Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Rebuilding Relationships with Police; Jobs Report is Released; Treating Minorities with Respect in our Communities

Aired December 05, 2014 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

RAYMOND KELLY, FORMER NYPD COMMISSIONER: The two decisions, Michael Brown and the Eric Garner case. We understand that.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: When you look at this Garner tape, you've seen it, you look at what the officer is doing there, were you surprised there was no indictment?

KELLY: No, I think you can't put yourselves in the place of the grand try. We weren't there. We -- I don't know what they saw. I don't know if they did it frame by frame. I don't know what the officer said to the grand jury.

CUOMO: Do you think we should know?

KELLY: I'd like to know. And, obviously, New York law is different than Missouri law.

CUOMO: But he hasn't even ask, the prosecutor. He hasn't even asked the judge to release it.

KELLY: Well, he's asked for a portion of it. We got some information yesterday or the previous day -

CUOMO: But he's not really going the disclosure route. Do you think they should be?

KELLY: Well, I think at this juncture, I'd like to see more information, yes.

CUOMO: Because there's something about it that doesn't make sense if you just look at the video in real time. It does look like he's choking the guy. He goes down.

KELLY: Well, I think it's important to remember that the chokehold is restricted by an internal regulation.

CUOMO: Right.

KELLY: It is not against the law. And many police departments in the country, this is no problem.

CUOMO: True.

KELLY: So it is a regulation.

CUOMO: Right. And it was very important to you. You were very out front about it, about why you didn't want --

KELLY: Well, I banned the regulation - I put in the regulation 20 years ago -

CUOMO: Right. Right.

KELLY: Because we had a series of cases, no question about it, it is very sensitive when you go near someone's neck.

CUOMO: Yes.

KELLY: And it's resulted in the death of other people in the history of this department and other departments.

CUOMO: But whether it's legal or not - I feel like we're getting caught in the weeds on this - he gets behind the guy, he chokes him. The guy goes down. He's saying, "I can't breathe." He dies. It just screams of excessive force.

KELLY: Well, again, we don't know exactly what was presented to the grand jury.

CUOMO: So then you get why this happened and race comes up. An unarmed black man. He's selling cigarettes, maybe, maybe not, who knows if he even had the cigarettes there, that's unclear. And he winds up dying. And this is what happens because blacks don't get fair treatment by the cops. It's a cultural problem. Do you accept that?

KELLY: Do I accept that as being a cause -- I accept it as being a - clearly a perception on the part of a lot of people. There is a perception in the African-American community that they don't get fair treatment in many, many encounters with the police department. I would like to point out that in 2013, there was a poll of satisfactory with the New York City Police Department. Seventy percent of the people approved the actions of the NYPD. And it was like 58 percent in the African-American community. So the notion that there is this great schism between the African-American community and the NYPD simply was not the case in 2013. Now, if you keep talking about it, yes, it can continue to fester and become more of a problem.

CUOMO: You think that our talking about it is creating the problem? (INAUDIBLE) the problem we're talking about it.

KELLY: No, I think some politicians and I -- certainly in the campaign in 2013 it was made an issue and it continues to be an issue in the political sphere. So, yes, I think that adds to the problem.

CUOMO: But do you think that it's not just highlighting a reality that cops in high crime districts, that tend to be high minority districts, have a rougher and a less dignified relationship with the people they police than let's say where I am on Carnegie (ph) Hill?

KELLY: Well, (INAUDIBLE) - I don't think that's what the - what their -- the issue is. I was (INAUDIBLE) people are saying. Is there tension in some minority communities between the police and the people who live there? Sure. CUOMO: Can you change that?

KELLY: (INAUDIBLE) -- I'm sorry?

CUOMO: Can you change it?

KELLY: You can work to change it. You can certainly --

CUOMO: How?

KELLY: By more communication, by having a more diversified police force. The NYPD police officer rank is majority/minority now.

CUOMO: Right.

KELLY: And police officers born in 106 countries. So a lot of effort has been made here. I think we've made a lot of progress. Now, when you have an Eric Garner case, when you have a Michael Brown case, certainly it sets u back significantly. But in the big picture, certainly from my vantage point, having been in the business 40 years -

CUOMO: Sure.

KELLY: A lot of progress has been made.

CUOMO: And it gets - well, then, so how do we improve? You've got to deal with culture. You've got to deal with conversation with the community. You work for them, not against them. You get to, what happens when the horrible happens? Do you think prosecutors should investigate their own cops?

KELLY: Prosecutors are elected.

CUOMO: Right.

KELLY: We have five district attorneys elected in New York City. They're representing the people. Now, in certain instances, I could see where you need a special prosecutor. But in normal cases, when I say normal cases, when it's some encounter between the police and, you know, members of the minority community, I think the D.A.s can do the job.

