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Ohio Police Officer Indicted; Plane Debris Found. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired July 29, 2015 - 15:00   ET

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


[15:00:08]

MAYOR JOHN CRANLEY, D-CINCINNATI, OHIO: It's too early to say how that all ends up. Obviously, our police department could do it, but, regardless, this isn't a unilateral decision. We're in partnership with U.C. And we will work all these things out together. It's too early to tell. But and right now, as Santa just told you, our police department is with the U.C. Police Department.

Our police department has enormous experience with situations like this, and I have asked and the U.C. has agreed to allow our folks to stand shoulder to shoulder today and over the next few days, because, certainly, we have -- we know how to deal with a situation like this.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right.

If you're just now joining us, we're in the midst of covering this breaking story out of Cincinnati, Ohio, and taking a half-step back. We are following basically what an Ohio prosecutor has now called the most asinine act he's ever seen by a police officer.

University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing -- here he is just in the last little bit -- turning himself in now in the wake of a grand jury handing down murder charges. He's the man accused of shooting and killing 42-year-old Samuel Dubose here, an unarmed man that he pulled over during a traffic stop apparently because he didn't have his front license plate.

We will show you the police body cam video from that traffic stop, but I have to warn you it is very graphic.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAY TENSING, UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI POLICE DEPARTMENT: Hey, how's it going?

SAMUEL DUBOSE, OHIO: Hey, how's it's going?

TENSING: (INAUDIBLE) U.C. police. Do you have a license on you?

DUBOSE: Yes. What happened?

(CROSSTALK)

TENSING: OK. Is this your car? DUBOSE: Yes.

TENSING: It's coming back to a female actually.

DUBOSE: Yes. It's my wife. (INAUDIBLE)

TENSING: OK.

You don't have a front license plate on your car.

DUBOSE: It's in my glove box. I have it.

TENSING: What's that?

DUBOSE: It's right here.

TENSING: Oh, OK.

(CROSSTALK)

TENSING: That's actually -- that's got to go where the front plate is supposed to go. You don't have to reach for it. That's OK. Do you have a license on you?

DUBOSE: Yes.

TENSING: What's that bottle on the floor there?

DUBOSE: Oh, that's a bottle of (INAUDIBLE)

TENSING: Bottle of what?

DUBOSE: (INAUDIBLE)

TENSING: OK. Do you have your license on you? OK. (INAUDIBLE)

DUBOSE: Yes. (INAUDIBLE)

TENSING: OK. I'm going to ask you again. Do you have your license on you?

DUBOSE: I have a license. (INAUDIBLE)

TENSING: Do you not have your license on you? I'm asking you a direct question. Do you have your license on you?

DUBOSE: I thought I did. (INAUDIBLE) What did you pull me over for?

TENSING: Again, the front tag.

DUBOSE: (INAUDIBLE) front tag.

TENSING: OK. Actually, it is.

I'm going to ask you again. Do you have a license on you?

DUBOSE: I have a license. You can run my name.

TENSING: OK. Is that not on you then?

DUBOSE: I don't seem to have it on me.

TENSING: Be straight up with me. Are you suspended?

DUBOSE: No, I'm not suspended.

TENSING: Then why don't you have your license on you?

DUBOSE: I don't. I just don't. I'm sorry, sir. I'm just going (INAUDIBLE) house.

TENSING: OK. Where do you stay at?

DUBOSE: Right around the corner.

TENSING: OK.

Well, until I can figure out if you have a license or not, go ahead and take your seat belt off.

DUBOSE: I didn't even do nothing.

TENSING: Go ahead and take your seat belt off.

Stop. Stop.

(SHOUTING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Now the prosecutor here expressing his utter disgust just before he played that video.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE DETERS, HAMILTON COUNTY PROSECUTOR: Moments ago, the Hamilton County grand jury has returned a murder indictment against Raymond Tensing, who is a University of Cincinnati police officer, for the murder of Samuel Dubose.

I will say this. I have been doing this for over 30 years. This is the most asinine act I have ever seen a police officer make, totally unwarranted. It was -- it's an absolute tragedy in the year 2015 that anyone would behave in this manner.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[15:05:20]

BALDWIN: Let me bring in CNN national correspondent Jason Carroll first with -- let's just begin, Jason, with the video itself. We were talking about this earlier. I had to watch this video multiple times to fully understand sort of the chronology of events. You see the officer pulling Samuel Dubose over, right, for not having that front license and then walk me through from there.

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, and it's difficult because it all happens so very quickly.

BALDWIN: Very fast.

CARROLL: But, as you see there, at that traffic stop on July 19 just after 6:30, officer Tensing pulls him over. Again, he is missing his front license plate. At a certain point, he asked him repeatedly for his license. He's unable to do that, and there's some back and forth conversation about that.

