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Protesters Flood New York City Streets; Eric Garner's Family Speaking Out; 321,000 Jobs Added in November

Aired December 05, 2014 - 09:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: I can't breathe.

COSTELLO: Protests erupt, swarming America coast to coast.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: You serve us. You serve us.

COSTELLO: Anger and angst demanding justice over the chokehold death of an unarmed black man.

GWEN CARR, ERIC GARNER'S MOTHER: Was video was they watching?

ERICA GARNER, ERIC GARNER'S DAUGHTER: This is not a black and white issue. This is a national crisis.

COSTELLO: Police departments in full scale damage control mode.

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO, NEW YORK CITY: We're changing how our officers talk with residents of the city.

COSTELLO: Ferguson, New York, Cleveland. As the streets are stormed, we're asking, how do you turn protests into tangible change?

Let's talk, live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: And good morning, I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

Today New York City begins arming police officers with body cameras. It's all part of the city's pilot program to equip as many as 60 officers with those devices. This as Mayor Bill de Blasio announces a major initiative to retrain the entire city police force.

Today demonstrators angry over the death of Eric Garner are expected to stage protests in at least 11 cities.

But let's begin here with CNN's Chris Cuomo. He was on the ground last night.

Good morning, Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR, NEW DAY: Good morning to you, Carol. And it's important to note that the cops who will be wearing those cameras are the cops from the precinct where Eric Garner was killed. That will be none too subtle message to people there as the communities try to figure out ways to blend better with their police force, and that was the focus of the message of the protests last night.

I have seen few nights like the one we had in New York last night. There were so many people with such diverse backgrounds but all with one voice that it is time for change.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO (voice-over): Overnight, huge waves of demonstrators taking to New York City's bridges and roads, bringing the big apple to a standstill. Thousands flooding the Brooklyn Bridge.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: No justice, no peace. No justice, no peace.

CUOMO: And shutting down Times Square.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Hands up.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Don't shoot.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Hands up.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Don't shoot.

CUOMO: Large crowds largely peaceful but this many people and this much emotion leads eventually to conflict.

(On camera): They're making an arrest here right now.

(Voice-over): NYPD making arrests after a massive scuffle.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's all pretty violent. They were plenty of people down in the ground, against the car.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They were very much overly aggressive, what a surprise. When has NYPD not been overly aggressive to us?

CUOMO: Marchers were chanting, "Whose streets? Our streets." Police disagreed. Some staged a sit-in, arrested while singing and holding hands.

But for all the noise, silence in Brooklyn may have made the most impact, protesters staging a die-in, lying on the ground next to them cardboard coffins displaying the names of others killed by police.

Among the crowd of young and old, friends of the Garner family.

(On camera): And what does this mean to you that this many people who showed up? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I mean, I'm so happy that people of all culture,

all ethnicities came out to show their love and support and basically we have to make a change because they're killing us off. They're killing us off.

CUOMO: What do you think Eric Garner would have thought of all of these people mobilizing? Because what was done to him?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He'd definitely been proud of this, because black people are adamant about making change, it's time for change.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: You know, it wasn't just about numbers. In Ferguson the crowds were largely African-American. Last night there was so much diversity going on. There were a lot of white kids, in fact, you know, they were younger, young adults, and Carol, one of the interesting things is the loudest and angriest voices screaming "end white supremacy" were often coming from groups of white people.

And I asked them about that because it's somewhat of an irony coming from white people and they said, you don't have to be a minority to feel the injustice that is done to minorities. And it's just one little look at what is driving this situation.

COSTELLO: All right. Chris Cuomo, many thanks. I appreciate it.

In the meantime, as fiery protests rage on, Eric Garner's mother and daughter are speaking out. Last night, Erica Garner sat down with CNN's Anderson Cooper, and said she is encouraged that protests have been peaceful. She also said the controversy surrounding her father's death is not a racial issue, but a national crisis. She was asked about whether she could ever forgive the police officer who killed her father.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GARNER: This is not a black and white issue. This is a national crisis. Like I believe that this is a crisis. I mean, for white people to come out and show how deeply they was hurt and like Asians and, you know, different people from different nations and different parts of the world to come out and show that they felt the same way I felt on that video, I greatly appreciate it. It's like a sense of I'm not the only one that feels this way.

He died in a horrible way, a horrible way, and for that person Ramsey to give that video out to the world, I think he will be very proud at the way these protests is going without being violent.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR, CNN TONIGHT: Can you forgive the officer?

GARNER: Can I forgive him? Eventually I can bring myself to forgiveness, but I would not forget what he did to my father. I'm sorry, I will not forget no matter, no matter, you know, how many sorries he say, how many cards he will send, how many tweets he'll send out, nothing's going to bring my father back, so, you know, you need to do the right thing, admit that you was wrong and do your time. And the rest of the officers as well. Do your time.

