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Dallas Police: 5 Officers Killed, 6 Wounded; Deadliest Day for Police Since 9/11. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired July 08, 2016 - 06:30   ET

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: -- Sara Sidner in Dallas.

[06:30:02] That is the scene of this ambush-style attack on police, Sara. Eleven casualties involved. At least five officers killed. It was happening during a protest in response to the recent police shootings. But by all accounts, especially police, this seemed planned. This seemed different than any violence we've seen growing out of a protest to date.

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This protest was peaceful. That's what you've heard from many of those who attended. The police were also out as well. The protest was actually breaking up when the shooting began.

We heard from a witness who said that the police officer actually helped shove him out of the way as the bullets rained down. He had a little cut on his leg, but he was shoved into a building and is safe because of that police officer.

The protesters, and we've talked to a couple of them now, have said this had nothing to do with us. We were basically done. It was a peaceful protest with people from all over Dallas and the world. And then, all of the sudden, this. Their reaction to this, that this is either terrorism or domestic terrorism.

The number of police officers killed, they say, they don't want to see police officers killed, they want to make sure that black folks aren't being killed by police officers. And that is their whole message.

I do want to talk to you about what I've heard from a witness who was here just a block over when all of this started happening. She says she was inside the McDonald's with a lot of other people. She heard what sounded like fire crackers, came outside, and all of the sudden she could see what she said were bits of light going back and forth. Realized this was gunfire and this was a really dangerous situation.

Suddenly, she said police came rushing in, rushing past her and telling everyone to get down. She lied on the ground. She was terrified for her life. And she was part of the black lives matter protest. She said, I have never been so scared of my life. When police said the shooter has a rifle, she got up and ran for her life.

This is just one story of many, very similar stories, in dealing with what turned out to be a barrage of gunfire that lasted about an hour. There was 45 minutes of back and forth between police and the suspects.

They say there were two snipers who were up high, either inside of a parking garage at El Centro College, looking down, and literally picking police officers off one by one by one, killing five, wounding six. People are devastated here.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Vicious, calculated, despicable, that's exactly what the president called those attacks.

Sara Sidner, thank you so much. Keep us posted as to what you learn.

I want to give you one new piece of information. The New York Police Department is increasing security around precincts in all of New York City in responses to what happened in Dallas. That's New York.

I have to believe that's going to happen everywhere or many places around the country this morning as this is understandably a nation on edge.

CUOMO: Look, that's the right way to look at it. Certainly we know what's going on in this country. We know what the dialogue is, but this take to a different level. This is the most deadly attack on law enforcement since 9/11, when you had over 70 officers enter those buildings trying to save people and lost their own lives.

There's no question that the country is on edge. The question is, what will our leaders do about it? One of the big scenes in Dallas that we've been covering in and around this story is what's been happening at the hospitals.

Kyung Lah is there at Baylor University Hospital.

You're there not just because of the worst of what's been seen there, but the best as well.

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a community that's trying to protect the officers because these officers from two different departments, Chris, have suffered losses that they simply could not imagine in one single day -- five deaths in two different departments in this city.

What we're seeing here at a couple different hospitals are a community trying to come to grips with that. So, what we've seen for hours here at Baylor University Medical Center is vigil. Constant vigil being kept by police.

Then, we saw what can only be described as a heartbreaking scene. Employees from the med center came down, and they tried to create a human barrier, tried to give these officers some peace as they said good-bye to two fellow officers. There was a line of police officers that we couldn't see because of the medical employees. They saluted as two bodies came out of the emergency room -- the bodies of a Dallas police officer and the body of a DART police officer.

They were loaded into a white van. We heard the call for two salutes.

[06:35:01] And then, the white van left. We can see police officers hugging and crying. You could see the medical staff here incredibly moved.

And it's not just here at this hospital. At Parkland Hospital, which is just a short distance away from here, it's also a level one trauma center, there were police officers saluting also as they said good-bye to their fellow brothers or sisters.

This again the deadliest day for law enforcement since 9/11. We want to introduce you to at least one of these people. He's the only one who's been identified.

He is a DART police officer. His name is Brent Thompson. He's 43 years old. He's someone that he wrote on his LinkedIn page that he felt the most important part of policing was to try and be a team.

I want to add on to something that Sara was talking about. She talked about how the police were there with the Black Lives Matter protesters. The police department had been posting pictures throughout the day for hours before this shooting happened.

They were there among the protesters, showing how peaceful it was. This is a big city police department that is unique from other departments, other big cities because they focus so much on community policing. And they talk about how community policing will then prevent police shootings.

It is something that this community certainly knows and that this department is known for. So, to suffer this kind of loss here is simply unspeakable.

I want to quote lose the police chaplain, who my producer spoke with very briefly. He said simply watching all of this happen is, quote, "there are no words" -- John, Chris.