CUOMO: But they're making all their cases with these same men and women. I mean these are their people. You know, this -- the guy out in Staten Island, these are his cops that he makes cases with all the time. And so he goes before the grand jury. Do you think he's as aggressive with, you know, that defendant being a cop, as he would be if it were Eric Garner? You know, that they usually go in there wanting an indictment. The grand jury is a tool of theirs. You know this.

KELLY: Well, the district attorneys that are in New York City, the ones that I know of, hold -- we all hold them to the highest standards. I think they do a terrific job. In certain instances, maybe it calls for a special prosecutor. I wouldn't say in a normal course -- any time there's a police investigation, you need a special prosecutor? I don't think so. I think they'd be against it quite a bit.

CUOMO: A little inside baseball, but I think people who are trying to figure out how this happened, because it seems like probable cause was a bar you could have hopped over pretty easily here. What would happen in trial? Who knows. Staten Island. That's where this happened. They made a movie "Cop Land" that was basically about Staten Island. That there's a lot of conservative people there, a lot of first responder families there, and that maybe if this had happened in another borough, you would have gotten an indictment, but not there. Do you think there's anything to that?

KELLY: The grand jury, as I understand it, made up of 14 whites and nine or eight African-Americans. So that's - that's pretty representative. And actually it's -- the demographics of Staten Island, a larger percentage of whites than that jury reflected. So, I mean, I think that's a pretty reasonable construct for a grand jury to look at this case.

CUOMO: So you think, going forward, changes can be made. The first thing we've heard is three-day training for 22,000 cops and, you know, that's going to be the sweeping change. That's not going to be enough. That's just a first step, right?

KELLY: Well, as far as training is concerned, I'd like to point out that the NYPD is the only major police department that had its training accredited by the commission on law enforcement accreditation. It took four years to do. It was renewed in 2009 and 2012. So the training, I think, has been well done.

Now, is the new training going to make a difference? We'll see. I don't know who devised it. I don't know who put it together. I don't know what the expert input we have. We'll have to see. Like, you know, we could talk about training and talk about it for quite a while. You know, it's always the answer down the road.

CUOMO: It could be something that just sounds good. That's right, right? And there - you started this conversation with kind of adding that, that, well, you know, a lot of politicians say this and, you know, and now they're saying they got the solution and it's in training. Do you think that the police can become scapegoats in a situation like this for politicians who don't want to deal with underlying social issues?

KELLY: Sure. Absolutely. We've seen that sort of throughout the history of modern policing. You know, the police are easy to bash. In this city, you have record low crime rates. Last year we had 333 murders. In 1990 we had 2,245 murders and a less than - a million fewer people living in New York than we have now. The city is safe as it's ever been, yet people still want to blame the police for a myriad of things.

CUOMO: The pushback is, well, how did you get it that way? Part of it's going to be the economy, right, and their external factors. But whether it's stop and frisk, which, you know, you had very strong feelings about, a broken windows policy, which Bratton and, you know, obviously you guys were architects of that, that the people who you police on that level pay too high a price for too small a crime. This guy was selling cigarettes. He winds up getting rushed by a handful of officers. He winds up dying. It's not worth it, even if it reduces crime a little bit.

KELLY: Well, people in these communities, I think, have a pretty strong relationship with the police, contrary to what you may see in the media. They need help. They want help. The president said that the other day, that these communities of color need strong policing. And it has absolutely transformed neighborhoods throughout New York. And you know that. You've been here your whole life. You know neighborhoods you never go to 20 years ago now have million-dollar condos in it. That's because of the low levels of crime and the feeling of public safety.

CUOMO: You do not think that this should be representative of the NYPD overall in terms of its reputation?

KELLY: What is representative?

CUOMO: The Eric Garner situation.

KELLY: The New York City Police Department does terrific work every day. And as I say, it's made this city that was crime-ridden in 1990 the safest big city in America.

CUOMO: Well, Commissioner Kelly, you're certainly part of that legacy and we appreciate you being on NEW DAY.

KELLY: Thanks, Chris. Have a good day.

CUOMO: All right, Alisyn, over to you.

ALISYN CAMEROTA: All right, Chris.

The final jobs report of the year is in and there's a big surprise inside. Details ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: OK, we're getting a look at the latest jobs numbers. Christine Romans is here to wreak them down for us.

