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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Manhunt for Rogue Cop; Blizzard 2013
Aired February 08, 2013 - 23:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Hey, good evening again. It's 11:00 here on the East Coast. We have two big breaking stories tonight. The manhunt for a rogue ex-cop and suspected triple killer. We just got these surveillance shots of him earlier this evening; Christopher Dorner, of course, is his name. These were taken January 28th outside a hotel in Orange County, California.
There's also exclusive new video on the firing range as an LAPD cadet. We have got a lot of new information on the manhunt, and we're going to look into exactly what Dorner's grievance is with the LAPD. We know he was fired from the force. The question is why? Why was he removed from the police force?
He says it was due to corruption because he broke the blue wall of silence. We're going to investigate exactly what he is talking about.
Also here in the east, the punishing winter storm that we have been covering a lot this past hour, just now reaching its peak, and many hours ahead. Possibly more snow than anyone has seen in a generation in some areas, not as bad in the New York region as it might have been. Hurricane force winds in some places. Power lines down.
More than 130,000 customers without power tonight across New England. Thousands of flights, as you know, canceled. Even snowplows getting stuck. There you see that snowplow in Boston. New York's commuter rail service Metro North canceling service. The major highway from Long Island into Manhattan now shut down.
Let's begin with the storm that's really hitting hard in Massachusetts. Jason Carroll is in Boston for us, as he has been for several hours. Ali Velshi is on the Cape, Cape Cod, in the town of Dennis Port. Let's start with Ali there.
Ali, it's looking like the snow is kind of -- you're in a lull there right now. Is that true?
ALI VELSHI, CNN HOST: Yes, a little bit. And the weirdest thing in the world just happened. I came out here to be on TV with you. And these two guys are here. I have no idea who they are. I thought they were our crew, so I told them to get out of the shot.
Can't possibly imagine anyone being out here. I have been out here for hours and hours and hours and have not seen a soul. And this is Jim (ph) and Garrett (ph). They live around here.
Jim (ph), where do you live?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I live on Inman Road (ph), about a quarter of a mile away.
VELSHI: What on Earth are you doing?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got a little cabin fever so we decided to come down to the water and see what it looked like. We heard there was a storm surge.
VELSHI: What did you -- what did you expect to see and what have you seen?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We expected to see frankly a little bit more surf than is going on here now. But the wind and the sleet, it's like -- it's really pounding against you.
VELSHI: I have been carrying on all day about how hardy you New Englanders are and you have seen weather. But this is different for you. How long have you been out here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have been in New England all my life. And this particular storm, it's pretty -- it's pretty good. I mean, I lived through the blizzard of '78.
VELSHI: Yes. That's what everybody keeps referring to.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is nothing compared to that.
VELSHI: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So far, anyway. We'll see.
VELSHI: All right. You have actually ventured further, Anderson, than we have because we have been sort of staying around this area. How far did you walk down here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: About a quarter mile.
VELSHI: And what does it look like? Is it -- give me some (inaudible).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's about 4 or 5 inches of snow, slushy snow on the streets. Nothing's really plowed yet. So it's really slushy. And -- but the wind is the hardest. It's like really, really blowing on you.
VELSHI: Did you see -- did you see power outages or does there seem to be power? There's power all around here. So is there power where you are?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We lost power for like a minute a couple times and then it just flicked back on. So far, so good. VELSHI: All right. Well, this is -- again, interesting, Anderson, because you were mentioning to Poppy you hadn't seen anybody around her except for a couple guys. Jason has been out on his own. I was certain I wouldn't see anybody. I was really quite surprised to see these two guys. And I -- it's the same reflection I've got.
The surf's -- it's up, but it's not -- the line of the surf is not further in than you would expect. It's a little rough, but this wind and these little icy pellets are really the problem around here, Anderson.
COOPER: Yes. Well, I'm glad you found two friends, Ali.
VELSHI: I do have two friends.
(CROSSTALK)
VELSHI: It's going to be busy for that --
COOPER: (Inaudible). All right, good. Ali, we'll continue to check in with you. Try to get some warmth.
Jason Carroll is in Boston.
How are things been in the last 30 minutes or so?
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're getting a bit of an estimate here. We're hearing just about a foot and a half of snow has fallen so far on Boston. This is going to be the problem tomorrow, Anderson, on streets like this.
Check out this car right here. I mean, in order to try to dig out, it's going to be really an effort here. Tomorrow, the whole story is going to be about digging out and trying to get into cars like this one that are parked on streets like this.
As you can see over here, it looks like fresh snow. Well, just about two hours ago, there was a plow that went through this entire area, but it's tough to tell, isn't it, because this is how much snow has fallen since the plow has been in here.
Doesn't even look like a plow has been in this particular parking lot in South Boston, but the reality is some 600 plows have been out throughout the city all night trying to battle this blizzard. Throughout the state, you've got about 4,000 pieces of equipment, you've got the National Guard numbering about 5,000, who are on the standby when the teeth of the storm hits just about an hour or so from now.
