Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

"Bringing Peace to Syria"; Chicago Mayor Emanuel Cuts Vacation Short After Police Shootings; No Charges in Tamir Rice Shooting Death; First Winter Storm Hits Northeast. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired December 29, 2015 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:29:49] POPPY HARLOW, CNN HOST: That headline posted by Kirby online yesterday certainly raised some eyebrows. Slate.com writes, "If you're thinking of Syria, the country embroiled in a brutal, deadly civil war that's witnessing atrocities committed by ISIS in the regime like forcing a mass exodus of ordinary Syrians you're thinking of the right country." In an op-ed, Secretary of State John Kerry warns in a very different tone the obstacles to peace in Syria remain daunting.

Let's talk about all this to CNN security and intelligence analyst Bob Baer. He's also a former CIA operative.

I want to get to that in a moment but I would like your take on this breaking news that we have. The fact that this ISIS operative Sharif al Maw Adan (ph) was killed. We are told he is tied to this man, Abdelhamid Abaaoud who was the ringleader of the Paris attack. Your take -- Bob.

ROBERT BAER, CNN SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, I mean this is a good turn of events, Poppy. I mean this synchronized attack on Paris was undoubtedly planned in Syria with the Islamic state. There's a lot of people who got training. They've got Syrian passports.

This was a military-style attack. So we're going up the chain of command. And, you know, the bombing is -- obviously the bombing is creating chaos in Syria, but at the same time it's taking out the leadership of the Islamic state. You look at the Islamic state. It is not doing well at this point.

HARLOW: All right. So let's talk about Syria as a whole because so many have said, Bob -- you and I have talked about this countless times. You cannot defeat ISIS. You cannot have a full win if you still have civil war, chaos in Syria, if you still have Assad in power. What do you make of what John Kirby, the spokesman for the State Department posted talking about one of their accomplishments was what's happened in Syria.

BAER: It's very bizarre. I mean clearly Syria is getting worse. I mean the Russian bombing is creating absolute havoc among the civilian population. There's going to be more migrants, more waves of immigrants coming into Europe.

Things are not going well in Syria. Saudi Arabia is pouring money in, supporting Islamic factions. Turkey is as well. I still think we're on the edge of the abyss here with Syria. It easily could go over a conflict between Russia and Turkey. Again, things are not getting better and it's a very bizarre statement to come out of the State Department.

HARLOW: He also wrote that the U.S. is, quote, "winning the fight against violent extremists". That just doesn't match up with how Americans see it, right? If you pull up this recent CNN/ORC poll, what it shows there's actually only 18 percent of Americans think that the U.S. has the upper hand when it comes to the war on terror; 40 percent say the terrorists are winning.

Bob, where's the disconnect?

BAER: You know, frankly, Poppy, it's propaganda. They're trying to paint the best picture they can about the Middle East. But it is getting more chaotic. You look at Afghanistan, al Qaeda is back. Yemen is an utter mess. Boko Haram in Nigeria is coming back -- major attacks yesterday.

This is not going away. We can take down the structure of the Islamic state. We can close off the oil production. We can do the rest of it. But if you still have chaos in the wake of it all, you're going to have continued violence, whether it's in Europe or the Middle East or the United States. It's just a fact.

The default is Islam when you have chaos, and radical Islam follows. We're going to have more of it unless we get a political solution to this part of the world and I don't see anybody moving toward that right now.

HARLOW: All right. Bob Baer -- thank you so much. Have a good New Year.

BAER: Thank you.

HARLOW: Any moment, the officer who shot and killed a teenager in Chicago last year, the teenager Laquan McDonald -- that officer Jason Van Dyke will appear in court. We saw him walk into the courthouse moments ago.

What political ramifications could his case have and the tension between police and civilians in Chicago? Ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:37:26] HARLOW: At any moment the officer who shot and killed Chicago teenager Laquan McDonald will appear in court. Officer Jason Van Dyke -- you see him there arriving at the courthouse just a few moments ago, protesters swarming him outside. We're expecting him to plead not guilty any moment to six separate counts of first-degree murder.

His arraignment coming as the city faces another wrongful death lawsuit filed by the father of teenager Quintonio LeGrier. He was fatally shot over the weekend by a different Chicago police officer. This all comes amid weeks of calls from some protesters for Chicago's mayor Rahm Emanuel to step down. He is now cutting his vacation short from Cuba, returning back to Chicago.