BERMAN: There are no words. I think there is only compassion this morning for the families of the 11 people shot last night, the 11 officers. Five killed, six wounded.

We only know the identity of one, Brent Thompson, that John was just talking about right there. We will learn the identities of the others, including those wounded. We don't have confirmation yet, but I can see some of the names. They will be men, they will be women, they will be black, they will be white, they will be Hispanic. These are all races targeted last night in Dallas in what the president called a vicious, calculated, despicable attack.

Joining us now, CNN political commentator Ben Ferguson, who's in Dallas. He's been speaking with law enforcement since the shooting begun. Also joining us, CNN political commentator Bakari Sellers, who's in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Ben, I want to the start with you since you're there in Dallas. Talk to me about what this night has been like and what you're hearing from your fellow Texans this morning.

BEN FERGUSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Horrific, anger, and outrage. Many police officers that I've talked to last night and into this morning, including three different officers that are African- American, said to me they want to make it clear the police were targeted in an assassination and a killing and they're tired of it. They don't feel like there are people in this country in positions of leadership that are backing them the way they should.

This was a terrorist attack, an assassination against police officers. As one police officer said to me early this morning when I talked to him, he said, my life has been put as a target, and it's been months of rhetoric, as he put it, against police officers. When you continue to have people, whether it be in New York when there was chants over a year ago saying, what do we want, dead cops, when do we want them, now. Or in Minneapolis, they were calling for pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon.

Yesterday, and this is his words, and he's African-American. When you have the president come out and imply that somehow the police are in some way the bad guys, this puts their lives at risk.

And these police officers, not only do they feel discouraged, but they feel like it is open season on them and that their lives do not seem to matter in this conversation. And they're obviously angry. They're frustrated.

But another officer told me this. He said, last night that police were at a 7-Eleven after the shooting at almost 2:00 in the morning. There was young men out there who were celebrating that police officers had been shot, and we knew at that point had been killed. They were out there still trying to keep people safe.

We as a country have got to make it clear, the president has to make it clear, every leader in the U.S. government needs to make it clear that we stand behind these police officers everywhere in this country and that there is no justification. I know we talk about this, but they this is what they're saying. There is no justification because the actions of a few that you do not like, bad cops, call them that, they're fine with that, but the fact we have not seen a massive standing with the police recently from the top leadership is putting their lives at risk and they're being targeted with assassinations and people who celebrate this.

[06:40:00] BERMAN: Ben, just a few things, number one, the idea that anyone would be celebrating this overnight, if that's in fact what happened at anywhere else is repugnant.

FERGUSON: I witnessed it, just so you know.

BERMAN: I hear you, simply repugnant. But when you used the words, "no justification for what happened," those are exactly the words President Obama just used a few minutes ago. To be fair, last night when he was talking about what happened in Minnesota and Louisiana, he also made clear, in fact, his exact words were just because you say black live matter doesn't mean you're saying blue lives don't matter.

He spoke about the police last night, spoke about them at length this morning. He said we need to stand behind the police officers. He said this is a wrenching reminder of the sacrifices that they make for us.

I know that the entire country should stand by those words.

Bakari Sellers, I want to get your response to what Ben was saying.

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, thank you, because I was going to echo the same points you just made, John. This is -- when I woke up this morning, I immediately thought I was still in a very bad dream. Our country has to do better. It seems like every time we wake up, our heart is going out or we're sending pieces of our heart out to someone else, and someone else's family.

So, today, my prayers go out to not just the law enforcement in Dallas but the law enforcement throughout this country. You know, that brings me to another point. Last night what we saw were -- it was an interesting dynamic. What we saw was a peaceful protest, and the police officers actually protecting our fundamental First Amendment right.

And then, you saw police officers doing something that was even more extraordinary because after the protest was over and what we know is the gunshots started raining down, we saw police officers actually going into life-saving mode, when they always do, and throwing protesters out of the way and saving lives. So, when you think about all of those dynamics, you can't help but to grieve.

But even more practically, and just so Ben understands this and just so the rest of the country understands this, my heart can go out and I can grieve and not want young people to be killed in a theater in Colorado, my heart can go out and I can grieve and not want young people slaughtered in an elementary school in Sandy Hook. You know, my heart can go out and I can grieve for young people, young African- Americans who are killed at traffic stops. And that has to stop. I can also grieve and say my heart can go out and it has to stop because police do not deserve to be targeted, assassinated and reeked with terror from snipers from above.

These things are not mutually exclusive. We can all get on these things together. We can all grieve together. We can all say this violence has to stop.

And there's no room in our discussion. There's no room in our dialogue for divisiveness. We can all equally pray that these things don't happen.