We've got blizzard-like condition, your whiteout conditions. If you look up the street here in South Boston, you can barely see up the street simply because you have got this powdery like snow which is blowing all over the place and making things very difficult.
I just also want to give you an example of just how cold it is out here. Now in between live shots, what I do is I run into my live truck over there, which is now being buried in that snowdrift, but my photographer, he stays out here so you can get what we call live bumps, live pictures of what is going on.
So let me show you very quickly -- hand that to my producer there. This is hard. He's like the Tin Man out here. It's trying to -- it's --thanks, Bob, for doing that for us, we really appreciate that, Bob the photographer, who is now literally frozen stiff.
COOPER: Wow.
CARROLL: But you can see he's still out here shooting, giving us an idea of just how cold it gets out here.
Anderson?
COOPER: Yes, amazing job that all our folks are doing behind the scenes.
You know, Jason, it's interesting to see how powdery that snow is because in the 8 o'clock hour when we first starting talking, the top of the 8 o'clock hour, it was a much kind of a wetter, harder packed snow, the kind that you said that was good for making snowballs, building snowmen, but now it seems it's kind of the nature of the snow itself has changed.
CARROLL: Yes, remember that before? As I said, it was like a sticky kind of a substance. But look at it now, Anderson. You can see here it's that powdery kind of stuff that you heard Chad Myers talking about earlier. And it's this powdery kind of snow that, once it -- you have got blizzard-like conditions, you have got, what, 40, 50-mile-per-hour wind gusts that are blowing around Logan International.
Once that gets up into the air, that's why you have these white- out conditions. That's why it's very important to stay off the roads. In fact, it's illegal at this point to be on the roads in the state of Massachusetts.
According to the governor, after he issued that mandate that basically said only emergency vehicles can be out, anyone caught being out on the roads, other than emergency vehicles, can face a fine up to $500 and jail time up to a year.
COOPER: Wow. All right, Jason, we'll continue to check in with you no doubt.
Let's get the big picture now, where the storm is, how much longer it's got. Chad Myers in the Weather Center.
Chad, where are you tracking right now?
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You know, it will start shutting off from the Poconos eastward in a couple of hours. Probably shut off in New York City in about six hours. But still, an awful long way to go for east of there, Connecticut, Rhode Island, into Massachusetts. Mt. Sinai now, our new winner or loser, depending on your point of view, 19 inches.
Now this is Suffolk County. This is just on the north shore of Long Island. This is Setauket (ph), 19 inches. Manchester, Connecticut,, 18.5. And if you go into Mansfield, into Massachusetts, we're talking 16 inches of snow. We haven't seen numbers like this now for a while. We know that it has been snowing 2 to 3 inches per hour.
If it will do that, even 1 to 2 inches per hour, for another eight hours, you can do the math. We still have more snow to come, especially into New England, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island. A little bit shutting off in New York City right now, but the snow is still coming down. And it will come down for the rest of the night, probably until morning.
Every time we see the blue here, the lighter blue, that is heavier snow. When you see the pink, that's what Ali Velshi is in. Ali's right there, and the pink is snow that's kind of melted and froze again, and the closer you get to the center of the low, the warmer it's going to get.
And Ali is going to be the closest person to that center of the low, so he's going to see that stuff, he's going to see that pelting icy snow all night long.
Back out farther to the west, it's going to be all powdery snow because now it's getting colder. And we're getting even some little bit of a little bluer area here around New York City where the snow is coming down a little bit harder. Probably another 4 to 6 for the city before it's done, maybe a little bit less. But that's what we're thinking at this point.
There will be more snow east of, let's say, Saratoga all the way into New England. Less snow if you obviously get west of the Hudson River.
COOPER: You know, Chad, when you and I talked about 24 hours ago last night, there were a couple different tracks for the storm. There was kind of a more optimistic one and one that you thought were going to be more accurate. So far, any big surprises, this storm following kind of the path you thought?
MYERS: A little bit of a surprise because we had two lows, one that was in Michigan and one that was in Georgia. And they were supposed to get together. Well, the one over Michigan was slow to arrive. And slow, so when the rain came into New York City, it should have been snow. That's why there isn't a lot of snow in the city, only about 4 inches in Central Park.
So because it rained a lot of the day, a rain/snow mix a lot of the day, the snow in Central Park in New York City never really did pile up. That was the good news. It was very happy there that we weren't going to get all that snow piling up in the city.
But now the warm and the cold have combined and so the low, even though it was slow to arrive from Michigan, it's now there and so the snow is coming down everywhere. Not -- there's no more rain/snow mix other than where we are right on the Cape. That's the only rain/snow mix, maybe Block Island out there in the Atlantic. But everybody else will just get all snow all night.
COOPER: I got what is probably a dumb question; I probably should know this. What makes a storm a blizzard rather than just a really, really bad snowstorm?
MYERS: Well, Chris Cuomo was talking about that earlier. It really is a wind event. You have to have wind over 35 miles per hour for about three hours straight, talking about visibility less than a quarter of a mile.
