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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Baltimore Police Threat; Stranded On Mt. Everest; Nepal Destruction. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired April 27, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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


[12:00:00] KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Earthquake and the aftermath and the tremors and aftershocks that continue. Matt Darvas with World Vision. Matt, thank you very much. I know you have so much on your - so much on your plate and the connection, of course, very difficult to get from those very rural places, but thank you so much for your time. Thank you all for joining us AT THIS HOUR. We're going to continue this coverage. But let's get you over to "Legal View" with Ashleigh Banfield. It starts right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. And welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

We begin with breaking news of a credible threat to law enforcement officers in Baltimore, Maryland. The police department says it's received information that members of various different gangs, including the Black Guerrilla Family, the Bloods and the Crips, have apparently entered into some kind of partnership to, quote, "take out law enforcement officers." And that is a quote. All of this at the same time the funeral for Freddie Gray is now underway, just 15 days after he was arrested, suffering a fatal spinal cord injury while in police custody.

I want to get right to Athena Jones, who's live in Baltimore. And also CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes is joining us on the telephone.

But first to you, Athena, what more do we know about this credible threat that the Baltimore police say they're taking very seriously?

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi. Well, good afternoon.

We know that the Baltimore Police tweeted this out a short while ago. They tweeted out this statement. They want everyone on alert. This is why they've distributed it to the media, calling it, as you said, a credible threat.

The gangs that they mentioned that entered into this partnership are the Black Guerrilla Family, the Bloods and the Crips in this partnership to, quote, "take out law enforcement officers." They're asking the media to distribute this information and, of course, to keep their own officers on alert.

This is exactly the opposite of what Freddie Gray's family has been calling for. They don't want to see any violence. And they have said over and over again, as have others, reverend, pastors in this community said violence does not bring justice. Those are calls that have been echoed by the mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, members of the police department and other elected officials. This is exactly the kind of thing, the kind of news that no one wants to hear. They want this day to be about healing after this tragic death of Freddie Gray in these questionable circumstances.

Of course, a lot of people have a lot of questions. Those questions haven't been answered and they probably won't be answered by the end of this week when the police department is set to turn over what they found in their investigation over to the state's attorney. But regardless, people don't want to see violence. They want to see peacefulness and calm. Freddie Gray's family says that that's what he would want.

Back to you.

BANFIELD: All right, Athena, stand by for a moment because I do want you to get to the reporting about what we thought we'd be talking to you about more, and that's the funeral services that got underway about an hour ago at the New Shiloh Baptist Church in Baltimore. Funeral services for Freddie Gray. All of this as this announcement is being made.

Tom Fuentes, what does this mean for police officers because clearly they are out on the streets, there are still regular protests out there, and hearing that there is this credible threat that police officers and authorities need to now take into account, what does that mean, practically speaking? What do they do now?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, practically, Ashleigh, it means that they're completely vulnerable. When you have that many officers on display, essentially, you know, it's so easy for these groups that are armed to the teeth to take them out if they want to. I think somehow there's a misconception out there that the entire black community is in mourning and in sympathy, you know, with the Freddie Gray family and with the incident that happened.

Make no mistake, the Black Guerrilla Family, the Bloods and Crips, target people like Freddie Gray. These are the people they're killing. And if you look at the statistics, the number, well over 200 murders last year, let's say, in Baltimore, those murders were committed by outside agitators that drove into Baltimore to kill people. They're some of the local gang members. Now they're there all the time. They're armed all the time. And they're dangerous to police all the time. It's just that now, when you put police in a line out in public, they're extremely vulnerable, as we just saw in Ferguson not too long ago where we had two police officers shot standing in a line on the street. So yes, it's very dangerous for them if these groups choose to try to pick out police officers.

BANFIELD: And just so I can understand how this information would have come to be known by police officers, is that they would put this threat out there and allow their thousands of officers to know that this is happening, how would that information come, you know, into the police hands? It's not as though they're - it's not as though there's a communication line open between the Black Guerrilla Family, the Bloods and the Crips and police officers. Is this undercover work that's been ongoing? What would it be?