How are they looking?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It's a strong jobs report. A strong jobs report, Alisyn. And 321,000 net new jobs created in the month, 321,000. The unemployment rate still 5.8 percent, which is basically the lowest since 2008. And the Labor Department saying that there was broad strength across job categories. I'm looking in these numbers and I see technical consultants, business professional services, computer systems workers, tech workers, accountants, high skilled manufacturing, lots of different kind of jobs here. So not just the low-paid retail jobs anymore, it's a lot of different jobs in here and that's something that's encouraging. We are on track for the best year of job creation since 1999, 2.6

million jobs added so far this year and the trend really important. Ten months in a row of 200,000 plus net new jobs created.

Now, why do people not feel this? Wages are not growing quickly. So the kinds of jobs are getting better. There are more of these jobs. But wages are not growing along with it, and that is still a real problem in the economic recovery. Make no mistake, this is a strong jobs report this week.

CAMEROTA: Great way to end the year on this jobs number.

ROMANS: Yes. Yes.

CAMEROTA: Christine Romans, thanks so much. Have a great weekend.

ROMANS: You're welcome. You, too.

CAMEROTA: Well, after the grand jury decision and the widespread protests, what's next? How does the reconciliation start?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Good to have you back with us here on NEW DAY. A conversation is taking place all across the nation, how do we rebuild a broken trust with police? And how to make sure that minorities are treated with respect by all officers. We want to dig deeper. We've got quite a panel today, Michael Smerconish, he's the host of CNN's "SMERCONISH," Democratic Congressman Charlie Rangel of New York is here, and LZ Granderson, CNN commentator.

Gentlemen, this is really a delight for me to have you all here, and I think I want to, if you will allow me and indulge me, to sort of take this beyond the politics, and talk about what we can be doing on the ground level in our communities. One of the things that I think we've all realized is that there's sort of a two-pronged aspect of this. What's going on with law enforcement and the criminal justice system, and what's going on in our communities? They're inextricably linked. In fact, Congressman, why don't we start with you? What can we be doing in terms of seeing how law enforcement is interacting with our communities of color?

REP. CHARLES RANGEL, (D) NEW YORK: There's two problems. One, as awkward as it is, we have to say that this great country of ours has a cancer called racism. Until you admit it, there's no way in the world to deal with it. The police are only symbolic of attitudes that people have. They're not born with it. They learn how to do it, and they treat people differently because of their color. You know, when people start to think, it hasn't been that long ago we were picking cotton without any names of our own, without any culture, and 60 years ago there was a question as to whether or not we had civil rights, whether we had voting. I say that because we've come a good distance from where we were when we were brought into this country.

PEREIRA: But we still have a long way to go. RANGEL: But we have to admit it. You know, when I marched with Dr.

King, I never believed I would hear Lyndon Johnson saying what he did. I never thought this - - I was out there politically more than believing in my heart that we were going to turn this country around. But when the dogs came out, when the kids got bombed at church, when white folks says, oh my god, that could be me, things changed, and things are changing now.

PEREIRA: LZ, things are changing, but it's 2014, and we've just seen what's happened in the last few months, and we see the rage, we see the frustration, we see the misconceptions, we see the stereotypes, we see the biases. How do we begin to change attitudes, to foster understanding both within the black community, but with also the other communities of color and within the white community?

LZ GRANDERSON, CNN COMMENTATOR: Well, it definitely starts with admitting that we have a problem.

PEREIRA: Fair enough.

GRANDERSON: And by we, I don't just mean white people, I mean all of us. There have been tons of studies that have been conducted that shows that inherently we all have some level of implicit racism, some level of implicit bias. It's not race-baiting or, you know, racism to admit that we all have this problem.

And then the second part of it is looking at - - There's a difference between racist and racism and institutionalized racism.

PEREIRA: Right.

GRANDERSON: You can have institutionalized racism, have long lasting impact on a minority community, without having actual racist people saying I hate black people.

PEREIRA: You have a system that is racist.

GRANDERSON: Exactly. Case in point, if you look at our education system, we know one of the precursors for longstanding academic achievement is preschool, is early childhood development. When you look at the number of facilities that are available in minority communities, when you look at the disparity along racial lines among black people who are suspended from preschool versus their white counterparts, you begin to see how, not necessarily racist people, but a systemic racist, have racial impact on our communities. Those are the sort of things we need to begin evaluating now.

PEREIRA: Michael, I know you have had a chance to talk to people from all across the country.

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN HOST "SMERCONISH" Incessantly, yes.

PEREIRA: Really, really curious, what you're hearing from people from of all ilts (ph), and all backgrounds, and all races.

SMERCONISH: So, I like to say, Michaela, that I answer the phone for a living, because truly on a day to day basis I entertain telephone calls from folks all across the country. And we've now had at least four high profile incidents that have ended in the same way. We had Trayvon Martin, we had Mike Brown, we have Tamir Rice, and now we have Eric Garner.