And it can be a ground blizzard even without snow. If it's just a blizzard, just blowing that light, fluffy snow around where you can't see a quarter mile, that's still a ground blizzard, but a true blizzard has to have snow falling from the sky at the same time. All of those things have to be put together.
COOPER: And you hear -- you know, I was 10 years old in '78. I still remember that blizzard, that snowstorm here in New York City. Any sense of how this is going to compare to '78?
MYERS: For New York City, it won't be an issue. We won't be close in the city because we got half of our precip out of the way as a rain/snow mucky mess. So that was good. We didn't pile up.
By this time, we've had enough rain, enough moisture falling out of the sky of New York City. There could have been 12 inches on the ground already with another 4 to 8 to go. So that would have got you to maybe even 20, especially up to Westchester.
That didn't happen because the cold was slow to arrive. That's the good news for the city. Now the bad news for Boston, the cold air is there and 20 to 30 will be easy because now I'm even seeing some spots at 19 already, and we have eight hours of snow to go. Yes, we're going to pile this up.
COOPER: What about -- there had been concern about flooding, that storm surge in some of these areas where Sandy, you know, out on Staten Island, out in Suffolk County, in Long Island. Have we seen that? Or is it too early to tell?
MEYER: Seen some breaches of the eroded dunes. The dunes are in bad shape in New Jersey for a while. It's going to take a while for the sea grass and the oats to kind of come back to get these dunes back together. Sometimes you'll see them put snow fences in the dunes so the sand kind of catches and you get those dunes back up.
So there has been some overwash in parts of New Jersey, not like Sandy. And there is some flooding up here from Boston points northward because the wind, you have to understand, at this point in time -- let's get that one back -- the wind is coming in from the east at 50, 60, and I just, right here at Logan, I just got a brand new wind gust at Logan of 76 miles per hour. So that's just blowing water on the shore, and there is water now coming into some of the low lying areas along the coast of Massachusetts. And we have heard of flooding in homes already. We just don't have locations put down just yet.
COOPER: Wow. All right, Chad. We'll continue to follow that. It's one of the important things that we're going to be trying to track not only over the course of this hour but also really frankly all night long, well into the morning.
Follow me on Twitter right now, let me know where you're experiencing the storm, what you're seeing, have you lost power? I'll be tweeting tonight as well.
Also, our other breaking news. New video tonight showing just how skilled the fugitive Christopher Dorner is with a gun. Just ahead, you're going to hear from the police chief who led efforts to capture the snipers in D.C. back in 2002, Chief Moose, what he thinks about the manhunt.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Hey, welcome back. We're continuing to follow the storm developments obviously throughout this hour and I've said well into the morning. As we mentioned also at the top, there's the other major story unfolding, though. Lives are on the line.
Much of Southern California on the edge -- or on edge, I should say, it's because this man, ex-cop and suspected killer Christopher Dorner is still at large, possibly in the snowy mountains east of Los Angeles, though, frankly, we have no idea. Tonight police in Irvine, California, released these surveillance photos. These were taken back on the 28th of January outside a local hotel. So they're pretty old.
We also have exclusive new video of Dorner that's years old taken at a police academy shooting range during his time as a cadet. These days he's on a self-proclaimed mission of revenge against the police force that he says unjustly let him go.
His alleged rampage has already taken three lives. Police have mistakenly shot two people in search of him. Shot at least one more. They said that both those groups were in vehicles that resembled his vehicle. We're going to be taking a closer look shortly at Dorner's long list of grievances and whether really there's any fact behind them. First, though, the ongoing manhunt. Randi Kaye has that.
RANDI KAYE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Despite the snow and drop in temperatures, search teams climbed to higher elevations hoping to find Christopher Dorner, the man who has eluded them for days.
KAYE: Here at big bear mountain, more than 100 officers are searching for Dorner. They're using dogs, too. They went door to door last night without any luck, so now they're focusing on a number of abandoned cabins high up the mountain, wondering if Dorner set up camp there. SWAT teams used snowcats to get up the mountain. Others jumped inside armored personnel carriers. SHERIFF JOHN MCMAHON, SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA: Certainly there has been time to get out of here but we're not sure if he has in fact left. There's a number of places up on the mountain that we haven't got to yet that we're continuing to search.
KAYE (voice-over): The search is massive. Bear mountain, which is in the San Bernardino National Forest, stretches hundreds of miles, but police and SWAT teams are up against more than some treacherous terrain. Dorner is a trained marksman with survival skills. He could have them in his sights before they spot him.
MCMAHON: It's extremely dangerous. I explained to them to be very careful, but our folks are highly trained.
KAYE: Snowy weather isn't making the job any easier. The sheriff was hoping to put his choppers in the air. They're equipped with thermal imaging and would make spotting Dorner on the ground easier if he's still here.
But given the snow and the poor visibility, the helicopters were grounded, at least for now.
KAYE (voice-over): Dorner's burned out truck, which authorities recovered Thursday on a mountain trail, has been removed and is being processed for clues, and those footprints leading away from the truck, officials now say they stopped suddenly when they reached frozen ground. Another dead end.
