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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield
More on the Meyers Las Vegas Shooting Case; Tax Collection Agency Problems Examined; A Look at Domestic Anti-Government Threats
Aired February 20, 2015 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
RANDI KAYE, CNN ANCHOR: The superbug outbreak connected to two patient deaths at UCLA Hospital was caused by two medical scopes that still carry the deadly bacteria. An internal review has found that the superbug, known as CRE, was imbedded in the scopes, even after cleaning. The hospital is now using an additional cleaning procedure of applying gas to those endoscopes.
The Ferguson Missouri Police Chief is responding to reports that the U.S. Justice Department may sue the police department over an alleged pattern of racial discrimination.
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THOMAS JACKSON, FERGUSON, MISSOURI POLICE CHIEF: We're hoping that there's a not a lawsuit, that they're going to come up with some suggestions that will help us better be a -- be a better police department. And if that's the case, you know, we actually welcome that.
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KAYE: This week, we told you the Justice Department may bring a lawsuit if the police department doesn't agree to make changes on its own. Chief Jackson, certainly seems be willing to do so.
Sources close to the family tells CNN that Bobbi Kristina Brown breathing tube has been removed and she is now being ventilated through a hole in her throat. The procedure lowers the risk of infection. The 21-year old remains at a medically-induced coma after being found unresponsive in a bath tub three weeks ago.
OK. So there's cold, and then there's almost frozen Niagara Falls cold. Take a look at that. Wind chills of minus 30 degrees. And when it's that cold, the whole area becomes glazed over in frozen mist. It is brutally beautiful you might say. Temperatures have not reached above freezing at Niagara Falls even once this month. Damn, that is beautiful.
A 19-year old is under arrest for the killing of a Las Vegas mother of four, and police are looking for at least one other person believed to have been in the car with that suspect. The alleged shooter lived just blocks away from the victim. And what first to appeared to be a deadly case of road rage is looking a bit more personal now. Sara Sidner has a look at what the victim's family is saying now that
the suspect is in custody.
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ROBERT MEYERS, VICTIM'S HUSBAND: Are you all happy that my wife looks like the animal and my son. There's the animal a block away. Are you happy?
SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Anger and sorrow bursting from Robert Meyers, a husband and father, clearly distraught as police are closing on the man accused of shooting and killing his wife.
The police (inaudible) is just one block away from where the shootings occurred. Neighbors described what happen when police came looking for the suspect.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They were going over the speaker, telling him he needed to come out with his hands in the air. Saying at least come to a window, let us know you're OK. We don't want to hurt you. We just want to talk to you. We need to discuss this with you. We know that you're a kid, we know you're young but we need to talk to you...
SIDNER: The suspect's mother arrived at the scene afraid for her son's safety and no mood to talk.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please, turn your -- phone off.
SIDNER: Moments later, the suspect, Eric Milton Nowsch, lead away in handcuffs, booked on three felonies including the murder of Tammy Meyers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The suspect has been taken into custody a few minutes ago, pursuant to the road rage and homicide that occurred.
SIDNER: But in another twist, late in the day, Tammy Meyers' husband said the man charged with murder was someone the Meyers' family actually knew, including Tammy Meyers herself who her husband said often try to help the suspect out.
MEYERS: We know this boy. I couldn't tell you this before. He knew where I live. We knew how bad he was but we didn't know he was this bad, that he's gotten to this point and his friends. But this kid, the animal my wife was going to search, my wife spent countless hours at that park consoling this boy. And he's probably watching this right now and I know he's got to feel bad because she was really good to him.
She fed him, she gave him money. She told him to pull his pants up and to be a man.
SIDNER: Sarah Sidner, CNN, Las Vegas.
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KAYE: Nowsch who is 19 is charged with murder, attempted murder and discharging a firearm from a vehicle. His arraignment is set for Monday morning. And of course we will continue to follow this story.
Up next, the biggest terror threat facing the U.S., ISIS, right? May be not. The real trouble may be right in your own backyard.