[12:05:08] FUENTES: It could be an active undercover case that's going on. It could be sources that the police have that they operate all the time. Just as in Ferguson, as I mentioned, that shooting was solved as a result of someone in the community that knew the shooter calling the police and working with the police to help make the arrest. So that's probably exactly what happened in this case. They had information from somebody in that community with close ties or maybe even a member of one or the other of these groups that would be able to give that to the police and say, this is what the leaders are talking about. They've just formed an alliance and a want to go forward with killing police officers.

BANFIELD: Stand by, if you would, Tom, for a moment. I want to go back to Athena Jones, who's standing by outside of the New Shiloh Baptist Church.

It seems, just looking at the picture of you right now, that things are relatively quiet behind you. Has that been the situation most of the morning, getting ready for these services? Or is there any kind of presence outside the church of protesters, either peaceful or otherwise?

JONES: Ashleigh, there have been no protests peaceful or otherwise outside the church. It's been just as calm as it is now. We did have some people arrive - several people arrive on motorcycles. There are a lot of motorcycle groups here in Baltimore, but there's been no - no protest. It's been completely calm. You've had folks coming in since before the funeral began to view the body of Freddie Gray. A lot of people filing through.

But now that service is underway. People are now listening right now to Maryland's Congressman Elijah Cummings, who's speaking very, very, passionately right now about Freddie Gray's death. He's spoken to me. I'm not able to hear him right now, but he's speaking passionately. He spoken to me yesterday very emotionally about the toll Freddie Gray's death has taken on his family and on the community and even on Cummings himself, who just feels the pain of having to see another young life cut short yet again.

So it's been an emotional day already so far. We saw Freddie Gray's twin sister break down while she was viewing his body before they closed the casket, before the services began. She had to be carried away. And, of course, it's not surprising, the man was 25 years old and died under these tragic and very questionable circumstances. So -

BANFIELD: And -

JONES: We're still watching to see what comes out of this service right now?

Ashleigh. BANFIELD: And, Athena, just before I let you go, as I'm looking behind you, it's hard to make out who the people are behind you. But just quickly, have you seen any difference in the way any kind of police who have been dispatched to actually work that location are dressed or how they're behaving? Are they in their cruisers? Are they out in plain view? I mean do you notice any difference now that we're hearing about this credible threat to them?

JONES: Frankly, Ashleigh, I haven't seen any police.

BANFIELD: OK.

JONES: I haven't - I've seen zero. I haven't - I don't see any police cruisers.

BANFIELD: Fascinating.

JONES: It's something that we were looking around for earlier, just before even hearing that - and seeing that tweet and that press release from the Baltimore Police Department. So no, this has been an incredibly calm day especially given what happened on Saturday night. This is - this is what the family had hoped for, a calmness and no protests.

BANFIELD: Oh, good.

JONES: What, of course, they hadn't hoped for is this threat that we're now hearing about on the police.

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Absolutely. And, Athena, just to the right of our two pictures is the live picture that we now have switched over to so that our viewers can see exactly what the circumstance is, in a wider view of your location where you are. The New Shiloh Baptist Church in west Baltimore. And as Athena just reported, it is very quiet there. Almost no police presence. If there is any, it's certainly not terribly visible.

Athena, we'll come back to you as the news warrants and thank you for your live coverage today. We'll continue to cover this breaking news as well, if you're just joining us, it's pretty remarkable to hear this, but the Baltimore Police Department, the criminal intelligence unit, has received some credible information now that members of various gangs, criminal gangs, have actually formed some kind of an alliance and are now entering a partnership to take out law enforcement officials. Those gangs including the Black Guerrilla Family, the Bloods and the Crips. They are calling this a credible threat and that law enforcement agencies should take appropriate precautions to ensure the safety of their officers.

We're going to watch this story for you as we watch the funeral of Freddie Fray underway in Baltimore.

And also up next, we are live in Nepal. The massive rescue and recovery effort, the earthquake there, the avalanche zone, thousands of volunteers, millions of dollars rolling in. Will it be enough?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:13:21] BANFIELD: This hour's other breaking story, two days after the worst earthquake to hit Nepal in 80 years, we can still only wonder exactly how bad it is. How much worse it will prove to be. Far- flung villages that were remote to begin with are all but unreachable now, except by air. Nepal's government is sending out helicopters and gratefully accepting help from two dozen other countries, at least, plus, the EU, plus a half dozen international charities.

Devastation in and around the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, is all too apparent in the images. The official death toll, which rises by the hour, now stands at 3,954. And that includes 72 deaths that happened in India and 20 people who died in China.