Shortly thereafter, the officer then asks him to unbuckle his seat belt. And Dubose was in the process of closing the door. Tensing is trying to open the door. You know, they are going back and forth, again this all happening within the span just of a few seconds at the key moment.

And then at one point, and this is according to the prosecutor's office, Dubose was closing the car door. He was also turning the ignition back on. The prosecutor says at that point the officer reaches in the car and it appears, at least on the body camera video, that the officer then draws his gun and fires a single shot to Mr. Dubose's head as the car starts to move forward.

As you know, Brooke, that officer, officer Tensing, said and told investigators that he was dragged by the car. Apparently, there's also a second officer identified as Officer Number B who corroborated that story and said, yes, he thought he saw officer Tensing being dragged by Dubose's car. But the body cam video does not show that.

Dubose's family did not believe that and that's why they pressed to have that video released as soon as possible.

BALDWIN: I'm also just actually being told we now have this officer's mug shot, officer Tensing, so we will throw that up on the screen, and here you go. He just turned himself in within the last hour. Just quickly, Jason, we're going to hear more from the family of Samuel Dubose, but what do you know about this officer? How long has he even been on the force?

CARROLL: Yes, Ray Tensing, he's 25 years old. He's been an officer for about four years. He's been with the University of Cincinnati Police Department ever since about 2014 and everything that we can tell from looking at his record, he's had no disciplinary record, nothing to speak of, up until this point, noted as a good officer, but at this point he's facing anywhere from 15 years to life for what the prosecutor called a completely asinine act and an act of murder.

BALDWIN: Said he never should have been a police officer. Jason Carroll, thank you.

Let's broaden this out with CNN law enforcement analyst and retired New York Police Detective Harry Houck, also with me CNN political commentator and Morehouse College professor Marc Lamont Hill. Harry and I were talking last hour. I have not heard from you, sir,

so I just want to open with your voice. I'm watching out of the corner of my eyes when I'm talking to Jason and you're shaking your head.

MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: It's stunning.

BALDWIN: Stunning.

HILL: Part of what is stunning is the fact that this came out of nowhere. Their interaction seemed like a perfectly normal police- citizen interaction.

BALDWIN: Seemed perfectly calm on both ends.

HILL: Right. The officer was ratcheting it a little bit when he kept insisting that he answer the question in a particular way. But there was no sign that he would be pulling a weapon and essentially executing this man in broad daylight.

For the last year, since last August 9, we have been talking about extrajudicial violence and extrajudicial killing, where the officer acts as judge, jury and executioner. There is no clearer case of that sort of than what we just saw on that tape. It's inexcusable and it's disgusting. Justice must be had here, justice or else.

BALDWIN: What do you see?

HARRY HOUCK, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: I agree with Marc 100 percent here on this case. I'm sitting here trying to think why the officer drew his weapon.

BALDWIN: In a second.

HOUCK: And fired that shot, and as you watch it -- and anybody who is watching this video, watch it four or five times.

BALDWIN: Yes.

HOUCK: Because the more I watch it, the more I'm convinced of what I said earlier, that this was totally unwarranted here. And what really annoys me is the fact is, why would this second officer back him up and lie on the report about the dragging?

BALDWIN: Right.

HOUCK: That really kills me. Is this stupid police officer who shot this man worth you losing your job, you know, your career, your life, and going to jail for, when it was very clear that this officer acted in a criminal manner here? I just -- that eludes me why police officers do that.

HILL: Unfortunately, that's part of the culture of police departments, the blue wall of silence, when police don't tell on each other and they often back each other up.

We saw this in Charleston, not in the church shooting, but in the...

[15:10:03]

BALDWIN: The Walter Scott case.

HILL: Walter Scott case.

BALDWIN: Yes. Yes.

HILL: Same thing. Officers are willing to help plant evidence. they're willing to lie on statements. This guy said he almost got dragged by a car and then later on said he was almost hit by a car in a statement.

BALDWIN: And to be crystal clear, again, if you were watching that, as I had to multiple times, it was prosecutor who explained -- you see the officer pull out the gun and he shoots Samuel Dubose. Then because he's shot and killed, his body falls forward and assuming he hits the gas pedal and goes forward and maybe takes the officer with him for a little bit.

But that's just to explain if you were confused by the jumbling of the video. Stay with me.

Let me also bring in another voice here, Cedric Alexander, who is the public safety director for DeKalb County, Georgia, also a CNN law enforcement analyst.

Cedric, your read on the video as well?

CEDRIC ALEXANDER, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, it's very clear. And I think anyone who is watching this video can see for themselves that this was just a horrendous and outrageous death that should not have occurred whatsoever. Every adjective that you heard the state attorney there use is accurate.