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KAYE: Welcome back. We heard a lot this week about violent extremism also know as terrorism, and rightly so. But the White House conference that wrapped yesterday, it included not one but two presidential addresses scarcely mentioned a threat that many police and experts rank higher even than ISIS. It comes from Americans who oppose any form of government. It is sometimes called the "sovereign citizens movement".
And a new report from Homeland Security counts two dozen attacks against law enforcement or other government authority since 2010.
So let me bring CNN justice correspondent, Evan Perez, along with Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center to talk some more about this.
Evan, police fear these groups because they, meaning the police, are really the most common targets, right?
EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right, Randi. You know, these encounters are sometimes just routine, you know, the cops trying to stop someone for a traffic infraction or to serve a warrant from the courts, and they get into these shootouts with these suspects.
In 2013, you know, there was this suspect, Paul Ciancia who carried out an attack at the Los Angeles Airport, killing a TSA officer, for example. And in 2014, there was another case at a Walmart in which Jared Miller and Amanda, his wife, killed two Las Vegas police officers and a bystander. These are routine things that police are much more likely to encounter around the country than, say, the Islamic threat, not to say that that is not also a very serious threat.
KAYE: And what is the FBI saying about this threat?
PEREZ: Well, that's one of the things that, you know, they say is at the top of their list because they hear from law enforcement, look, you guys are focusing on the foreign threat but at the same time, for local law enforcement, they're much more likely to run into this. Here's what Michael Steinbach, who is the head of counter terrorism had to say about this recently to CNN.
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MICHAEL STEINBACH, FBI ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: We've got groups that adhere to an anarchist ideology, a militia ideology -- separatist ideology, a hate ideology and unfortunately, there is a number of those threats at the United States that we have to be concerned about.
(END VIDEO CLIP) PEREZ: And Randi, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about keeping some of the terrorist out of this country from Syria and other place, the concern for law enforcement is obviously that these guys are already here.
KAYE: Yeah, certainly. And that is a big concern. Mark, let me ask you, I mean who are the sovereign citizens, really, I mean? And do they communicate with each other?
MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: This is a very weird amorphous movement. It's basically not organized into groups, but it's a kind of free flowing movement. A lot of people, perhaps as many as 300,000 people in this country, they're beliefs go back about 20, 25 years or even further, and essentially they believe that the federal government has no jurisdiction over them. The reason they get into so many conflicts with police officers is that they are commonly pulled over for driving violations, not having a registration tag for example, and wind up drawn down on the police officers. That is because they believe the government has no right to demand that people have driver's licenses, car registrations, auto insurance and so on.
So there's a lot of conflict between them and police officers.
KAYE: And I understand that these people actually, they travel around the country and they pitch their beliefs to others. I mean, how does that work, Mark?
POTOK: Well, there's an infamous case of father and son, the Kanes who murdered two police officers on May 20th of 2010 in West Memphis, Arkansas. Those two were traveling around the country giving seminars which purported to tell people the trick to getting out of bankruptcy proceedings, how to get their houses back even as they were being seized for failure to pay. You know, of course, all of these techniques that sovereign citizens pay or rather teach, are simply ridiculous, right? They have no basis in reality but they're out there, spreading this ideology. They often basically are telling people they can get something for nothing.
They don't have to pay their taxes, they don't have to pay their credit card debt. They can simply move into a house that's been foreclosed on by the bank and take it for their own. You know, so there's that kind of teaching going on all around the country and that's what's really driving this movement.
KAYE: And where does their support come from?
POTOK: Well, from many different corners. You know, as I tried to say earlier, they're essentially being promised something for nothing. You can make money by following our rules. And this comes at a time when the economy, not so much now, but in the recent years, has been in really terrible shape. So, enormous numbers of people have signed on to this.
What is very strange and kind of ironic is quite a lot of sovereign citizens today are black Americans, African-Americans. That's strange because when this ideology was first concocted in the 1980s, it excluded black people. It was an explicitly a racist ideology which said that black people are 14th Amendment citizens "and therefore cannot be sovereign citizens", cannot be free like white people in this country are.
