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New Day
Escape from Tsarnaev Brothers; CNN Hero: Cathy Heying; Ferguson PD Profiting off Minorities?; "Finding Jesus" and the Lost Gospel of Judas
Aired March 13, 2015 - 08:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Gripping testimony in the trial against Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The man they carjacked describing how he escaped.
CNN's Deborah Feyerick joins us live from Boston with more.
What video you're showing us.
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's really incredible. Alisyn, the interesting thing is had this man not been as brave as he was breaking away from the Boston marathon bombers, Boston may not have gotten the break it needed. But because of his heroics, they actually were able to get them much sooner than expected.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FEYERICK (voice-over): Kidnapped and carjacked by the Boston bombers, 27-year-old Dun Meng anxiously waited for a chance to run. When his SUV pulled into a gas station, he found his opening and raced as fast as he could across the street to another gas station. Watch as Meng frantically tries locking the store door, begging the confused clerk to call 911. Fearing the Tsarnaev brothers will follow, he crawls to the back and hides in a store room. The clerk gets police on the line and hands Meng the phone.
911 OPERATOR: Did they leave?
DUN MENG: I don't know. I don't know. They took my car, they took it half an hour ago.
FEYERICK: Following the murder of MIT Officer Sean Collier, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hijacked the black SUV. Meng testified Tamerlan pointed a gun and him and asked, "do you know the Boston Marathon explosion? I did it and I just killed a policeman in Cambridge." Prosecutors say the brothers had placed homemade explosives in the SUV's trunk and then drove Meng to a bank where Dzhokhar used Meng's ATM card to withdraw $800 in cash. Driving around, Meng testified Tamerlan Tsarnaev made small talk, asking him where he was from? Meng replied, I'm Chinese. Tamerlan's response, "I'm Muslim. Muslims hate Americans." Just before midnight they stopped at this Shell station, Meng says to
fill up the gas tank intending to drive to New York. At the gas station, Dzhokhar goes inside to buy snacks, taking his time picking out chips. That's when Meng decided to run. Surveillance video shows Tamerlan going to tell his brother Meng has escaped. He leaves the snacks and follows Tamerlan. Meng alerted police his SUV had GPS tracking, a crucial break that helped police close in on the Tsarnaev brothers.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FEYERICK: And Tsarnaev's lawyers have barely cross examined any of the witnesses. All that video that you're seeing, you would have expected certain questions to be raised, like how can you be sure that it's actually the man walking across the MIT campus? Well, his lawyers didn't raise those issues. They're really focused on getting through the trial portion to begin the guilt phase.
Michaela.
CAMEROTA: Deb, that video is spine-tingling. We just can't get over the -- his panicked expression and seeing him run around that store in the aftermath. Thanks so much for the update.
MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: A quick thinking shop keeper as well that helped out.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
PEREIRA: All right to this now. Car problems can do a whole lot more than put a large hole in your budget. A broken down vehicle can endanger your health, your job, possibly even your home. One woman was driven to find a way to stop this domino effect. That's why she is this year's first CNN hero of 2015. Meet Cathy Heying.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CATHY HEYING, CNN HERO: I was a social worker for 15 years. I kept seeing people struggling with making ends meet. One car repair can upset the entire apple cart. I just kept thinking, why isn't somebody doing something about this? And then one day it occurred to me, oh, dang, I think that somebody might be me.
I did not grow up working on cars, so I ended up getting a degree in auto technology.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE). I smell it.
HEYING: Does it get worse when you turn on the heat?
How we're different than a regular garage is that people have to meet certain income requirements.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was quoted close to $1,400.
HEYING: We charge the customer $15 an hour for labor. Market rate was about $100 an hour. We don't do any markup on the parts, so we are a lot less.
So you'd be looking at about $300.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three? OK.
I'd even give you guys more, you know?
HEYING: And a car that works allows them to meet the basic needs of their lives with dignity.
Thanks for your patience.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You get a hug.
HEYING: Oh, thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They fixed everything.
It's just a lot of weight off my shoulders.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thanks. Take care.
It's about moving people forward and moving their lives forward.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MARIA CHAPPELLE-NADAL (D), MISSOURI: We know that African- American males have been targeted systematically again and again. We also know in the last three years revenue in Ferguson has increased exponentially.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: That was State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal suggesting that the Ferguson, Missouri, police department is profiting by issuing more tickets than necessary. That's something the DOJ report seems to back up. Our Christine Romans is here to explain the finances of Ferguson.