BALDWIN: Senseless, horrible.

ALEXANDER: It's horrible. It's -- you know, you get to a point where you can't find enough words. And I agree with this DA as well, too. Maybe this young man should never have been a police officer at all.

And the video is really very striking, but I will tell you, this is a really horrific case and my heart and prayers go out to the families for their loss here tonight.

BALDWIN: Let me turn back to the two of you because I think the other issue in listening to multiple family members including Samuel Dubose's mother also the sister, and the sister, I hear her words in my head. She was saying we knew the video would vindicate our brother.

And to your point about what is said initially on a police report and then obviously we have seen on a body camera shows, had there not been a body camera on this officer, we may not be seeing a murder indictment. HILL: We would be having a very different conversation. You and I

might even be debating right now if there was no camera.

HOUCK: Right. Exactly. It might be. But the whole thing is that we don't know where the investigation was going before they looked at the video, so we have to be clear here. We can't say that if there was no video that this officer never would have been indicted.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: We're not saying that.

(CROSSTALK)

HILL: I'm saying that and here's why I say that. If you look at indictments of police officers killing people this year, I think this is the fourth. I'm not sure. We will check the numbers, but I believe it's the fourth.

But every one has had a videotape attached to it. Police officers don't get indicted for killing citizens unless we watch them do it on tape.

(CROSSTALK)

HOUCK: That's not true, though.

(CROSSTALK)

HOUCK: There might be a few incidents like that. But that's not true.

(CROSSTALK)

HOUCK: You have got to take each incident as they come.

HILL: I agree, but what I'm saying is when police are policing the police and investigating the police, it's very difficult to prosecute police. That's simply a fact.

(CROSSTALK)

HOUCK: I wouldn't agree with you at all, because I have seen -- remember, I have spent several years in internal affairs in New York. We indicted a lot of police officers without video. We have put police officers in jail and we have suspended police officers for not acting improperly without video.

It's very easy to say, hey, we have got this video now, so, therefore, if we don't have any video, then the police officer would have probably been cleared. We can't say that.

(CROSSTALK)

HILL: That's typically what happens.

HOUCK: Typically?

(CROSSTALK)

HILL: Yes, typically.

HOUCK: I don't agree with that.

(CROSSTALK)

HILL: We don't have to agree on this.

(CROSSTALK)

HOUCK: ... don't bear out.

HILL: The statistics do bear that out.

(CROSSTALK)

HILL: And that's why we don't have to agree. We can just look this up. The numbers show that when there's not a videotape, police rarely -- an infinitesimal number of police officers get indicted or prosecuted and certainly not convicted for killing citizens. Well, that's just a fact.

HOUCK: But maybe because the police officers were correct.

You can just throw that number out because of all the instances where police officers get involved with people on street and say, oh, there's a lot, but it doesn't mean that all those police officers are guilty.

(CROSSTALK)

HILL: I don't think all are. I think some are.

BALDWIN: It's a big part of the conversation, I think.

And, clearly, here we see we how the family feels as far as this particular police officer and having this body camera and how they feel, how this could have gone a very different way, as has been emblematic with a lot of other cases here in this country that we have covered very recently.

But thank you so much for now, Marc Lamont Hill and Harry Houck. I particular it.

We're coming back to that, but I have to pivot to another breaking story. Plane debris just found off this island in the Indian Ocean and investigators say it's too early to tell definitively if it belongs to that missing plane Flight 370. Folks, it's been over a year missing, 239 souls on board. No one has known what happened. We now have these new photos. We will bring in our aviation analysts to discuss.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [15:18:35]

BALDWIN: I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Another breaking story we're following here at CNN, we have now learned airplane debris found off the coast of Madagascar, right, this is an island off Africa, it's now being closely examined right now to see if it could maybe be the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

The debris found, we're told, appears to be a wing flap. You're looking at video of this. This was found on this remote island in the Indian Ocean. Investigators say, let me be crystal clear, it is way too soon to know definitively if it belonged to that missing 777.

Let me just bring you up to speed on the whole story. Of course, you will remember this airplane disappeared after taking off March of 2014 and it took off from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. It was supposed to go to Beijing. Aviation experts believe the plane went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean, 239 passengers and crew presumed dead.

So let me bring in CNN safety analyst David Soucie and CNN aviation analysts Les Abend and Mary Schiavo.

Les Abend, to you first, since you're sitting next to me. How will they even begin to figure out if it could be MH370?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Mary mentioned this on a previous episode that there are serial numbers that are riveted to parts of the airplane. Those serial numbers can be attributed not only to that type of airplane, but to that very airplane.

