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New Day

Objects on Sea Floor Believed from Flight 8501; Security Tightened for Times Square Ball Drop; College Football Playoff Preview; NYC Mayor Meets with Police Union Leaders

Aired December 31, 2014 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning once again to you. Welcome back to NEW DAY.

Developments overnight in the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501: sonar equipment may have located wreckage believed to be from the plane on the bottom of the Java Sea. Four more bodies have been recovered, bringing the total number to at least 10. Two of the victims' bodies have arrived in Surabaya for identification. Meantime, bad, bad weather is hampering search efforts, which have been called off for the day. Divers are hoping to get back in the water soon. But air Asia's CEO says the weather forecast for the next few days is not looking good.

For more on the latest developments, let's head right to Gary Tuchman who is live once again from Indonesia -- Gary.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Michaela, that's the newest information that more bodies have been recovered, upping the total to 10. In addition to that, five more bodies will be brought back here to this area, this airport, the naval air base near here for a ceremony like the one we saw about two and a half hours ago. It was incredibly moving.

The first two victims were brought in their coffins, on an Indonesian air force jet. There was an honor guard of 110 members of Indonesia's army, air force and navy who met them there. In a ceremony, they walked two hearses that were awaiting, they were numbered 001 and 002. Not only because they were the first two victims brought back to the city where the plane took off from, but because their identities are not yet known.

They were transported to a police station about an hour away from here, brought to a hospital facility, and that's where family members will attempt to identify their loved ones. It's the most important and critical thing for the people in this room behind me, this is a crisis center, that's been set up at the airport. People here have been here as long as I've been here, all day today.

Right now, there are between 90 and 100 family members waiting for any word whatsoever about their loved ones. Most of them have come to terms with the fact that their loved ones died aboard this plane. They just want their bodies back now. There are some people, however, and it's sad, and you understand and I

think I feel the same way if I was going through something like this, who are still hoping for some kind of miracle. One man came up to me and told me, I think there's a good possibility that some of these rafts were use and I think my grandmother got on a raft and she's on an uninhabited island.

This is a nation of many islands. And he's hoping that they're searching the islands. So, he asked rescue officials, are you searching land and they told him they were. They said it's unlikely that somebody is there. But that's what people are still clinging to hopes that maybe their loved ones are still alive, even though they know it's very unlikely -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: Yes, I think all of us would do the same if it were our loved ones.

Gary Tuchman, thanks so much for that.

Let's get right to Poppy.

There's lots of other headlines today.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, of course, because it is new years, a big celebration in New York City.

A lot of preparations under way and security will be very tight as this city gets ready to ring in 2015. Heavily armed counterterrorism teams, bomb-sniffing dogs, rooftop patrols and the NYPD helicopters part of the effort to insure safety for the one million revelers expected to pack into Times Square tonight.

Also front and center, the potential for demonstrations against the NYPD. Let's go straight to Rosa Flores. She's in a very chilly Times Square this morning with more.

Good morning, Rosa.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy.

Here's the biggest take-away for the everyday reveler that's going to be paying attention to what's happening on the stages or waiting for the ball to drop, nothing is going to change, the experience won't change.

But will things change behind the scenes? Absolutely, of course. The NYPD telling us they're going to have extra eyes and ears on the ground.

They're also going to be monitoring social media heavily. Why? Well, because of the increased threats coming to social media towards police officers. All of this of course following the ambush and killing of two of their own. Now, that has also triggered protests around the city. So, hear this -- for five weeks they've had a specific team dedicated to just for these protests. So, they're going to have those officers on standby as well. Again, Poppy, for the regular reveler that's going to be here with

their family hoping to ring in the New Year, the experience shouldn't change -- Poppy.

HARLOW: It is a wonderful night, I've been down there many a New Year's Eve. I have a great time, Rosa. Happy New Year to you. Thank you for that.

And, of course, to all of you watching, you are certainly invited to CNN's New Year's party. Our Anderson Cooper will try to keep it together and hold down the fort as the one and only Kathy Griffin does her thing. You got to see this. Watch it unfold live from Times Square, New Year's Eve begins here at 9:00 Eastern.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. I cannot wait for that. Pack your patience folks, if you're going down to that Rosa called them pens, people in pens.

HARLOW: You can't get out.

PEREIRA: Use the restroom before you go.

ROMANS: They're serious about security.

Thank you, Poppy.

The wait is almost over for the college football fans. Tomorrow, the inaugural playoffs will take place at the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl.

Andy Scholes is part of our (INAUDIBLE) is in New Orleans covering the Sugar Bowl. And I will say it one more time -- you have the best job at CNN right now.

