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Police Fatally Shoot Black Man Who Was Not Target Of Warrant; Michael Avenatti Trial: Juror Ignoring Evidence, "Acting On A Feeling"; Pentagon: Kabul Suicide Bombing Was Not A Complex Attack; 85 Million Under Winter Warnings, Alerts As Storm Heads To Northeast; Icy System In Texas First Test Of Power Grid Since Deadly 2021 Freeze. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired February 04, 2022 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[14:33:34]
VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Minnesota's attorney general and the Hennepin County attorney will review a fatal police shooting during a no-knock warrant.
We want to show you this police body cam footage from Wednesday. It is disturbing.
Here it is. It shows Minneapolis officers enter an apartment where 22- year-old Amir Locke appears to be asleep.
He gets up from the couch after it is kicked. And footage shows him holding a gun, and within seconds, officers fire three shots and they kill him.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Now attorneys for Locke's family say he legally owned that firearm and he was not the target of the search, which was tied to a homicide investigation.
And police confirmed he was not named in that warrant.
Let's go to CNN's Omar Jimenez.
Omar, explain, how could this happen?
OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Victor and Alisyn, so the Minneapolis Police Department said they were executing a warrant that was tied to a homicide investigation out of nearby St. Paul.
And the lawyers say he was not target of this investigation. And police confirm that, saying his name wasn't listed on any warrants.
Regardless, as you saw in that video, police pushed in, they appear to wake Locke up. He's seen in blankets but also with a gun. That is when shots were fired.
Now police say the gun was aimed at the shooting police officer when those shots were fired. But based on the video and pictures provided, we have not been able to independently confirm that.
The parents of Amir Locke also saw that video and we're hearing from them for the first time today.
Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[14:35:04]
KAREN WELLS, MOTHER OF AMIR LOCKE: As his mother, I will make sure that as long as I'm on this side of this world --
ANDRE LOCKE, FATHER OF AMIR LOCKE: Yes.
WELLS: -- I am going to fight --
LOCKE: Yes.
WELLS: -- every day throughout the day, 365 days, to make sure that Amir Ricari Locke gets justice --
LOCKE: Yes, yes.
WELLS: -- for being executed by the MPD.
LOCKE: Yes. Yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JIMENEZ: Now, one of their attorneys and the parents also emphasized that Locke was a lawful gun owner.
It is also worth noting that, in Minneapolis, in late 2020, the city updated its no-knock warrant policy, not completely eliminating it, but basically saying it could only be used for specific high-risk circumstances.
So we're trying to get clarity from the city right now on why this particular situation qualified for that.
Because obviously, we have seen that dynamic play out in so many cases across the country, from Breonna Taylor, which was a fatal one.
Even to the case of Anjanette Young, here in Chicago, which was not a fatal one, thankfully, but that same dynamic at play -- Victor and Alisyn?
CAMEROTA: OK, let us know as soon as you have developments.
Omar Jimenez, thank you very much.
With us now is CNN legal analyst and defense attorney, Joey Jackson.
Joey, explain how police in the middle of the night can key into someone's apartment before they -- without knocking, and shoot someone who was sleeping, who was asleep.
As we know, we saw this with Breonna Taylor, this is not the first time we've seen this. Why is this happening?
JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. Good to be you with, Alisyn and Victor.
I think that is something that they need to explain.
So backing up, you have this no-knock warrant issued. What does that mean?
It means that the police in certain circumstances can go into a location without knocking, without warning, and otherwise, you know, do whatever they're there to do, whether it is to apprehend someone or search, et cetera.
Those no-knock warrants are very dangerous. And that is why their limited and had been limited.
And in the wake of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky have been evaluated by various jurisdictions, who have moved to ban them.
And we have the question, we could look at video, which is horrifying to see, someone sleeping and dead.
But I think the legal analysis can't stop there, right, or can't even begin there. We have to begin with respect to the process.
Why were they executing the warrant? Is it appropriate? Should warning have been issued? Did this qualify as an exception, such that they could they have entered without knocking?
And I think answers to those questions are critical because here you have someone dead who doesn't need to be.
You have to reform and identify the process and not look and just evaluate the outcome, which is more likely than not, in these circumstances, deadly, as we see here.
It shouldn't have happened.
BLACKWELL: Joey, let's turn to the Michael Avenatti fraud trial. He, of course, is on trial for allegedly stealing Stormy Daniels's book advances, the royalties there.
And the judge has been deliberating -- the jury has been deliberating for several days.
They've sent another note to the judge and here is what it said, the most recent one:
"We have one juror who is refusing to look at evidence and is acting on a feeling. We need assistance on moving forward. She does not believe she needs to prove her side using evidence. And refuses to show us how she has come to her conclusion." "Please help us move forward and not going on any evidence. All
emotions and does not understand this job of a jury."
What can a judge do? I mean, I've never seen a note like this.
JACKSON: Yes. Judges, Victor, have to be very careful.
Because, if you isolate, identify and single out a juror, now you have an issue in the event there's a conviction or whatever else as an appellate issue because now you're engaging in coercive conduct.
What a remedy is, what a judge will generally do, and which I believe has happened here, is to bring the whole jury in and remind them of their obligations.
What are those? To actually deliberate in good faith. To deliberate with consideration on the evidence, not sympathy, not with regard to what the punishment would be, not who you like.
And in this instance, whether you like Trump or you don't like him or love Avenatti, what happened limited to the facts and the circumstances and nothing else.
And I think that is what the judge did. Sent them back to deliberate.
And in the event that it persists, the prosecutors have already asked the judge to ask the foreman to identify that juror and otherwise to question the juror.
