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Migrants Being Sent Back to Turkey From Greece; Amnesty International Speaks Out About EU-Turkey Deal; Trump Trailing in Wisconsin Polls; Sanders Versus Clinton on Oil Industry Donations; Brussels Airport Reopens; California Tech Company Behind ShotSpotter. Aired 12-1a ET

Aired April 04, 2016 - 00:00   ET

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

[00:00:11] ISHA SESAY, CNN ANCHOR: This is CNN "NEWSROOM" live from Los Angeles.

Thousands have traveled by land and sea in a desperately attempt to reach Europe. For some migrants and refugees, their future is newly uncertain as a controversial deal between the European Union and Turkey takes effect.

A week after the amusement park bombings in Lahore, loved ones say a final good-bye. We'll look at what is being done to protect Christians in Pakistan.

And, in American politics, the Republican Front-runner warned of a massive recession. Why Donald Trump says he's the only one who can fix the economy.

Hello and welcome to our viewers from all around the world. I'm Isha Sesay. "NEWSROOM" L.A. starts right now.

Many have risked their lives to try to reach Europe but the fate of thousands of migrants and refugees is uncertain right now. A controversial and much criticized deal between the European Union and Turkey is taking effect. Boats are beginning to take migrants from Greece back across the Aegean Sea to Turkey. Ankara agreed to take in migrants who arrived in Greece illegally after March 20th who either failed to apply for asylum or were rejected. For each Syrian that Turkey receives it will send another vetted Syrian to Europe for resettlement.

Tensions are running high in parts of Greece where refugees and migrants now wait to see what will happen next.

CNN's Erin McLaughlin joins us now from the Greek Island of Lesbos. Erin, have the deportations begun? What can you tell us about what's happening where you are?

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT, via satellite: Isha, it would seem so. I'm here at the port here in Lesbos and what has happened is several buses have arrived. We actually saw the buses at detention camp not far from here. They arrived in the early-morning hours, under the cloak of darkness, and then proceeded, under police escort, to this port where, you can see behind me, we've see busloads of predominantly men -- we have yet to see a female -- being loaded onto two Turkish boats. They seem to have finished loading onto this boat right here and have proceeded to begin - if you can see the buses in a distance loading one by one onto the boat just over that way.

Now there is a police presence here. There are riot police present. However, this, for the most part, has seemed to be a peaceful affair. We have heard echoes of protesters outside of this port, behind those gates, just over that way, but so far the protesters have not made their way on to the port. So far this is seeming to be a peaceful process.

Now, there has not been much in the way of information that has been made public about this process, how the individuals boarding these boats were chosen and their nationalities. Authorities are so far being very tight-lipped about that. We have spoken, though, to an EU official who said that they expect about 125 migrants to be loaded onto each of these boats and two boats here in Lesbos and then another two boats on the Greek Island of Chios.

This is a highly controversial procedure, a highly controversial deal and what we're seeing here is it is taking place and unfolding and soon, the thinking being, the people that you've seen loading on those boats will head back to Greece. These are migrants who have risked their lives to come here, trying to enter Europe, and now, for the most part, it seems that those hopes and dreams have been dashed. Isha?

SESAY: So Erin, just to recap for our viewers, if you're just joining us, we are watching these scenes from Lesbos, where Greek officials are loading migrants on to boats to begin the deportation process to Turkey.

Erin, let me ask you, what do we know of what awaits these folks, these people, once they arrive in Turkey? What arrangements, what preparations are in place?

MCLAUGHLIN: Well, we know that Turkey has prepared a facility for these migrants when they arrive, a place for them to stay. But that really is the question here that many international human rights organizations are asking: is Turkey prepared? People are questioning whether or not they have the facilities, the infrastructure to give safe harbor to many of these migrants. [00:05:01] Amnesty International, an organization raising questions about whether or not Turkey is a safe (inaudible) country; and that really is the key question.

