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San Francisco Officers Accused of Racism; San Francisco Officers Made Inmates Fight Gladiator-Style; Gut-Wrenching Testimony in Aurora Theater Shooting Trial; Stock Market Rises on Good Jobs Report. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired May 08, 2015 - 14:30   ET

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


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[14:03:01] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Officers in big, big trouble, accused of racism and wrongful arrest. Sadly, this is too familiar. But the scope and scale of San Francisco's story is unlike anything we have seen thus far in a single department. 3,000 cases now are under review from last 10 years because they involve work from 14 police officers under fire for sending racist text messages. San Francisco's district attorney just made this announcement saying he has now enlisted these three retired judges who will, pro bono, sift through all these cases to see if people were wrongfully arrested or convicted. Here's the fear from the D.A., that the bias seen in the text may have bled into their investigations.

At one public meeting, a fellow officer gave a reminder of how offensive those messages really were.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SGT. TANISA WILLIAM (ph), SAN FRANCISCO POLICE DEPARTMENT: Silver- backed gorillas, "N" words, monkeys. I feel personally betrayed by our department because my dedication, loyalty, and service to this city is still not respected by some.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Wow.

Dan Simon is with me.

You sort of hear the tone and tenor of some of these texts. What else did they say?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, this is really ugly stuff, and it's very serious. But first, let me give you a little context in terms of how these text messages came to light. They surfaced earlier in the year in the federal corruption case of a police officer. So this was a by-product of that. You had 14 officers either sending or receiving these messages.

I just want to give you a little flavor in terms of what was said. They included phrases like "white power," references to the KKK, the lynchings of blacks, and repeated use of the "N" world. Also there were hateful words against gays, Mexicans, and Filipinos as well.

Because of this, you have the D.A. dropping this absolute bombshell, announcing that 3,000 cases are going to be reviewed to see if they may be tainted by these officers due to racial bias.

This was the D.A. explaining that announcement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[14:35:00] GEORGE GASCON, SAN FRANCISCO DISTRICT ATTORNEY: I want you to think for a moment, what is the potential impact in our justice system when a juror in a criminal trial questions the credibility of the arresting officer or the evidence that is being presented because they believe that this process may have been influenced by racial or homophobic bias or some other form of bias. Can justice prevail under such conditions?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIMON: Well, the police chief, Greg Suhr, declined our request for an on-camera interview, but his spokesperson told us that the chief has already spoken out forcefully against either homophobic behavior or racist behavior on the part of the police officers, but he's yet to comment about this revelation that 3,000 cases are now under review -- Brooke?

BALDWIN: So that's the chief. What about these 14 officers? What's their status?

SIMON: Well, the chief has recommended that at least eight of these officers be terminated. I can tell you that three of them have reportedly resigned, but the other six apparently their offense was not as severe as some of the others. But what will happen to them, it's unclear at this point.

BALDWIN: All right. Dan Simon, thank you so much. I know you're working on this and will have more tonight at 7:00 with Erin Burnett.

San Francisco's district attorney says some of these cases investigated by these 14 officers have already been dismiss. The D.A. is also looking into a case of jailers forcing inmates into, quote, "gladiator-style fights." According to some of the local news outlets there, two inmates say they were promised hamburgers if they won these fights and threatened with mace and beatings if they refused to do battle.

With me now, criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor, Randy Zelin.

My goodness. Can I just get you to respond? In all your years in law, have you ever heard of gladiator-style fights and which these deputies are trying to get these guys to -- and they're betting on them?

RANDY ZELIN, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY & FORMER PROSECUTOR: Only on "Game of Thrones." So the answer is no. I'd like to think I'm not being naive when I say that.

BALDWIN: When you hear about 3,000 cases -- and we were talking during the commercial break. You were referencing the fact that so many of these have gone through the system in a vacuum at the time. Now trying to look at these cases with total different set of eyes for racial bias, how do you do that?

ZELIN: Well, let's not lose sight of the fact we're always talking about evidence. Merely because a police officer behaved badly, brutally, insanely. The evidence is still the evidence. That's where you get into this notion of harmless error. A judge will say, what happened here was wrong, but it wouldn't have changed the outcome. The evidence is what the evidence is. But what happens is where the evidence isn't now --

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Perhaps they weren't looking for it at the type.

ZELIN: Or didn't want to look for it or buried it, destroyed it, changed it. So it's not simply a matter of I'm not a nice person because I say mean things and I'm biased or I'm prejudiced, but I've actually done something to make evidence go away, to change the case, where if true facts were known, my god, this man, this woman would not be in jail.

BALDWIN: So what do you do if they don't have the full picture, the full pieces of evidence looking back at these cases?

ZELIN: What you do is sometimes you do is circumstantially. If you don't have that smoking gun, you develop change. You go from point "A," you want to get to point "D," you create chains along the way. Common sense, this is how it must have happened. Now if you have a completely different smell in the air, the temperature in the room is different because now you know that it wasn't done in a sterile, normal atmosphere, but in an atmosphere of hatred and bias and prejudice. Now all of a sudden, maybe the evidence looks different because it's now under a different prism. And lord only knows, if you've got people in there who don't belong in that jail, you got to get them out.