What have you found, Christine?
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Well, what's pretty clear by the numbers is the city was reliant -- more and more reliant on this money from people for having -- for jay walking, for tickets they citing for too long grass in the front yard. $3.1 million of projected income from public citations this year. It's the growth that that is so remarkable. $1.38 million back in 2010. Now that anticipated $3.1 million, that's more than double, almost triple in five years, showing you the city is relying more and more on these fines and fees.
What's also very interesting about it is where those fines and fees are coming from. They're coming out of the pockets of the people stopped by police. In some cases police were competing with each other to see how many tickets they could give in a single traffic stop or a single stop. Total arrests. Ninety-three percent of total arrests were African-Americans. Eighty-eight percent, this is all from the Department of Justice report, 88 percent of cases involving use of police force, African-Americans. Vehicle stops, 85 percent African- American. So that's why so many people are saying, this looks like a city policing for profit. And basically funding the government to a very big degree, African-Americans who live in Ferguson.
CAMEROTA: No wonder the citizens are frustrated. I mean white and black together. When you think that your police department is having a contest for how many tickets they can issue, that's not a good feeling.
ROMANS: City officials at one point, because they were so reliant on this revenue, they were actually encouraging -- or encouraging officers to write 28 tickets a month. Twenty-eight tickets a month. They were disciplined if they didn't.
CAMEROTA: Thanks so much for explaining the numbers to us.
ROMANS: You're welcome.
CAMEROTA: That puts it into a sharper context.
Let's go over to Chris in Ferguson.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Alisyn.
Obviously, you know, writing tickets for profits is a problem. When you're targeting a community, it's an even bigger one and that's why there are cries for the dissolution of the police department here in Ferguson and they're continuing to grow.
Let's bring in David Klinger, former LAPD officer and author of "Into the Kill Zone," and Tom Fuentes, CNN law enforcement analyst and former FBI assistant director.
Tom, just for a little bit of perspective on these numbers that we're hearing about in the DOJ report, we are hearing, well, look, there -- this problem exists in a lot of police work. There is something unique about the numbers, the perception and the supposed motivation for what we saw with this ticketing in this police department, don't you think?
TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Right. And investigators that looked into this really felt that this was just excessive, way beyond what other towns, many towns do that, even here in the state of Missouri where it's allowed. They have a certain percentage of your income for the department based on fines from traffic and other offenses. But nowhere near the degree that it was found to be the case here.
CUOMO: And, yes, the e-mails are horrible, right? Yes, we see those in other police departments and other offices, frankly. But when you look at the findings of more arrests, more prosecutions if you're black than if you're white, and every single arrest for resisting arrest was a black person, when you start to hear that, that moves beyond just percentage of population, doesn't it?
DAVID KLINGER, AUTHOR, "INTO THE KILL ZONE": Well, I think what we need to do is we need to understand what the proper benchmark is. And looking just at population figures doesn't tell us much because we know a few things from decades of research on the nature of the role that race plays in police interactions and that is that we have to be able to norm for the differentials in crime commission and then also who is in the community as opposed to who lives in the community. And so it could be that there are reasons why these disproportionate numbers exist. It also could be worse because we don't know who is being stopped based upon who is in the community, who's driving through the community, different from who lives in the community. And so we have to parse the numbers very carefully. And like I said, it might not be as bad as it looks but it could be worse. I mean we have to take a very careful look at this.
CUOMO: DOJ went out of its way to say at least part of the reason for this pattern of conduct was unlawful bias. And that kind of tells you what you need to know, doesn't it?
KLINGER: That's their opinion. And the way that I would frame it is, in a legal situation, this is the prosecution's case. Let's take a careful look and let's look at the numbers. And what does the defense have to say? And that's the way that I would frame it.
And then the other thing is -- that Tom mentioned about the use of police to raise revenue. That one -- that's what I think is a really highly problematic issue. And that goes beyond Ferguson to civil asset forfeiture. There's much broader issues that we need to grapple with as a society to get a handle on that problem.
CUOMO: It's even worse when they do it by targeting a specific community as well. It's like a double bad.
