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Tyre Nichols Death Puts Spotlight on Memphis SkyCop Cameras; Double-Amputee Shot and Killed by California Police; WEF: AI Will Disrupt 85 Million Jobs, But Also Create New Ones. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired February 03, 2023 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:30:00]
BIANCA NOBILO, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Bianca Nobilo. And if you are just joining us, let me bring you up-to-date with our top stories this hour.
The Pentagon is tracking a suspected Chinese spy balloon flying over the northern U.S. the U.S. has been aware of it for days and there has been debate over whether or not to shoot it down. The Pentagon has decided against that for now.
Plus, an Arctic blast is moving into the northeast in the U.S. over the next 24 hours and will be the coldest in years to some locations. It's being called a generational event. We'll have more on these stories in the hours ahead for you.
Prosecutors say that up to 20 more hours of video related to the police beating of Tyre Nichols is yet to be released. Nichols tied last month after being brutally beaten by five officers in Memphis, Tennessee. The confrontation was caught on footage that has already been released. Prosecutors also say that more charges are possible because the officers may have filed a false report about what happened during the incident. Some of the released video was captured on the so-called SkyCop cameras which are part of the city's crime surveillance network. Ryan Young explains how they work.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Joe, what's that camera that's up there?
JOE PATTY, RETIRED VIDEO SURVEILLANCE MANAGER, MEMPHIS POLICE DEPARTMENT: That is a Memphis police SkyCop.
YOUNG (voice-over): It's a surveillance system used to capture this overhead shot of the brutal beating that led to the death of Tyre Nichols. Five former Memphis police officers now charged with second degree murder. Joe Patty installed the exact camera that captured the crucial footage of Nichols being beaten up by the SCORPION Unit.
PATTY: The cameras was put here to deter crime, and to capture crime, and it did what it was supposed to do. YOUNG (voice-over): Patty is a former Memphis police officer, who oversaw MPD's SkyCop program in its early stages from 2010 to 2018. And he now works for SkyCop, a private company that works with police departments to build the cameras and technology that goes with that.
PATTY: So, this is a monitor utility pole, it's powered by a light, it has a recorder inside. It has a blue light, has pan, tilt, zoom camera on it, and a connection with cellular. So that we can pull this camera up at any time, it's always recording. And if we need video, we can just pull it up in the crime center.
YOUNG: Is it a 360 view or is it important for whoever the operator is to make that turn like they did that night?
PATTY: It has capability of 360. But it needs to be turned into a certain area to field of view.
YOUNG (voice-over): Each SkyCop box as three cameras, and there are currently around 1,500 SkyCop boxes across Memphis. The data from all the cameras is analyzed by police staff in a real time crime center.
YOUNG: How did that camera know to move over to this intersection and catch what happened to Tyre?
PATTY: The Memphis Police Department has a realtime crime center. It can access any one of these SkyCops from there. It also has computer aided dispatch. They have a dispatch sitting in there. So, they'd be monitoring anything going on in the city.
YOUNG (voice-over): Memphis PD says the crime data they gather from SkyCop is analyzed to provide information, on the type of crime, day of the week, time of day, and the location the crimes occurring, which makes the department more accountable, and responsible for the crime that occurs across the city.
PATTY: It's a virtual officer on a pole. Never has to take a vacation, always recording.
YOUNG (voice-over): And in the case of Tyre Nichols, this SkyCop footage was instrumental in the speed of which the five officers were fired and the district attorney's decision to charge them. And it potentially could lead to more charges as the investigation continues.
YOUNG: Of course that video is hard to watch, but there were so many questions about how that video was captured and how the cameras turn. You can see the cameras here on a pole just like this one created by a company here in Memphis, but when you look at a pole like this, SkyCop is always above. If an officer hears something over the radio, they can switch this camera, they can see in such clarity what is going on and that is what happened that night when the camera zoomed in.
[04:35:00]
These cameras are crucial to adding a force multiplier across the city.