BALDWIN: Final question, since so many of us are -- or so many people in general are looking at these cases, given all these examples of police brutality and some not, but some are, are people going to be looking at cases now with different sets of eyes? Not just San Francisco, but anywhere else.

ZELIN: On the one hand, you want to say as a human being, I hope so. As a defense attorney, quite frankly, this is manna from heaven. Give me bad cops. Have jurors saying -- you know, once upon a time, a juror would look at a police officer, no matter what a judge said -- listen, don't look at a police officer any differently. He or she is no more credible than any other witness, but people respected police officers. They loved them. They protected us. If this cop said that he did it, then my god he must have done it. Now you have a different atmosphere. People don't trust the police. (CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Many still do. Many still do. But right now, in this climate --

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: -- there is definitely distrust.

ZELIN: You get more and more and more of this. And you're not going to want your police officer dad coming to school anymore, saying, hey, this is what my dad does for a living. We can't exist as a society if that happens.

BALDWIN: I hope that never does.

Randy Zelin, thank you so much.

ZELIN: Thank you.

[14:40:07] BALDWIN: Next on CNN, more of our breaking news here. Today, the United States military raising the terror threat level for bases across America. The reason? ISIS. Hear what prompted this.

Plus, our other breaking story. This single-engine plane crashing on a major American highway. We'll speak live with a driver who was there who and took this video.

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BALDWIN: Back with our breaking news, the threat of ISIS and the growing number of jihadis in this country putting all U.S. military bases on heightened alert. The threat level now with all of these military installations is now at Bravo, which means at this moment there's a, quote, "increased and predictable threat of terrorism."

Joining me now, Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He's also written a new foreign policy e-book entitled "The ISIS Crisis."

Gideon, welcome back.

GIDEON ROSE, EDITOR, FOREIGN AFFAIRS & MEMBER, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Good to be here.

BALDWIN: Here's my question. This hasn't happened, just context wise, since the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. So what do you think, you know, law enforcement are picking up? We know it's not a specific threat.

[14:45:11] ROSE: Well, look, what you have is a situation in which there aren't -- ISIS doesn't have operatives here the way al Qaeda guys sent to blow up the twin towers were. What they have is a pool of disaffected, radicalized allies who might be motivated to do some freelance attacks themselves. And that, I guess, is what's worrying. Like what you saw with the recent attacks in Texas where people drove there, tried to make some trouble, and got shot down in the process.

BALDWIN: Why -- on the notion -- why target the military? I was watching some of our coverage earlier. One of my colleagues here was pointing out back when James Foley was executed, he referenced his brother, and he said this, I died when your colleagues dropped that bomb on those people, they signed my death certificate. He was sort of saying, it's a soldier for a soldier. Do you think that could be part of the motivation here?

ROSE: It's an interesting question. Actually, I think it's a good thing they're targeting soldiers and military officials as opposed to civilians. After all, the definition of terrorism is not just about the non-state actor of the terrorist but who the target is. It's an interesting question. If we're in a war against ISIS and ISIS is attacking U.S. Soldiers, even if they're noncombatants, it's an interesting question whether it's terrorism, but it's certainly better they're going after armed officials who can shoot back than --

BALDWIN: Still, it's not a good thing.

ROSE: -- than the local people. It's a better thing than it would be them going after soft targets like a local McDonald's or a movie theater.

BALDWIN: OK --

ROSE: The point being that, look, we have -- I'm not saying it's a good thing they're attacking soldiers. My point is that soldiers know how to defend themselves. Our military has strong security procedures in place. I think that this is not a sort of call for the entire United States to be in an uproar and scared to walk out the door or travel to the subway. I don't think we're in danger of an imminent large-scale terrorist attack.

BALDWIN: OK. I referenced your e-book a second ago. I know something you included there on ISIS strategy is the tactics that Washington has used to combat ISIS, mirror those that was used against al Qaeda, but they will not yield the same results in this new age of modern terror, where these ISIS attacks, unlike al Qaeda, they seem to be smaller, more intimate. How has counter-terrorism strategies -- have they even caught up with that?

ROSE: It's actually very interesting. Because ISIS, unlike al Qaeda, is trying to build an actual Islamic State on the ground in Syria and Iraq in the region, and that's where its real power base is. They're also trying to pick up affiliates elsewhere allied with their brand. Their primary focus has not been attacks against American targets, certainly in the United States or even in the region. It's been gaining ground in Syria and Iraq in their territory and holding it and building a state there. So to extent that they're moving more towards what al Qaeda used to do, which is try to generate spontaneous attacks all around the world, that would be something of a change in strategy. But I think their prime focus really is more about building something that's on the ground and durable in the region than it is attacking the United States or the far enemy over here.

BALDWIN: OK. Gideon Rose, thank you. Hope it stays that way.