When you do stuff to kill people for no reason, there's going to be consequences. Right. There has to be consequences.

CARR: If you look at Pantaleo, he's a little man. And he sneaked up behind my son and grabbed him, which he didn't have to do that. My son was no threat at that time. If you look at the video, he's talking to them, but he has his hands up at all times. They know that he wasn't going to try to attack them or anything. He wanted to be a hero. And he went behind him, and put him in a chokehold, and brought him down, and then he wouldn't let him go, as my son begged for his life. He still held on, so it was like a thrill kill.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: What do you say to people who say that, had your son simply complied with the officers that this wouldn't have happened?

CARR: He didn't -- he was complying. What more could he do? He had his hands up.

CAMEROTA: What do you want to see happen?

CARR: I would like to see a just decision in my son's case. The jury didn't give us a just decision, from things that I heard, witnesses who went before the grand jury, I heard that they never even looked up at them, or they might have been in there five minutes and never even got eye contact with the grand jury. I thought that was -- that's very disrespectful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Eric Garner leaves behind six children.

Make sure to stay with us later this hour. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson will be in Boston to meet with federal, state and local law enforcement officials to discuss community partnership and policing. We'll bring it to you live as soon as it gets underway.

We know Eric Garner was killed by a white police officer. We know a grand jury decided Officer Daniel Pantaleo will not go to trial. The question the country is grappling over now is why did this happen?

Senator Rand Paul blamed it on cigarette taxes. Congressman Peter King blamed it on Garner's obesity. Rudy Giuliani blamed it on high crime in black neighborhoods. Police blamed it on Garner's resisting arrest. Garner's family and thousands of protesters blame it on race.

So why did Eric Garner die? Let's talk about this. I'm joined by CNN political commentator LZ Granderson.

Welcome, LZ.

LZ GRANDERSON, CNN COMMENTATOR: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: Is Garner's death really about race? And I ask you that, too, because in Don Lemon's interview with Eric Garner's daughter she doesn't think it was about race.

GRANDERSON: Well, I have not talked to her obviously, but my sense is what she's saying is the response that you're seeing to her father's death isn't one that only affects black people, but it affects everyone. And I totally support her in that sentiment. You know, there's a young man out in Utah who was unarmed and killed, a white civilian who was killed by police officers, and that community is trying to get answers as to why that happened, how did this white person get killed -- unarmed person get killed by police officers.

And so what's really happening now is that because of technology, because of smartphones, we're beginning to see a through line in that there aren't crimes that are motivated strictly because of race but it's also a question of police and whether or not some officers, not all, but some officers are being overly aggressive with their encounter with civilians leading to unjustifiable deaths not being talked about, they're not being covered up or being covered up, and this has given us an opportunity to talk about that.

COSTELLO: Right, right. Because you could argue, police officers always get the benefit of the doubt from grand juries, whether or not their alleged victims are black or white, right?

GRANDERSON: Absolutely. I mean, we have no idea, there have been stories going on, "The Wall Street Journal" had on their front page. We have no idea how many people, police officers, how many Americans police officers actually killed? Our metric system, our system in terms of guiding those statistics are not streamlined, and so we really don't know if it's really the 400 plus that are reported by the FBI or many, many more, because so many of the departments are allowed to self-report.

In addition to that, we have no idea how many people are actually shot by police officers every year in this country, so those are some really problematic issues that affect more than just black people. It affects everyone.

COSTELLO: And just something else to throw by you, the U.S. Justice Department issued this scathing report on Cleveland Police calling the police department there chaotic and dangerous. No mention of racial profiling, just bad policing.

So I'll ask you again, is it possible that Garner's case was just a case of bad policing?

GRANDERSON: It's basically bad policing that obviously included aspects of complicit racism. And the reason why I say that is -- or implicit racism. The reason why I say that is because we know from research that police officers tend to view black men as more hostile than any other racial group. We know from research and data that police officers view children who are minorities as being older and less innocent than their white counterparts.

We know from research that all of us have a layer of bias that has us seeing one group of people as being less trustworthy than another group of people. This is what the data and the research has shown us. And so to suggest that our interaction particularly with the police is completely free of race goes against what the research tells us about how we live our lives in this country.

COSTELLO: All right, LZ Granderson, many thanks.

Let's get the other side of the story. New York's mayor, he finds himself in a tough spot. He has to tamp down anger in the community and show support for cops who patrol the streets but that's proving to be quite difficult. The police union is lashing out at the mayor for, quote, "throwing the troops under the bus."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PATRICK LYNCH, PRESIDENT, PATROLMEN'S BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION: What police officers felt yesterday after that press conference is that they were thrown under the bus, that they were out there doing a difficult job in the middle of the night protecting the rights of those to protest, protecting our sons and daughters, and the mayor was behind microphones like this throwing them under the bus.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So let's talk about this with retired New York Police Department detective Harry Houck. He has more than 25 years of experience in law enforcement and security.

