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NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio on the Drop of Crime Rate During His Term; U.S. Ski Team Loses Two Of Its Most PROMISING Athletes; The Search for Flight 8501 Due to Resume at Daybreak; 7-Year-Old Sailor Gutzler Sole Survivor of a Plane Crash

Aired January 05, 2015 - 15:30   ET

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

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK CITY: Let me close by saying that rather than get lost in the daily back and forth by the loudest and most disrespectful voices, those that have been so loud in this debate in recent weeks. Let's talk about where we need to go as a city. Let's talk about a positive vision. Let's talk about what the people of this city want us to do together. And I'll tell you this is the vision I think we'll see play out in the near future in New York City.

I see a New York where our streets will be even safer. I see a New York where citizens and police officers are partners in the endeavor of making us safer, respectful partners, working together for the betterment of our neighborhoods. I believe that positive vision will win the day. I believe it's what people are demanding of us.

The people want us all to come together. The people believe that we can do better and that positive vision will prevail over the negative visions or the loudest voices of disunity and discord dominate the news cycle. We will be as good as the people we serve. We're going to find a way forward together, that I'm convinced of.

With that, let me say a couple of word in Spanish before I turn to Commissioner Bratton and Deputy Commissioner Shay.

(SPEAKING SPANISH LANGUAGE)

BROOK BALDWIN, CNN HOST: All right, so as he's speaking in Spanish you've been listening to the mayor of New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio. And really, the two headlines, and let's also keep in mind despite all these protests we've seen, of course, in the wake of these non-indictments both in New York and in Ferguson, this news conference was on the books. So you have the mayor there really touting that the real drop in crime, 2,600 fewer robberies than the previous year, drop in major crime, drop in major crime in the subways. So that's huge, obviously, for the city of New York.

And as you will hear from these two veteran officers sitting next to me, they will say this is all this in part of a greater theme in the city who dropped steady dropped in same crime.

Michael Sapraicone now runs squad security, on the force two decades and I got Gil Alba here founded Alba investigations, a cop for 27 years.

So between these two, you got a little experience. And we were talking while we were listening, of course, as well to the mayor and I believe the police commissioner will be speaking so if that happens, guys, let's get in my ear let me know and we'll listen. But what did you make of, you know, just hearing this -- for someone who is not as familiar with the intricacies of New York City, that's great news, right, drop in major crime from the previous year, right?

GIL ALBA, FORMER NYPD DETECTIVE: That's huge what he was talking about the drop in crime. Only the tourists and everybody coming in to the city, the real estate, everything, New York City is coming up and building up even more and the crime means a lot. If you go to other cities, Detroit, Michigan, or wherever you go, you know, they have a problem. But New York is one of the safest cities in the whole country.

So people want to come in here. That's where you make the money. That's where the money is. And who is taking care of the crime, really? It's New York City police department. Of course, the mayor has something to do with it and the police commissioner. So you all have to work together to make this happen.

MICHAEL SAPRAICONE, FOR NYPD DETECTIVE: I'm sorry, but that's correct without doubt. But statistics are statistics. You can look at them anyway you want. I'm sure they are going go down over the course of 20 years. That's the great job the mayors have done, the police commissioner, the police officers, but it's the perception. It is the perception what people think, the tourists, the old who are living New York City. What they think is going on here. That's what's important. That's what keeps us going.

BALDWIN: It is important and it's huge, but it is also, you know, it's this positive picture of the city, right? But when you juxtapose that from what we saw, and not just over the weekend, it is a two, you know, police officers funerals in which you had, and more so Officer Ramos' funeral and then the one yesterday. These, you know, men and women in blue turning their backs literally, you know, on the mayor. And then you have them even doing that after those two officers were shot and killed on Tompkins avenue a couple of weeks ago, if they were leaving the hospital and the ambulance. I mean, the pictures speak for themselves and for people who are not familiar with sort of city hall/police clash. It doesn't look good for the city.

SAPRAICONE: It doesn't. It's a time, it is a time when we need to show our unity of what we do.

BALDWIN: Would you have turned your back?

SAPRAICONE: I would not have turned my back because it's not about the officers being annoyed at the mayor or about contracts. It's about two officers who gave the ultimate sacrifice. The same thing that Gil and I for years, hope and pray that every night we get to go home, that we wouldn't be those guys given that sacrifice. And these two officers gave that. And we need to show respect to that and not worry about -- we can't make our agenda or about other problems, rise to the top and make that something that's more important than the death of these two officers. That's what's important.

BALDWIN: You were saying specifically, Gil, that it's a manifestation of a lack of respect. It's not some police department out of order. It's a direct, you know, show of defiance against the mayor.