Many international organizations are asking, whether Turkey, given what Amnesty International calls a "suspect human rights record," is prepared to take these people and to give them safety -- a safe place to stay. Many of these people, keep in mind, Isha, spent most of their money to come here to Greece. So many will be leaving penniless and their future very much uncertain.

SESAY: Yes; and, Erin, of course, there's a question about those heading to Turkey, but then there's also the question about the selection process for those who are sent onwards to Europe. So many questions that we need answers to. Do we know anything about that stage of things?

MCLAUGHLIN: Well, at this point, as I said, officials at the EU and Greek officials have been very tight-lipped in terms of the procedures that have been put in place to determine who gets sent back. We know that these individuals being sent back today, being sent back to Turkey, they have not applied for asylum here in Greece, for the most part. Those that apply for asylum here, it's still very unclear what sort of policies, what sort of procedures they will be able to follow to try and seek asylum in Greece. So again, just how these individuals have been selected, their nationalities, of these people heading back to Greece, not entirely apparent today, based on information, very limited information, that EU officials have provided.

SESAY: Erin McLaughlin joining us there from Lesbos, Greece with those pictures of migrant refugees being loaded onto boats heading back to Turkey in a short while. Erin, we appreciate it. Thank you for the reporting.

All right, well let's breakdown the key points of this deal for you, this deal between the EU and Turkey on handling refugees and migrants.

Turkey will now take back all who arrived in Greece from Turkey without asylum status; The EU will resettle one Syrian asylum seeker from Turkey for every Syrian returned to the country; The EU will also speed up payment of some $3.3 billion already promised to Turkey to help deal with the refugee crisis; and, the EU will waive visa requirements for Turkish citizens by the end of June; both sides will also continue to negotiate Turkey's possible accession to the EU.

Well Amnesty International has denounced the EU/Turkey agreement calling it a historic blow to human rights. Andrew Gardner is a researcher with Amnesty International and joins us now, live from Istanbul, Turkey. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us. We were just speaking to our Erin McLaughlin. She's there in Lesbos, as the efforts begin to deport people from Greece back to Turkey. Explain for our viewers what you see as the flaws in the construction of this deal.

ANDREW GARDNER, RESEARCHER, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, via satellite: Well, the deal is completely illegal. It's illegal to send blanket returns without any sort of safeguards in place. The UNHCR has been very clear that the necessary safeguards are not in place in Greece. Certainly Turkey is not a safe place to send refugees back to and it's getting less safe by the day. We've documented numerous cases of forced returns of refugees and asylum seekers of various nationalities, including Syrian refugees, en mass, back to the war zone in Syria, but also to Iraq and to Afghanistan as well. So we have really serious concerns that the refugees and the asylum seekers coming back from Greece to Turkey, they could face the same fate.

SESAY: Do you have concerns that this is a process that will be far from smooth and that there will be violence and resistance? GARDNER: I think it's very unclear what will happen. In taking recent (inaudible) there's been a lot of conversations between the authorities as to how these refugees and asylum seekers will be processed, where they will be received. Turkey doesn't have readmission centers in existence yet. So there's likelihood that people will be held in detention centers and these are detention centers that Amnesty International has documented people haven't been able to access lawyers. The UNHCR, they don't have access to these centers, and these are also the places where we've documented people being forcibly returned to their home country.

So the fact that people being sent back from the EU can be held in these places are of deep concern to us. It's a really dark day in the EU's history, as a political bloc that claims to stand up for human rights.

[00:10:01] SESAY: Andrew, as you describe what Amnesty says are the conditions on the ground in these centers that people are being housed in, I'm going to ask you, what do you know of the actual process for selecting whom is sent back? I mean, there are some questions and some have fears that now we face the situation where people won't be given a due process, the application processes won't be fairly heard there in Greece. What are you hearing?

