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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
No Indictment in Death of Eric Garner; Federal Investigation Underway; Inside the Fight for Kobani; American Hostage Pleads for His Life
Aired December 04, 2014 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight: protests erupting in New York and across the country after a grand jury decides not to indict a white police officer involved in the chokehold death of an unarmed black man. Eric Garner's family is outraged this morning and speaking out.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Now, a federal civil rights investigation underway into Garner's death as President Obama vows to lessen racial tensions between police and minorities across the nation.
Good morning. Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.
BERMAN: And I'm John Berman. Great to see you today. It is Thursday, December 4th. It is 5:00 a.m. in the East.
And breaking overnight: protests of race and justice -- or what some people called the lack of justice -- erupting across the country. And just in Ferguson last week, the flashpoint is the grand jury's decision not to indict a white police officer in the death of a black man.
ROMANS: In this case, a New Yorker named Eric Garner. Garner died in July after officers used a chokehold trying to arrest him for selling loose cigarettes.
National correspondent Jason Carroll is in Times Square where protesters have gathered.
Good morning, Jason.
JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, calm streets this morning, Christine. Peaceful demonstrations last night as hundreds poured in the streets, marching past some of New York's most iconic spots right here in Times Square. The West Side Highway, Rockefeller Center, marching across the Brooklyn Bridge, some of them chanting Eric Garner's last words, "I can't breathe". Others chanting, "Black lives matter".
At one point, protesters gathering at Grand Central Station, holding a so-called die-in, lying down right in the middle of the station. They marched throughout the night. The grand jury had cleared, as you said, Daniel Panteleo in the chokehold death of Eric Garner. Panteleo releasing a statement last night, saying, "It is never my
intention to harm anyone. And I feel very bad about the death of Mr. Garner. My family and I include him and his family in our prayers. And I hope that they will accept my personal condolences for their loss."
Last night, Eric Garner's widow could never accept the grand jury decision or the officer's apology.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ESAW GARNER, WIDOW OF ERIC GARNER: I'm determined to get justice for my husband, because he shouldn't have been killed in that way. He shouldn't have been killed in any way. He should be celebrating Christmas and Thanksgiving and everything else with his children and his grandchildren. And he can't. Why? Because a cop did wrong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARROLL: Very emotional moment there, Christine. Again, the demonstrations last night were peaceful. As of last count, some 30 arrests. Most of those charged with minor offenses such as disorderly conduct.
At this point in terms of the investigation, the U.S. attorney's office announcing they are moving forward with a civil rights investigation -- Christine.
ROMANS: All right. Jason Carroll for us in Times Square this morning -- thanks, Jason.
BERMAN: Eric Garner's father, Ben Garner, had a message for the public. He told our Joe Johns that he is disappointed by the grand jury decision, but people should keep their protests lawful and peaceful.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BEN GARNER, FATHER OF ERIC GARNER: I was hurt by it, but still, I don't want no reason for anybody to get locked up here and go through the same (EXPLETIVE DELETED) that we are going through all the time.
JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What do you think happens next? Have you talked to the lawyers a bit about, you know --
GARNER: The feds will take over.
JOHNS: And you are hopeful that the federal government --
GARNER: I'm quite sure they will give us the right decision.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Ben Garner's message struck a cord with the New York City's mayor. Bill de Blasio telling reporters about the painful personal talk he had to have with his son Dante who is black. De Blasio says even he, the mayor of New York, had to warn his son to be careful in any interactions he might have with police.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK CITY: I couldn't help but immediately think what it would mean to lose Dante. Life could never been the same thereafter. I could feel how it will never been whole again. Things will never been whole again for Mr. Garner.
And even in the midst of his pain, one of the things he stopped and said so squarely was, there can't be violence. And said Eric would not have wanted violence. Violence won't get us anywhere.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Following the grand jury decision not to hand an indictment in Garner's death, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department will launch a federal civil rights investigation into the case. The attorney general promised it will be, quote, "independent, thorough, fair and expeditious".
Now, the investigation will be handled at least initially by the woman that President Obama nominated to replace Eric Holder, the U.S. attorney for Brooklyn, Loretta Lynch. The president himself weighed in on the Garner case.
