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CNN Live Today
Shoplifting Gangs Cost Malls Thousands; U.S. Troops Work to Save Life of Iraqi Baby; M.A.S.H. in Pakistan Helping Quake Victims
Aired December 28, 2005 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: So most after-Christmas shoppers are out there looking for bargains, but the people we're telling you about right now, they are looking for steals, literally. They belong to one of many shoplifting gangs. They have the skills of NBA players, quick hands dishing off to the open man, avoiding defenders.
Law enforcement and store owners are teaming up to try to stop these thieves, but as CNN's Deborah Feyerick reports, this case is no slam dunk.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Take a look at this surveillance video from a suburban shopping mall. This is no ordinary shoplifter. Just watch -- one, two, three pairs of shoes all stolen in less than a minute.
Now watch this woman, different store, different day, same technique. While her partner acts as a lookout, she slips box after box of perfume into a bag. Police call it "boosting," organized shoplifting carried out by trained gangs of professional thieves.
(on camera): How much merchandise are we talking about at any one time in an hour?
DETECTIVE DAVID HILL, MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MARYLAND, POLICE DEPARTMENT: In an hour, we have made an apprehension where we recovered $40,000 worth of merchandise.
FEYERICK: In a single hour?
HILL: In a single hour.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) security officer is holding an adult male.
FEYERICK (voice-over): Maryland Detective David Hill heads the Montgomery County Police retail theft unit.
HILL: ... target high-end stores...
FEYERICK: We met Detective Hill at a mall, but agreed not to mention which one. Stores are desperately afraid of drawing unwanted attention from gangs.
(on camera): So, one person is stealing. One person is doing surveillance. What are their roles?
HILL: You have collectors, packers, ones that take it to the car, others that are watching their backs to make sure they're not being followed by security.
FEYERICK (voice-over): Authorities say the gangs that have made the biggest dent are largely from Latin and South America.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My eyes never look down, always straight.
FEYERICK: This man, who we'll call "Carlos," says it's not unusual for his gang to hit seven malls in one day. He asked that we disguise his voice and face, afraid of retribution by those who run the criminal enterprise.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are very dangerous, because, in their countries, they rob banks, they kidnap people. They're drug dealers. If you fail them or if you -- you do something against them, yes. These people is dangerous.
FEYERICK: Authorities don't know how many gangs there are or who runs them. Yet, police believe organized shoplifting has touched nearly every major retail chain in the country.
Joe LaRocca is with the National Retail Federation, the group that represents many major store owners.
JOE LAROCCA, NATIONAL RETAIL FEDERATION: They are targeting particular types of merchandise. They have an order list. And they're going out and stealing what's on their order list.
FEYERICK: You name it, police say, they will steal it, jeans, lingerie, iPods, baby formula, over-the-counter drugs. The demand is endless, stolen merchandise then sold online, or at discount shops that fuel a black market.
(on camera): It looks like they have just been shopping in the mall.
FEYERICK (voice-over): Even with store clerks and shoppers around, it's surprisingly easy. Detective Hill showed us one of the tools the gangs use, boosting bags, ordinary shopping bags lined with foil to smuggle stolen merchandise out of a store.
(on camera): This is regular aluminum foil?
HILL: Right.
FEYERICK: Regular aluminum foil.
(CROSSTALK)
FEYERICK: So, somebody's put in a lot of work just to make this one bag.
HILL: Oh, yes. FEYERICK: OK.
HILL: And what that does is, when they walk out of the store with merchandise that has sensors on, the alarms will not be activated.
FEYERICK (voice-over): The bag also boosts the thieves' efficiency.
(on camera): So, then, I go over here and I'm just kind of looking at these jeans and then I can very easily just take it.
HILL: Come over.
FEYERICK: You put it into the bag.
HILL: Drop it right in.
FEYERICK: OK.
And, while you pick it up -- now, this is interesting. So, you pick it up. Then you can effectively walk out.
HILL: I walk out, unless I want -- want more.
FEYERICK: And...
HILL: And they usually...
FEYERICK: And...
(CROSSTALK)
HILL: They're going to want this full.
FEYERICK (voice-over): This video command center at a major department store invited us to see this recent hit by a shoplifting gang.
(on camera): The woman in the white looked back at her colleague.
HILL: She gives the OK. The coast is clear.
FEYERICK (voice-over): Here's how it works. While her partner trails her, the woman in white picks up a black shirt. She holds it up to block the security camera, then loads her bag with perfume. She passes the perfume to a third woman, who switches it to a different bag, and walks out of the store.
HILL: Over 40 items of perfume were taken. And it was just under $3,000 recovery was made.
FEYERICK (on camera): Not bad for eight minutes' work.
HILL: Not bad at all. FEYERICK (voice-over): These women were caught. But even when police do make arrests, most of these thefts are treated as misdemeanors. The criminals get no more than 30 days in prison.
Stephen Chaikin prosecutes organized crime in Montgomery County, Maryland.
