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American Morning

New Orleans Has a New Top Cop; Grim Benchmark in American Law Enforcement and American Justice; Interview with Mike Wallace

Aired November 29, 2005 - 09:30   ET

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

(NEWSBREAK)
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's talk about New Orleans. Today officially New Orleans has a new top cop, but it's a name you might recognize, Warren Riley. He was sworn in as the chief of police on Monday. Of course, he's been running the department since the first superintendent Eddie Compass left back in September.

In a MORNING exclusive, Warren Riley joins us this morning from New Orleans.

Congratulations to you on a job you already had. It's nice to have you.

WARREN RILEY, NEW ORLEANS POLICE: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: And you inherit, along with the job, a big old list of problems too. What's your number-one focus, right now, chief?

RILEY: Well, our number-one focus, again, is always and, until it's corrected, is housing for the New Orleans Police officers. We have 1,100 officers living on a ship who are literally homeless. Those ships will leave in March, and that is a major concern for us.

S. O'BRIEN: Eleven-hundred officers. I think the total now is something like 1440. So you're talking about a huge percentage of the force that's kind of potentially in limbo.

RILEY: Yes, you're absolutely right. Certainly we believe that there will be some trailers and other things that will come in that will assist once those ships leave, but that has not been determined, or it's not definite yet, so it continues to be a concern.

S. O'BRIEN: When you consider that and you consider the host of other problems that you're dealing with, how's the morale along the force?

RILEY: Well, when you consider everything that we've gone through, morale is relatively good. We will lose a few more people over the coming months, I'm sure. A lot of people can't stand being away from their families, being homeless, but when you consider everything that we've gone through, the vast majority of officers have relatively good -- the morale is relatively good, considering.

S. O'BRIEN: Let's walk through some of the more public problems that you've had on the force of late. First, you've got the large number of police officers who were not at their posts, and I know that almost 60 now have been dismissed because of the investigation following that. You have the shootout on the Danziger Bridge, and there's some back and forth about what happened on September 4th. You've got the beating of the African-American man on Bourbon Street. He claimed that he, in fact, was not drinking. Other officers said that they thought he was drunk.

Is there any way to improve the public image of the New Orleans Police Department at this point?

RILEY: Well, that's probably number two on the list, after finding housing for police officers.

But what we've done, we've partnered with the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Authority. One of the members of my staff went up to Quantico, Virginia, along with the members of the New Orleans Police Foundation. The FBI, some of their (INAUDIBLE) from Quantico are actually in New Orleans this morning, meeting with our command staff, focusing on leadership and organizational behavior. We will have every member of this police department trained by members of the FBI and DEA, some of their staff members from Quantico, Virginia. We're also remodifying, so to speak, our public integrity bureau, which I term as a hard-hitting organization, one that really focuses on the conduct and the behavior of the New Orleans Police Department, and ensuring that we do all that we can to ensure that our officers respect the public, that we continue to move forward in a positive direction. So there are a number of things in place.

S. O'BRIEN: I guess if there's any silver lining, is that crime rates are down, and probably because the city is not really fully occupied right now. Are the jails back? Are there systems in place to process criminals? I mean, how's it working right now. Or what percentage is it back?

S. O'BRIEN: Well, right now I believe of the 10 buildings that are Orleans Parish prisons, two of the buildings are fully operational. Our intake center, where arrestees are processed, is up and running as well. Our criminal-justice system is beginning to come back. I believe they're holding two sessions of court every day, as opposed to the 10 or 11 sessions that were in place pre-Katrina. So things are moving slowly, but they're improving every day.

S. O'BRIEN: Quick question for you before I let you. Mardi Gras, February. Do you have enough cops to manage the crowds if they come?

RILEY: Sure. We have 1,448 police officers -- or, I'm sorry, 1,442 police officers right now. Normally on a parade route, we'll have about 600 officers, and the remaining officers going 12-hour shifts in the district. So it's not a manpower issue. But our days are normally 12 hours. The problem that we have is overtime and the city being able to finance it. But we're work that out, and we will have a eight-day Mardi Gras, as opposed to 11 days.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, that certainly can be things you can add to your list of things to do as the new police chief. New Orleans Police Chief Warren Riley joining us this morning. congratulations on the official gig -- Miles.

RILEY: Thank you very much.

M. O'BRIEN: Thank you, Soledad.

A grim benchmark in American law enforcement and American justice. Tomorrow night it is very likely that the 1,000th person since the death penalty was reinstated back in '77 will be executed in the state of Virginia.

Joining me now is CNN's senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin to talk about the death penalty and where it is right now. I suspect if we had talked back in '77 and had tried to predict when a thousand executions would have occurred, we probably might have guessed it would have happened sooner. It turns out it takes a lot of time through the whole appeals process, and that's one of the complaints about the whole thing.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST: It's a remarkable sort of bell-shaped curve that has gone on. There was tremendous support for reinstating the death penalty in the late '70s and early '80s, and the number of executions ramped up, and I think we have a graphic that explains the story. But after -- there it is.