PEREIRA: New Orleans for New Year's? Not fair.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS: Not a bad place to be tonight, right, guys? And us sports people are not only calling this New Year's Eve. We're calling it college football playoff eve as well.

You know, I was walking around in New Orleans in the French, all you see is football fans gearing up for a good time.

Now, in the Sugar Bowl here in New Orleans, it's a match-up that features two of the most successful college coaches over the last decade, Nick Saban and Urban Meyer. Together, they've won five of the last eight national championships.

Now, Rose Bowl is being called Heisman versus Heisman as this year's winner Marcus Mariota and the Oregon Ducks are going to face against Jameis Winston and the defending champion Florida State Seminoles.

Of course, all the action gets started tomorrow afternoon, and all four teams excited to be a part of this first ever playoff.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KEANON LOWE, OREGON WIDE RECEIVER: This is a part of sports history, not just college football history.

LANDON COLLINS, ALABAMA SAFETY: It's fantastic because -- I mean, why not Alabama, you know? Why not being one of those teams always making history?

CARDALE JONES, OHIO STATE QUARTERBACK: That's not enough for us. I just want to be the starting quarterback of the playoff game that we lose and got to go home and hope to play next year. You know, we want to keep this train moving.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: In other college football news, Jim Harbaugh now officially the new football coach of the University of Michigan. The school introduced him yesterday. Just two days after parting ways with the San Francisco 49ers.

After the news conference, Harbaugh made an appearance at Michigan's basketball game. Harbaugh called the return do his alma mater a homecoming for him and his family. Harbaugh is going to make more than $5 million a year to coach the Wolverines, less than the record deal many expected he would sign.

Guys back here in New Orleans, all quiet right now in the French Quarter. I'm sure everyone is sleeping, resting up, getting ready to go hard here tonight on bourbon and in the French Quarter.

PEREIRA: We hope you are well prepared, because they go hard. Look at that face. It's no going to look the same tomorrow.

ROMANS: Poor Berman lost his voice, he's not going to be able to make a sound during these games. It's like a fate worse than death for Berman.

All right. Thank you so much, Andy Scholes.

PEREIRA: It really.

Feel better, John, by the way.

All right. We are following the very developments in the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501. Sonar's detected objects thought to be from the plane. The question is, will it lead those search and rescue teams to the main fuselage and to the all important black boxes?

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ROMANS: Welcome back.

Sonar equipment, investigators telling us sonar equipment may have located objects at the bottom of the Java Sea that could be the wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501. Now, search and recovery teams must continue this arduous process of finding the rest of the plane and its victims. Here to discuss the challenges ahead is CNN safety analyst and former

FAA safety inspector, David Soucie.

Again, the news this morning, is that they've called off the search because the weather is too bad. The weather has been bad for several days now. That's why we're talking about this missing plane.

I want to show you here. This is the zone we're talking about. I want it talk about the debris location.

When you look at the flight path and then where the debris location is, what does it tell bus what may have happened in the last moments of that flight?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Something interesting about the flight path to me is where the debris is located. Versus the last position that we knew the aircraft was to be.

ROMANS: Right.

SOUCIE: So, if you notice it comes back around the other direction. So this could tell us two things. Either a stall situation in which there's not a lot of control, with where you come out.

ROMANS: Right.

SOUCIE: Or he made an attempt to turn back around to get out of the thunderstorm. But in doing so, he actually put -- if he did that, it would actually put himself into a even more difficult situation.

ROMANS: Let's talk about the currents in the area. That's an issue right now for both where the debris is floating, where the debris is and how difficult it will be for them to recover more bodies.

Let's look at the currents, we can pile it on and you can see how the currents may be pushing this into Borneo.

SOUCIE: Right. The currents in this -- the benefit is the fact that it's only 100 feet deep. Whereas -- but the bad thing about that is that the currents are higher when it's that shallow. So --

ROMANS: It's rougher.

SOUCIE: Yes. And air France 447, whatever went to the bottom stayed on the bottom. In this situation, the only thing that's going to stay object on the bottom in this area are the really heavy things, the engines, the landing gear, the hard, solid pieces of metal.

ROMANS: What do you make of the fact that in the recovery zone we've found seven bodies? We have found a few pieces of the wreckage, things that would float from the interior of an airplane?

SOUCIE: Yes, it's too early for me to say it's conclusive in any way. However, what concerns me is there's not much debris here. All we see is the slide, the raft, the --

ROMANS: Do you think that means a mostly intact plane on the bottom of the ocean?

SOUCIE: I do. The fact that it's there means there was some kind of breach, but now we've got no debris.

ROMANS: We talked about the depth. So, the depth in the water, about 100 feet for 8501. It's fascinating when you layer on some of the other crashes that have made news.