KAYE: With the search in its second day, authorities have so many questions. They want to know if Dorner has any ties to Big Bear, had he ever visited here or maybe even had a cabin here. They're also trying to figure out if he had come here earlier before the shooting spree to stash supplies.
KAYE (voice-over): And if he did, how long will those supplies last? No matter the answer, police aren't leaving here until they're sure he's left the mountain or they find him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Now Randi is joining us now live.
You know, Randi, I remember last night around -- in the 8 o'clock hour when we were reporting on this, there was a police press conference. And the police were saying that they had these air assets, they had helicopters with the thermal imaging that you -- that you talked about, the infrared. The fact they haven't been able to get those air assets into the air is clearly an issue today.
Do you know how long the bad conditions are supposed to remain? How long is the visibility supposed to be bad? How long are those choppers going to be grounded?
KAYE: Well, these are really white-out conditions. The sheriff really wasn't able to say how long those choppers would have to stay on the ground. The snow is still continuing at this hour. It's supposed to continue into tomorrow. So today, they had no choice but to get out there on these snowcats, so they did that.
But the snow they say may be working to their advantage. Even though it's very difficult to get around, the roads are very treacherous, many of them are closed, but they can spot footprints. And if Christopher Dorner is here, they may be able to find his footprints. They had a false alarm earlier today. They found some footprints from a cross country skier.
They did check those out but they obviously proved to be not belonging to Christopher Dorner. So in some sense, it's very difficult, but in the other sense, it could be an advantage.
COOPER: You know, but frankly the snow is falling a lot. I mean, they can cover footprints very rapidly. I mean, you can have a lot of snowfall in a very short amount of time.
Dorner's mom's home was searched today. Do we know anything about that?
KAYE: Yes, this is the second time they met with his mother. They had spoken with her, but today they went back with a search warrant and a forensics team and they looked at the computers there.
Now we don't know exactly what they took or what they found, but you can bet that they were probably searching those computers to see if maybe he had looked into a possible place to escape to or maybe even bought some airline tickets or maybe he made some contact with somebody who might be helping him.
So those are things that they would be looking for. But Christopher Dorner didn't live at that house. He was pretty much estranged from his mom, but he was there from time to time. He was there in high school and college more full time. So it's unclear what they found, but they were there with that search warrant.
COOPER: Randi, thanks.
Now whatever happens next, and we don't know what is going to happen, the fear and the uncertainty in Southern California, it reminds a lot of folks about the sniper case that paralyzed the Washington, D.C., area back in 2002.
During that investigation, you all got to know the Montgomery County, Maryland, police chief, Charles Moose. He helped lead the effort; I spoke to him earlier tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: From your experience, what does it tell you that authorities not only haven't located him by now but apparently that he's not launched another attack over the last 24 hours? What does that tell you?
CHARLES MOOSE, POLICE CHIEF, MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MD.: Well, Anderson, I think it tells me that, you know, we always have to remember that police work is very difficult. You know, we want this instant gratification.
We're dealing with a person who has thought this process out. Apparently he's not using drugs. He's not on alcohol. And he doesn't want anything.
The fact that he only wants revenge says that he's got patience, that he's willing to operate at his own pace.
We're used to people having a short timespan. We're used to them wanting money. I can remember the relief in some strange way when we found out that Malvo and Mohammed wanted money because then we knew we were dealing with criminals and that there would be a process and an opportunity to talk to them privately and to negotiate.
But with this gentleman, it seems like there is no negotiation. It's only revenge, and makes it a very difficult case.
COOPER: I mean, you know, I think back, and I covered that -- the D.C. sniper case. I mean, you guys didn't know who you were searching for, so that made it all the more difficult. I suppose there is an advantage this time around in that they at least know who the suspect is, know what his training is and, you know, what his -- what his training is, basically.
MOOSE: Yes, that does make it easier in some way, but you know, a lot of police work is about boredom. The rest of police work is about confrontation. I think in this case, there may not be a confrontation because we're talking about someone willing to ambush.
That's a mentality that police officers aren't used to facing, an ambush where they're going to be hit unknown, hit from their blind side where they're not able to confront their adversary. And so that brings a great deal of stress to the police officer, and I think that makes this case 10 times more difficult.
COOPER: When you have a situation where police officers have been shot at and hit and killed in at least one case, how do you try to sort of make sure that folks don't overreact and that, you know, we have had two civilians apparently shot, one of them shot in the back; I think 20 or 30 shots were fired at some newspaper delivery people who were in a vehicle that was said to resemble the vehicle that this man had.
I mean, as the chief of police, how do you try to send the message that you need to be on point, but you need to, you know, also be careful?
MOOSE: Well, I think police officers live under those circumstances every day. People do make mistakes. People do engage targets inappropriately. And that has to be dealt with. And I don't think that's going to be a common theme to this investigation.