STEPHEN CHAIKIN, PROSECUTOR: When they get into the court system, since they have multiple names and Social Security numbers, it's often hard to know who we're dealing with. And, sometimes, they bond out. They get out of jail. We never see them again.
FEYERICK: The other reason shoplifting has turned epidemic, because of their competitiveness, stores are notoriously secretive, sometimes, even refusing to alert mall security or a store next door. That's now changing.
(on camera): So, basically, this database allows the stores to talk to each other.
LAROCCA: Absolutely.
FEYERICK (voice-over): Stores have joined together to create a national crime database. Retailers that are targeted can now post information, like the type of crime, where and how it was committed, and a description of the criminal.
LAROCCA: We need to be able to go after these individuals. We need to put them behind bars for their crimes. And we need to keep them out of our retail stores.
FEYERICK: Carlos, who was recently arrested and is now awaiting trial, says it's not so much the individual, but the gang leaders.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These people, I don't think they're going to stop.
FEYERICK: And even stores and police acknowledge, it will take a very long time to bring organized shoplifting under control.
Deborah Feyerick, CNN, Maryland.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: We have world news ahead. It is mission critical in Iraq. U.S. soldiers not fighting the insurgency, but fighting to save this little girl's life. Their efforts to get her to the U.S. for urgent medical attention. It's an exclusive CNN story that will warm your heart, just ahead.
And deep in the mountains of Afghanistan, a U.S. army MASH unit, the last of its kind, is patching up victims of the earthquake-ravaged region. An inside look at unit's heroic efforts when CNN LIVE TODAY continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) KAGAN: Welcome back to CNN LIVE TODAY. We have an update for you now on Baby Noor. She is the 3-month-old Iraqi girl discovered by U.S. soldiers. She and her family are now on a U.S. military base and they are waiting for a visa to fly here to Atlanta for life-saving surgery.
Baby Noor was born with a severe form of spina bifida. Iraqi doctors gave her only a few weeks to live. Earlier this morning, I had a chance to speak to the Georgia Army National Guardsman who arranged for Noor to get to the base. He told me how the soldiers found the baby.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SGT. ARCHER FORD, GEORGIA ARMY NATL. GUARD: We were out in our sector patrolling, just doing our normal day's work, going from house to house knocking and searching, and we came to this house with this family. They showed us the baby, Noor, and we took pictures. We were concerned, and we felt that maybe this was something that the military could help out and see if we could effect some sort of change in this child's life.
KAGAN: How were you able to communicate with this family?
FORD: We always carry an interpreter with us when we go into our sector on patrol. It's required.
KAGAN: I understand this family was concerned about possible retaliation in asking American military for help.
FORD: Right. In the particular area that we're in in Baghdad, there's always the possibility that talking to locals will put them in a bad light with the local thugs, and we are always concerned that talking with anybody longer than a normal conversation will put them in danger.
KAGAN: Sergeant, what has it meant to you and your troops to focus on this little three-month-old baby and helping her amidst these very difficult conditions that you're working in?
FORD: It's a tremendous boon for all of us. We go out and we see a lot of negative things, I mean, that's just unavoidable in any kind of a conflict you're in, and this is just helping us to try and return something to the community, to improve relations with the local people who are often fed false propaganda by the AIF forces in the area, and this is just helping us a lot as soldiers to make us feel like we're able to contribute something other than just a force of arms.
KAGAN: Well, thank you for your good work. Thank you for your service. And we look forward to watching the story of baby Noor as her story moves from Iraq to the states here in Atlanta, Georgia.
Sergeant Archer Ford, thank you.
FORD: You're welcome. (END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: And so here is where that story is now. Last-minute travel arrangements are being made right now to fly baby Noor here to Atlanta. Timing is critical. The pediatric neurosurgeon Doctor Roger Hudgins told Carol Costello on CNN's AMERICAN MORNING about the importance of the timing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ROGER HUDGINS, CHILDREN'S HEALTHCARE ATLANTA: We need to get the back closed. The concern here is meningitis. If the baby gets an infection on the back, that infection can spread to the coverings all over the brain and the baby may die. So time is of the essence.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: So when the baby arrives here and undergoes surgery for spina bifida, can the baby be totally cured and live a normal, healthy life?
HUDGINS: That's a difficult question, because each child with spina bifida is different. And I have not examined this child. Our hope and expectation, though, is that we can get the child through the surgery and save the life and then we can work on the quality of life.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: Dr. Hudgins will perform the surgery for free, but there are other costs involved in baby Noor's care. If you'd like to help out, you can just logon to www.lifeover.org, or you can send donations to local church, Shepherd of the Hills, United Methodist Church in Douglasville, Georgia. We're going to put all the information up again, because a little bit of short notice for to you get that done. But lifeover.org is probably the easiest way to remember where you can help out Baby Noor.
Another medical story for you now, just like in the hit TV series "M.A.S.H.," the mobile army surgical hospital in Pakistan sees devastating injuries and illnesses every day. It's the last MASH unit in existence.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta spent some time with the doctors and nurses who are treating survivors from the October's deadly earthquake.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the mountains of Pakistan, you need two functioning legs to survive. They tell me anything less, and like an animal, you die. In other words, to lose a leg here is a death sentence.