ALBA: That's what is it. Between the police, because the head of the PBA now said right before this --

BALDWIN: They said the biggest union in New York.

ALBA: Not only -- yes, the biggest union in New York. And you saw the line of blue at these both of these funerals as far as you could see the line of blue. So it's solidarity -- I mean, that. But he said about the mayor that because the mayor was for these rallies and all that and say, you know, what do we want, dead cops and all that and he really didn't fight against that. He made a couple of public statements against the New York City police.

The PBA president said listen, something is going to happen to one of our cops. And if something happens he goes, we are going to have these guys sign a petition. They don't want you to come to the funeral. And what happen? These two guys been assassinated. Now, I was on the police from the 1970s when they had assassinations. I didn't think it would ever happen again like this.

These two guys didn't even belong there from a different precinct sitting there. One guy, Liu, you know, volunteered to go there. They are having lunch. They were just sitting there. And the crime -- you know, because of the crime in that particular Tompkins square housing which by the way has gone down like 30 percent. So that's the important line.

So the officers at the funeral here, the mayor talked and they know that, you know, because this guy got killed it could have been us. It could have been anybody who got killed. So they feel the pain of the families of this particular guy. And especially when you're at the funeral and you hear the procession go by and you hear the motorcycles go by and you hear, you know, the singing of what's happening you actually feel that yourself inside and it stays with you for the rest of your life.

BALDWIN: Commissioner Bratton was saying this should be about grieving and not about grievances. Final thoughts.

SAPRAICONE: Well, it should be about grieving. And unfortunately, police are very thick headed, OK? And I guess I could say that. If one officer does something sometimes another officer feels he has to do it because how does the guy next to me turn around and I won't turn around?

BALDWIN: You're brother.

ALBA: And then when I go back to the precinct like, hey, what's your story? I'm not going to work with you because you don't feel the same way. So you got that problem.

BALDWIN: Still, there is to be unity.

SAPRAICONE: There has to be unity. Especially in the situation -- there is unity.

BALDWIN: Greatest city on earth. Go ahead.

SAPRAICONE: And when he talks about the community want us we're part of the community. We want that peace and there is that peace going on. It's a minority of the people, minority of the police department, minority of the communities that don't feel that we're united together.

Michael Sapraicone and Gil Alba, thank you both very much. We'll continue to watch, hopefully the unification improve.

ALBA: But you know, what's New York City? I know what's going to happen. He knows it is going to happen between mayor and the police?

BALDWIN: What is going to happen?

ALBA: They will be together and it is going to work out.

SAPRAICONE: It will work out without a doubt.

BALDWIN: I hope to see that. Thanks guys.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: And we'll take you back to that news conference, of course, if there is Q&A and we hear anything from either the mayor or the police commissioner. So stay tuned to that.

Also ahead, we are going to talk about this little girl. She is just is amazing, seven years of age, manages to survive a plane crash. A plane crash that killed her parents, her cousin, the other sister, but what she did after the plane went down is truly astonishing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You have to hear the story about this little girl, the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed her family, 7-year-old Sailor Gutzler was flying home from Key West on Friday when the plane had a problem. Her father, the pilot, tried land but the plane crashed about ten miles from the airport. And when this was all over Sailor's entire family, her mother, her father, her older sister and her cousin were all dead. And Sailor somehow found herself with a broken arm in the middle of this dark freezing rainy forest. She was dressed for Key West. She was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and not a lot of 7- year-olds would have the courage to do what she did next to stagger off about a mile to go find help.

She found it at a home. She saw is a light on. So she went and she knocked and just a short time ago I talked with the police officer from the Kentucky state patrol about this entire ordeal and he talked to me exactly about how the plane crashed in this wooded area and how fortunate Sailor Gutzler is to be alive. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On Friday night it was raining. There was some fog, some dense fog. It was dark. There was no moon light. So it was almost just pitch black. It took rescue workers approximately two hours to find the plane, just searching through the woods. There was really nothing reflective on the plane to help with their flash lights. But a small fire that she told us about had extinguished itself. So we really had nothing to go on. We had general direction to look for.

She had the survival mindset she had to get help for her family and she started that trek through the woods. There's not many houses in that area that she was in. And a lot of the houses that are actually there are vacation homes where people don't live there year round. So she was very lucky to make it to Mr. Wilkins' house.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Nick Valencia joins me now.