But I think that's something that police officers face and are trained and try to avoid on a daily basis, to not overreact, to not escalate a situation. But that did happen. We have to remember that. But again, this situation is different. This situation, this gentleman has committed murder. You know, he has no story to tell. He shouldn't be given any kind of forum. He is a murderer.
He needs to be brought to justice. I hope he surrenders, but certainly there's no forum for him to tell his story.
We just celebrated the life and death of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He changed a lot in this country and in this world. He did not resort to violence. Violence is not the way to change things. This gentleman needs to be addressed; he needs to come forth and face justice. Sympathy needs to go out to the victims, to their families and their loved ones.
COOPER: Chief Moose, we'll end it on that tonight. Thank you very much for being with us. I appreciate it. It's good to see you again.
Well, we have been covering two breaking stories all night long. Next, back to the blizzard and the reporters out in the middle of it. Also, we're going to talk the producer who has been driving the CNN carcam throughout the snowy Boston, giving you a sense of what the roads are like just to try to warn people to stay off the roads as we're supposed to. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Late breaking blizzard development as we look at the Midtown skyline. New York authorities have closed the Long Island Expressway, the main highway from the island into Manhattan, one of the busiest arteries literally on the planet. Luckily tomorrow is not a work day.
But bad as it is on Long Island, it's even worse in the Bay State. Jason Carroll obviously has been in Boston for us all night and Ali Velshi is out on Cape Cod in the town of Dennis Port.
And let's -- Ali, let's start off with you. It is looking really bad there. I mean, just the wind and the snow moving in front of the camera.
VELSHI: Yes, your timing is impeccable. You got us right in a surge, actually. I think the sustained winds around here are somewhere around the 40-mile-an-hour mark, a little bit less than that, but we have got a gust coming through as we speak, an increase in the snow, and again, it's those little icy pellets.
I was going to give you a weather update last time I was here, and the weirdest thing happened, I ran into those two guys who said they had cabin fever so they came for a walk. We haven't been walking around. I have been sort of between here and our shelter, but they did confirm what we thought was going on around here, about 4 to 6 inches of snow, it's a heavy, slushy snow on the ground.
We didn't get a lot of accumulation through the day like Providence did and like Boston did because it was warm. Although Poppy is still getting a lot of accumulation. It's warmer there than it is here. But this wind is very -- the gusts are above 60 miles per hour. We're getting one now, and the two guys who came out said that they had heard a rumor that there was a storm surge.
There's been no storm surge. The surf is heavy, but it's still -- it's still where it should be. So that's what we've got right now. We've got a couple more hours, probably before the worst of it comes. The sustained winds have settled a little bit.
Now again, Anderson, I have to be clear, I'm on Cape Cod, but I'm in the middle of the south side of Cape Cod, the south side of the triangle. The northeast side of the triangle is expected to be getting things worse than we are. But I have been on Twitter with a bunch of people around Cape Cod, trying to get a sense of what's going on.
The two guys I spoke to said they lost power for about a minute and it came back on. We have seen some flickering lights around here while I was on air with you earlier; we saw a transformer blow. But things do seem to be OK.
Emboldened by those two guys, a couple of our producers went out for a walk to -- one producer and our photojournalist went out for a walk just to, you know, a little bit around here to see what's going on. They actually found a store open that's still providing things to people who are walking around. So, you know, people around here are taking it in stride.
I think everybody decided to stay home. Can't drive. It's Massachusetts, like Connecticut and Rhode Island, they're under curfew, but, yes, you got us in the middle of a gust here, Anderson. It's -- if I had to guess, I would say it's 65 miles an hour, something like that.
COOPER: Right. Well, it's interesting to hear those two guys you were talking to compare it to the blizzard back in '78. They were saying '78 was way worse, at least at this point in the storm. So we'll continue to monitor it really into the morning hours to see how it does finally compare.
And also Chad Myers, we talked to him a little bit ago and we're going to talk to him toward the end of this hour as well. He was saying in the New York area, it's certainly nowhere near where the blizzard of '78 was, which I remember very well.
Let's check in with our Jason Carroll, who is in Boston.
And Jason, Ali is getting pretty -- hit pretty hard right now, particularly strong gusts coming. How are you faring there?
CARROLL: Well, we're not having the type of gusts that we saw just about an hour ago. The story here, Anderson, is snow and lots of it. Look at this car here on the side. Tomorrow, this man is going to have a real problem digging out. His hood completely covered with snow here in Boston, in the South Side of Boston.
There's been about a foot and a half of snow that we have seen falling so far. Plows have been moving in and out of the area. We have seen several plows come through here. In fact, one at about 8 o'clock came right into this church parking lot.
Doesn't look like it now because it looks like it's just been snow and no plow has been here, but a plow came through here, got stuck here in this driveway, then got stuck right over there and finally managed to get out. Some 600 plows are already out on the streets of Boston, doing what they can to battle the blizzard, going up and down streets like this, but you can see, it's near visibility.