GARDNER: I mean, everyone who arrives in Greece deserves to be treated fairly, to have access to an asylum procedure with all of the necessary safeguards and to be able to appeal that decision if they are rejected. I think there's no evidence that any of those safeguards are in place, and really, as the EU stated itself, all those people, it says, all those people who arrive irregularly to Greece will be sent back to Turkey. So we are very concerned on the face of it. This is clearly illegal, and that really people being sent back to Turkey, we are hopefully going to try and access some of these people but our fear is that really they'll have had no access to a fair procedure whilst they're in Greece.

Our concern now, obviously, is that their rights should be protected while they are in Turkey, but given the constraints to accessing people in detention, given detainees problems with accessing lawyers and procedure and detention, this is obviously a very serious concern.

SESAY: Yes; and for those who are in Greece and came to avoid deportation, is there any legal recourse to avoid the process?

GARDNER: I mean, all of the procedures are incredibly unclear. Greece is passed emergency legislation. It's not clear what effect that will have on the treatment of people on the ground. You know, it's very unclear how the EU is trying to justify this; what procedures they are putting in place; or, really, what is going to be the situation either in Greece or in Turkey.

I mean, the UNHCR said very clear that the necessary protections are not present either in Greece or Turkey. So the fact that not just that Turkey and the EU have gone through with this deal, but it's being rushed through, very clearly without the facilities in place to even have the most basic things like accommodating people when they arrive in Turkey, or without any sort of credible procedures being in place in Greece, is really a sign that both the EU and the Turkey authorities are riding roughshod over human rights standards and really are just keen to push this deal through as quickly as possible without thinking of the consequences for refugees, asylum seekers or migrants.

SESAY: And to that point, in terms of the consequences of this deal, as some have pointed out, this provides an opening for human smugglers, human traffickers to further exploit people who have already been through so much?

GARDNER: Yes, that's right. If you look at the EU's policy, not just over the past months but over the past years, it's been to make it harder and harder to cross the border from Turkey into the EU, effectively sealing off the land border from Turkey into Bulgaria and Turkey into Greece, forcing people to still more dangerous routes, across the sea border where many people have crossed and died in the sea; and, you know, the likelihood is that, you know, this process will continue, that where people can't access these routes, because they're more heavily policed, people are going to try to go more longer and dangerous routes, have to pay more money to smugglers and that more people will die in the sea as a result.

At the same time, we're seeing a parallel process where Turkey's border with Syria has become increasingly dangerous and difficult to cross. We're seeing people faced to pay in excess of $1,000 per person to cross from Syria into Turkey itself; and we're getting reports of refugees, when they attempt to cross, being shut out and in some cases fatally injured by Turkish border guards and people being rounded up, if they get into Turkey, and sent back into the war zone in Syria, where they are staying in camps in pretty abysmal conditions, without access to running water, sanitation, adequate food delivery. These camps, you know, are fraught with dangers, including kidnapping for ransom.

So it's not just the EU border; it's also these policies are having a knock-[00:15:01] on impact all along the line and this is really making the situation more dangerous, not just for refugees in Turkey but also for those tens and thousands of people who are at the Turkish border with Syria and are finding it increasingly difficult to access protection in Turkey.

SESAY: Andrew Gardner with Amnesty International joining us there from Istanbul, Turkey, with some very important insight and perspective. Andrew, we appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Well, for a list of ways to help those affected by the refugee crisis impacting Europe, visit our Impact Your World webpage. It has links to various organizations that are working to help the refugees. That's at CNN.com/impact.

Memorial services having held in churches across Pakistan one week after the Easter bombing a crowded park; more than 70 people were killed and hundreds wounded. A splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban said it targeted Christians in the attack, but most the victims were Muslims. This isn't a first; churches have been bombed and are now protected by private gunmen. Christian communities feel isolated and excluded as families live in fear for their children.

CNN's Saima Mohsin has more on the challenges Christians face throughout the country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAIMA MOHSIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Gunmen guarding a church. I meet Pastor Shakeel and say it's strange to see gunmen outside a place of worship.

We have 20 to guard us on a Sunday, he says.

Youhanabad is the most densely populated Christian area in Pakistan. it was attacked last year. Inside, the Free Church School; there are usually 40 children in this class, but many are too scared to attend since the Lahore Park bombing.

