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New Day

No Charges for Officer in Deadly Shooting; U.S. Beefing Up Cyber Defense Against North Korea; NYC Mayor Calls for Unity After Police Officers Killed; How Can NYC Heal Police Community Divisions?

Aired December 23, 2014 - 07:30   ET

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

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ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to NEW DAY. Let's get right over to Christine Romans. She is in for Michaela this morning with our top headlines.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. There's a lot going on this morning. Let's take a look, New York Mayor Bill De Blasio insisting critics are wrong to blame him for creating an anti-cop culture. He's pleading to a pause in protests following the shooting death of two police officers.

A pause at least until the slain cops can be laid to rest. This as the NYPD announces tougher, tighter security for the Times Square New Year's Eve celebrations over the new threats they're getting against police.

A white police officer in Milwaukee will not face charges in the shooting death of a black man with mental illness. Officer Christopher Manney shot Dontre Hamilton more than a dozen times. He said he was forced to take action after Hamilton grabbed his baton and struck him with it.

The D.A.'s office said Manney acted in self-defense although he was fired after the altercation for breaking protocol. The feds have opened a civil rights probe into the case.

A new report to be released today by House Republicans points to a culture of bias, by certainly employees of the IRS. Now this report from House Oversight Chairman Darryl Issa stems from the targeting of conservative groups. Extra scrutiny of Tea Party groups was isolated says Obama administration and resulted from confusing regulations.

The Salvation Army getting a surprised donation, look at this a diamond-encrusted cross, dropped into a Boston area Ketal, a week ago, the donor, an Australian mother who left a note asking that the cross be sold and the money used to be help the less fortunate this Christmas.

She wrote it was her way of thanking the people of Boston, particularly Brookline for embracing her family. That is lovely.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: That's the good stuff. That's what that is. They're important inflection points. The news is so predominantly heavy. It's always questioning humanity and you see the best is out there as well.

CAMEROTA: All right, thanks so much, Christine. The relationship between the U.S. and North Korea getting more frosty this morning, if you can believe that. CNN has learned the Pentagon beefing up its cyberdefense to guard against future hacks by the regime.

This as North Korea's internet service remains spotty this morning, some suggesting it's the response that President Obama promised after the Sony hack. Our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr, is on top of the story, what do we know?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: The North Korean internet system suffered a massive outage yesterday about nine hours totally offline. And it's raised a lot of questions around the world whether the Obama administration might have been responsible for basically taking the North Korean internet out.

Nobody in Washington as you'd expect commenting on it the White House, the State Department, Pentagon, all quiet. Mum's the word. They're not saying one way or the other. These are of course some of the most sensitive cyber operations, if, if the U.S. was behind it.

Always possible, the North Koreans took themselves offline to avoid being the hacked. Pretty ironic. Also possible it was experts will tell you it was the North Korea internet system run through China.

China may be aggravated enough when the turmoil that North Korea is causing. All of that said, here at pentagon, the military moved quickly after the Sony hack, to beef up its own cyberdefenses against North Korea.

Also the military along with the rest of the administration looking at the options, very secretive, very classified. We don't know the specifics. But what are the options that they could offer the president in the cyberworld to potentially deal with the North Koreans?

Send them a message, but not provoke them so far that there might be some additional North Korean retaliation -- Alisyn, Chris.

CAMEROTA: Also shrouded in secrecy, but thanks for making sense of it, Barbara.

CUOMO: So in the wake of the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases and the assassination of two NYPD officers, the question is how account rift between the police and these communities start to heal? We're going to get some unique perspective coming up.

CAMEROTA: It's a question many can't figure out -- why did North Korea take the movie "The Interview" so seriously? We'll have a look at why a sense of humor got lost in translation.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The most important reflection I can give you right now is in this tragedy, maybe we find some way of moving forward. Never been a doubt in my mind that we are working towards a day when there's greater harmony between police and community. It is achievable. It must be achieved.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: That's New York City's mayor on how to heal. There is been a lot of talk in the last few days on what is wrong, what needs to change, but not nearly as much on how. The real problem is there seems to be different realities emerging.

One on how cops see whom they police and a different one on how those same people see the police. So let's discuss this. Let's bring in Bernard Kerik, former New York City police commissioner and Benjamin Crump, attorney for Michael Brown's family.

Let's discuss the disconnect and the potential solution. Counselor, let me start with you. The idea that the police are too often out to get the communities that they are policing, and that they treat those of color, those of lower income differently, do you believe that to be true?

BENJAMIN CRUMP, ATTORNEY FOR MICHAEL BROWN'S FAMILY: I think that there's statistics that suggest that. But we have to always know that policing is a difficult job. We want to respect the job that they have to do.