And you know, talking about that officer, she had, you know, initially talked to some emergency responders saying, you know, that her family was dead and then she said well maybe they are sleeping. And here she is she finds her way at this home. Do we know how she's doing today, who she is with?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you mentioned she had some broken bones. We believe it is actually her wrist that was broken. She had some superficial injuries, Brooke, but we understand that she was treated for those minor injuries. Was released from the hospital and is now with her step-sister, we believe. We can't be sure on her exact whereabouts but understand that she told Mr. Wilkins, that 71- year-old man who happened to be at home fortunately for little Sailor Gutzler, she told him that she had an older sister and he was trying to get in touch with family members.

I mean it really such a remarkable story. Some people are calling it a miracle. There is Kentucky state police officer saying it was divine intervention. It was -- the path that she took, Brooke, that was really the extraordinary thing. She could have gone in any direction, but she chose the best path not knowing that there were any lights out there. She had to go through a ridge, there were 12-foot creek bed at one point, through briar fields. And you know, as you mentioned, she's wearing shorts, she's barefooted, she has got a sock on.

Earlier John Berman caught up with Larry Wilkins, that 71-year-old who was home, that door she knocked on and he talked about this experience.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY WILKINS, HELP SAILOR GUTZLER: Wish her good luck, you know. I know she's having extraordinarily hard time and probably in her mind she doesn't understand everything that's going on right at this moment. But her grandfather was very, very pleasant person. And thanked me. Actually you know, I didn't do anything that you wouldn't do or anybody you know probably wouldn't do if a small child come to your door in that kind of condition.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: Humble man that speaks to Larry Wilkins character. He was telling us as well he was heartbroken at the very end of their exchange with that little girl Sailor. She wanted him to go the hospital with her. But because he's not a family member, Brooke, he wasn't allowed to go and that's when she really started breaking down. He says it breaks his heart to think that, you know, he was sort her saving Grace and she couldn't go -- he couldn't go to the hospital with her. But she is, you know, she's surviving. That's the silver lining in the story. Her family has died but that little girl that you're looking there, that precious face, she survived, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Breaks your heart. Nick Valencia, thank you so much.

VALENCIA: You bet.

BALDWIN: Two weeks into the search for that missing AirAsia plane and still a long way to go. Now divers say they have no visibility under the water. We'll talk to a former diver about what they are up against in those conditions out there as you can see, not great.

Also, breaking news just in, the U.S. ski team suffering a major loss today. Two young ski racers have been killed in this avalanche. What we're learning about them and how that happened next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: The search for flight 8501 is due to resume at daybreak in Indonesia just about an hour-and-a-half from now. Right now, American naval ships, they are en route. They are carrying special sonar equipment just trying to find the plane's black boxes, those data recorders that really hold a lot of the crucial clues and keys to what happened.

The big question now is will weather again stall the search? We can tell you that earlier today dozens of divers were dropped in the water to just look for any kind of wreckage. But thus far murky conditions and strong current forced them back up to the surface.

We do have this video, I want to share with you. Because we are wondering exactly when we talk about how choppy, how bad the conditions are. You can see how it is for these divers just trying to jump into.

CNN Paula Hancocks was on that boat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We are within the area where some bodies and debris have been found. But you can see how challenging it is the fact that as soon as you see something in the distance it disappears behind a wave and that is very difficult to try and spot it again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Joining me now, Bobbie Scholley, retired Navy captain and Navy diver.

Bobbie, nice to see you.

CAPT. BOBBIE SCHOLLEY, (RET.) U.S. NAVY: Nice seeing you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: So we're getting words this afternoon that U.S. Navy divers from the USS Fort Worth will be using, you know, sonar equipment capable of finding items they say just even as small as a golf ball as they are helping the government there finding wreckage? How exactly will that sonar equipment work?

SCHOLLEY: Well, they have some additional sonar equipment that they can launch off of their small inflatable boat. This is similar to the type of side-scan sonar, just a little bit more precise. And they can help it to assist the search commander that's out there to help, to detect what the different search areas actually have in them.

So they're just another asset for that search commander to go out and interpret what he has in each of those different debris fields to help them, get a feel for what those pieces are that they've already picked up. So this is a fine-tuning type of piece of sonar equipment for the search commander.

BALDWIN: Because, Bobbie, when I'm reading about this and we were showing video of some of these divers, you know, when they're going, you know, deep, deep levels and they're reporting zero visibility, why is that? Is it because of all the mud and the muck and the silt that's getting churn and churned because of the chop?

SCHOLLEY: From what I understand, it's a very silty bottom, soft mud. And with the currents that are rushing through there, it just continues to churn up that bottom. And when the divers get down there, they have zero visibility. And that's making it impossible for them to get -- either to acquire the piece of debris that the side- scan sonar has picked up for them. You have to think of it as a huge football field and there's something at one end of the football field and the divers might get down to the bottom of the ocean at the other end of the football field. And if you only have one or two feet of visibility and you have to make it to the opposite end of that football field to find that piece of debris that may only be a couple of feet long and you only have one or two feet of visibility, that's a long way to go.