Thanks for being here. I appreciate it.

HOWARD HOUCK, RETIRED NYPD DETECTIVE: Thanks for having me, Carol.

COSTELLO: So did Mayor de Blasio throw the troops under the bus? Did he make it appear that the -- that officers in the New York City Police Department are racist?

HOUCK: Well, I think his tone was pretty much like that, you know what I mean? I think the -- I think the mayor should step back and wait and always give the police the benefit of the doubt until all the evidence comes in on what's going on. I mean, what's really annoying me is how these allegations are being made that the grand jury in Staten Island is somehow corrupt or somehow involved in any kind of misconduct, but not one ounce of evidence that that has occurred.

All right? And it's just driving me crazy. And I'm sitting here looking at --

COSTELLO: Well, there's an easy way to solve the problem. Why not just release all of the transcripts that authorities are not doing?

HOUCK: Well, I think that's what they're going to do. I think they just got --

COSTELLO: Not yet, partial.

HOUCK: Well, yes, partially, but the grand jury, and I'm not a lawyer, but the grand jury is supposed to be secretive anyway. You know what I mean? Every grand jury has been secretive, every grand jury I've been on has been secretive. All right? Why should this case not be secretive? All right? Because there's so much rhetoric out there about this being a racial case.

COSTELLO: Well, do you think that the officer acted properly?

HOUCK: Yes, I do.

COSTELLO: In taking down Eric -- you do.

HOUCK: Yes, I do.

COSTELLO: So was it a chokehold, was it not a chokehold?

HOUCK: I don't believe that was a chokehold. I've done that exact move 100 times back in the early '80s when I was on patrol. That's the only way you take somebody down six foot, 350 pounds. If anybody thinks --

COSTELLO: But he did not appear to me that Eric Garner was fighting back in anyway. He just said, "Don't touch me."

HOUCK: You know, first of all, we didn't see that whole exact video from when the police first approached him. You only see a piece of it when this guy starts taping, so it looks like the police have been sitting here and talk with him for a little bit of a while. And then once he made an aggressive gesture that you're not taking me, as a police officer you need to take action now because the giant guy can do some damage to you.

COSTELLO: Here's the thing that I just can't escape.

HOUCK: OK.

COSTELLO: So, a police officer a lot of them approached me and accused me of doing something wrong, and I didn't think I was doing anything wrong or I felt like they were harassing me. I would say what are you talking about? Like leave me alone and I would also say, don't touch me.

So, that would give you the right to put me in a chokehold and throw me to the ground?

HOUCK: Well, hold on. You're not 6'4", 350 pounds, OK? It's different. All right.

The police officer would talk to -- I was not there. We're not getting all the verbiage out of this video. We're not seeing exactly the whole video, all right?

It looked like to me when you look at that video that police officers had been talking to him for a while and then when they said to him you're under arrest and somebody said this really pretty good on a TV show the other day, when a police officer tells you "you're under arrest", it's not a request, all right? It's not a request.

You put your hands behind your back, Mr. Garner, all right, is dead because he resisted arrest, OK? This could have all been stopped --

COSTELLO: So --

HOUCK: -- if all he did was turn around, put his hands behind his back. Listen, he's been through the routine. He's been locked up 29 times at least for the same exact thing. He's there all the time. The crack heads come and buy cigarettes from him, that's why people from Staten Island who I know say everybody's calling about it because they're tired of the crack heads coming around and buying cigarettes from him.

COSTELLO: So, you're saying exactly the opposite of what Captain Eric Adams told me yesterday.

HOUCK: Mr. Adams and I aren't hardly on the same page when it comes to policing.

COSTELLO: Let me tell you what he says. He's a former NYPD captain and former state senator. He writes this, "In order to finally bring this darkness into the light of day, our nation must address the foundation of this. That starts with acknowledging that the training taught in police academies across the country is not being applied in communities of color. After six months in the police academy, that instruction is effectively wiped out by six days of being taught by veteran cops on the streets."

In other words he's saying, you know, be the tough cop, don't stand back and try to talk a guy out of doing something, but expect those people to listen to you now as in right now.

HOUCK: Well, I don't know what he said, but, listen, I was a cop in the early '80s. We always talked to people before we made an arrest, saying there's two ways to do it, you know? Come peaceably, you're coming anyway, so why don't you put your hands behind your back. That works maybe 30 percent, 40 percent of the time.

Listen, no matter what talking they were going to do to Eric Garner or maybe some other perpetrator who wants to resist arrest, all the talk in the world isn't going to help you. It might help you about 10 percent, 15 percent of the time. And maybe if they talked to him another 20 minutes, you know, maybe this might not have happened but as a police officer you don't have the time to do that.