That's why they worry about 10-year-old Abita Danon (ph). She now has only one leg. The other crushed when the walls and roof of her school buckled all around here.
CAPT. JOHN FERNALD, MASH PEDIATRICIAN: One of the true disasters in pediatrics is all the schools that collapsed. So, you know, every (INAUDIBLE).
GUPTA: Abita (ph) was one of three children to survive out of more than 200. But she is considered lucky.
(on camera): It's hard to believe that this was actually a school once. These are actually tables over here, a bench for the students over here.
This is where they studied. You have notepads still lying on the ground, pencils all still standing just the way it was on October 8.
I also couldn't help but notice some of these signs around the room. This one in particular, "Out of the frying pan, into the fire," with the Urdu translation underneath. How eerily true.
Then over here, just a whole collection of papers and books. Someone came back and wrote on this chalkboard in Urdu afterwards. It reads, "On October 8, 2005, the earth shook and wreaked havoc." And it certainly did for so many students in this school and so many members of this community.
(voice-over): It was also a description of what happened to Abita Danon (ph). She was so fragile, so badly injured, simply moving her meant it would take over a month to get her to the hospital. If she could get there at all. By the time she did arrive, she was infected and nearly dead.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bones were sticking out of the skin for 30 days before they were treated and the infection is just persistent. And, you know, it requires a lot of trips to the operating room.
GUPTA: Nine operations so far. It would take all the resources of the U.S. Army's 212th MASH unit to coax her leg and life back to health.
A MASH unit. Remember? A Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. And this is the last MASH in existence. After it's gone, MASH will be disbanded in favor of smaller, more nimble units. But here, in northeastern Pakistan, 200 patients a day are lucky MASH is still open for business.
Here, a young boy with scabies. This man simply can't sleep. A woman who's lost all feeling in her hand. And some of the stories are just too much to bear.
Dr. Mohammed Haque from New York City is volunteering. A Pakistani-American doctor and a Muslim. He took care of Americans after 9/11.
DR. MOHAMMED HAQUE, VOLUNTEER PHYSICIAN: (INAUDIBLE) baby starts crying.
GUPTA: No matter how hard he works, he can never bring back a young girl's mother.
This woman was carrying her baby that morning. And even though she broke her arm trying, she could not save her baby's life.
My own daughter is six months old. These stories so incredibly hard to hear.
And this is just one day. All of this pain and grief in just 24 hours.
At the MASH unit, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Muzaffarabad, Pakistan.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
And there's more stories to tell you today. You can call him a television icon. A famous doughnut maker has passed away. That's ahead. And a police dashboard camera captures an incredible interstate accident. We'll show you more of this when CNN LIVE TODAY returns.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL VALE, ACTOR: Time to make the doughnuts.
I made the doughnuts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: You'll recognize that face. The veteran actor who delighted TV audiences for years in the series of popular "Dunkin' Donuts" commercials has died. Michael Vale's family says he passed away on Saturday in New York of complications from diabetes. He was 83 years old.
Dunkin' Donuts chief executive called the Brooklyn native, known as "Fred the Baker," a beloved icon. Vale's career included Broadway, film and TV roles. He appeared in more than 1,300 TV commercials. So we're toasting to him today with our Dunkin' Donuts coffee.
(MARKET REPORT)
KAGAN: We're going to take a look at other stories making news coast to coast today.
Police in California searching for a gunman who opened fire at a mall in Bakersfield while post-Christmas shoppers ran for their lives. One man is dead. Mall surveillance video shows the 20-year-old victim arguing with the group before gunfire broke out. Police suspect the shooting was gang-related.
And disturbing video in Ohio taken from a patrol trooper's car shows just how deadly conditions are on the highways in winter. You can see the tractor trailer -- oh, slam! It had jackknifed on the highway and then ran into the parked highway troopers' car. The driver of the jackknife rig died, but amazingly, the trooper escaped injury. Police say the driver of the second rig was going way too fast for these icy roads. Let's check the time. It is 10:54. For those of you in Cincinnati, Ohio, 7:54 in windy and rainy San Francisco. We'll update the morning forecast after the break. It is wet and wild on the West Coast.
Plus, you will find out why this man is giving two big thumbs up to his surgeons.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: All right, this next story, it's not really so much a transplant as it was a rearranging of body parts. This is a 22-year- old man from Peru. He lost both thumbs and a finger in an accident. He now has two new thumbs.
Surgeons at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore used one of his big toes and another one of his fingers to fashion the new thumbs. The young man says having thumbs will allow him to pursue his dream of becoming a chef. Good for him. We like dreams coming true.
(WEATHER REPORT)
KAGAN: A story just ahead for you, Afghan soldiers trying to do it on their own. Our Becky Diamond is just back from a patrol with them. She'll join us live.
Plus, "Da Vinci Code," the movie. Will it be the big talker in 2006? We'll examine what's hot and what's not for the new year, as the second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY begins right now.
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