Another aspect of this -- this investigation. There's a weird political dynamic to figuring out who did the shooting of these two cops. Everybody says they want the answer, they just want the answer to not come from the group of protesters because they think that that will stain the protests. So that now has this one theory. We don't know if investigators are chasing it as much as the media is, but that these shooters may have been as far as 125 yards away. They think it was a handgun. They found some casings that were handgun casings. In your experience, Tom and I have been talking about it, let's get your fresh take on it, 125 yards, at night, four, maybe five rounds, two hits on a police officer from that distance. How precise a shot does that have to be?
KLINGER: It doesn't have to be very precise in the sense that you had a bunch of police officers lined up, so you've got basically from zero to about six feet and then 100 feet across or whatever basically standing shoulder to shoulder. If the individual was targeting that particular officer and the other particular officer, hell of a shot, but just to hit two police officers, 50 percent hit ratio at that distance, people get lucky. And that might have been what the situation is. Someone just got lucky.
CUOMO: Lucky twice?
KLINGER: Absolutely.
CUOMO: They weren't even right next to each other, Tom. That's another thing. It wasn't just a phalanx and they shot into the phalanx? They hit guys who were a little bit different from each other. Do you think that, over time, they may wind up -- that may have been just an early estimate about distance and it my wind up closing in? Certainly the ear witness accounts can put it right in this area where we're standing right now, as well as up that hill.
FUENTES: Well, to put it in better perspective, we have 300 million guns among a population of 320 million. We have people out there shooting all the time. We have prepers (ph). We have white supremist groups, we have criminals, just gun hobbyists. There are a lot of people that are real good shots and the police know that. They go up against that all the time. That's part of the justification of the militarization of the police that we heard so much about. They are frequently outgunned by people with better weapons and better training to use them.
CUOMO: And here -- what it creates here is this, well, it wasn't a protester, it wasn't a protester. This was a bad apple that was outside. Why do you think that's so important?
KLINGER: I think that what we need to do is we need to wait and see what the research -- excuse me, what the evidence shows and I think that what happens is it's a good example of a narrative getting ahold -- getting ahead of the evidence. Let's let the investigation move forward. Let's see what the truth is. And then we structure the narrative around the truth as opposed to trying to run to a narrative.
CUOMO: Right. And so what if the shooters were among the protesters. Does that mean the protesters were bad or, I mean -- you know, you know you have disparate elements here.
KLINGER: Absolutely. And I -- for my money it doesn't matter because it's the individuals who pulled the trigger or individual who pulled the trigger that we need to focus on, instead of trying to make it a much broader -- someone says committing sociology. We want to have this big explanation for why someone did something, why something happened. Sometimes it's as simple as, we've got a person who's a bad actor and they embed themselves with a group or they go off by themselves. We don't know.
CUOMO: People were running around, the group was breaking up, then there was panic. So it will be hard to know. But the investigation is so key, not just for bringing justice to those two officers who were seriously injured in that, they're saying they don't know if they'll work again, even though they got discharged quickly --
FUENTES: And even if the shooters were in the crowd amongst the protesters, give the police credit for not returning fire.
CUOMO: Sure.
FUENTES: That took a lot of discipline to take fire, have two officers go down and not fire a single shot back.
CUOMO: Strong point. Tom Fuentes, thank you very much. David Klinger, always a pleasure.
All right. Back to you, Michaela and Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: Okay, Chris, it's been great to have you on the ground there for us to give us such a great perspective of the logistics and the geography there, as well as the arguments on both sides. Thanks so much. Safe travels back.
PEREIRA: Ahead, he is known in the new testament as the apostle who committed the ultimate betrayal of Jesus. We're going to take a closer look at "The Lost Gospel of Judas." It might actually have you thinking otherwise.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PEREIRA: A new CNN series "FINDING JESUS" this week takes a closer look at "The Lost Gospel of Judas." Here's a preview.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Jesus wanted to be sacrificed. He asks Judas to betray him, and Judas says, "Why me?" Jesus says to him, "Because you are the closest to me. I beg you to do it."
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (on camera): He understands what's happening. He's helping Jesus. He knows that because of what he has to do, he's going to be hated forever.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PEREIRA: Challenging our view of Judas. Was he a villain or a hero? Let's bring in April DeConick. She is the chair of the Religious Studies Department at Rice University and the first person to seriously challenge this interpretation of Judas. Good morning to you.
APRIL DECONICK, CHAIR, RELIGIOUS STUDIES DEPARTMENT, RICE UNIVERSITY: Good morning.