BALDWIN: That's a huge, huge challenge. And you know, final question, we're focusing so much on debris and hopefully finding the tail section because therein lies the key that the flight data recorders. We also know that they have been still pulling bodies. And how do these divers, as a Navy woman, I mean, how would you be trained knowing that at any given moment, you may see someone?

SCHOLLEY: These are trained military divers. And this is something that we are used to doing, unfortunately. It is a part of our mission. And we know that that's just something that we need to be prepared for.

When I was involved in TWA flight 800, a lot of the passengers were discovered still strapped into their seats. I have to assume that that's what they're going to find the majority of the passengers here on AirAsia, is strapped into their seats still with part of the fuselage when they find those sections of the fuselage. That's where they're going to find the majority of the passengers. That is my assumption.

And these military divers understand that. That's why they are so eager to get into the water whenever there's a break in the weather, and to get down there to those pieces of debris that have already been found by the side-scan sonar because they probably assume the same thing, that that's where they're going to find the victims that they can return to the families and that's what we're trained to do. You've focused on the mission. You want to accomplish the mission for the family. And then you think of it as just getting that mission done. And then you worry about the grieving later.

BALDWIN: Tough job. We are grateful for their service and also for yours.

Bobbie Scholley, thank you so much.

SCHOLLEY: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, news just in here, the U.S. ski team losing two of its most promising athletes, these two young skiers have been killed in an avalanche. What we're learning about them and how this happened next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Before I let you go, some sad news report. The U.S. Ski team is mourning a loss of not just one but two promising young athletes after this massive avalanche today in Austria. The team says 20-year-old Ronnie Berlack and 19-year-old Bryce Astle were among this group of six skiers caught in this massive slide. The four others managed to maneuver out to safety. And we pulled some video of Astle training back in 2013. He and Berlack were both incredibly well- respected by their peers and looking forward to a promising career in skiing.

So with more, CNN sports anchor Rachel Nichols -- awful, awful story. Tell me about these two.

RACHEL NICHOLS, CNN ANCHOR, UNGUARDED WITH RACHEL NICHOLS: Yes.

BALDWIN: Nineteen and 20.

NICHOLS: Yes. I mean, these were the kids that we would be probably going to be rooting for in the Olympics just a few years from now, really promising skiers, sweet young men from everyone, the account from everyone who's been around them and just, just such a tragedy. The 20-year-old, Ronnie, grew up in New Hampshire, actually from the

same small town that Bode Miller is from and had drawn all this comparisons to Miller. The 19-year-old Bryce, he is from Sandy, Utah. And his mom has told these great stories about when he was just two years old, she took him out with her onto the slopes that he was this tiny little thing just barreling down the mountain, just attacking the slopes. He wouldn't stop. And you know, it sounds like that may have been an element of what happened here.

Look. These are America's best young skiers. They are aggressive skiers. It seems like these six guys went on this very high mountain in what had already been avalanche alert conditions. That's when you have a lot of snow but also some warm weather which makes the snow kind of dicey. And according to the "Associated Press," they, quote, "left the prepared slope," which is a thing often we see elite skiers do. But in this case, it seems to have had some tragic consequences. And it's just, you know, when you think about the promise that was cut short here, I want to show you an Instagram post from Bryce. This was just four days before the tragedy.

BALDWIN: Beautiful picture.

NICHOLS: And he tweeted out his view from the top of this mountain and he says, 2014 was definitely bad ass, such an epic ending to the year. Now off to Europe. So that was from back at home then he goes out and unfortunately, he is not going to have --

BALDWIN: Loses his life.

NICHOLS: Yes. It's awful to think about.

BALDWIN: What's next, obviously, you're thinking is about the families, you think about their friends, the team that we would be cheering for.

NICHOLS: Yes. I mean, look. This is the beginning of the ski season. So the U.S. team that is supposed to compete in a world cup event tomorrow.

BALDWIN: Tomorrow?

NICHOLS: Yes. The head of the ski team has told all of the athletes, it's up to them if they don't want to compete, if they don't feel they can get out there, they don't have to. The skiers that are going to compete said they want to wear armbands in support of Bryce and Ronnie and to show their families that they're thinking of them. It is going to be hard for everyone to move forward from this. They feel like a family member, two family members are gone.

BALDWIN: Awful. Thinking about their family and their friends.

Rachel Nichols, thank you so much. Appreciate it very much.

And thank you very much for being with me. I'm Brooke Baldwin here in New York. I will see you same time tomorrow. In the meantime, let's take things to Washington. "The LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.