Air France 447, we're going to show that one, more than 12,000 feet. When you look at MH370, we think that could be up to almost 19,000 or 20,000 feet. In the case of this flight, this flight, just 100 feet. Found in three days.

You look at how long it took two years to find Air France 447. And an unknown amount of time to find MH370.

SOUCIE: Not only the depth of the water, but to think about how far away from supplies and how far away from the coast this is, that's what helped as well in finding the aircraft so quickly. It's only 100 feet away from the coast.

ROMANS: All right. David Soucie, thanks for walking us through it.

SOUCIE: Miles.

ROMANS: Yes, 100 miles. Thank you.

We're going to have much more on the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501 next.

Plus, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio met with police union leaders in an effort to ease tensions after two officers were assassinated. Should police departments across the country be concerned about copycat attacks?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: Gun-related deaths of police officers in the United States rose a staggering 56 percent last year. This is according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. This frightening statistics underscore increased tensions between New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and the city's police department.

The mayor of New York City met Tuesday with police union leaders. They have been sharply critical of him since the assassination of two NYPD officers about two weeks ago. What can be done to heal this relationship and should police and law enforcement around the country be on alert for such attacks?

Joining me now: former NYPD detective and founder of Casale Associates, Nicholas Casale. And here with us, CNN political commentator and political anchor at the New York 1 News, Errol Louis.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining me on this last day of tremendously difficult year. Let's hope next year is better, and maybe this kind of conversations can be had. Let's talk about the meeting that was held between the mayor of New

York City sitting down with the police commissioner and with union leaders in an effort to heal the rift that seems to have been widening.

Errol, do you think this is a step in the right direction, even though they sort of seem to think that it was a bust?

ERROL LEWIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, yes, I think they needed on both sides, to really show the public that they could act like adults. You know, the reality is that the political folks, the mayor and his staff as well as the union leaders know how bad they look.

I mean, beyond a certain point, the normal give and take of politics in New York, beyond a certain point it seems as if nobody is in charge and that's untenable. I don't think anybody wants that. I think both sides realize that that starts to have an effect on public safety. If the public feels that the people who are entrusted with keeping the city safe are bickering, are fighting, are not doing the job, then there's a real problem and I think they, both sides realize that.

So, at a minimum they have to at least put on a good show.

PEREIRA: It's not going to happen overnight, obviously the rift wasn't a day in the making, it won't be a day in the offing.

So, Nick, do you think the mayor is doing enough?

NICHOLAS CASALE, FORMER NYPD DETECTIVE: Well, the mayor is not doing enough, he's not looking for a common ground to come together. I said right away when we went to the funeral of Police Officer Ramos, everybody was waiting for him to say the "A" word, apology, he didn't.

I don't believe the city is any less safe -- that I have to disagree with. This city is as safe as it's going to be. The police officers are still going to take police action and risk their lives to save their fellow citizen.

What we have here is a mayor who had the opportunity and failed to grasp it. Maybe it's immaturity, maybe it's a lack of experience. But he should not have been the focal point of dealing with Patty Lynch. Patty Lynch is a brilliant person.

PEREIRA: One of the union leaders.

CASALE: Yes, the president of Patrolman's Benevolent Association, charismatic, great integrity and he knows what he's doing.

What he should have occurred is that the mayor should have had Bill Bratton negotiate this out, with Patty Lynch and he should have stood in reserve. He should have come in when they locked horns and there was no potential for settlement. As long as Patty Lynch and Bill Bratton are negotiating, remembering, they're both cops and they're going to come to a common ground, the mayor would then take credit for bringing the sides together. PEREIRA: You know you make a good point. Because Bill Bratton had

sort of said look if you ask me, ask any mayor, there's no mayor that hasn't had the police sort of upset with him at one point.

Errol, is this par for the course? Help people get a little context about what's going on here. Is there an historical rift in New York City that outsiders are not aware of? Does this go back? What is at play at here?

LOUIS: I think what outsiders can almost never grasp is there are 35,000 cops in New York.

PEREIRA: A lot of police officers.

LOUIS: Even for a city of 8 million, percentagewise, it's much greater than Los Angeles or any other big city.

PEREIRA: Sure.

LOUIS: I've heard of them referred to as their own nation state. They have their own tradition. They have their own foreign bureaus. They have intelligence officers, submarines, aircraft, the whole thing, and they have a very proud tradition.

And so, you have to approach them, any mayor has to approach them very intelligently, in a very savvy kind of a way. I mean, we've had -- this is not the low point of police relationship to city hall. I think the low point was 1992 when cops rioted on the steps of city hall.

CASALE: Remember Yankee Stadium in the '70s, fear city. So you know you could go back to the days of that. But you're right.