Reporting in Memphis, Ryan Young, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NOBILO: And the family is demanding answers after their loved one was shot and killed by police in Southern California in the city of Huntington Park. Police say that the man, a 36-year-old double amputee, was the suspect in a nearby stabbing. Video appears to capture the moment before the shooting. CNN's Stephanie Elam reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
YATOYA TOY, ANTHONY LOWE'S SISTER: This is a man, a father, a son, a brother who was gunned down by the police.
STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A double amputee out of his wheelchair. Huntington Park police officers pursuing the man as he moves away. Bystander videos on social media purportedly capturing the moments before police shot that man to death, sparking renewed concerns about the excessive use of force by law enforcement.
JONATHAN LONGMIRE, ANTHONY LOWE'S COUSIN: If you guys are here to protect and serve us, protect us, serve us, you know, don't kill us.
ELAM (voice-over): His family confirming to CNN the man in the videos is 36-year-old Anthony Lowe.
CLIFF SMITH, ORGANIZER, COALITION FOR COMMUNITY CONTROL OVER THE POLICE: There could be absolutely no justification for the use of lethal force. No justification for shooting Anthony.
ELAM (voice-over): In one video, two officers are seen pointing weapons at Lowe who moves away from them with something shiny in his hand. The officers walk after him but then a police cruiser arrives blocking that vantage point.
From a different video on social media, another officer joins the other two following after Lowe. As another cruiser arrives the three officers reach for their weapons. From this angle, the moment is seen when the officers open fire.
In a statement, Huntington Park Police said they were responding to a stabbing call last Thursday afternoon where the victim said a man dismounted the wheelchair, ran to the victim without provocation and stabbed him in the side of the chest with a 12-inch butcher knife before fleeing the scene on the wheelchair.
The department said two Tasers were ineffective in subduing the man as the suspect ignored their verbal commands and threatened to advance or throw the knife at the officers.
ELAM: Would it change the way you would approach somebody if they were a double-amputee?
CHERYL DORSEY, RETIRED LAPD SERGEANT: There are times certainly when deadly force is necessary. Given the fact that this guy was a double amputee and could only move so swiftly, my mindset would have been to try to corral him but I did not see imminent threat of deadly injury to the officers or anyone else.
ELAM (voice-over): Officials said Lowe was pronounced dead at the scene and the police officers involved are on paid administrative leave while the Huntington Park Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's homicide bureau investigate.
The county's district attorney's office told CNN it will investigate once LASD completes its investigation, saying, Los Angeles County deserves to know how and why these incidents have occurred.
Ebonique Simon, the mother of Lowe's 15-year-old son, telling CNN he had been dealing with a lot of depression after losing his legs in an incident that happened about a year ago.
EBONIQUE SIMON, MOTHER OF LOWE'S SON: I just want justice and the truth for my son.
ELAM (voice-over): Lowe's mother distraught and in disbelief.
DOROTHY LOWE, ANTHONY'S MOTHER: They murdered my son, in a wheelchair, with no legs.
ELAM (voice-over): Stephanie Elam, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NOBILO: We're learning new details about events leading up to moment that disgraced attorney Alex Murdaugh allegedly killed his wife and son. The CFO of Murdaugh's former law firm testified on Thursday that she confronted him about the missing funds the morning of the murders. Prosecutors want the judge to allow testimony about Murdaugh's alleged financial crimes as part of the double murder trial. With the jury out of the courtroom, the CFO testified that Murdaugh stole what amounted to millions of dollars from clients and the law firm.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CREIGHTON WATERS, LEAD PROSECUTOR: Had the firm received the $792,000?
JEANNE SECKINGER, CEO OF MURDAUGH'S FORMER LAW FIRM: No.
WATERS: Did this email, sort of end the inquiry at least for the present moment?
SECKINGER: Yes.
WATERS: All right, well let's move the story forward again. Did this matter ever come to your attention again at a later time?
SECKINGER: Yes.
WATERS: All right and tell me when that came to your attention.
SECKINGER: That would have been in September after we found some other misappropriations and we had confronted Alex and he had resigned.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NOBILO: Murdaugh faces 99 charges stemming from white collar theft and fraud allegations. His defense team say that those charges are irrelevant to the question of guilt in the murders of his wife and son.