Pastor Shakeel buried six of his flock in one day.

SHAKEEL ANJUM, PASTOR, CHILDRENS CHAPEL CHURCH, via translator: Our people are very poor. They can't afford the time to protest the attack. We really need the support of Muslims of Pakistan and the government. As Christians it is we love and pray for Pakistan.

MOHSIN: In a national address, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said each and every drop of blood is being counted. The score will be settled.

It's being settled, apparently, by the military and police and raids on terrorist hideouts across the country.

CECIL S. CHAUDHRY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE: What about the beast within us? What about the beast that is within our houses and our society? If we do not address those problems this military operation will be a waste?

MOHSIN: Minority rights worker Cecil Chaudhry, says successive governments have made space for extremists. The roots of radicalization of Pakistan are in its biased laws.

CHAUDHRY: When you exclude the law of religious minorities from your textbooks, when you start putting material that is biased towards or discriminate towards other faith, so how would they respect minorities when they grow up?

MOHSIN: Cecil's father, a decorated war veteran and pilot in two wars, has been removed from the history books; and this ad clearly says it is looking for non-Muslims to clean toilets. The ad was later retracted but exposed the institutionalized discrimination.

In Youhanabad we found this Christian community feels isolated and neglected.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My husband is a day laborer but sometimes doesn't find work. I only get cleaning jobs.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's clear our area is neglected because we're Christians. No roads or pavement. No running water.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: if our voices aren't being heard, how can we live here? We are under attack.

MOHSIN: The Blasphemy law has often been manipulated to persecute minorities, including Christians. In a highly publicized case, Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five was sentenced to death for blasphemy. Salman Taseer, the Muslim governor of Punjab, called for the death penalty to be revoked. He was gunned down by his own guard.

At Sunday's service, a special song praying not just for Christians but for citizens of all faiths in Pakistan, who should be seen as equals in the eyes of this state.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: Saima Mohsin reporting there. Time for a quick break now. Donald Trump has some dire predictions about the American economy and some bold plans for eliminating the U.S. national debt. We'll have a look at what he's proposing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (WEATHER HEADLINES)

[00:23:32] SESAY: Hello, everyone. Right now, the U.S. presidential hopefuls are focused on one state, Wisconsin. The key primary there is just one day away. Republican Front-Runner, Donald Trump is trailing in Wisconsin polls behind Senator Ted Cruz. The billionaire businessman said his other rival, Governor John Kasich, who is far behind in the delegate count, should pull out of the race.

Trump also had pessimistic words about the economy in an interview with "The Washington Post" he said the U.S. is headed for a, "very massive recession" and the country is "sitting on an economic bubble, a financial bubble." Despite his gloomy forecast, he also promised that if elected president, he could eliminate the $19 trillion national debt in eight years.

Well, the Democrats also hold primaries on Tuesday in Wisconsin. Candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are accusing each other for taking donations from the oil industry.

Dylan Byers is CNN's Senior Reporter for Media and Politics and joins me now. Dylan, always good to have you with us.

DYLAN BYERS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER MEDIA & POLITICS: Good to see you.

SESAY: We'll get to the Democrats in a moment, but let's start with the race in Wisconsin, which almost all are focused on. It would seem that Ted Cruz, who is doing really well there, according to some polls, ahead up to ten points over Donald Trump, has kind of resorted to Old-School Politics, kissing babies, shaking hands, and it's working; but curiously this is a state Trump should do well in.

BYERS: This is a state Trump should do well in. What Ted Cruz is doing is [00:25:01] going back to the Iowa playbook and that Iowa playbook is, you know, remember he went to all 99 counties in Iowa. The expectation going into Iowa was that Donald Trump would win. I think right now what's appealing to so many voters, with all the, sort of, controversy that is surrounding some of the recent statements that Donald Trump has made, some sort of questions over Donald Trump that we've seen in the past week, people are sort of looking to Ted Cruz now.