CNN White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski has more now -- Michelle.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, John and Christine.
Yes, this is interesting. I mean, we have the outgoing attorney general announcing a federal investigation now into the case. And the U.S. attorney there is going to be the next attorney general.
We also heard from the president on this in an unexpectedly long statement just before he addressed Native American tribal leaders.
Here's part of what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When I met with folks from Ferguson and law enforcement and clergy and civil rights activists, I said, this is an issue we have been dealing with for far too long and it's time for us to make more progress that we've made. And I'm not interested in talk. I'm interested in action. And I am absolutely committed as president of the United States to making sure that we have a country in which everybody believes in the core principle that we are equal under the law.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KOSINSKI: It will go what the administration announced just in this past week, a task force to look at policing in America, a deeper investigation of what some see as the militarization of local police departments and the receiving of military equipment from the federal government.
Also, the administration asking Congress for more money for training for local police departments, also body cameras. The president said that that kind of action is going to continue until he sees some strengthening in the trust and accountability between police departments and communities -- John and Christine.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: All right. Michelle, thanks for that this morning.
Now, the protests around the country have been largely peaceful.
In Philadelphia, protesters gathered in city hall for a die-in prior to that city's tree lighting ceremony. The crowd there was chanting "no justice", and "hands up, don't shoot", throughout the event there.
BERMAN: In Washington, hundreds of demonstrators marched through the Dupont Circle neighborhood. They can be heard chanting "I can't breathe" and "no justice, no peace". The protests lasted several hours before that one begun winding down.
ROMANS: And in Ferguson, Missouri, Michael Brown's stepfather says he is sorry for his emotional outburst. His call to burn this down came the night a grand jury there decided not to indict a police officer in his stepson's death.
CNN correspondent George Howell has the latest for us this morning from Ferguson.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GEORGE HOWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Police in Ferguson are looking back at what happened last week to determine to find out why and what started the looting and rioting that we saw. And they are focusing on video and that audio. You will remember, Louis Head making the comment. He's the stepfather of Michael Brown, telling people to burn things down. Police are questioning whether that helped incite a riot.
Mr. Head has since apologized for those comments, saying that he made them in a fit of rage. He was angry and that he did not want to see this community burn down.
In the meantime, we are also hearing from the governor of the state, Jay Nixon. You'll remember, he took some heat for his decision on how he deployed the National Guard after the rioting took place.
Take a listen to what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HOWELL: There are business owners who said, hey, had the National Guard been there, maybe my business would not have been looted or burned down. Your decision, though, to bring them in later.
GOV. JAY NIXON (D), MISSOURI: The loss of property was significant, clearly. Individual business owners, our hearts go out to them. But you put in context, the fact we didn't have a single one of those folks shot or single law enforcement or trooper or national guardsmen shot nor any of their weapons discharged in that difficult a situation, I had to make decision about life.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOWELL: In the aftermath of what happened in New York with Eric Garner, I can tell you, there were about a handful of protesters in front of the police department. But overall, here in Ferguson, everything remained peaceful -- John, Christine.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BERMAN: Our thanks to George Howell for that report from Ferguson. We're going to have much more on our coverage, the reaction surrounding the decision not to indict the officer in Eric Garner's death.
ROMANS: And we're going to take you to one of the most dangerous places for journalists in the world. Our Nick Paton Walsh went inside Kobani in Syria for an up-close look at the fight against ISIS. He has got some gripping reporting. He brings it to you, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROMANS: Happening now: reaction to the case of Eric Garner. A New York City grand jury declines on Wednesday to indict the police officer who tried to arrest Garner using a chokehold, a chokehold that resulted in Garner's death. That announcement of the grand jury's decision sparked protests nationwide last night. In New York, marchers virtually shutdown midtown Manhattan for a time.
BERMAN: I want to go now to Syria and a gripping CNN exclusive. We're going to take you inside the intense deadly fight for Kobani.
Our Nick Paton Walsh and his crew, they followed a female commander and her Kurdish fighting force as they exchanged fired with ISIS just feet away from their positions.
Nick joins us live from inside the Turkish border where you can see Kobani.
Nick, this is a remarkable report.