New Jersey authorities say a local town councilwoman was found shot to death on Wednesday. 30-year-old Eunice Dwumfour was discovered in her own car a short distance from her home, according to police. She had multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene.
[04:40:00]
Dwumfour a Republican member of the borough council for a town of Sayreville in central New Jersey. Officials say that they don't have a motive at this time, but that the investigation is ongoing.
Still ahead, the Dow dropped but tech stocks surged. Find out which company's earnings reports are driving the Nasdaq higher.
Plus, how artificial intelligence is set to take over many more jobs that humans now do. Experts say that's not necessarily a bad thing.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NOBILO: The new trading day gets under way in the U.S. in about five hours' time and here is where futures stand right now. Markets are looking quite depressed. Meantime the European markets are up and running and here is a look at how markets across Asia faired today, it saw a mixed picture.
Wall Street will be closely watching for tangible signs that inflation is getting under control when the January jobs report comes out this morning. The markets closed mixed on Thursday as tech giants reported their fourth quarter results. Apple and Google owner Alphabet both posted lackluster earnings after the closing bell and Amazon beat expectations, but investors are disappointed by a slowdown in some key sectors.
As more and more businesses begin incorporating artificial intelligence into their operations, the World Economic Forum predicts that it will impact some 85 million workers worldwide within just a few years. But even as robots take over more and more jobs, experts say that AI will also generate many new ones. CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich has our report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Which jobs is AI coming after first?
SHELLY PALMER, PROFESSOR OF ADVANCED MEDIA, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY: If you're a middle manager, you're doomed. Any kind of commodity salesperson, report writers and journalists, accountants and bookkeepers and oddly enough, doctors who are looking -- who specialize in things like drug interactions. [04:45:04]
YURKEVICH: Do you mean out of a job --
PALMER: No.
YURKEVICH: -- or you mean that part of your job?
PALMER: That part.
YURKEVICH: OK.
PALMER: Yes.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): That's the relief a lot of Americans are looking for right now. The explosion of ChatGPT, an AI platform, showed us it could do a lot of what we humans do at work and faster.
YURKEVICH: Will it take my job?
PALMER: Yes and no. It's not going to replace you. Someone who knows how to use it well is going to take your job. And that's a guarantee.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): By 2025, the World Economic Forum predicts that 85 million jobs will be displaced by automation and technology but it will also create 97 million new roles. We've seen it before in the auto industry.
PALMER: While the auto worker may be displaced because they are not as good at welding or as painting as the robot, there's probably 35 people that have to be involved in the creation and maintenance of that device that welds better than a person.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): And that's what happened at Carbon Robotic. Former auto workers now building an AI laser weeder in Detroit for farms.
PAUL MIKESELL, FOUNDER AND CEO, CARBON ROBOTICS: It's a direct result of the history of auto manufacturing that we have that skill set available to us all in one place.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): The laser weeder, still operated by a human but run by AI, can do the work of between 40 to 80 people, says the CEO, filling roles that are hard to find humans for.
MIKESELL: Labor is harder and harder to find every year, particularly farm labor. And an AI system like ours that can do that job automatically saves a lot of time, money, effort.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): This music is composed solely by artificial intelligence called Ava. It even has an album you can stream. AI music is more affordable. There's no producer, composer or artist to pay.
KARL FOWLKES, ENTERTAINMENT AND BUSINESS ATTORNEY, THE FOWLKES FIRM: It's taken away opportunity from songwriters, producers and artists, right. So the people that are trying to feed them -- their families. YURKEVICH (voice-over): Something similar is happening in the art world, leaving artist Karla Ortiz and two others to file a class- action lawsuit against three AI art companies for copyright infringement. Ortiz claims they're using her name and art to train the AI.
KARLA ORTIZ, ARTIST: It's feast and famine for most of us. We go job by job. And what happens when there's a little bit less work to go around?
YURKEVICH (voice-over): Stability AI, one of the companies named, says the suit misunderstands how AI and copyright law work, adding it intends to, quote,
defend ourselves and the vast potential generative AI has to expand the creative power of humanity. The two other companies did not respond.
ORTIZ: I never thought we'd be here. It's like straight out of a sci- fi movie.