KAYE: All right. Mark Potok, Evan Perez, thank you both very much.
So the last time we heard a suspect singing during a police interrogation, it was Jodie Arias. She even did a headstand when police left the room. Now, an eerily similar response from a 12-year old stabbing suspect.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE).
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KAYE: Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier are accused of trying to kill their friend to appease a fictional character called Slenderman. We'll hear their chilling police interrogations, next.
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KAYE: Disturbing new interrogation video just in of two 12-year old girls accused of stabbing their best friend last year. Police questioned Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier for nine hours combined.
The girls told the investigators, they planned the attack to ward off a fictional internet character called Slenderman. If they kill their friend, Slenderman would not kill their family.
Now, here is just a sample of the interrogation video that Waukesha, Wisconsin police released to our affiliate WISN. It begins with Morgan Geyser explaining the police how they lured their friend to the woods.
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MORGAN GEYSER: We said that we were going to go bird watching. People who trust you become very gullible. And it was sort of sad.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: While you guys were walking you though you saw Slender?
ANNISA WEIER: After Morgan had stabbed her.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So then how did yo get the knife from Anissa?
GEYSER: She sort of just shoved it into my hands and there it was. And then I didn't know what I did. It just sort of just happened. It didn't feel like anything, it was like air.
WEIER: So we told her we're going to look in help but we really weren't. We we're going to run to let her pass away. So we ran.
GEYSER: Sheena (ph) was going to be at my birthday sleepover. You have no idea how difficult it was not to tell anyone.
Truth be told, I wanted to be locked-up so I couldn't hurt her. That time I have to know I'm in here because we we're careless. I knew this would happen, I knew we get in trouble.
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KAYE: Trouble is an understatement. While their friend survived, the girls as still charged as adults with attempted first degree intentional homicide, and unless the judge agrees to reduce those charges, they each face up to 60 years in prison if they are convicted.
This time of year, a lot of people lose sleep over the IRS, but you really don't want to get on the bad side of the people who go after unpaid taxes and fines, even tolls. That's the story, next.
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KAYE: Anybody who's ever gotten a letter, or worse, a phone call from debt collector will probably never forget it. But there are debt collectors and there are debt collectors and the ones who work for the government agencies as oppose to private lenders are breed apart.
My colleagues at CNN Money spent months investigating one firm in particular that collects a billion dollars a year for more than 2,000 state and local government. Sometimes, the original debts are trivial or were never owed in the first place or were owed but the debtors didn't even know it. Watch this.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a true story of a man named Harry Memnon. Harry is married, he has two kids and one grandson. He lives in Houston. He's an instructor for the ROTC. He teaches kids what it means to be a good citizen.
One day in 2009, Harry run a toll booth. He didn't remember doing it so he didn't think to pay the bill. For three years he didn't hear a peep, and that made sense because he didn't know he did it.
Then one day, there was a bill in the mail, it came from the firm Linebarger, Goggan, Blair & Sampson. They are a company that makes money on collecting government debt. And they collect a lot of it, a billion dollars each year to be exact. They have clients in 21 states and they work for more than 2,300 government authorities, collecting everything from water bills to speeding tickets. Over the years they have collected so much debt that they become known as one of the biggest government debt collectors in the entire country.
So, let's get back to Harry. He is the one stuck with the bill. Remember that $1.25 toll he missed, well that turned into $286 tab. And where do that money go? Technically, to the Harris County Toll Road Authority in Houston, Texas but now with that Linebarger, Goggan, Blair & Sampson taking a big cut. So this is a true story of a man name Harry. But it's also a true story of how Linebarger, Goggan, Blair & Sampson built an empire by making people like Harry their bread and butter.
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KAYE: I'm joined now by the journalist behind this investigation, CNN Money's Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken. Great to see you both. That a little bit was fascinating right there. But before we talk about all the outrageous abuses that you both uncovered, Blake, first tell me, how the rules are different for firms that go after a government debt?
