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At This Hour
Successful Lander Has Some Problems; Bono's Jet Lands After Losing Rear Hatch; Report: Sex Crimes Cops Do Not Do Jobs
Aired November 13, 2014 - 11:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a big step for human civilization.
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JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: A big step indeed. We have brand new pictures from more than 300 million miles away, something none of us have ever seen. This is after today's stunning TVD of a lander the size of a washing machine on a speeding comet.
MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Check it out. You can see the lander and its three legs as it descends kind of in slow motion from the orbiter row set that as it gets smaller in the picture as it free falls. And then it hits, kind of bumps onto the surface and bounces twice. You can see the composition of the comet, ice and rock, material from some 4.6 billion years ago.
While scientists at the European Space Agency are elated and likely sleepless today, the mission didn't go exactly as planned.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After our first touchdown signal yesterday, here we saw immediately that something was not normal. Our system data was indicating that the lander was still moving, and it can only indicate that we're not standing on the comet surface and solid wave.
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PEREIRA: Our Fred Pleitgen tells us what happened -- Fred?
FRED PLEITGEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: John and Michaela, absolutely stunning images we're seeing from surface of the comet, 67P, some 310 million miles away from earth. The interesting thing about these images is that they're stunning to the scientists themselves. They believe on the comet's surface they would find a very powdery substance. They believed the surface itself might be have small and that the lander, if bad comes to worse, might sink in and wouldn't transmit signals back.
What we're seeing on these images, seems to be a very rocky surface. It's unclear whether those are rocks or whether those might be ice crystals mixed with some metallic dust. These are all things that the Philae lander is supposed to find out in the coming days. The scientific experiments are already under way.
One of the interesting things they just told us is that the landing seems to have been a road I don't ride by any stretch of the imagination. The Philae lander came and touched down in exactly the spot they wanted it to touch down. A harpoon system didn't deploy. It jumped back up. That jump took two hours, there's very little gravity here. It came back down close to some sort of crater, jumped again for another seven minutes and came to a standstill. They think right now it's on the edge of the cliff, probably standing with two feet on the ground. The third foot they believe is up in the air. They're not exactly sure where it is right now. They know it's on the comet because that's what the sensors are telling them. They say pretty much all the scientific instruments are working.
The one thing they think might be a problem is drilling because the harpoon system failed and, therefore, the comet is not attached to the lander or the lander attach to the comet. They're afraid if they try something like that, it might actually fall off the comet.
There is one problem that they have with the mission right now. That is the place where they're at right now, close to that cliff, seems to be pretty far away from any sort of sunlight. They're getting a lot less sunlight than they actually thought. Right now it's running on battery power. It will need power on the solar panels. It's going to need light rays if it wants to recharge those batteries and continue to scientific experiment for a long time to come. That's something they're working on. They say it could impact the mission. But at this point in time, people in this town in Germany absolutely jubilant at what they've achieved. And that is to catch a comet in the middle of space.
Michaela and John?
PEREIRA: More like catch a ride with a comet.
BERMAN: With a spacecraft that traveled 300 million miles and can bounce.
PEREIRA: And is now hanging on the edge.
BERMAN: Hang in there, pal.
PEREIRA: Hang in there.
BERMAN: Hang in there.
PEREIRA: We'll be watching.
Ahead @THISHOUR, talk about a nightmare, a nightmare flight for U2 front man, Bono? The plane's rear hatch fell off mid flight. We'll bring you the details next.
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BERMAN: You are looking at live pictures right now of a window being replaced. This might be the most watched window on earth right now.
PEREIRA: Would you volunteer for this job?
BERMAN: Not in a second.
Yesterday, that is where those window washers were trapped some 68 stories up in the air. The scaffolding they were on had a malfunction. That's the world trade center building in New York. The rescue workers had to use a diamond saw to cut through the windows to get to them three pains thick. I guess two inches thick, three layers. The guys were pulled to safety. They're doing fine. They said they were shaken but did suffer a mild case of hypothermia. I got to say I still can't get over those pictures.
PEREIRA: If that was your job and that happened to you, would you go back to that job doing the same thing?
BERMAN: It's an impossible hypothetical because --
PEREIRA: Are you afraid of heights?
BERMAN: I'm not. But I'm afraid of being on scaffolding that's hanging down from the World Trade Center.
PEREIRA: It's interesting, the firefighters, NYFD, had just been training on procedures of doing such a rescue. It came in handy yesterday.
BERMAN: Great, great work.
PEREIRA: Great work.
A plane carrying rock star, Bono, lost its rear hatch shortly before landing earlier in Berlin.