Anyone who has sort of been on the fence with Donald Trump is looking to Ted Cruz to see if they can gravitate towards him. I think that's true of a lot of Wisconsin voters and I think that's why we're seeing that surge of support for Ted Cruz and I don't think that's something that has happened recently. I mean, if you look at Ted Cruz's momentum, generally, in the polls across the nation, he, while not doing as well as Donald Trump, he has had much more momentum. We're seeing a lot -- I think we're seeing that in Wisconsin and I wouldn't be surprised if we see that in states further down the line.

SESAY: Donald Trump/Ted Cruz tag-teaming and now saying John Kasich dropout of the race. We're hearing the Cruz Campaign saying he's a spoiler. We're hearing, you know, Trump say he's talking votes from me. Listen to what John Kasich himself had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. JOHN KASICH (R-OH), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There's two strong things I have going for me: (1) I beat Hillary Clinton in virtually every poll. I'm the only one that does it on the republican side. (2) When they look at the record, when they look at the record of job growth, the record of international foreign policy, knowledge and experience, I believe that a convention will look at somebody like me and that's why I think I'm going to be the nominee. We just have to keep going.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: okay; well, he's clearly putting all of his eggs in the convention basket there and saying that they are going to look at him and see his record. He's - effectively he's the grown-up.

BYERS: No; but see, this is the argument that John Kasich has been making for so long. Once people take a look at me, -- the voters haven't taken a look at me. Once they take a look at me they'll know what I'm all about. This was the argument after he won Ohio. The people who know me know that I'm good. That - look, any governor in the United States of America with an approval rating higher than 40- percent could make that argument.

The problem is, he hasn't been able to sell that pitch at a national level. And his inability to sell that pitch at national level has to do with the fact that so many republican voters are hankering for someone who's a traditional establishment Washington governor. They're hankering for either a Donald Trump or Ted Cruz type character, someone who goes against the grain, who positions themselves as an outsider and that, of course, is the problem that the Republican Party itself is dealing with, which is they can't put up an establishment alternative to Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, because that's not what the people want right now.

SESAY: Speaking of doing it their own way, Donald Trump giving an interview to "The Washington Post" on Thursday in which he gave a rather gloomy forecast of the U.S. economy, which runs contrary and counter to general economic forecasts, saying the U.S. is heading for massive recession and also claiming that he's the one that could rid the country of its $19 trillion debt by the end of his eight-year term. This is typical Trump here.

BYERS: Typical Trump. It's, look, danger is on the horizon and I'm going to stop it. I am going to build a wall. China will listen to me. We have a recession coming. I'm going to make sure that recession doesn't happen. It is these sort of setting up these monsters lurking just over the horizon in 2017 and him saying I'm going to be the strong man to stop it. Where is the concrete policy telling you how he's going to do that? Where is the actual evidence that the problem he's citing is actually a real problem? None of that exists.

SESAY: Very quickly, on the Democrats, there seems to be a lot of gamesmanship between the Sanders Campaign and the Clinton Campaign, on this debate, this pre-New York debate. They are debating about the debate. I'm wondering why. Why all of the gamesmanship.

BYERS: There's been gamesmanship between the two of them for such a long time. I mean, for a long time Hillary Clinton believed it wasn't advantageous for her to have debates with the Sanders campaign. She had the first Democratic debate. You go back when there were five candidates on the stage; she did very well. She did better than anyone. All of a sudden she thought it was advantageous.

I think what you see happening is there's this sort of -- Hillary Clinton and her team fundamentally, I do think, believe they are going to win the nomination. Sanders is in this now to advance his agenda as hard and as long as he possibly can.

Right now what you're seeing is the gamesmanship is based off of trying to find out strategically, is it good for Hillary Clinton to debate Bernie Sanders? Can she afford to avoid him? For the Sanders campaign, look, any chance to get on a stage with Hillary Clinton is a good one.

SESAY: Dylan Byers, always a pleasure. I know you're here next hour; we're going to talk "Saturday Night Live" and Trump.