Let's discuss all of this in a bigger picture with Lynn Sweet, she's the Washington bureau chief for the "Chicago Sun-Times" and Joe Moore an alderman for the city's 49th Ward. Thank you both for being here.

LYNN SWEET, "CHICAGO SUN TIMES": Hi -- Poppy.

JOE MOORE, CHICAGO ALDERMAN: Thanks for having us -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Of course. Let's just do a reality check because you see so many headlines. This is now in the national conversation, you know, calling on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to step down. Lynn, knowing -- for anyone who knows Rahm Emanuel, this is not someone who goes quietly. There's also not a protocol in the city to remove the mayor -- right.

SWEET: You're right -- Poppy. There's no recall. There's no impeachment and Rahm Emanuel is not going to step down. So however this story unfolds he's going to be the mayor of Chicago for the foreseeable future.

HARLOW: When we look at the future, though, he, Joe, has admitted and said, we have to have change. Something needs to change. Obviously you've got the police chief is out. The former head of IPRA, independently overseeing these police investigations is out. You've got two new folks in there. But it's much bigger than that. What needs to happen, Joe?

MOORE: Of course it's much bigger than that. You know, we've seen it in Ferguson, New York -- the issue of police misconduct and police relationships with the community, particularly communities of color, are issues across urban America.

The issue is not what we should have done in the past but what we can do to shape the future. And I think all these calls for the mayor to resign are distracting us from being laser-focused on trying to change the culture of the police department.

HARLOW: Lynn, let me read you this because there's this interesting "Wall Street Journal" article that said, look, the city of Chicago can't afford to lose Rahm Emanuel. He has huge ties to big business in the area.

[10:40:05] Andrea Zopp, former head of the Chicago Urban League wrote this. "I certainly understand the frustration of all those who are calling for the mayor to resign and there are views that he has not handled these issues well. My view is that he is there and he is paying attention and we have his ear. We ought to use it to drive real change."

Give me the heart beat of Chicagoans right now. What are they saying about that? SWEET: Well, first of all Andrea Zopp is a Democratic senate

candidate and she is a former appointee to the school board by Rahm Emanuel. The "Wall Street Journal" is looking at this just through a business lens.

HARLOW: Right.

SWEET: So the reality is, as Alderman Moore has pointed out and I pointed out that Rahm Emanuel is going to stay, I think you can't forget the past because what Rahm Emanuel has not done is create constituency. He has no base support in the city that is going to be there for him no matter what.

He has --

MOORE: Well, Lynn he just got reelected with 57 percent of the vote.

SWEET: Yes. And that was then, this is now. I think that the facts on the street have changed because of these two horrific incidents dealing with police. He has to -- just looking at him in terms of his ties to corporate Chicago, I mean you give him credit where credit is due.

He is -- so you have a plus or good grade on that mark on his report card. When you come to school to give him a different grade, when you give him policing, it's yet another grade.

You know, I understand is that when it comes to the totality of the picture, right now the policing piece is the one that has created the worst crisis in his political career and governmental career.

HARLOW: Joe, I know you want to push back.

MOORE: Actually being on the ground in Chicago and not Washington, D.C., I think I have a little bit more of an ear what's going on here. And what you're seeing is the people calling for the mayor's resignation are the same people that supported his opponent in the last election. You don't get do-overs in elections.

The mayor will be up for reelection in three and a half years and he will be judged in large part by how he responds to this latest crisis.

SWEET: Right. We're not disagreeing --

HARLOW: Lynn?

SWEET: -- by that. And Joe, my accent is as thick as yours here so we're both Chicagoans. Don't pull that Washington, D.C. thing. I grew up a few blocks from his ward. So he's just trying to egg me on there -- Poppy.

MOORE: You've been in D.C. for a while, Lynn, we miss you.

SWEET: But the point is, Rahm Emanuel is going to be there. I think the calls -- the stories about him resigning or stepping down are not where the story is at because it's not going to happen. I'm surprise that the conversation is kind of stuck on that rather than think of something you want Rahm Emanuel to do, ask him to do it.

HARLOW: All right. Joe -- you're a big supporter of Rahm Emanuel --

MOORE: And Lynn and I agree totally on that.

HARLOW: All right. So you're a big supporter of Rahm Emanuel. Hindsight is 20/20 -- we would all do things differently looking back. What can he do now? Issue number one -- he needs to do better.

MOORE: Well, you know, first of all, he's been doing a lot already. As you indicated, he's fired the police superintendent --

HARLOW: All right. But what needs to change? Something needs to change.