M. O'BRIEN: OK, so that's '76, zero, obviously, before, '85, and then finally the peak would be '99, and then all of a sudden things taper off, and we're talking about what science has done for all of this.

TOOBIN: Well, I think science has played a big part. The fact that DNA has freed so many people from death row, the Innocence Project that people are so familiar with, that juries are much more worried about imposing the death penalty because they're much less sure. Also, crime is down so dramatically. There are fewer murder prosecutions. Here in New York, we've gone from 2,000 murders a year to fewer than 500. That kind of pattern is replicated around the country. You have juries who are less afraid of crime, and simply fewer murder prosecutions, and that's part of why you get that number.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, let's talk about the Supreme Court for a moment, because it's a different court, obviously, certainly very different than it was in '77, but a new court now. Is there apt to be a softening on the high court about this? What do we know about Justice Alito?

TOOBIN: Well, one of the real failures of Chief Justice Rehnquist, in terms of his agenda, is he really wanted to speed up the executions.

But in the last few years, you had the death penalty for juvenile offenders struck down. You had the death penalty for the mentally retarded struck down. If Judge Alito becomes Justice Alito, he may well push it in the opposite direction, as Sandra Day O'Connor moved to the left. The limited record that Alito has, has been very pro- death penalty, and he could push things in that direction.

M. O'BRIEN: I prematurely elevated him to the high court. Thank you for catching that.

Let's talk about -- because the whole notion of this was to act as a deterrent. Do we really know?

TOOBIN: You know, I think it's safe to say we don't know, that there have been many studies, but it's very hard to tell why murders murder. It's very hard to tell why murders decide not to murder. I don't think anyone knows, and the death penalty is so concentrated in a few states that New York has no death penalty, but New York has had the biggest crime drop of any state. California has a death penalty on the books. There's 648 people on death row in California, but they essentially don't execute anyone. The appeals are so clogged there. They've also had crimes down.

But Texas, Virginia, Florida, the main states for executing, they've had crime reductions as well. It's very hard to know where the death penalty plays into it.

M. O'BRIEN: Not large enough of a sample.

TOOBIN: Well, it's not a consistent sample. It is really hard to know.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, Jeff Toobin, thanks very much.

TOOBIN: All right, man.

M. O'BRIEN: CNN's senior legal analyst, Jeff Toobin.

(WEATHER REPORT)

S. O'BRIEN: Let's turn right to business news. Andy is "Minding Your Business." What's ahead?

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE: MAGAZINE: Soledad, is Elvis Presley still The King, and how much would he be worth? Stay tuned for that. Coming up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Well, Elvis left the building a long time ago, but...

M. O'BRIEN: Well some, say that. Aren't they still seeing him at 7-Elevens?

(CROSSTALK)

SERWER: Yes, he did, 28 years ago actually.

S. O'BRIEN: However, there is someone who is still betting that The King is royalty, and he's got that. He's "Minding Your Business."

SERWER: We're going to talk about The King in one second. Let's go down to Wall Street, first of all, Soledad, and see how the Big Board, up 45 -- you know why? Because Miles O'Brien wasn't jinxing the market this morning.

S. O'BRIEN: We told you ixnay on the market.

SERWER: Right. But what's happening today is lower energy prices are really causing stocks to soar, and the warm weather in the Northeast is having everything to do. That (INAUDIBLE). We're going back and forth.

Yesterday, we had Merck, we had housing prices going down, housing starts weak. So a lot of things going into play here.

Now, let's talk about The King. Elvis Presley did leave the building 28 years ago, but he is still, obviously, a hot commodity. In fact, a Wall street investor named bob Sillerman is betting on Elvis and some other media properties and looking to build a media empire. Sillerman bought the rights to Elvis Presley earlier this year for $114 million, buying it from his daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, who owned the company, and there you can see her.

I spoke with Lisa Marie Presley about the sale, and she said basically it was a family-run business. It wasn't really going anywhere, and they wanted to take it to the next level, meaning they wanted to expand it. They're probably going build an Elvis Presley casino in Las Vegas, maybe some more in Maccaw (ph) and Dubai, also have themed restaurants in Europe, and they didn't have the wherewithal and the capital to do it.

Now that's Las Vegas Elvis, not rock 'n' roll Elvis. That's the later Elvis.

Interestingly, this gentlemen, Bob Sillerman, has also bought "American Idol," so that's another property he owns. He's trying to build a pure-content company, and obviously, that's a huge, huge hit, and in fact it looks like they're going to be reupping that show on Fox.

M. O'BRIEN: Where are they going to take that, though? It's been so successful?

SERWER: Well, that's a -- interestingly, that is a show that is shown around the world. There are versions of it in dozens and dozens of countries, and what they're thinking about doing there, for instance, is having a "Global Idol." A contest with contestants from around the world. They could also do different kinds of things like having a golf-contest show, you know, having the best amateur golfer in the country compete with each other. So it's a franchise that could be extended.

M. O'BRIEN: American duffer.

All right.