PALMER: My father tried to teach me human emotions.
There's a wonderful scene in the movie "I, Robot." Detective Spooner hates robots. And he says --
WILL SMITH, ACTOR, "I, ROBOT": Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?
PALMER: And the robot looks up like this --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you?
PALMER: Every one of us is not Mozart or Rembrandt or Picasso or choose your super famous, amazing artist or artisan. We're just people. This is not coming to kill us, it's coming to help us.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): Vanessa Yurkevich, CNN New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NOBILO: One of Italy's most wanted mob bosses has been arrested in France working as a pizza maker. Edgardo Greco was convicted in absentia for the murder of two brothers in the '90s and had been on the run for 16 years after escaping police custody in Italy. Under his new identity, Greco was even featured in a local French newspaper as an authentic Italian pizza maker. The 63-year-old will likely be extradited to Italy.
Still ahead, NFL legend Tom Brady says that he's retiring for good this time. But the New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft hopes the 45-year-old quarterback won't be able to pass up his offer.
[04:50:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) NOBILO: Basketball star LeBron James is getting closer to becoming the
NBA all-time leading scorer. James scored 26 points Los Angeles Lakers in their win over the Indiana Pacers on Thursday. And now 38-year-old forward need just 63 points to surpass Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and become the leads all-time leading scorer. This is the 20th season for James who showing no signs of slowing down. Since James celebrated his birthday on December 30, the four time NBA champion has averaged nearly 35 points per game. Abdul-Jabbar has held the record of 38,387 points since he retired in 1989. Abdul-Jabbar is expected to attend two games in Los Angeles next week where James could break that record.
And Robert Kraft says that he wants Tom Brady back in Boston. Not to suit up as a quarterback but to officially retired as a New England Patriot. In order to make it happen, the NFL team owner wants to sign Brady to a one day contract.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT KRAFT, NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS OWNER: Not only do I want it, our fans are clamoring for it. And to us, he always has been and always will be a Patriot. We will do everything in our power to bring him back, have him sign off as a Patriot and find ways to honor him for many years to come.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NOBILO: Brady played 23 seasons after he was drafted in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL draft. In Boston alone, he won six Super Bowls and three league MVPs.
Speaking of Super Bowl, Super Bowl LVII is a bit more than a week away and for the first time in U.S. pro football history, black quarterbacks will be leading both teams. Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles and Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs noted the importance of this moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PATRICK MAHOMES, QUARTERBACK, KANSAS CITY CHIEFS: Yes, I mean, to be on the world stage and have two black quarterbacks start in the Super Bowl, I think it's special. And I've learned more and more about the history of the black quarterbacks since I've been in this league.
[04:55:00]
And the guys that came before me and Jalen set the stage for this. And now, I'm just glad that we can kind of set the stage for guys -- kids coming up now.
JALEN HURTS, QUARTERBACK, PHILADELPHIA EAGLES: You know, I think it's history. I think it's something that is worthy of being noted and it is history. You know, it has come a long way. I think there has only been seven African-American quarterbacks to play in the Super Bowl. So to be the first for some is pretty cool. So it will be a good one.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NOBILO: The Eagles and Chiefs kickoff on Sunday February 12 in Glendale, Arizona for the U.S. football championships.
A first generation iPhone that is still sealed in its original box could dial in big bucks at auction. The device is an obsolete relic by today's standards, but to savvy investors, it's a valuable piece of history. My first phone was much older than that. Originally costing about $600 when it came out in 2007, another just like it recently sold for about 40 grand. The owner of this device says that she is hopeful it might fetch as much as $50,000. Bidding opened on Thursday and ends February 19.
And before we go, take a look at the world's oldest dog ever. As of today, bobby is 30 years and 268 days old. He has lived his entire life with a family in a rural village in Portugal. Dogs like Bobby usually live 12 to 14 years, but this purebred livestock guardian dog has beaten all odds. In fact, when he was born the family decided to get rid of the litter of four pups because they already had too many dogs. But Bobby mistakenly got left behind. He is extremely cute.
And that does it here on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Bianca Nobilo in London. And "EARLY START" with Christine Romans is coming up for you next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