But still there is hope. Just a short time ago, after three hours of digging, this happened. A young boy, you can see him there, pulled from the rubble, and he was alive. The climbers are still being airlifted off of Mt. Everest, where at least 17 people were killed in an avalanche on Saturday. A climber at the base camp shot some absolutely remarkable video as the main quake was still underway and the worst was yet to come.

[12:14:48] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The ground is shaking. (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

Go! Go! (EXPLETIVE DELETED). Go! (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

Come under my jacket. Come under my jacket.

Are you OK?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You all right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Yes.

(EXPLETIVE DELETED).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, no, no. Wait, wait, wait. Wait. Maybe there's coming more.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) get back in the tent.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) under the tent? Tent? Tent?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, oh, (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

Should we go back under the tent? (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

Maybe in the kitchen tent. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, maybe.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE). Stay together.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stay together.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stay together. And we try to find the kitchen tent. Oh, no, there is no kitchen tent left.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The kitchen tent was -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The kitchen tent is down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The kitchen tent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Just harrowing. And joining me now on the phone from Everest is mountain climber Jim Davidson, who should be at all counts right now at base camp, the site of that video that we just saw.

Jim, can you hear me OK?

JIM DAVIDSON, MT. EVEREST CLIMBER (via telephone): Yes, I can. Go ahead.

BANFIELD: Jim, the pictures we're seeing are just unbelievably terrifying. I wanted to get a picture of what things are like right now. That's usually a base camp that can, you know, be populated by upwards of a thousand people. What's the circumstance you're in right now?

DAVIDSON: Well, I'm down at Everest base camp now at 17,300 feet. I just got here about 12 hours ago having flown down from the upper mountain. And as you said, and as the footage provides, it was a pretty devastating scene down here for everybody at Everest base camp about two days ago.

BANFIELD: So, there have been some reports that upwards of 70 percent of the people who were in those tents and either waiting to climb or waiting to leave, or supplying those and helping those who do these missions, have left and that they've been able to successfully descend from base camp, and yet we're seeing other pictures where there are clearly bodies that were marked on tents. How many people are still there and are people still trying to get down from base camp into the villages below?

DAVIDSON: The people have started to leave base camp as of today. The last day or two was focused upon treating the injured and taking care of the fatalities. That work has been mostly completed now. And so some teams are starting to pack up and leave.

It's a rugged hike but a simple hike really too slowly work your way down the valley, but the villages below have been impacted as well. Some of the local tea (ph) houses that we stay in have been damaged or don't have their usual electricity or water sources. So certainly some of the groups have started heading down. And, of course, some of the local mountain workers, the Sherpa people and other ethnic groups that work here at Everest base camp, they're worried about their families because they can't get through to them on the phone. So there is a movement starting and it will continue to accelerate over the next few days.

BANFIELD: It is such a desperate situation for so much of that country. And I just want to set the scene for maybe those who are watching our program right now who aren't as clear on how Everest works. But effectively you're at the command central where everybody stages their ascent for the peak and there are several base - there are several camps above base camp. And as I understand it, Jim, you were two camps above base camp when this earthquake and then the subsequent avalanche hit, is that correct?

[12:19:57] DAVIDSON: Just about. You described it well. It is -- Everest base camp is sort of the command center. People flock from all over the world and all over Nepal to come here. We get our equipment organized and the teams support one another and we start climbing the mountain. There are four camps above Everest - Everest base camps. There's camps one, two, three and four. (INAUDIBLE) which is, of course, the first stop above Everest base camp when the avalanche - when the avalanches occurred due to the earthquake about two days ago.

BANFIELD: You are just so incredibly fortunate to have survive that alone. And then if - I know I can hear some trouble with our sat line to you and if I still have you, Jim, maybe if you could describe for me the fact that you could not descend, nor could any of the other climbers who had ascended, to those upper camps because the infrastructure was gone. The ropes were gone. Everything you need to get up and down that mountain was effectively buried by this onslaught of snow, rock and ice. Did those helicopters get everyone off the mountain above base camp? Is everybody cleared from those very dangerous and deathly zones?