BYERS: Can't wait.

SESAY: Oh, yeah! Thank you, Dylan.

BYERS: Thank you.

SESAY: All right; and a reminder that you can join us here on CNN all day Tuesday for complete coverage of the critical Wisconsin primary. We're going to take a quick break.

Passenger flights are now taking off and landing at Brussels Airport for the first time since last week's deadly terror attack.

[00:30:05] More on the Airport's gradual reopening just ahead; do stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SESAY: You're watching "CNN NEWSROOM" live from Los Angeles. I'm Isha Sesay; the headlines this hour:

A controversial migrant deal between the European Union and Turkey is going into effect. Greece is beginning to send migrants who arrived illegally in the Greek Isles after March 20th, back to Turkey. Buses they took some of them from a holding center to the port of Lesbos, where they are getting on boats for Turkey.

More flights are planned for Monday at Brussels Airport, which reopened to passengers for the first time since last month's deadly terror attack. Three flights took off Sunday afternoon. There are now enhanced security measures at the airport entrance and at the new check-in area. The airport had been closed to passenger flights since two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the Departure Lounge on March 22nd. this was part of a coordinated terrorist attack in the Belgian capital that killed 32 people.

The U.K. has de-radicalization programs to help convicted jihadists try to reintegrate into society when they leave prison, but the man considered one of Britain's the most effective de-radicalizers tells Nic Robertson government funding is falling short.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Three years ago in London -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why are you bothering me? I'm not -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because you're walking through a Muslim area. You're walking through a Muslim area dressed like [bleep]. You need to get out of it.

[00:35:01] ROBERTSON: A Muslim vigilante patrol. The threatening voice? That's Jordan Horner. Today, he says he's a changed man.

JORDAN HORNER, REFORMED RADICAL: It's something which, when I was sincere to myself, I said yes, it was something which I was regretting.

ROBERTSON: Back then, he was a Muslim radical, praised Muslim killers. He was dangerous and went to jail. Today, he credits this man, former cage fighter and de-radicalizer, Usman Raja, with turning him around.

HORNER: That made me understand that, you know, that the actions that I did do were not Islamic.

DOUGLAS WEEKS, TERROR EXPERT, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY: Usman looks at, and is able to re-conceptualized things for the individuals in a way that allows them to challenge their own internal beliefs. There is a very, very select few that are actually quite effective at what they do. Usman, of course, is one of those in that very small group.

ROBERTSON: Getting de-radicalized right has never been so important. British officials estimate about 800 people have gone to join ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and half come back; and then there's Jordan Horner and others like him, an unknown number who radicalized and never left. What Usman Raja, whom I've been covering for several years, is telling me is shocking, that his scant government funding is drying up, as authorities reevaluate their programs.

Always working on a shoe string, he's down to his last $200, in an overdraft account.

USMAN RAJA, DERADICALIZER, GREAT BRITIAN: We were doing about 70- percent of our work for free. What ended up happening is that even that agreement has now disappeared.

ROBERTSON: But he is still in demand; plenty of jail terrorists are asking for his help.

I wanted to go after a few weeks but I couldn't go on my own and he says, you know, I still have terrible nightmares and I want you to help me.

This letter he says, from Imram Quajah (ps), a British radical who joined ISIS in Syria, now a convicted terrorist.

RAJA: We're not able to reach those individuals because there isn't an understanding there of how to deal with this phenomenon.

ROBERTSON: He is frustrated, and so is expert Douglas Weeks. Both say most de-radicalizing programs can alienate radicals.

WEEKS: What they are saying is, you're wrong and so you immediately have this confrontational approach.

ROBERTSON: The British government prevent de-radicalization strategies, details hundreds of people who have been helped through education, criminal justice, faith charities, online and health approaches to de-radicalization.

In jail Horner says authorities tried to de-radicalize him using a psychological approach, telling him he was wrong, to be a good husband, a good father. Nothing worked, until he met Raja.