I know you have been checking in with Julian Cummings' car as he's driving around the streets. This is what Julian has been dealing with. It's basically a white-out here in Boston. This is what it's like at just about 11:30, and the conditions are set to get even worse than what we're experiencing now. Once again, we get gusts every now and then. Not on the same way that Ali is receiving them.
The story here in Boston is all about snow. And Anderson, tomorrow, the story is going to be not only about digging out but one of the people who live here in this neighborhood remembers when it snowed a few years ago.
And she said the problem was once they started digging out, there was no place to put all of the snow. There's no place to put it. So tomorrow, the problem is going to be digging out and where to put all of the snow that has fallen, Anderson.
COOPER: Jason, I keep seeing a flashing light over there. What is that?
CARROLL: A flashing light?
COOPER: Yes, I swear I keep seeing it -- yes, over where you're looking. You were just looking -- anyway, I'm not imagining it. I -- other people have seen it as well. I have seen it all night long. Anyway, never mind. I'm not going crazy.
Jason, we'll try to check in with you again.
Actually, you know, Jason was talking about Julian. He's joining us now on the phone.
Julian, you have been driving around, as Jason was saying, and giving us this live image of what it looks like from a driver's perspective.
And it's important because really, you know, officials want people to stay off the road, and it's important to get a look at what the roads are like. It's just to warn the folks out there, you've been seeing a lot of emergency vehicles. How has it been driving along? I mean, how treacherous are those roads?
JULIAN CUMMINGS, CNN PRODUCER: The roads are pretty bad right now. We have been out here since 2 o'clock today when it first started to fall. And we watched it start to stick and start to accumulate, and now we're seeing plows really struggling to keep up.
I mean, they are out, as Jason said, there's many plows out, but we're on this road we're on right now, maybe, maybe 30 minutes ago, and they're now on it again. And they're trying their hardest to get through.
We're trying right now to be careful to get past this plow so we don't get stuck with it. I'm going to go ahead of it on this one. But it's a total white-out right now. No cars on the road other than emergency vehicles. And there are some people on the road who are (inaudible).
COOPER: And this may be a dumb question, but Ali Velshi, who's over in Cape Cod, saw a store that was open. Are you seeing any stores, bars, anything like that open, or is everything basically shut down tight?
CUMMINGS: Boston is shut down. It's a college town. There are a few bars that are open, and we are seeing people going in and out of them. So, you know, the tradition lives on in Boston, you could say, for riding out the storm.
COOPER: Have you seen a lot of vehicles stuck in the snow on the side of the road or blocking any roads?
CUMMINGS: Earlier on, we saw a fair amount of cars being towed out to avoid getting stuck, but we have actually seen a few state police cars stuck, and a few plows themselves being stuck.
COOPER: I got to say, it looks like a zombie film from where you're at. It looks like people kind of wandering in the middle of the road very slowly, just kind of plodding along. It's a really creepy and bizarre image, really, to see Boston like this right now. Clearly, a bunch of people out kind of with cabin fever, just wanting to walk around.
Julian, appreciate it. Please stay safe. Be careful driving along there to give us that image. We're going to be following the weather all night long, well into the morning. As always, you can find more of the weather and everything else tonight online at CNN.com.
We also wanted to give you more of the manhunt on Christopher Dorner right now and his murderous manifesto. We're going to look at what is at the heart of this. His grievances against the LAPD. We're going to investigate what his complaints are, if there's any validity to them. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: We've got more now on the breaking news in Southern California. The manhunt for the ex-cop and suspected triple murderer, Christopher Dorner.
As you might know, he sent me a parcel, I learned about it just yesterday, contained a bullet-riddled keepsake coin from former L.A. police chief, Bill Bratton. It also contained a DVD that had testimony from the man at the center of the incident that Dorner says precipitated his firing. The man, Christopher Gettler, says he was kicked by an LAPD officer, and Dorner apparently believes that Gettler's account will bolster his case against the police force. It's a case he lays out in detail in that lengthy, rambling manifesto. The question is, is there really anything to it? Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER (voice-over): The subject of Christopher Dorner's rage goes back to an incident in July 2007. Dorner was out on patrol with a female officer, a veteran of the force, when they were dispatched to check out a report of a mentally unstable man named Christopher Gettler. Gettler was refusing to leave the grounds of a hotel.
And after a struggle, Dorner and his partner subdued him. Then Dorner says his partner, who was white, unnecessarily kicked Gettler, who was also white, twice in the chest and once in the face while he was being cuffed.
In the manifesto, Dorner writes, "The kick to the face left a visible injury on the left cheek below the eye. Unfortunately, after reporting it to supervisors and investigated, nothing was done. I had broken their supposed blue line."
The blue line he spoke of is a legendary unspoken code of conduct among police that states you never rat out a fellow officer. The LAPD did launch an internal investigation into Dorner's complaint but found, quote, "the alleged kicks had not occurred."
Dorner writes, quote, "The department stated that I had lied and made up the report." Dorner was charged with making false statements, and the LAPD Board of Rights found him guilty. But according to Dorner, this was a result of corruption and retaliation on the part of the LAPD.