We'll turn to aviation and government regulation correspondent, Rene Marsh. I believe you're also our rock star correspondent, coming in perfectly handy.
We can joke about it because it all ended fine and nobody was injured. What exactly went on?
RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: This really sounds scary when you hear the details. We're talking about a door that false off, the private jet, this happened mid air. Somehow everyone survived without a scratch. The question is how does that happen? These are photos of the actual private jet Bono was flying on late last night. He was on his way to a festival. He was traveling, as you mentioned, from Dublin, landing in Berlin.
The problem is the door that flew off, that was actually part of the luggage compartment, not part of the main door to the cabin. That really is the key here. On this specific type of plane, the Learjet 60, it has a rear cargo door that is totally separate from the passenger cabin some where you had these five passengers seated, they didn't lose pressure at any point. They were perfectly safe. The bottom line is the door of your private jet really should not fall
off. It definitely presents a danger to anyone below. We know from authorities two pieces of luggage fell out. We're told from the German equivalent of the NTSB it's an unusual case and they're trying to figure this all out. They are now investigating.
BERMAN: Wow.
PEREIRA: You're thinking somebody down below is collecting Bono's luggage right now.
BERMAN: A nice pair of those wrap-around sunglasses.
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BERMAN: Pretty scary to land and see a door is missing on your plane.
PEREIRA: And to hear that happen, too.
Rene Marsh, thanks so much.
Ahead @THISHOUR, a damming new report of sex crimes a detective ignored. This, as the Michael Brown grand jury gets ready to hear what could be key testimony. Ahead @THISHOUR, the forensic expert who claims she cracked the case of Jack the Ripper joins us to dive into the day's crime story.
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BERMAN: We're about to radically alter your impression of Ironman. You might know Ironman as a comic book or movie or dashing rich guy, builds a robotic suit that gives him super hero with super human strength. That's a fanciful notion in the movies, right?
PEREIRA: No, John, at least not anymore. Lockheed Martin has actually built a device like this. It's testing the technology in factories around the nation.
Our Laurie Segall has the scoop.
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LAURIE SEGALL, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Check out the Hercules C-130. It's a military plane used to carry weapons, Humvees and even drop bombs. Not exactly a light load. And to handle the tools responsible for building them, you have to be strong, really strong.
Here is one solution, a robotic suit aimed at giving workers super human strength.
(on camera): Right now, tell me, what does it feel like right now?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pretty much weightless.
SEGALL: I'm told this is definitely not weightless. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Definitely not.
SEGALL: I'm going to try it and I'm going to see.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: yeah. You got it?
SEGALL: OK. So that is certainly not weightless.
(voice-over): It transfers weight to the ground. It has weights on the back to serve as a counter balance. It's a cross between wearing a space suit and becoming a robot.
A little awkward to move around but it can allow you to lift heavy objects for long periods on end. That's helpful when you're building something as big as a plane.
(on camera): We've both seen "Ironman" before, it seems so futuristic. What was the idea behind it?
PATRICIA AELKER, LOCKHEED MARTIN: Through working with different technologies, we found there was a need to help industrial workers who were experiencing fatigue from holding heavy tools up for long periods of time.
SEGALL (voice-over): You don't want people building these things to be tired. Lockheed Martin made it to sell to customers. The Navy just got two. But here is the C-130 plan. Lockheed is using it as a new manufacturing upgrade to a plane they've been making since the 1950s. But the 2014 model is being built in a way that is very futuristic.
Laurie Segall, CNN Money, Marietta, Georgia.
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MARISKA HARGITAY, ACTRESS: The rape kit backlog sends two terrible messages. To victims, it says you don't matter, what happened to you doesn't matter. And to criminals, it says, what you did doesn't matter. Testing the kits reverses those two messages.
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PEREIRA: That was actress, Mariska Hargitay, actress of "Law and Order," to help cities around the nation process untested rape kits. There are backlogs of untested rape kits. The $35 million program will help Memphis and Las Vegas, which reportedly have a combined backlog of 15,000 kits. New York City was in a similar situation about 15 years ago. It took the city four years to clean 17,000 untested rape kits and begin seeking justice for those victims.
BERMAN: Officers in special victims units are supposed to hunt down perpetrators of sex crimes, but a stunning new report out of New Orleans reveals that detectives there, apparently, did next to nothing at all in an alarming number of cases. According to the city's inspector general, five officers could not show any evidence that they had investigated the majority of suspected sex crimes assigned to them over a three-year period.
PEREIRA: The police chief, for his part, says he can't explain what happened.
We get a chance to speak earlier with best selling crime author, Patricia Cornwall, whose latest novel, "Flesh and Blood" just hit store shelves. She also happens to be the co-founder of the National Forensic Center.