HORNER: I knew I was a father. I knew I was a husband. I still wanted what I did. Once I knew, from a religious perspective, what I did was incorrect, then I have to question, okay, what's the solution?

ROBERTSON: A solution, it seems, may be at hand; embracing it still a challenge.

Nic Robertson, CNN, London. (END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: After the break, new technology is looking to revolutionize the fight against gun violence. We'll show you how police are using it to listen for trouble.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:40:40] SESAY: Welcome back, everyone. the tech world is joining the fight against gun violence in America. ShotSpotter listens for gunshots to try and direct police to crime scenes faster than a 911 call. Our Samuel Burke visited a police department in New Jersey to see how they are putting the technology to use.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMUEL BURKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (off camera): Gunshots in one of America's most dangerous cities: Camden, New Jersey. Within seconds, and without even a call to 911, the police know exactly where the shooting happened.

GABRIEL CAMACHO, CAPTAIN, CAMDEN COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT: The way it works is you have microphones throughout the entire city. They pick up on sounds of gunfire, and not a matter of hours or minutes but even seconds it will take that sound and triangulate it and send it to main system ShotSpotter, come back with a location and even give us a difference whether it was an actual gunshot or even a firecracker.

BURKE: And it's telling you all of that right here, in your car?

CAMACHO: We saw that information real-time and we are directed to, not within miles or blocks, but, you know, a matter of feet.

BURKE (off camera): California company, ShotSpotter, is placing its listening devices on rooftops and light posts in high crime neighborhoods. It wouldn't show us the microphones, hoping to keep people from finding them and disabling them.

To be effective in the city how many of them do you need dispatched?

RALPH CLARK, CEO, SHOTSPOTTER: We deploy (inaudible) rays of 15 to 20 sensors per square mile, depending on the environment that we're in.

BURKE: How can your system hear the difference between a gunshot and a car backfiring?

CLARK: We have trained human experts there, listening to these particular events and confirming that they are gunshots. Although, our machine algorithms are really, really good, they are not perfect. We know that humans, even though they're not perfect either, they are better than the machine. So we think it's a small price to pay, in terms of time.

You're talking about 15, 20 seconds to make sure we're not pushing over false positives because that's a bit of a deal killer.

BURKE (off camera): With microphones listening in on a city 24/7, many police departments now realize just how much gunfire has gone unreported.

J. SCOTT THOMSON, CHIEF OF POLICE, CAMDEN COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT: Before, the community wasn't calling and telling us about the overwhelming majority of gunshots that occurred; but now, even when people were calling in, many times we were responding to the scene quicker than they were even getting the phone call into us.

BURKE: Some people worry about this technology. Okay, so it's telling you where crime is happening but has it actually changed the crime levels and brought them down, do you think?

THOMSON: When you look where we initially started with ShotSpotter, the first square mile we utilized, it was, statistically, probably the most challenged square mile in the United States of America. We've been able to significantly drive down gun violence within that neighborhood. Now ShotSpotter has been a piece of a puzzle along with Community Policing efforts.

BURKE: What about privacy, when you start talking about listening devices in the lights it does make people fearful about Big Brother?

CLARK: As opposed to video surveillance, which, you know, looks at everything, even if nothing is going bad and then retaining that data for a long time. If you think about what we do, we're acoustic only. We're acoustic 30 feet up in the air. We do all manner of things to our sensors to essentially baffle ambient noise and pull out, you know, impulsive noise. We only keep the gunshot data, you know, the two seconds before and the four seconds after. Everything else gets thrown out.

BURKE (off camera): These systems are not cheap. ShotSpotter charges as much as $100,000 a year, per square mile of coverage. 90 cities across the U.S. are trying out the service now.

For Camden, the fees are worth it; using technology to try and transform modern day policing.

Samuel Burke, CNN Money, New York

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: Fascinating report there. Well, thank you for watching "CNN NEWSROOM" live from Los Angeles. I'm Isha Sesay. "World Sport" is up next. You're watching CNN.

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