"Terminating me for telling the truth of a Caucasian officer kicking a mentally ill man is disgusting," Dorner writes. "With the discovery and evidence available, you will see the truth."
The evidence Dorner points to is the testimony of Gettler himself. Court documents show he told the LAPD he was kicked by a female police officer. Gettler's father also testified that his son told him about the attack. NBC4 Los Angeles spoke exclusively with Gettler's father, who says he remembers that night in 2007 when his son came home and told him he was kicked.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two in the chest, the third one missed and got him in the face.
COOPER (voice-over): "This is my last resort," Dorner writes. "The LAPD has suppressed the truth and it has now led to deadly consequences."
But did the LAPD really suppress the truth? Court documents show the testimony of both Gettler and his father was heard by the Board of Rights who say, quote, "While the board acknowledge that the testimony of Gettler and his father indicated a kicking had occurred, Gettler is schizophrenic."
The board did not find him to be a reliable witness, and found his father's testimony was hearsay. The board also found that the officer he accused of abuse was considering giving Dorner a negative review and that he falsely alleged the kicks in order to stop working with her.
Dorner challenged his firing in the court of appeals but lost, but this incident is not Dorner's only problem with the LAPD. He also accuses officers of rampant racism, saying they use racial slurs on the job. He writes, quote, "The department has not changed since the rampart and Rodney King days. It's gotten worse."
In his manifesto, he promises, quote, "Terminating officers because they expose a culture of lying, racism and excessive use of force will immediately change. The blue line will forever be severed and a cultural change will be implanted. You have awoken a sleeping giant."
Dorner promises violent retaliation against the LAPD until his name is cleared. Whether or not his claims are true, police say he's already delivering on that promise.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, wherever Christopher Dorner is right now, police say they believe he could have dozens of weapons with him. In that manifesto, Dorner bragged about his rifle and small arms training. He even calls himself a top shot. So what does his background tell us about how dangerous he is?
Brandon Webb is a former navy SEAL and editor-in-chief of softrep.com, a website focused on the special forces community.
Brandon, thanks for being with us. Obviously, you don't know Christopher Dorner. You did not work with him in the military at all, but you have taken issue with the perception that surfaces that he's somehow a kind of a highly trained military sniper. You're saying that's not true. Why?
BRANDON WEBB, FORMER NAVY SEAL: Well, I think it's just important to be real clear on his military qualifications. There is only one sniper course in the Navy, and that's run by the SEAL community. It's a course that I used to be a course manager of.
But you know, I looked at -- I was looking at the reports coming out, and you could see that this is not a highly trained individual. He didn't even qualify expert with his rifle medal, so I just think it's important to point out that he's not a -- some highly trained military special operations person.
It just seems like he's had a little bit of military training, and thank goodness he's not a trained sniper or else we would be in a lot worse situation in Los Angeles than we currently are.
COOPER: We have just gotten some video today of some of the -- just the small arms training he got with the LAPD. But he -- would he have received -- I mean, he -- with the LAPD, just in regular training, he would not have received sniper training with them, either, would he?
WEBB: No, I mean, the sniper training -- and I have trained the Los Angeles SWAT guys and their snipers, and they're great guys, but it's a very specialty piece of training to get. And he wouldn't have had that training as a regular officer.
COOPER: If he was a military trained sniper, do you think we would be looking at a situation more like the D.C. sniper case instead of some of these close range attacks which he's allegedly perpetrated?
WEBB: Yes, I think in the case of the D.C. sniper case, those guys weren't really trained military snipers, either. They were just using sniper-like tactics.
But if he was a trained sniper, the Los Angeles police department would be in a world of hurt, I can guarantee that much. And I just think we're -- you're seeing a disturbed individual, and I don't personally see this ending very well just because like was said earlier on the show, he really has nothing to lose at this point.
COOPER: If he is up in the Big Bear area and that's where his vehicle, his burned-out vehicle was found, the conditions there have deteriorated a lot in the last 24 hours, seeing a lot of snow falling. It's obviously very difficult for law enforcement, the conditions up there.
How much skill does someone need to elude capture and survive in an area like this if they haven't found, you know, a home to break into and stay in or if they don't have some sort of home to stay in?
WEBB: I mean, it's an extremely tough situation. Having been to survival school myself, and you know, when you're in the mountains and it drops below freezing, you better have some very good survival skills. So I would say if that is the situation, he's in really bad shape.
I would probably suspect that he is holed up somewhere, and the main advantage that he has is he, as a former police officer, he understands the way the police departments work, how they communicate, what the response times are. And so in that case, he is at an advantage there.
COOPER: And from all of the reports we have, there are a number of homes in this area which are vacation homes and that are theoretically empty that he possibly could use and maybe just be holed up.
Brandon, I appreciate your expertise. I appreciate you being on. Thank you.
WEBB: No problem. Thanks.
COOPER: Well, let's go back to our blizzard coverage when we continue. The worst is not over. We're going to check in with Chad Myers ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Hey, welcome back. Couple of notes on the blizzard.