PEREIRA: Quickly tell us, how is it that we have not heard of the Gospel of Judas? When was it discovered and translated?
DECONICK: Well, it was discovered and translated and publicized about 2006, but it's an actual ancient Christian gospel that we knew about from a bishop in the second century. He mentions this gospel of Judas, but we didn't have a copy until modern times.
PEREIRA: You have done your own research and translation of the script.
DECONICK: That's right.
PEREIRA: Where does your research show us and how does it show us who Judas was?
DECONICK: Well, the bishop, Irenaeus, who mentioned the Gospel of Judas told us that Judas in the text was a hero, but now that we have the actual text, it calls Judas a demon and so really he's not much different than the Judas we see in the new testament.
PEREIRA: Why do you think there's such a discrepancy?
DECONICK: Between the -- what Irenaeus tells us and what we have today?
PEREIRA: Yes.
DECONICK: I think that Irenaeus must have been mistaken or -- whether intentionally or accidentally.
PEREIRA: Now does it shine light on why Judas would have betrayed Jesus or does that still sort of ring true?
DECONICK: Judas, in this text, betrays Jesus because it's part of his fate to do so. The text very much understands this to be Jesus -- Judas's destiny.
PEREIRA: Why do you think that Judas is such a fascinating feature, character in the Bible? It's interesting to me. I've spent my time in Bible study and in Sunday school. There's something about this imperfect human that we're drawn to. Why is that?
DECONICK: We are. I think it's the fact that it's a tragedy. For human beings, the tragedy is fascinating for us. Here you have someone who, in Christian story, is betraying the son of God, somebody that he was close to, a disciple of, and that is the most tragic story of all.
PEREIRA: It almost humanizes him a bit, doesn't it?
DECONICK: Very much so. Very much so.
PEREIRA: Where does the debate currently stand on this character of Judas today?
DECONICK: In terms of the Gospel of Judas, I think now we have established what the actual text is stating, and so we have now interpretations of Judas being made by scholars. Most of them now are understanding him, in terms of being more of an ambiguous figure, having some more negative aspects. The early Christians saw him as a demon so that's being discussed now.
PEREIRA: Fascinating work theology and fascinating course of study. Thank you so much for sharing your insight with us. April DeConick, really a pleasure. Have a great weekend.
DECONICK: Thank you.
PEREIRA: Be sure to tune in and watch "FINDING JESUS." It airs this Sunday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern, right here on CNN. Alisyn? CAMEROTA: All right. Possibly one of our favorite stories coming up, Michaela, because Robert Downey Jr. channeling his inner Iron Man to help a young boy in need. Yes, I said Robert Downey Jr. And there he is. Oh, and there's a heartwarming deed also. It's today's Good Stuff straight ahead.
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PEREIRA: Just a couple of chicks sitting on a sofa talking about the Good Stuff.
CAMEROTA: Rocking out.
PEREIRA: All right, here we go. Rocking out. I want you to meet 7- year-old Alex Pring. He is like most little fellows, likes comic books, riding his bike, but he has a partially developed right arm. A group of geniuses at Limbitless Solutions -- and I should point out it's spelled l-i-m-b -- they wanted to help so they created 3-D printed parts to build life-changing prosthetics. They built Alex a brand new prosthetic arm, modeled after his favorite super hero, Iron Man. Who better than Iron Man, himself, Robert Downey Jr., to present Alex with his very own bionic arm?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT DOWNEY JR., ACTOR: What do you say we both try them on and do a progress report?
ALEX PRING, RECEIVED "IRON MAN" ARM: Okay.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you know who that is?
PRING: Iron Man.
DOWNEY JR.: Look at that then. It's a marriage of robotic technology. Bang, nailed it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PEREIRA: Nailed it. He is the coolest kid in whatever grade he is.
CAMEROTA: Can we have Robert Downey Jr. in every Good Stuff?
PEREIRA: You didn't even see the adorable child beside him, did you, Alisyn?
CAMEROTA: What child?
(LAUGHTER)
PEREIRA: Isn't that wonderful? Carol, what do you think? Do you think that's worthy of the good stuff today? Carol? You're astounded by Robert Downey Jr., I know.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: I was actually buying Girl Scout Cookies.
PEREIRA: You were not. What flavor?
COSTELLO: Peanut butter, they're my favorite.
PEREIRA: After my heart.
COSTELLO: Exactly. Got to get serious now. You have a great weekend. Thanks so much.
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