MOORE: He's put in any people and well, it doesn't happen overnight. He's got to show that he understands what people in minority communities are feeling with respect to police relationships.

The best antiseptic is transparency. Nothing is more transparent as we've demonstrated than video cameras. He is pushing harder on putting cameras on uniforms on police officers. Going to make sure that the cameras in the squad cars are actually working and if they aren't that the people -- the officers driving those squad cars don't have them in operating order are disciplined.

In other words, what he's doing is trying to do everything he can to restore trust in the Chicago Police Department, particularly in communities of color where that trust has been torn apart.

HARLOW: All right. Lynn Sweet, Joe Moore -- thank you both.

SWEET: Thank you.

HARLOW: Still to come, the family of a slain 12-year-old says corruption tainted a grand jury's decision. What they say forced the controversial decision to not charge the police officer who fatally shot their son.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:47:33] HARLOW: Two police officers will not be charged in the death of Tamir Rice. A 12-year-old was shot -- he was shot and killed while he was playing with a toy gun in a park. It took more than a year for a grand jury to come out last night with the controversial ruling. The boy's family is more than just outraged. They're making allegations of corruption and sabotage pointing to the grand jury process.

Jonathan Abady an attorney for the Rice's family was on CNN earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JONATHAN ABADY, ATTORNEY FOR TAMIR RICE'S FAMILY: It's clear to us from interaction with the prosecutor that this entire process was being distorted and corrupted and directed in a way that would engineer a no indictment in this case.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: CNN's Jean Casarez is with me now. Also CNN legal analyst Mark O'Mara is also with us.

Jean, to you first: what happen next legally? I know the family is calling on the Department of Justice to do something. What can be done legally?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, first of all the grant jury has spoken in regard to state charges -- right, the U.S. attorney's office for northern Ohio. So this is the feds, right, in Ohio. They say that they have followed the investigation. They are going to be continuing the investigation.

Of course, Mark can talk more about the high standards when you're talking about a federal charge in this case. But the Justice Department for two years now have been investigating the Cuyahoga County Cleveland Departments because of allegations of excessive force. And they found excessive force.

So there is a consent agreement at this point where the two agencies will work hand in hand and obviously they're going to address this case. But one thing yesterday that goes out of the legal realm in a sense, the prosecutor actually showed a picture of Tamir Rice's gun which was a pellet gun, toy gun but it did shoot out things -- pellets, alongside an actual gun. I think we can see how similar they are right there. The toy gun is supposed to have an orange end to it. That had been ripped, torn off.

So the prosecutor yesterday made a plea to toy gun manufacturers. Here's what he said. He said, "I want to call on the manufacturers of toy guns not to make guns that look so much like the real thing. If the color and design of Tamir's pellet gun had screamed toy, then the call that set this tragedy in motion might never have been made.

[10:50:00] And that code was, Code 1 report of a guy pointing a gun at people -- that's what the dispatcher said to the officers that were one mile away.

HARLOW: And what is critical here, Mark O'Mara, is the difference between what the dispatcher said, which Jean just read, and what was told to the dispatcher in the 911 call, which included at two times the caller saying, it is probably fake and at one time the caller saying this may be a juvenile. What kind of accountability, if any, on the dispatcher?

MARK O'MARA, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, part of the problem is whenever there's a tragedy like Tamir's killing we want to look for responsibility. Certainly when you look at what the dispatcher did or didn't do, we can say, had that dispatcher been slightly better- trained, had that dispatcher taken the extra 15 seconds to advise the officer, who were going to respond exactly what they were really dealing with, it may have had a different outcome. Because certainly we know those two officers when they responded unfortunately were responding with the adrenaline that's there.

When they heard there's a code 1 person pointing a firearm. That's an immediate dangerous situation. That's why the cops responded the way they did. Had they known it was a 12-year-old child? Had they known it was with a toy gun, obviously the result would have been different.

But that's why I'm not particularly surprised with the outcome from the grand jury because w When you look at what those officers did based upon the information available to them at the moment they had to make that very tragic decision, that's all they had to work with.

I'm afraid that we might attack the grand jury process as the attorney for the Rice family did and I'm not certain that's well placed criticism.

HARLOW: Let's talk about that. Let's talk Mark O'Mara about the grand jury process, you know. They came out here and they said that that this prosecutor did everything he could to defend his police and do nothing for our son. You can understand a family's pain.