PEREIRA: So, what do we do to heal? Because we can't -- here's the question, if we keep sort of pointing the finger at either the men and women in blue that turn their backs on the mayor, and some are calling that a sign of absolute disrespect for the mayor. And then if we keep putting pointing fingers at the mayor saying, you shouldn't have sort of put yourself, inserted yourself in this story, yet others will say he has a black son. Every parent who has a black son is going to be concerned.

If we don't withdraw from that, we're going to keep repeating this. No, Nick?

CASALE: That is correct. The mark of a good leader is to apologize -- you know, I mean to paraphrase Grant, mark of a good general is not to fire his enemies, but to fire his friends.

What he has done here, is he has taken Bill Bratton, a very good police commissioner, police commissioner the city likes and taken him out of the equation by stepping in and dealing with the union and Patty Lynch. How do we get this back going again?

LOUIS: And to be fair, another piece of this is that there's been a multi-year reform process, it's involved the courts and a lot of different things, the city has never been safer. But that means policing has to change. There's been a lot of political and legal pressure to do that. It's why Mayor De Blasio was elected. It's something he really has to attempt to do.

And the police unions, including Pat Lynch, was up for re-election as president of his union next year, they're going to have to I think step up a little bit and treat this not just as a workplace dispute but as important public policy discussion.

PEREIRA: I'm going to make a bold prediction for 2015. We're going to be back talking about this, because this is not something that's going to be fixed overnight.

Errol Louis, Nick Casale, thanks for joining me. Thank you for having a conversation that was reasonable and intelligent. We appreciate both of you very much. And happy New Year to you.

LOUIS: Happy New Year.

CASALE: Happy New Year.

PEREIRA: We're certainly following a lot of news this morning, let's get right to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The first two victims have just arrived.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A stark in your face reminder of the human tragedy here.

TONY FERNANDES, AIRASIA CEO: I'm the leader of this company and I have to take responsibility.

PEREIRA: Objects thought to be from the plane may have been spotted by sonar.

SOUCIE: If it's whole, that means there's was an attempt to land the aircraft.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You think it did fall belly-first.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think that the plane stalled.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Clearly the aircraft has ruptured.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The industry needs to know urgently what went wrong.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA: Good morning. Welcome to NEW DAY. It is Wednesday, December 31st, my goodness, it's the last day of the year. I'm Michaela Pereira. Christine Romans is here.

ROMANS: Happy New Year. PEREIRA: And happy New Year to Poppy Harlow who is here.

HARLOW: Happy New Year, guys.

PEREIRA: And, of course, we want to welcome the viewers around the U.S. and across the globe. Some of them, in fact, in New Zealand already celebrating 2015.

We want to begin with breaking news out of Indonesia. Wreckage believed to be from AirAsia Flight 8501 has been found on the bottom of the Java Sea. It's believed search crews may have used sonar technology to discover the major find. At least 90 divers have been deployed, looking for the plane's critical black boxes, rough weather however has halted the search for today, and may impact the search efforts in the next few days.

AirAsia's CEO saying the weather forecast certainly is not looking good.

ROMANS: Meantime, heartbreak as four more bodies were pulled from the water. At least 10 victims now recovered. And an emotional scene earlier as the bodies two of people arrived at a naval base in Surabaya where officials are working to identify them.

We're covering all the angles of the story like only CNN can.

We want to begin with Gary Tuchman. He's live from the naval air base in Surabaya, Indonesia -- Gary.

TUCHMAN: Christine, hello to you.

Ten victims have now been recovered, which means there are 152 souls who have not been recovered. And in addition to that, there's the matter of the so-called black boxes, the voice and data recorder that they hope to find eventually. But the top priority is finding the bodies of all the people who are aboard this flight.

We know of the ten people, nine were passengers, and one was a flight attendant and that is known because she had her flight attendant's uniform on when she was recovered. Right now, it's pouring rain, it's been very foggy, smoggy, the waters have been rough and the search was called off just before dusk.

It's now nighttime. They wouldn't be searching at this point, anyway, but they're hoping to resume again tomorrow on the first day of the year 2015. But the search so far has been very difficult.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN (voice-over): This morning, the first group of recovered passengers arriving in Surabaya, in an emotional ceremony in caskets marked 001 and 002. This as Indonesian authorities focus on pinpointing the last known location of AirAsia flight 8501, officials confirming sonar imagery located wreckage believed to be from the aircraft, submerged at the bottom of the Java Sea. GEOFFREY THOMAS, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, MANAGING DIRECTOR AT

AIRLINERATINGS.COM: What's going to be particular interest is what part of the airplane are there, the wings, the tail, just to sort of try to understand whether the plane broke up in flight.