[15:20:03]

If it's MH370, that makes it very simple. Photography can help and the accident investigation team can look at the numbers and say, yes, that belongs to the airplane. Of course, let's not get anybody's hopes up, like you said earlier.

The other aspect to it is they can match up parts diagrams. This very well could be an aileron, a flap, or what we call a flaperon, which is both a combination of an aileron and a flap together. If they match up those parts with schematic diagrams, it may very well fit. As these slides go through, these photographs go through, there is one slotted piece that you can see that might fit an actuator.

So there is some definite evidence just by photography sending it to the accident investigation team to make a determination whether this is indeed a 777 part.

BALDWIN: OK. We will come back to the map in just a second.

ABEND: Sure.

BALDWIN: But, David Soucie, let me bring you in.

When you're looking at these photos can you please explain to me what you and your expert eyes are seeing here?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: It does look like a sudden tear or pull-apart. It wouldn't have been something that worked over time and then came apart slowly. This is from a sudden impact, it looks like to me, but back to Les Abend about looking back to what type of part that is or which arc it is, even just the part number which is stamped on the part will tell us what model aircraft it's from.

But important to me looking at this is the fact that there's a seal on top of the larger side of this part. That seal is consistent with what I would see on an inside flap of the 777. So that is a thing that tells me it is from a 777. The other thing is, if you look at barnacles and things that have been built up on this over time, the length of time we're looking at, that would be consistent with the amount of parasitic activity on the part.

The third thing though that's counterintuitive to me is the fact that, in this area, in that large area, it's typically is coated with zinc chromate and not a white paint. Now, whether that's from oxidization, which is kind atypical with zinc chromate, but this particular aircraft model uses zinc chromate on the inside of that particular flap which would tell us that this is not from a 777 unless it's coated by something from the ocean.

So, there's pluses and there's minuses. As Les said, it's way too early to tell, but there are certainly indications in my mind that it is from a 777.

BALDWIN: Incredible.

Mary, as I talk to you, Alan (ph), can you pull up the big picture and the map here? Just geography I think is important here, because if you look on the right side of your screen, there's Malaysia and that's where in Kuala Lumpur where this plane took off March of last year. And as we're pointing on the far left, you have continent of Africa, off of Africa, Madagascar, and then this Reunion Island where this piece of -- I don't know what it is, right, was found.

Can you talk to me about what happens next? Does an accident investigative team swoop into the island in hopes of finding other pieces of debris? Walk me through the next couple of steps.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: They will have a lot of different moving parts. Obviously, they're going to go back and look at various current study maps and see whether -- where they thought based on the pings -- remember Inmarsat pings -- if the part could have made its way from that area up to this particular area.

If it is a 777, I will add one more thing to what David said. If it is a part from a 777, we can be fairly confident it's from 370 because there just haven't been that many 777 crashes and there haven't been any in this area. The other crash was a 2009 crash of a Yemeni Airlines. There was one survivor on that, by the way, but that was a 310.

And because when the 777 was certified to fly back in '95, it was a totally re-engineered and redesigned plane, and these flaperon, wing flaps and ailerons were made by a company called Vought. And they're very unique, so they will be able to tell that right away

And if this is the 370, I think they will go back to their theories and actually look at possibly a rapid decompression, because a fuel starvation, if they turned back and ran out of fuel, would have put them more in this area, so I think they will reconsider their theories of the crash as well.

BALDWIN: It's way too early, as we pointed out. Boeing, they won't comment any further on this, but they have released this statement.

Let me just read this for you from Boeing: "Remaining committed to supporting the MH370 investigation and the search for the airplane. We continue to share our technical expertise and analysis. Our goal, along with the entire global aviation industry, continues to be not only to find the airplane, but also determine what happened and why."

Mary and Les and David, thank you all so much.

Coming up next, more on this story of what could be here with this piece of debris off of this island of Madagascar, Reunion Island. We will take you live to the region next here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:29:02]

BALDWIN: Back to our breaking news here, a possible new clue in the disappearance of MH370, debris found in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar, off the coast of Africa here.

Let's bring in our correspondent David McKenzie, who is live there in the region.

David McKenzie, what do you know about this?

DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, what we know is that an air force official in Reunion -- that's French territory, an island east of Madagascar, off the coast of Africa and in the Indian Ocean -- saying that they did find this debris in a place called Saint Andre, that it washed up or they found it near the shore.

And you see those pictures of a very large piece of the debris, which could be from a plane, could be a flap of some kind, as your experts have been saying. Now, they, of course, aren't speculating directly of where this could come from. They say it's way too early to tell if it's linked to MH370, that vanished plane.

But they say they are going to investigate it very closely, of course, and they potentially are going to send it to France, to the BEA investigators. That's a -- very respected French authorities who look into crash investigations -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: All right