BLAKE ELLIS, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. So this is one of the most interesting findings from our whole investigation was that unlike consumer debt collectors that go after things like credit card debts, governments debt collectors which go after parking tickets, taxes, toll violations, get to play by their own rules because most of the time, they don't fall under the consumer protections laws that apply to other kinds of debt collectors.
And this means that they can charge much higher fees of up to 40 percent in some states on top of the bill that's actually owed. And they can also issue huge threats like foreclosure, arrest and wage garnishment if people don't pay.
MELANIE HICKEN, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: Or even suspending people's driver licenses, I mean, it's crazy.
KAYE: Yeah. There is one story from this woman, this New York woman who received a bill that for really -- it really seems almost unthinkable. So let me just play a little bit of her story. And we'll talk more about Laverne Robinson here.
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LAVERNE ROBINSON, ACCUSED OF OWING $710: It was about April 12 of 2012. My son was being run down by the police because they said he allegedly stole some curbstones or something outside. So he was running from the police and the police were in their police car. And they run him over and killed him.
They send me a letter stating that I have to pay for the car that hit my son. At first I thought it was a scam. I could not believe that they actually sent me a bill.
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KAYE: That is just heartbreaking. A bill for the car that hit her son, I mean, Melanie was that resolved? Was it a mistake?
HICKEN: The thing with Laverne's story is in that case, it really was a horrifying mistake. The City of New York acknowledged after the fact that that bill shouldn't have been sent obviously. But, I mean, kind of bigger issue here is Laverne is obviously a crazy example, but there's a lot of other consumers who are getting bills that are a mistake and they don't get a public apology. They don't get the, "Oops, that totally was our fault." They're just left trying to figure out how to convince Linebarger that this is a mistake.
KAYE: Yeah. We have another example. This six-figure debt for taxes that were never actually delinquent. So let's listen to this one.
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MIKE KNIGHT, ACCUSED OF OWING $112,360: The first restaurant I opened, the sales taxes ended up being questioned nine years later. I knew I've paid the taxes, I produced documents from the online process that were receipts of the payments.
They keep telling me that they need a bank statement. So I say, "I don't have bank statements." It's -- they're purged. The bank is on a seven-year purge system, so those documents were gone.
For approximately two months, I couldn't go to sleep at night. I didn't know if the Oklahoma Tax Commission could take everything I own. I didn't know if they could put me in jail.
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KAYE: How did that end like?
ELLIS: Well, I mean, as you can see, he was absolutely terrified. I mean, imagine getting a bill for $112,000 for taxes that you paid seven years ago. And that's what happened to him. So he didn't know what to do. He dealt with the firm for months and months and they just didn't believe him, kept telling him that he owed this money. He kept saying he'd already paid it. He couldn't find a proof. And eventually he said it was a miracle that his bank ended up in a garage somewhere finding the documentation.
KAYE: So I keep those records for so long. But what does the law firm say about this?
HICKEN: I mean, the law firm says that these kinds of mistakes are rare, though, we've talked to quite a few people who have dealt with them. And they say, you know, the way to avoid dealing with them is to pay your bills on time. And that to avoid going to collections entirely but obviously, as we've seen it's not that simple.
KAYE: Yeah. And why do government agencies even hire these private collectors in the first place?
ELLIS: Well, it's an easy way for them to get back some money that would otherwise be lost. And they say that the debts that they recover help funds things like teacher salaries, help road construction and all kinds of important things.
And in the case of Linebarger and many other debt collectors, their services come free of charge. So it's kind of a no-brainer.
KAYE: Yeah. You just think about all the red tape, though. If you go through to try and correct the mistakes or people trying to find their paperwork from all those years ago, it's a lot of work.
And you guys did some really great work on this, Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken. Nice job.
HICKEN: Thank you so much.
ELLIS: Thank you.
KAYE: Thanks for bringing it to us.
And for more on this, you can visit cnnmoney.com and click on Above the Law to check it out.
All right, everyone, that's it for me. I'm Randi Kaye. Thanks for watching "LEGAL VIEW." Wolf starts right now.