For nine days now, Colorado has been reliving the heartbreak of 2012's Aurora theater shooting. So far, more than 20 survivors of that massacre have testified in the murder trial of James Holmes. Holmes is charged with killing 12 people and injuring 70 others during a midnight showing of the Batman thriller, "The Dark Knight Rises." He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Testimony has been extraordinarily emotional. Late yesterday, the jury heard just gut-wrenching details from Amanda Teves. Her fiance, Alex, died while shielding her from the bullets that sprayed that entire movie theater.

I want to play some of this for you. There are cameras in this courtroom, but some of the audio, it's pretty disturbing to listen to.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANDA TEVES, FIANCE MURDERED: At first, I didn't know what was going on, but Alex did. And he put his arm around me and pulled me down to the ground.

UNIDENTIFIED PROSECUTOR: What happened when you got down on the ground?

TEVES: I was just really confused. I kept asking what was happening and Alex just kept shushing me and saying it was going to be OK. Until I heard someone yelling that they'd been hit.

UNIDENTIFIED PROSECUTOR: What do you remember after you heard that?

TEVES: I thought it was Craig. I thought that was Alex saying that Craig had been hurt. And then I looked down at the ground at my hands, and I realized they were just in a pool of blood. I yelled for Alex, and I started shaking his tummy, but he wasn't answering me. I just kept shaking him and calling his name, but he wasn't answering me. So I looked at Craig, and I knew something was really wrong when I looked at Craig.

[14:50:38] UNIDENTIFIED PROSECUTOR: Why did you know something was really wrong when you looked at Craig?

TEVES: Because his face was -- it was covered in blood, and I could tell that Alex had been hit in the head because of what else was on his face.

UNIDENTIFIED PROSECUTOR: And what else was on Craig's face?

TEVES: The flesh of Alex. I don't know how else --

UNIDENTIFIED PROSECUTOR: So after you see Craig and you see that, what do you do?

TEVES: I didn't want to leave. Craig was reaching his hand out to me and telling me to go and that people behind me were telling me to go, too, and I didn't -- I didn't want to leave him there. (END VIDEO CLIP)

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[14:56:11] DR. ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: AS a parent, you might think, well, I would know if my child were overweight. But it turns out, according to a new study, often, that's not true. The researchers asked parent of some overweight preschoolers, is your child overweight, and 94 percent thought their child was fine. They didn't think their child was overweight. Part of the problem is there are so many overweight children these days that their parents thought their child was OK because they looked like so many other children.

The children in this study, they were ages 2 to 5. Sometimes it's hard to tell, because they're growing, if they're overweight or not. So you can do two things. One, go to the CDC's website. They have a body-mass index calculator for children. Also, go to your pediatrician. Your doctor will be able to tell you if your child is overweight.

If your child is overweight, we all know what the answer is. They need to move more and consumer fewer calories. Here's a few tips for how to do that. One, avoid sugary drinks. Kids can suck down juices and sodas. It's a lot of calories and you don't realize it. Two, do fun physical activities. If your child enjoys soccer, great, but if not, playing tag, jumping rope, all of those burn calories. Number three, turn off the electronics. Sitting still for long periods of time is terrible for all of us, including children.

Teaching them good habits now is important because overweight children often grow up to be overweight adults. So keeping your child healthy now, you are helping to keep them healthy when they grow up.

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BALDWIN: Elizabeth, thank you.

How about some good news? The April jobs report is so good, as soon as it was released this morning, the Dow immediately shot up nearly 200 points. The NASDAQ rallied as well. Bottom line, the U.S. added 223,000 jobs in April, which is a healthy turnaround after a disappointing month of March. And the unemployment rate is lower than it has been in years and years.

Here is CNN's Christine Romans.

Hey, Christine.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, the headline here, the jobless rate is the lowest in seven years. 5.4 percent is that number. That is a number considered not very far from a fully healthy American job market. Also falling, the black unemployment rate. Look at this trend here.

It is below 10 percent for the first time in seven years. 9.6 percent right now after staying stubbornly high during the early stages of the job market recovery. The black unemployment rate has begun falling quickly recently from about 12 percent a year ago now to that 9.6.

So how many jobs added overall? 223,000 new jobs added in April. That's a big relief after just 85,000 in March. A cold, slow march. Likely winter weather chilled growth there. The second quarter, we can see is now improving.

But those are the overall numbers. You want to know where there's job creation. We saw hiring pick up in office jobs, business and professional services. We saw health care jobs. These are in hospitals. Also ambulatory care centers. These are all kinds of health care workers, including nurses. Net new, 45,000. Construction jobs also grew.

But there were losses in the energy sector, Brooke. 15,000 coal miners, oil and das grilling jobs gone because cheap fuel has hurt jobs and profits.

Wages, another important number. The raise over the past year, about 2.2 percent for most Americans. Doing a little bit better, but you'd like to see closer to 4 percent -- Brooke?

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[14:49:49] BALDWIN: And we're hour two. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Let's get to the breaking news here. The fear of homegrown jihadists prompting U.S. military bases to raise security conditions all across the country. That means every single military installation, including the National Guard, is now under this renewed terror scale. You see the chart here.