DAVIDSON: Yes, you are correct, and I verified that with some of the folks in charge of the helicopter evacuations today. As of late afternoon, everybody from camp two and everybody from camp one has been successfully airlifted out by helicopters. And you're also correct, that that had to be done because the ropes and the ladders we uses to cross hundreds and hundreds of stable - of unstable ice blocks, those were all destroyed completely during the earthquake and during the avalanches that happened after the earthquake. So it is good news that, though a lot of effort and a lot of helicopter flights, we've got everybody off the mountain late this afternoon.

BANFIELD: I am so sorry for what you and your fellow climbers and Sherpas and support staff have had to go through and I am so glad that you are fortunate to have survived this. And our thoughts go out to all of you on the mountain and those who have been lost and, of course, those who may choose to continue this journey up the mountain. I don't know how they can do it with so much infrastructure gone, but that is the story that remains. Jim, thank you for your time. Jim Davidson stranded on Mt. Everest at this point but lucky to be alive having survived that harrowing series of unfortunate tragedies, not only the earthquake but those aftershocks and the avalanches and our thanks to him. That is a difficult job to do to communicate with us from there.

Coming up next, we're going to take you farther down to the ground level. Down in Kathmandu, Nepal, where if you want to helps these victims of this terrible, terrible tragedy, we ask you, please go over to cnn.com/impact, cnn.com/impact. You'll find plenty of ways that you can help, big or small. Groups working to help people of Nepal and you can be part of it even where you are in your home.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:26:23] BANFIELD: Almost 4,000 people now is the death toll. And before we took you live to Mt. Everest, where people remain stranded and the bodies liter the mountain, that death toll, as we watch it, keeps rising by the hour. This is the known dead in the Nepalese earthquake and that is before aid and rescue workers even get a chance to report back from the decimated mountain villages nearest the epicenter.

In Kathmandu, the capital, the situation is simply dire. There's very little else to describe, its dire. CNN's Arwa Damon is in Nepalese capital. She joins me live now.

Arwa, do your best to set the scene for us because I think that in the early hours it's hard to even deal with the magnitude of the scope of this all. But the information must be sifting in now as to how big this job is going to be. Help me understand it.

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you can't go a lot of places in the capital and not see a certain level of destruction. Some parts of it understandably naturally harder hit than others. And every location that you go to where a building has collapsed, you find a heartbreaking story still unfolding on the scene itself.

In one location we went to, a man was trying to scale a ladder, something the rescue workers would not let him do because it wasn't safe, because his father was buried underneath the rubble. In another location, part of a volunteer force helping out their rescue teams. Another young man digging with his bare hands because he believed that his wife and seven-year-old daughter might still be alive in that building because 24 hours earlier, the rescue teams had actually managed to find a woman alive.

And then you have all of these people that are too afraid to go home, living in tents along sidewalks and gardens, in parks, and there you also see a lot of the walking wounded. In one of the parks there is a medical field clinic to help them out, give them whatever aid they need, medical aid they need. There we met a little six-year-old boy who described the earthquake as feeling like fire and then he felt a lot of pain. A brick had fallen on his head. But, still, 48 plus hours on, I think people are really still

struggling to deal with the magnitude of all of this and so many are out there not really knowing the fate of their loved ones, especially those that have relatives in these far flung areas. When we arrived this morning at the airport, we met a man whose village is not far from the epicenter of the earthquake. Two of his cousins work on Mt. Everest. He had not heard from any of them since the earthquake happened. He didn't know how he was going to reach his village because the roads are blocked off. And you have all this uncertainly that remains, not to mention the still very real fear of aftershocks. We felt one about 45 minutes ago.

BANFIELD: Oh, Lord. And imagine being after 10:00 at night, there must be so many people who are exhausted and trying to just find a place to sleep safely.

Arwa, the reports that have been coming into CNN are that dozens of countries are reaching out and they're doing so quickly. There's only one international airport there in Kathmandu and it must be just so overwhelmed. Are you seeing any evidence of some of that international aid that is about to be deluging where you are, thankfully, but also the concern that it may be very, very difficult to disseminate this kind of aid?

[12:29:54] DAMON: It's difficult for a number of reasons. One, as you mentioned, they're actually landing at the airport. A number of the commercial flights that are coming in aren't able to land because of damage or because it's simply too crowded. That is the same problem that is facing some of these aid flights that are coming in. But then the issue isn't just getting the aid to Katmandu. It's getting it to those areas