SERWER: Slacker. I could do that, one of my special teas.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, Andy, thanks very much.

"CNN LIVE TODAY" is coming up next. Tony Harris in for Daryn again today.

Hello, Tony.

TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, Miles.

At the top of the hour, potentially life-saving information coming up. Heart attacks kill more than 300,000 Americans each year, but CPR can double many victims' chances of survival. Now doctors, Miles, have made some radical changes to the way CPR is performed. So we're going to show you exactly how to save a life at the top of the hour.

Also, big screen, big controversy for "Memoirs of a Geisha." Why are some people in Japan outraged over this Hollywood blockbuster? We'll take you to Tokyo for some answers.

Miles, back to you.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, if you had a question for Mike Wallace, what would it be?

HARRIS: Westmoreland. That whole chapter of his life, and that case in court, and what it was like to be called all those names.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, out of it and he became clinically depress.

HARRIS: That's right. That's right.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, Tony Harris, thank you.

HARRIS: Sure.

M. O'BRIEN: Mike Wallace has been in broadcasting for over 50 years, but you wonder how it all began? My conversation with Mike Wallace just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: I had the good pleasure of meeting Mike Wallace yesterday. He came by. He's talking about the new book. You know, he's been in the business now --he started in 1939 at WOOD in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He's interviewed just about everybody, but there's one important omission. He talked to me about that and he also explained how he got in the business.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE WALLACE, AUTHOR, "BETWEEN YOU AND ME": I wanted to be a radio announcer. That's was my dream. I went to the University of Michigan, got out in '35 -- no, I got out in '39. And was turned down for a job in Muskegon, Michigan, and then finally was hired for 20 bucks a week by WOOD in Grand Rapids, and I was off to the races.

M. O'BRIEN: You create in your interviews a sense of intimacy, and you do that by learning, it seems, just about you can about the person you're talking to.

WALLACE: Exactly right.

M. O'BRIEN: Is that the secret to doing an interview as far you see it?

WALLACE: For me it is. Look, if I want to interview you -- which is not a bad idea -- what I try to do when I'm going to do a one-on-one with somebody who is interesting is read everything, see everything that they've been involved with. As a result of which, when you sit down with the interviewee, the object of your scrutiny, they suddenly realize, hey, this guy is paying some attention.

M. O'BRIEN: Let's talk about Clint Hill for a moment. That chapter of the book was very gripping. Anybody who saw that interview knows a little something about how emotional that was. But hearing your insights on that were something.

First of all, let's share with people -- Clint Hill, secret service agent who was there, November 22nd, 1963, Dallas. His job to protect the president of the United States. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: You mean, you would have gotten there and you would have taken the shot?

CLINT HILL, FMR. SECRET SERVICE AGENT: That's our job. Yes, sir.

WALLACE: And that would have been all right with you?

HILL: That would have been fine with me.

WALLACE: But you couldn't. You got there in less than two seconds, Clint. You couldn't have gotten there. You don't -- you surely don't have any sense of guilt about that?

HILL: Yes, I certainly do. I have a great deal of guilt about that. Had I turned in a different direction, I would have made it. That was my fault.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

M. O'BRIEN: Oh, my gosh. It's hard to watch that again, isn't it? The torment.

WALLACE: And this is 12 years after the thing had happened. He really believed that he was responsible for the death of JFK.

M. O'BRIEN: Let's talk about Nancy Reagan. You had some interviews with her which were extremely hard hitting. In particular, there was a lot of criticism immediately after they left office accepting some money for a trip. And you pressed on that very hard and it hurt the friendship. It...

WALLACE: For a while it did, sure. And then she called CNN on Larry King. She's on with him and he said, are you still not talking to Mike?

M. O'BRIEN: We have the clip. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY KING, CNN ANCHOR: Well, he'll hear about this now.

NANCY REAGAN, FMR. FIRST LADY: I hope so, Mike. If you're watching the show, call me. Call me, Mike.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: And I did the next day and we've been wonderful, good friends.

M. O'BRIEN: So you're watching at home, and essentially...

WALLACE: That's correct. That's correct.

M. O'BRIEN: What do you think about corporate pressure? The corporate pressure on journalism only grows, doesn't it?

WALLACE: You're dealing with a different animal. The news business has really, really changed. Having said that, anybody who respects himself as a reporter gets his stories on the air today.

M. O'BRIEN: Who do you want to interview that you haven't?

WALLACE: Well, I haven't interviewed George W. Bush. What question would I -- might I like to ask him? What prepares a man or a woman running for president who is going to take on the job of commander in chief of the biggest superpower in the world? What prepares him for that job? What was George W. Bush's preparation for that job?

M. O'BRIEN: You look good, you feel good, 87, still going strong, still working.

WALLACE: What would I do if I quit? What the dickens would I do?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: The book is "Between You and Me." The author is Mike Wallace. Also comes with a really great DVD with a lot of those interviews that made him so famous.

S. O'BRIEN: That was fantastic.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, thanks. A pleasure. Back with more in a moment.

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