m., a woman shouted out from her second-story window to alert everyone else to the initial tremor. But then she didn't make it out herself. She died trying to save others. They've already been able to identify the person, this woman, she's 45 years old. They showed us this ID card. She has two boys. They were able to survive and now we know she has perished as well. It is such incredibly, incredibly grim work.

Can you tell me what kind of person she was? How would you describe her?

She was a very good person, he told me. She was a mother and she was my friend.

It is clear, (INAUDIBLE) won't soon be forgotten. Yes, the death toll went up by one more today. But for (INAUDIBLE), it's not just a number, she will be remembered, along with hundreds more souls who are still being recovered from this ancient city. Because the reminders are everywhere, growing stronger like the flowers among the rubble.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: There are so many stories here, Fred. And you know, we focus a lot on the numbers. People want to know the numbers. But every single person has a story. And then people are so lovely and people want to -- people coming up to us and telling us about the people who had passed away and wanting us to share their stories. And that's what we're trying to do in decision to providing you the larger context of what happened here, reminding you of the people that passed away in this earthquake as well, Fred.

WHITFIELD: God. And then, Sanjay, you know, for the survivors like that months-old baby, is there enough food and water, what kind of sustenance is there to make sure the survivors can make it through this hardship?

GUPTA: You know, the best way I would characterize this, Fred, is that there has been a lot of aid that was started to come into the country. Every commercial flight even that's come in, the mandate is if you're flying commercial, you have to have a certain percentage of your cargo be aid, be resources for the needy.

But once it gets to Katmandu and at that airport, the question how it gets distributed within Katmandu and especially to more remote areas outside is a challenge, it is a challenge on many levels. First of all, the roads as you seen have been damaged. The airlifts sometimes are spotty because actually the small helicopter sometimes can't fly in these weather conditions. And just communicating from one place to another, picking up the phone and saying, OK, we have these supplies, you need these supplies, where are you? Those communications sometimes simply can't happen.

So it's challenging. The aid getting here to the country is one thing. Distributing it is also a part of the challenge.

WHITFIELD: Right. And then, you know, Sanjay, you talked about that 72-hour period, it's crucial, usually most do not survive past that point. We saw the one man pulled from the rubble, we saw the months- old baby. How do you suppose that happened? What makes the difference between those who are able to survive, whether it be an air pocket, just how their body is positioned, what is it?

GUPTA: Yes. I think that there is a lot of that. People who find themselves in a void or an air pocket as opposed to having some sort of injury. Obviously, having some access to oxygen and water is really critical. And then, you know, look, it just the will to live. We saw people, 16 patients came in off a helicopter yesterday who were passed that 72-hour window. They were in pain, they were injured. But they were going to survive. So you know, who knows what that quality is. But we're seeing a lot of it out here, Fred.

WHITFIELD: Well, it's extraordinary.

Doctor Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much, from Katmandu. Great reporting. And continue to bring us those images and powerful stories. Appreciate it. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. We'll go back to Baltimore right now. Anderson Cooper and John Berman are there in for Jake Tapper. "The LEAD" starts right now.