The judge said to them, we're not there yet. Let's see if the juror gets the hint and, otherwise, is able to participate.
Last point, Victor, and that is this, you cannot single out a juror if you're in the jury just because you don't like the fact that they don't agree with you.
You have to single them out predicated upon them not deliberating in good faith. And I think that is what this needs to be limited to.
BLACKWELL: Joey Jackson, thanks for the insight.
[14:40:00]
JACKSON: Always. Thanks, Victor and Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: Thanks so much.
BLACKWELL: Well, the Pentagon is providing new details about the Kabul airport attack that killed 13 U.S. servicemembers. What they say happened during the chaos of evacuating people out of Afghanistan.
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[14:45:57]
CAMEROTA: The bombing at the Kabul airport in August that killed 13 U.S. servicemembers and at least 170 Afghan civilians was the result of a single bomber, not a complex attack as the United States military first thought.
BLACKWELL: The Pentagon shared the results of the month's-long investigation.
That attack happened when the U.S. and foreign troops were conducting evacuations before U.S. troops completed their withdrawal.
Oren Liebermann joins us now.
Oren, what more are U.S. officials saying about the investigation?
OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Investigators have for months been interviewing scores of U.S. witnesses and coalition forces to get a better sense of exactly what happened during, before, and after the attack.
In the conclusion of that investigation, they say that the attack itself could not have been prevented.
They say the bomber likely used alternate routes to get to the Abbey Gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport, routes that allowed the bomber to avoid Taliban checkpoints.
They say it was not, as initially described, multiple bombers and multiple ISIS-K gunmen. Instead, it was one single suicide bomber.
A 20-pound bomb filled with five-millimeter ball bearings that tore through the area around the Abbey Gate, leading to 13 killed U.S. servicemembers as well as over 170 Afghans.
Here is General Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARINE CORPS GEN. KENNETH F. MCKENZIE JR, COMMANDER, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND: At the time, the best information that we had in the immediate aftermath of the attack indicated that it was a complex attack by both a suicide bomber and ISIS-K gunman.
We now know that the explosively fired ball bearings caused wounds that looked like gunshots. And when combine with a small number of warning shots, that led many to assume that a complex attack had occurred.
The fact that this investigation has contradicted our first impression demonstrates to me that the team went into this investigation with an open mind in search of the truth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LIEBERMANN: Investigators did not identify the bomber. They say his identity, his background is now part of an FBI investigation. But CNN has previously reported that the identity of the suicide
bomber was Abdul Rehman al-Logri, who had been released from a prison just days earlier when the Taliban, in sweeping across the country, had opened up prisons and released hundreds if not thousands of prisoners.
As for those warning shots, the investigators say there were about 25 to 30 warning shots fired from U.K. forces near the area. Four fired from a single Marine and an unknown number fired from a team of Marines near that location.
They say those forces did not hit other coalition forces or any Afghans.
BLACKWELL: Oren Liebermann, at the Pentagon, thank you.
CAMEROTA: OK, now to Texas. Areas of I-10 are a parking lot after accidents caused by easy roads. More on that and how the state's electric grid is holding up.
BLACKWELL: There's a lot going on here today. Here is what else we're watching.
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[14:53:06]
BLACKWELL: More than 85 million Americans are under winter weather warnings or advisories today from this major winter storm. It's now setting its sights on the northeast.
More than 8,000 flights have been cancelled in the last two days, 8,000 flights.
Flight Aware says the last time weather alone caused this many cancellations, 10 years ago, and that was Superstorm Sandy.
CAMEROTA: Is that right?
This winter storm system has killed three people in New Mexico and Alabama.
CNN's Rosa Flores is in Houston, Texas, for us.
Many have been watching the power grid, Rosa, because one year ago there was the deep freeze that shut down much of Texas. It killed nearly 250 people.
I can see it's cold. What's happening there today?
(LAUGHTER)
ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, it's definitely cold. The precipitation has stopped but the temperatures have been at or freezing levels. Those temperatures are supposed to stay like that through this afternoon. If my mouth freezes throughout this live shot, you'll understand why.
About that big storm last year, one of the big differences this year is that this storm is not supposed to last as long and it's not supposed to be as cold.
The big problem is the ice. Take a look at this video. This is I-10 looking more like a parking lot at Kerrville. This is northwest of San Antonio.
I talked to an official there who says that, overnight, two 18 wheelers jackknifed because of the ice and treacherous conditions on the roadways on I-10 there. He said there's no injuries.
But of course, long lines on I-10. A lot of people wanting to go along their way and they can't.
At last check, at least one lane is open but traffic is moving very, very slowly.
It's not over yet for the of Texas. The good news, according to Greg Abbott, is the power grid is holding.
[14:55:02]
Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): Tonight, it's anticipated that the entire state will be in a freezing or below-freezing temperature situation.
Importantly, though, the power grid continues to perform well at peak demand during this winter storm.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FLORES: Governor Greg Abbott has activated 27 state agencies, deployed 4,000 Texas Department of Transportation personnel.
These are the individuals out and about de-icing, treating roads to make sure that Texans can go about their way. They are recommending people to stay home though.
They have also activated 127 National Guard members that are strategically placed around the state -- Alisyn and Victor?
CAMEROTA: Rosa, great job.
We are so familiar with the dreaded mouth freeze.
(CROSSTALK)
CAMEROTA: That's a real phenomenon.
You are not suffering from it right now. So thank you very much for that reporting.
BLACKWELL: Thank you.
All right, new CNN exclusive reporting now. Sources say the January 6th committee now has records that show former President Trump and Republican Congressman Jim Jordan spoke at length on that morning. We're live on Capitol Hill, next.
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