But also you want the police to respect the community and respect the citizens. So I think in looking for solutions as an Attorney Jonathan Moore who has litigated for decades with the New York police department to try to make it better.

We got to find solutions to say, there's got to more interaction with the community, so the community don't feel like we're against the police, but that we're together and we need the police.

CUOMO: Now Bernie, even obviously that resolution is what we all want, we want communities and police to be together. We want it to be a partnership, right? Because protect and serve means just that the premise of why we need it is where you take issue? You say there's a lie out there about the police. And what is that lie?

BERNARD KERIK, FORMER NEW YORK CITY POLICE COMMISSIONER: The overall lie over the last several weeks, six weeks, two months, people have portrayed the national police service, as racist. They have said that they're going into minority communities to target minorities.

They're going into minority communities to harass minorities. That is not true. It's not true. They go into minority communities in this city because that's where the crime is they've gone into those communities and they've reduced crime by 80, 85 percent, violent crime. They've reduced homicides over the last 20 years since 1994, by 80 percent. Those are minority lives saved. Think back to 1990, when there were 2470 homicides in this city. In the last year, there were under 400. That comes from New York City cops.

That have put their lives on the line for the minority community, and we have, do we have problems in the communities? Yes. We do individual problems. But to label the whole police service of our country, as some have, over the last several weeks, as racist, as targeting minorities, it's b.s., it's not true. And I'm just tired of hearing it.

CUOMO: Counsel, do you take issue with what Mr. Kerik said, or do you agree?

CRUMP: I think the majority of people who were marching, thousands upon thousands, Chris, black and white alike. They weren't marching against the police. They were marching against police brutality. They were marching against what they saw as police practices that was very unfair in the minority community.

And let's face it, we want to be able to look at the hard facts and the hard data and vet it out. We don't want to act on emotion and so forth. We are America. Our military resolve is to try to be better especially in the wake of tragedies like this. And the ones we saw earlier this year.

We want to say -- we can do better. We can find a solution, but everybody has to come, we have to respect each other and I think that's a big thing, crisis. We should probably have a national day of respect where the communities say we respect you police for what you do for us. But also, the police should reciprocate and say, we respect the community for trying to help us.

That's how we move forward. We have to, we must, because we have to honor the legacies of these officers, and others who have died from senseless acts of violence to say we're going to do better.

CUOMO: What's getting under your skin about this?

KERIK: What he just said, that's right. In the majority of the time, that actually happens. What we've seen over the last several weeks, is an element where people have promoted this you know --

CUOMO: What people, blame some people, Bernie. Put some meat on the bones.

KERIK: Al Sharpton.

CUOMO: Why are you giving him that power, like he shapes the conversation?

KERIK: You know what, Chris, I didn't give him that power. Al Sharpton has no power unless either the elected officials give it to him. That's where he gets his power. When the mayor of New York City has Al Sharpton sit at a table, with the police commissioner of the city of New York to talk about the departmental policy, Al Sharpton has no business talking about the department's policy. He's --

CUOMO: You think one guy shapes a complete idea about the culture of policing in this country?

KERIK: No, yes, yes, he does.

CUOMO: Come on. How?

KERIK: I'm telling you --

CUOMO: Different communities all over the country coming out with the same issues that they feel about what is excessive force.

KERIK: It's being promoted by Al Sharpton, Mayor De Blasio and others, who are promoting this element, that the entire police service of this nation is racist.

CUOMO: People weren't following the race here in New York City. Probably as closely, certainly Counselor Crump didn't have reason to but you know that the current mayor, Bill De Blasio, got elected in part because of what he was saying about stop and frisk.

It's one of the reasons he wouldn't. That's not him hating the police, that's him going after the policy, which is the same thing that the current Commissioner Bratton said. That he was running against policies. Not police.

And he talked about his son, Daunte, who is a brown kid and that he has to be careful that he treats police the right way because there's a tendency towards excessive force.

KERIK: Because he would be in danger. Those are his words. The mayor said his son could be in danger.

CUOMO: That's the first time you've heard that?

KERIK: That his son --

CUOMO: That black parents -- parents of black kids feel that their kid may be susceptible?

KERIK: You know, Chris, I don't care what color you are. You have to teach your kid to respect others. My son is half Latino. My son is half Latino. But he's known since he was nine years old, if someone talks to you, you say yes sir, no sir. Yes ma'am, no ma'am.

If a cop stops you, you're going to treat them with respect. You're not going to spit on him, taunt him. You're not going to do the things I've seen done to cops over the last four weeks in these peaceful protests.