By the way, if you've been watching Ali Velshi's coverage out in Cape Cod, there's actually now a Twitter account that has been created by viewers watching Ali Velshi stand out in the storm. The Twitter account is @savealivelshi, @savealivelshi. Anyway, some buzz too about Ashleigh Banfield's presidential method of blizzard measurement with help from Millard Fillmore. Take a look.
ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN HOST: Anderson, we have been sort of checking out the levels. And I e-mails Chad Myers earlier. I said there was a real calm before the storm. I couldn't figure out why we didn't have much snow. And it's like Magic Chad, because it's really started to come down over here. Take a look at the snowfall now.
And I just wanted to let you know that while it's lovely, it's also a real pain in the butt because we're now getting reports of about 26,600 people without power in Connecticut. And that's sure to get worse. I do want to report something to you.
Just before you came to us, a number of emergency vehicles went flying by with their sirens on. So I called the Connecticut State Police and I said, what's going on. They said apparently a trooper has actually had an accident up on 95. But apparently he's OK, minor injuries.
But it was enough. An ambulance going by and all the rest just tells you if the trooper is getting into an accident, there's a reason there is a state wide ban on travel.
One other thing that I have been doing, Anderson, all day I've been doing the presidents' measurements. And I think this -- as the governor of the state said, this is when it's going to start getting a lot more serious.
The snowfall is going to start getting a lot more thick. We're going to going to those 3 to 5 inches an hour. And our official presidents' measurement, we have reached Millard Fillmore. I've been waiting. I've been waiting to reach Millard Fillmore, which is about 7 inches or so.
But now I can tell you every 10 minutes or so, we're going up a president, and they are really cooped up in here. I'm telling you. With the travel ban, they can't get out of the streets so they're going bananas.
COOPER: Hey, Ashleigh, I know you're cold, but what are you talking about? I don't understand, the measurements of the presidents?
BANFIELD: Anderson Cooper, you know, get your Kathy Griffin on. I have a second grader, so this is how the rulers are when you're in second grade. Those are presidents. COOPER: I see. OK.
BANFIELD: (Inaudible). So I have been measuring it in presidents. We started at George Washington. We're at Millard Fillmore. I'm waiting to get to Cleveland -- not second term, first term, b/ that's halfway.
COOPER: It's been a long night, hasn't it, Ashleigh?
BANFIELD: You know what, I have been up since 4:00. That's all I'm going to say.
COOPER: OK. Listen, try to stay warm, Ashleigh, thank you.
BANFIELD: All right.
COOPER: Folks are getting a little snow crazy out there, some serious stuff, though. Let's check back in with Chad Myers in the Weather Center.
So, Chad, give us the overview, where this thing is.
MYERS: You know, I think we're now third quarter. I think we're as big, as close, as deep, as low as we're going to get. Just had a wind gust at Logan Airport of 76. That's over hurricane strength. Into Bedford, Mass., 75 and Buzzards Bay, 74 miles per hour, and we have even seen the snow now pile up almost 20 inches, Mt. Sinai, 19. Same way for Manchester, Mansfield into Massachusetts at 16.
This is going to be the story for the rest of the day. The low is just south of Ali Velshi right now. Ali's not going to see a lot more snow. He's going to see this ice pellet stuff kind of slam him from the side. But if you're away from the storm a little bit, it's colder. It's colder aloft and that turns into all snow.
So the snow stays with Boston and Providence and Hartford for at least another 6 to 10 hours. It begins to back away from the Hudson Valley. Here, New York City, you have got a couple more hours of the light snow and then it pulls away for you, too.
But the winds just haven't really reached all the way back here, all the way back into New York City. The biggest wind I could find was like 20, 30 miles per hour in the city. That's because the snow and the storm is beginning to pull away in the next couple hours. We won't see that much wind back there.
I don't even know that we're actually going to get blizzard conditions in New York City. Plus a lot of the snow that came down in the city came down and it stuck to the ground. And now it's frozen there like a big ice skating rink under about 3 or 4 inches of snow.
So as you walk out in the city, you think it's OK, it looks like snow, but there's actually a layer of ice under that. The big snows won't be for New York City. They'll be farther to the east because the snow continues. We will see, we will see before this is over, Anderson, some place with 30 inches of snow or even more. COOPER: Wow. Wow. All right, Chad, appreciate it. Amazing job all night long. Thank you very much, Chad. We're going to be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Welcome back. You're looking at probably the only graceful thing you can possibly do in a blizzard. A woman cross country skiing through the streets of Greenwich, Connecticut. It turns out she's a doctor coming back from her office.
However, you may get around, if you have to get around, please be careful out there. Stay safe tonight. That does it for this two-hour edition of 360. CNN's coverage, though, of the blizzard continues right now with our own Brooke Baldwin.
Brooke?
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, Anderson, thank you so much.
Hello to all of you from the weather cube, CNN World Headquarters. I am Brooke Baldwin. I want to welcome all of our viewers in the U.S. and all around the world as we continue all night long.