What's your -- I mean you came out saying I hope this doesn't have bad implications for the overall grand jury process.

O'MARA: Well, here's the problem. Grand juries are put in place to protect citizens. Sometimes they protect cops as they sometimes protect other citizens. What it's there for is to limit the government's otherwise existing ability to just prosecute you.

Now, the Rice family's attorney is saying, well, they abused that privilege because the prosecutor can do whatever he wants in a grand jury. While that's true, I think that degrades or insults the true grand jury process. And this particular grand jury who took months to look at an enormous amount of information, granted it wasn't what the Rice family wanted but the grand jury process is there to protect all of us.

It's intentionally secretive because a decision has not been made to publicize a criminal event. I like grand juries for the most part because when we don't have grand juries we simply have prosecutors making the decision without citizen involvement. I think grand juries are generally doing a very good job, should be kept and should be respected.

CASAREZ: And Timothy McGinty, the prosecutor in all of this, was previously a judge. Yesterday he said that when he took office it was paramount to him to make a more investigation with excessive force cases. They all go to grand jury.

It used to be prosecutors behind closed doors and he changed that. HARLOW: Right. Thank you so much -- Jean Casarez, reporting for

us. Also Mark O'Mara -- thank you very much.

We're going to take a quick break. Coming up at the top of the hour press conference on that 18-year-old Ethan Couch who killed four people in a drunk driving accident who was on the lam for weeks and weeks has been captured along with his mother on the run in Mexico. More on that straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:56:58] HARLOW: The central United States recovering after a monster storm system unleashes heavy rain, flooding and tornadoes. More than 40 deaths blamed on the severe weather over the last week. We know 11 people were killed by those tornadoes in north Texas alone over the weekend. In Chicago nearly 2,000 flights canceled yesterday alone, delays continuing to mount this morning.

Jennifer Gray -- tracking all of it in the Severe Weather Center -- where do we begin? This is all part of the same system that's just moving east, right?

JENNIFER GRAY, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes. You're exactly right. This is still the same system that impacted Texas just a couple of days ago. It has been a powerful one.

Of course, now losing a lot of steam -- not much snow left with this system at all. New York City, you're 45 degrees now, all rain. It's actually almost ending for you altogether. Boston, you've turned to rain now, your temperature rising 38 degrees. A little bit of snow left across portions of Maine and northern sections of Vermont and New Hampshire.

But this is really moving out quickly. You can see Boston even ending a little bit of that rain. So by this afternoon it looks like things will pretty much be wrapped up or at least the big cities. But those delays like Poppy said they are going to stick around for much of the day.

Ice accumulation is going to be a huge problem. We could see quarter of an inch to half an inch of ice definitely enough to lose some power with those trees and power lines falling. So be on the lookout for that if you're in those areas. The higher amounts of snow basically going to be in portions of Maine and northern Vermont and New Hampshire with 2 to 4 inches possibly isolated amounts up to 8 if you're in Maine.

This winter storm is definitely one of the concerns but another concern, even though those showers have ended for the middle part of the country, the flooding is there. We have the Mississippi River at major flood stage, 439 locations reporting flooding. All of that water flowing downstream, Poppy so the Mississippi River definitely overfilling its banks in some places and all those rivers and streams down stream are going to be a huge concern for the coming days.

HARLOW: No question. All right. Jennifer Gray, on top of all this -- thank you so much.

Quick check of our top stories for you.

Secret service agent stops a man flying a drone alongside President Obama's motorcade. This happened while the President is on vacation in Hawaii. Authorities say the man was completely unaware the President was even there. He cooperated with requests to land the drone. He will not be charged.

San Francisco has a beef with the Biebs. The city upset over all the graffiti promoting Justin Bieber's new album. Public works employees have been trying to spread a much of that graffiti paint off, if they can but it's hard. Recent rainstorms didn't even fade it. The city attorney calling it a visual blight, demanding to know who's responsible; not clear how much money the city is paying for cleanup.

(MUSIC)

HARLOW: Music fans mourning a rock icon. Legendary Motorhead front man and basis Ian Lemmy (ph) died following a very short battle with cancer. He was told of an extremely aggressive form of cancer Just on Saturday. He just passed away.

His fans took to Facebook, expressing their sadness. They said, we will say more in the coming days but for now please play Motorhead loud, play Lemmy's music loud. He was 70 years old.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Poppy Harlow.

"AT THIS HOUR" with Berman and Bolduan begins now.