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: John, what is remarkable is to be inside Kobani after weeks of overlooking that town in the conflict raging inside it from the Turkish hills and to see the extent of the devastation. I mean, they are fighting over a town which is really little left. There are civilians trying to live there. They're short of food and fuel.
But ISIS rained down on them with an hourly fashion, homemade mortars. These are simply gas canisters with scrap metal and fired out of launch tubes.
There's also heavy machine gun fire. We heard on roofs gunfire, night long continually. It makes extraordinarily hard for people simply to live there. But the fight continues. The Kurds obviously not giving up, backed up by coalition air strikes.
But on the ground, actual fighters doing the fighting are often women in their early 20s. We followed one commander Media Raqqa (ph) toward the front. Saw heavy fighting.
But she also described us to how her best friend lost her life trying to save others on that same frontline.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): There were heavy clashes with ISIS. We were outnumbered and out of ammunition. She herself was injured, but she advanced to help save the other injured with her. ISIS surrounded her because girls are very prized by them. She then blew herself up and killed a lot of them with her.
I was near her then. Her last words were, "We will liberate our land with the last drop of blood in my body."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALSH: Now, John, it's a grim detail, but one worthy of note. The same frontline has a number of ISIS corpses still in the rubble and a strong smell of decay, because ISIS retreat, they don't take their dead with them. This is an area that's been hit heavily by coalition airstrikes. So, the Kurds were able to retake it.
But that smell of decay, it lingers around that fighters, surely reminding them of the fight and the enemy they face, John.
BERMAN: Inside the destruction in Kobani. It doesn't look like there is much left to fight for in terms of space for the city itself.
Nick Paton Walsh for us from Southern Turkey, thanks so much, Nick.
Breaking overnight: an American man held captive in Yemen is begging for help. Luke Somers was kidnapped last year by an al Qaeda affiliate. In a recent video, Somers appears nervous as he introduces himself.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LUKE SOMERS, KIDNAPPED BY AL QAEDA: My name is Luke Somers. I'm 33 years old. I was born in England, but I carry an American citizenship and have lived in America for most of my life.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Last week, both special operations and Yemeni forces tried to free Somers without success. An al Qaeda official said that Somers will, in his words, meet his inevitable fate if the United States does not meet the group's demands in three days. Those demands were not outlined in the video.
Somers says his life is in danger. He needs help immediately. He is a freelance photographer. He was kidnapped by terrorists last September.
ROMANS: An American woman was stabbed in a restroom at a high-end mall in the United Arab Emirates. Police in Abu Dhabi identified the woman as 47-year-old Ibolya Ryan, a schoolteacher. She has 11-year- old twins.
Security footage shows a suspect covered head to toe in women's garb. The U.S. embassy is working with authorities to identify the suspect's motive, identity, even the gender.
BERMAN: All right. The launch is a go. You're looking at live pictures from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. In just about three hours, NASA is going to launch the Orion spacecraft. The unmanned Orion spacecraft will blast off at 7:05 Eastern Time on top of a Delta IV rocket right there.
Now, this capsule, it is special, new operation designed to take astronauts maybe to asteroids, maybe to Mars one day, certainly deeper into space that we have been going. And by we, I mean humans have been going for the last 40 years or so. This goes beyond the near- earth orbit that the shuttle and the International Space Station had been flying out.
The Orion mission is expected to last 4.5 hours, orbit the earth twice. It could be about seven years, NASA says, before an astronaut flies in the Orion capsule. Very exciting. I love this stuff.
ROMANS: It is really cool.
BERMAN: Indra Petersons now with an early look at our forecast.
Good morning, Indra.
ROMANS: Hi, Indra.
INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I have good news. It's going to be the nicest day of the week, including the weekend, because we're going to start to get rained out as we head toward the weekend. So, enjoy today.
Temperatures are warming up into the south. We'll actually see above normal temperatures. Some of you looking at temperatures 15 degrees above normal. A little bit colder than yesterday into the mid- Atlantic and Northeast. But either way, sunshine, we're not looking at rain we have been seeing for the last several days, as high pressure builds in. That does change, though, because all of this moisture will start to fill in and make its way into the mid-Atlantic and Northeast as we head through the weekend.