You're not going to attack cops like they attacked those lieutenants in the peaceful protests. You're not going to burn down a community. My son wouldn't burn down a community. My son grew up to be a cop. He's a cop in Newark, New Jersey, in extremely dangerous job.

CUOMO: But most of the process weren't that please, Counselor, weigh in, I'm sorry.

CRUMP: Yes, it works both ways, just like there are bad individuals within the community, there are also bad police. And I think most people are not marching against police, they're marching to say we got to get better police policies. Because what we saw play out over and over again when people in the community are killed.

That happen to be black or brown, nobody is held accountable and no policy has changed. That's what people are marching for. We can't keep trying to say the blame game about blood on the president's hands or the mayor's hands.

The only blood is on the killer, this mentally ill person who did these senseless acts of violence. We got to bring people together. We can't be dividing people and that's all our responsibility. I'm welcome the commission and everybody to find solutions to say. How we bring people together right now especially right now.

CUOMO: Now, let me give you a chance to respond to what -- if it's not Reverend Al they're going to say Bernie Kerik is pointing at Reverend Al Sharpton saying he doesn't have the right to be there. They would say why does Kerik have the right it talk about policing when they argue he's an example of a bad judgment as a police officer.

KERIK: Here's why, because I ran the New York City Police Department. I know what cops go through, I was a cop myself. I was a very decorated cop myself. I know what the cops do. How they do their job. And I also know that all cops aren't racist. All cops are not targeting the minority community.

And I agree with the counselor, we have to work on a solution where we bring the communities and the cops together. But don't label the entire national police service, as saying they're racist. They're not racist, Chris.

CUOMO: Bernie Kerik, thank you very much. Counselor Benjamin Crump, always a pleasure. Thank you for discussing these issues. All right, Alisyn, over to you.

CAMEROTA: Chris, thanks so much. It's widely assumed the movie "The Interview" inspired North Korea to hack Sony Pictures. The film's release now canceled. What exactly was it about that comedy that so offended the North Korean regime? We'll look at it in a moment.

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CAMEROTA: In the wake of North Korea's massive hack on Sony, many wonder how the regime could be so angry about a Seth Rogen comedy. The answer is that comedy as we know it is off limits in the reclusive country for it's perceived as a threat to the regime, making fun of the country's leader an unspeakable offense. For some context, let's go to CNN's Kyung Lah. She is live in Seoul, South Korea. Tell us more, Kyung.

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, it's so speakable that you drop a picture of Kim Jong-Un, and it could mean prison time for you and your family for life. The people of North Korea do not know drama. They don't know comedy. They only know one thing and that is the supreme leader.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAH (voice-over): Welcome to prime time programming on North Korea's only television station, cartoon explaining how to bomb the enemy, to traditional dance praising the supreme leader. This is entertainment ala North Korean regime.

The rare interlude in between the news bulletins about Kim Jong-Un's God-like generosity and love of his people, to the western world, all of this is strange, a little twisted and certainly devoid of any humor.

(on camera): Would you have ever made fun of Kim Jong-Un?

(voice-over): "I wouldn't dare" says Kim Soong-Min, that's a path to death." Kim knows because the defector and now anti-Korea radio host was once a comedy writer for five years in the North Korean military. Comedy in the DPRK, you ask? Well, sort of.

(on camera): As a comedy writer is it very dangerous what you can make jokes about?

(voice-over): "Among writers" says Kim the ones sent to prison or executed most often are the comedy writers. Go too far in a punch line it's prison time, often for the entire family.

Kim says the comedy of North Korea is not to laugh, but as another method to enhance loyalty to the regime. It is little wonder North Korea fails to see the humor of this silly American movie. Satire just doesn't exist.

Joking about the supreme leader and killing the character on the big screen is not metaphor, but punishable by death. Kim understands why the movie would push North Korea to launch a cyberattack, something the regime denies doing.

This former comedic writer is now in the very unfunny business of recording news from the outside world, sending it via proxies into North Korea. He doesn't joke as he reads about the global crisis surrounding the interview.

Because he wants his former homeland to understand the very serious consequences of what began as a comedy

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAH: It bears reminding that we are in the middle of this international crisis, the escalation of the cyber attacks, all because, Alisyn and Chris, of a Seth Rogen movie. Back to you.

CAMEROTA: Kyung Lah, that is great context for us, surely put a fine point on how seriously they take that.

CUOMO: Right, just the way she says the Seth Rogen movie.

CAMEROTA: Comedy, right.

CUOMO: All right, so let's get back to what we're dealing with at home, bitter dispute between New York City's mayor and the police department. Does it need to get better? How does it get better? We have Congressman Charles Rangel weighing in on that.

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