Something has changed, and it doesn't make any of this worth it, but perhaps there's a silver lining. I'm seeing, I'm hearing, something different now with regard to the Garner case and the Tamir Rice case in Cleveland that I didn't hear with regard to Mike Brown and I didn't hear in Trayvon Martin. And that is that when I hear a voice on the phone, and if I could discern if they're African-American or if they're white, I pretty much used to know which way this call was going to go. These two incidents, with the presence of the videotape, have dramatically changed that, and now I think that there's far more of a consensus than I recognized in the prior incidents of people being offended, regardless of their ideological perspective or their racial perspective.

PEREIRA: Now, and Congressman, that's really interesting. We saw the video from the protests that we're seeing all across the nation, remarkably here in New York last night. Spike Lee even mentioned it, that it's really a beautiful thing to see New Yorkers coming out in support of Eric Garner and his family. How do we make this conversation one that we can have, not just in times of crisis? You know, the relationship is important to establish when there isn't just a problem. It has to be one that is sort of part of the fabric of our society.

RANGEL: Some politician said no good crisis should go to waste, and it's a time of crisis that ministers, and rabbis, and everyone, you know, they deal directly, right? And they should be able to say that God didn't want people -- when God gives birth to these little kids, they haven't the slightest clue as to who to hate and who to dislike. So we screw it up.

PEREIRA: We're born with a clean slate.

RANGEL: So, if ever they had an agenda just like in the civil rights movement, you had nuns, you had rabbis, you had people of all faiths saying this is wrong, and it made you feel good that you were trying to correct something. So don't wait for a crisis, take advantage of this one, and I really think that if we had educations about what people have gone through, my buddy used to be, Paul O'Dwyer, by the time he got finished telling me how Irish are treated in this country, and then followed - -

PEREIRA: Different perspective, right?

RANGEL: Right. And then the Italians would come, and they still are suffering with the "Sopranos" and whatnot, and they are treated really mean by people who they don't have to have an interchange with, even today. If you can put your feet, or kids' feet, into shoes that we have to walk because we are the kids of former slaves, I think as Americans you would say thank God I'm born in America, thank God it's time that we can change, and thank God we can get rid of this cancer we have. PEREIRA: Walk a mile in another man's moccasins is the way I like to

say it. Gentlemen, the three of you share a lot of things in common. The fact that you care very deeply about this nation, about this conversation we're having, and also the three of you are all fathers. I'm very curious how this conversation has gone with each of you, and what it has been with your grandchildren even.

Michael, I'll start with you. I know you have three sons, a daughter. The conversation around this, and what you want the conversation to be with your kids, and I'll get your reaction in the last two minutes.

SMERCONISH: Well, let's be fair. I've never had to have the kind of conversation with my three sons that these men have had.

PEREIRA: But there's a conversation to be had because we're all in this stand together, right?

SMERCONISH: Oh, we've had a conversation. Believe me, at our dinner table this is the sort of thing that gets discussed constantly, but it's not the same type of a conversation that would take place if we were a family of color. And that in and of itself is quite heartbreaking, and I've had any number of people share with me the types of comments they've had to make to their own sons about how to deal with law enforcement if they should find themselves in an interaction with police that I've never had to have.

PEREIRA: LZ quickly, and then I'll get the congressman's response.

GRANDERSON: You know, I'm in a really blessed place right now. In my household we're going through the college application process, and so we're talking about, you know, my son's future as these event are unfolding. And he wants to go into higher education, he wants to go into policy making because he wants to impact education, because he sees a through line between the racial disparity in terms of public education, and many of the ills that he sees happening, including what's happening with Michael Brown. And so education is what the focus of our conversation has been about.

PEREIRA: I love that. Congressman, final, quick, thought, 30 seconds.

RANGEL: Well, I would say it's national security. We have so many damn enemies, we cannot afford to be fighting among ourselves because of color and background. Because my son is a Marine, he gets offended when I tell him to act any differently because someone else has a uniform that he think is inferior to the one that he wore as a United States Marine. So, people don't like the attitude, especially men, do you tell them they have to get rid of their respect for themselves, because someone's a bigot. But, listen, we have a long way to go, and I hope we all are correct that this could be the turning point in terms of how black and others live and work together in this great country of ours.

PEREIRA: I have loved this conversation with all of you. Congressman, Michael, LZ, really a delight. Thank you so much.

RANGEL: Thank you. CUOMO: Ending on the right tone. To be absolutely clear, America's

strength has always been found in its diversity, and that's why we're going to keep telling this story and figure out the way forward. There's a lot of news on that front, we're going to get it to you.

CAMEROTA: Have a great weekend, everyone. "NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello starts right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)