When a police officer tells you you're under arrest, hands behind your back, placed under arrest, like I said, he had been through this 26 times. He's just tired. He must have had the attitude, listen, I'm tired of you guys locking me up for committing crimes out here. I'm not going to put up with it anymore, all right?

You can't do that. We can't have a city where police officers walk away because somebody might want to resist arrest.

COSTELLO: OK. So, the mayor and the police commissioner have ordered every single officer in the New York City Police Department to undergo retraining, and part of that retraining includes how to control their egos, adrenalin and profanity. HOUCK: Listen, I'm fine with that. I mean, the police department

isn't perfect. There's nothing perfect out there.

Can -- do we need more training? Do we need more training 50 years from now, yes, 100 years from now, yes. One of the things about this case that is really interesting to me, do you think if Eric Garner was white, this would be going on in the streets today?

COSTELLO: That's a good question, I don't know the answer to that question.

HOUCK: I don't think it would be. I don't think it would be, and if the grand jury was all black, do you think there'd still be allegations about the grand jury?

COSTELLO: I don't know. I think there was video out there and it happened the same way to a white man, there would be questions how the police acted. I do believe that.

HOUCK: Maybe questions but not like what we're seeing here.

COSTELLO: How do you think race enters into this picture then?

HOUCK: I think this all started with Ferguson, now we got it here, and we have another officer who shot a 12-year-old in another city, and then another incident that happened. And everything is starting to come out now, this investigation in Cleveland -- I mean, to me it's like there's a war on the police. There is no reason to indicate that police are targeting black men for death, all right? It's insane.

COSTELLO: But in Cleveland, the U.S. Justice Department came back with a report that found that the police tactics were chaotic and irresponsible. There was evidence of police brutality.

HOUCK: I'm not a Cleveland police officer. I can't really --

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: I understand that. I'm just saying that there is evidence that police are doing something wrong in these communities.

HOUCK: Then make the changes. I'm all for changes. I've got no problem with that.

It's a different world today, all right, out there, and police have got to evolve like, they always have evolved since the 1900s to today.

COSTELLO: Harry Houck, former detective from NYPD thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it.

HOUCK: Thank you for having me, Carol.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM: 2014 now on pace to be the best year ever, actually the best year for jobs in 15 years. Christine Romans will tell us more, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Now, some breaking money news and I'm so happy to share good news with you this morning, especially when it's Friday.

The government's final jobs report of the year is out and it's a big one, far better than anyone expected. The Labor Department estimates 321,000 new jobs were added last month. That's the biggest single month for new hires in almost three years.

Chief business correspondent Christine Romans is here.

Yay! Wow.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It's a strong number. It's a really strong number, Carol. When I look within these numbers, I see the quality of job improving, too. The Labor Department saying that it was widespread job creation and that's what you want to see, the trend.

Over the past year, 2.6 million net new jobs created. And, Carol, that's 10 months in a row of 200,000 plus new jobs. That is strong.

When I look at what kinds of jobs, I see accountants, I see lawyers. I see in here architects, engineers, computer systems designers, temporary help managers, consultants, highly skilled factor jobs, transportation, warehousing, also, retail, those tend to be the lower paid jobs. It's one of the reasons why you see people taking to the streets about higher minimum wage. And health care jobs, all along the wage spectrum for health care. So, that's really encouraging to see.

The underemployment rate, those are people who are working part-time but would like to be working fulltime. That's still too high. It's still double digit. I'm so concerned about that.

But you're seeing these numbers get better consistently.

COSTELLO: How about wages overall?

ROMANS: Wages just ticked up a little bit this month. But the trend for wages hasn't been good, and that's been going on for sometime. A lot of people think there's a structural change happening where we're going to be paid less for the same amount of work. So, that's the problem, and that's why people don't feel so good about the labor market, because job wages have not been coming along.

Carol, this week, as I've been watching all of our coverage of the protests in the streets, about the relationship between police forces and communities, I keep hearing the same phrase, justice and jobs. And you look at these numbers and you're seeing overall job market that's getting better.

But I wanted to bring up a point here, the unemployment rate has been coming down, down, down. It's 5.8 percent, the unemployment rate overall. But when you break it out for African-Americans, that's 11.1 percent, Carol; 11.1 percent is almost twice this rate. The unemployment for someone who drops out of high school is 10

percent, in the 10 percent range. So, that's still a high number. It's been drifting lower, too, but it is still too high. I think it's a number in these jobs data tables that bares considering as we talk about what's been happening in the streets over the last week or so.

COSTELLO: I think you're right. Christine Romans, many thanks. I appreciate it.

Still to come on NEWSROOM: Deadly car chases, brutal beatings, reckless gunfire, and that's the police. A scathing government report, it's slamming the Cleveland Police Department. We'll talk about that next.

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