So, day by day, you can see a soggy mess cutting through the middle of the country. It spreads further to the East. Tomorrow, we can get heavy amounts of rain outwards Louisville, Nashville and Memphis. And, of course, by Saturday, oh, yes, a soggy weekend into the Northeast, even upstate, we'll be talking about some snow. So, today, it's gorgeous. We love it.
ROMANS: Today is gorgeous. All right. We'll take that. Thank you so much, Indra.
That was an early start on your weather. Now, it is time for an early start on your money.
Asian stocks soaring. Look at Shanghai.
BERMAN: Wow.
BERMAN: Up 2.3 percent, that's big. Strong data in the U.S. and hoping of more stimulus measures.
European stocks also up, ahead of a decision on your interest rates by the European Central Bank. U.S. stock futures are barely budging, but who cares. At the highest they have ever been.
Yesterday, the Dow and S&P closed at highs. My line of the day of the year, stocks have been a broken record, a broken record. The S&P 500 up 12 percent this year.
Fast food workers are not feeling it and they are promising to walk off the job. Protests demanding $15 an hour pay expected in the 190 cities. It's the latest in the campaign of strikes that started two years ago. Since then, more than a dozen states and several cities have raised their minimum wage above the federal limit of $7.25. No fast food chains have yet committed to a wage hike.
You know, in Chicago, earlier this week, city council voted to raise minimum wage to $13 an hour by the year 2019. And a lot of people are saying does that mean things will cost more? It means people have more money in their pocket to spend on things that might cost more. But the trend is clearly that they're raising those wages.
BERMAN: About 20 minutes after the hour right now.
And the Philadelphia 76ers last night, they did the impossible. They actually won a game. How did they accomplish this simply shocking feat? Laura Rutledge in the "Bleacher Report", next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BERMAN: Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston read aloud a written statement during his student code of conduct hearing yesterday, giving his side of the story after being accused of sexual assault by a fellow student in 2012.
ROMANS: Yes, Laura Rutledge has more on this in this morning's "Bleacher Report".
Hey, Laura.
LAURA RUTLEDGE, BLEACHER REPORT: Hey, John and Christine. And yes, Winston wouldn't answer questions during the hearing, which is well within his rights. But the Heisman winning quarterback was ready with a lengthy planned statement acclaiming his innocence. He said in part, "I did not rape or sexually assault the accuser. I did not create a hostile, intimidating or offensive environment in the short period of time that we were together. The accuser had the capacity to consent to having sex with me and she repeatedly did so by her conduct and her verbal expressions."
The statement went on to say, "Rape is a vicious crime. The only thing as vicious of rape is falsely accusing someone of rape."
The hearing finished on Wednesday. He faces four violations of Florida State's code of conduct. The panel is expected to come back with a decision within 10 days.
One of the St. Louis Rams football players who participated in the controversial "hands up, don't shoot" gesture before a game earlier this week is speaking out about it. Jared Cook says their expression was misunderstood.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JARED COOK, RAMS TIGHT END: It was a perfect example of a peaceful protest. If anything -- if anything should have been said about it by anybody, it should have been an example of a way to peacefully protest and peacefully get your point across without tearing up your neighborhood.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RUTLEDGE: Earlier this week, the St. Louis Police Officers Association called the gesture tasteless and offensive.
The Philadelphia 76ers, losers of 17 games straight to start the season, one loss away from tying the NBA record of the worst start ever, finally won last night, beating the Minnesota Timberwolves. But much like their season, they literally started the game out in the wrong direction. Sixteen seconds in, refs stopped the game and pointed them in the right direction. It was a tight game in the end. But Sixers made shot and they should and pulled out their first "w" of the year, 1-17 never tasted so sweet.
And, John and Christine, it gives a new meaning to directionally challenged. I think they're glad that the refs finally got everything worked out there.
BERMAN: I got to say, I've actually seen them play this season. They're not as good as their record. They're not as good as 1-17.
Laura Rutledge, thanks so much. Appreciate it.
ROMANS: Ouch.
Much more ahead on the protests in New York and the country over a grand jury's decision not to indict a police officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner. What we know this morning about a federal investigation, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