We asked her about the situation in Louisiana and if it surprised her.
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PATRICIA CORNWALL, CRIME AUTHOR & CO-FOUNDER, NATIONAL FORENSIC CENTER: It surprises me and it doesn't surprise me. Because I think what's -- I mean listen, I'm a big fan of law enforcement and I've spent a lot of time with police, but what happens in situations like this, is, first of all, I would like to know the demographic of the victims who have been ignored because, I hate to say it, but it's easy for people to get in a mindset of throw-away victims. If you're not high profile, if you're not of some certain persuasion that causes police to want to go to the extreme levels they have to go to work sex crimes, because they're difficult, as we know, I would like to know what the demographics are. I'd like to know who these people are. Is there some kind of corruption or is it more likely a lack of interest, being slackers, as I saw the word a minute ago. But sex crimes are extremely difficult. Here's what's tragic about this. It's -- once you have not worked these cases properly, there's no going back.
BERMAN: Do it right at the beginning.
CORNWALL: There's going to be no forensic evidence.
BERMAN: We say no follow-up, only follow up in 100 some-odd cases out of 1300, you need that right away.
CORNWALL: What needs to happen, is, if this has been a recent crime and you can still get evidence, immediately the police need to take, have the victim go to a place where they can get a physical evidence, recovery kit, you know, the swabs, to see ifs there's any biological evidence or injury that might indicate there's validation a crime occurred. And then you do the testing in the labs and all this. Well, if you didn't do that, you really just have the one person's word against another, and that's why these cases become pretty much undoable at that point.
PEREIRA: So this is a good thing that the inspector general has uncovered this. But what does it do for the victims, the cases, that they're never going to see justice.
CORNWALL: Their only justice is going to be if they helped make a difference somewhere else because this isn't going to happen anymore. Police, like everybody, they have to be held accountable. And I have been to so many crime scenes where this is not somebody in their own house minding their own business. A lot of poor people who oftentimes are at risk for these types of crimes because they don't have a lot of the safeguards other people do because they don't have nice locked doors, they may live with lots of other people, but that doesn't make it any less wrong if someone is violated and you should work that case as hard as if it's a celebrity that has it happen to them.
BERMAN: The issue, not even getting justice, it's not even an effort to get justice in this case, it sounds like.
Let me ask you, since you're here and have knowledgeable about forensics, in Ferguson, the grand jury is hearing testimony from the man who performed the private autopsy for Michael Brown's family. Why would a grand jury hear from two pathologists, evidence on two separate autopsies?
CORNWALL: Well, in this case, the private pathologist obviously is a board certified pathologist, he's been stipulated, if it's who I think it is, multiple times as an expert witness in court. He's considered a credible person.
What you're seeing here is a vast distrust of, quote, "the government," because the family did not believe that the St. Louis medical examiner was going to tell the truth about the results because they're already thinking conspiracy and all this sort of thing. And by the way, highly unlikely. I know people in the St. Louis medical examiner's office. But point is we've lost trust. So you bring in someone private. The problem is it's a hired gun. I'm not going to disparage or compliment either one.
The forensic pathologist that works for the county is not supposed to take sides. He's not supposed to care, if that's possible. A private pathologist who's working for somebody has more skin in the game, so to speak.
What's tough about Ferguson, what I think police need a little reminder of, is let's talk about rules of engagement. Maybe there's sometimes you don't get out of your car, you don't chase somebody, you don't do like the Trayvon Martin thing where you pursue somebody, and then when it ends as badly as it can, the victim is dead can be, and you're not going to bring that person back. And chances are, if there's a chance the person involved is not going to get in trouble, well, it shouldn't have happened to begin with. Call for a backup. If you're alone in a vehicle, why do you want to engage with somebody just because they're walking in the middle of the street? I'm not saying it was right or wrong. I'm saying I look at this and I go, wow, could this have been prevented. Let's talk about that.
Forensic science and forensic medicine are the cleanup crew. They come in because the worst has happened. Let's try to prevent the worst next time.
PEREIRA: Glad to have you voice in this conversation.
(CROSSTALK) Patricia Cornwall, thank you for joining us.
CORNWALL: Thank you for having me.
PEREIRA: And hopefully, we can talk to you again about other things. You're busy.
Thanks so much.
CORNWALL: I always have time for CNN.
PEREIRA: We love that.
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PEREIRA: We love that.
Again, her new novel is called "Flesh and Blood."
That's it for us @THISHOUR. I'm Michaela Pereira.
BERMAN: And I'm John Berman.
"LEGAL VIEW" with Ashleigh Banfield starts right now.