CUOMO: Right, the problem is that that doesn't happen, except in the worst of moments. The politics of whether it's excessive force or as we saw the president fold in the gun issue, and we're going to hear more about that because these guys were armed to the teeth, that did these murders, it is never about the balance of both of these things, Ben.

I mean, just look at what we're hearing this morning. We can have this as a healthy discussion. We all know each other. We all know we're coming from a good place in this discussion.

Cops feel that they've been targeted all the time, but that's not what goes on in these dialogues. Very often, it is about the specific incident that happens. We hear from cops as much as anybody that those incidents have to be investigated, and whatever infection is there has to be rooted out because that's as bad for police as anything that they hear from politicians or in the media, Ben, because as much as those situations happen where you have excessive force, that is the worst PR for the police force in general. That's the root of this, not the politics of it.

FERGUSON: I agree. I think the police officers and the point they made to me as I spoke with them, these Dallas police officers, is they feel like the majority of the conversation in this country is negative and anti-police now. And it has moved to the point where there is a boldness by those that do not like the police, a purposeful disrespect to the police by many who think that is now somehow the right thing to do, to be disrespectful, to not comply, to not respect police officers.

We have to change that trend. I don't think this has to do with Republican or Democrat, but right now, I think it's very clear that the police that you talk to all over the country, they feel like there truly is a target because they wear a badge. We have not done a good enough job, I think, in this country recently of making it clear that as a nation, we believe the majority of police officers are good people. They want the bad cops to be rooted out. They want the bad cops to get out of the police force. They want them to go to jail if they commit crimes.

But the police that I saw and the police that I've talked to, they feel like as a whole in this country right now, police officers have become now the bad guys and that it is justified to hate them, to disrespect them, and even target them.

[06:45:03] And that's where we have to come together to make it clear as a nation we back every police officer everywhere, and we believe they're good people trying to protect lives, whether it's protecting back lives matter or anybody else.

BERMAN: Bakari, you do know there are officers around the country even before this morning who felt like they were being targeted, who felt like they were coming under unfair criticism. In just the last 24 hours, you have heard sometimes explosive language about police officers. You've heard people say that black people are being hunted by police officers. You heard Diamond Reynolds, the woman who filmed what happened in the car in St. Paul, Minnesota, saying she believes police officers are trying to assassinate African- Americans.

Is that rhetoric, is that type of language, does that contribute to the atmosphere right now?

SELLERS: I think all of our language, we have to be mindful of all of our language. But I can't sit here and condemn Diamond Reynolds. I mean, I can't condemn her for those thoughts when she witnessed what she witnessed in her vehicle.

And I think we have to have empathy and sympathy on both sides of this discussion. I think there has been divisive language by some, like Joe Walsh, who have just pushed these narratives. I can't condemn Diamond Reynolds for saying that when she went through that trauma. So, that's first.

More importantly, let me tell you what this does. Let me tell you what this act of terror, because I heard you call it that earlier John and that's exactly what it is. This act of terror last night does nothing but further divide us, because not only does it have our cops, who have to wake up this morning and see, if they didn't know already, it's not hyperbole to say their lives are at risk every single day they go out.

But not only that, but you have now a group of people like myself and many others who don't want cops to believe that I am the one who's persecuting them. That is not the goal. I don't want any cop out there to believe that I am a greater threat. I'm afraid that what happened last night, I don't want law enforcement to believe that I am inherently a greater threat than I am.

I think that is why this terror last night causes many of us to fret, many of us to worry. I'm afraid that that terror may instill some fear in many of us. I don't want anyone to believe that I'm a greater threat than I am. I just want the discussion of people of good hearts and good minds to continue like the one we're having this morning.

FERGUSON: I'll say this --

CUOMO: Go ahead, Ben. Take the last word.

FERGUSON: I want to be clear. There have been a lot of people that are trying to somehow separate the shooting from the Black Lives Matter protest last night.

We have to, I think, be candid. There are people that have been outspoken that are a part of the Black Lives Matter movement that are not advocating for peace, that are not advocating for peaceful protests, that are advocating for hurting police officers.

You can see it on social media. You can see it last night with some of these men that I witnessed that were at this 7Eeleven that were literally celebrating police officers being shot and killed.

And to somehow say that there is some complete divide here, there is not a total divide. We have to do a better job of calling out when you see people that are part of a movement advocating for police being killed. We saw it in Minneapolis months ago in that Black Lives Matter protest. What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want them? In New York, we saw it with pigs in a blanket.

The idea we can separate this, it needs to be called what it is. There are people that do want police officers to be harmed. Some of them are, in fact, a part of Black Lives Matter movement. They need to be called out for that and not be politically correct on this issue.

CUOMO: There's a lot to be called out in this situation, Ben. We know that. There's no reason to get ahead of where police are, because they keep saying we're not going to give information about who did this until they know.

You know enough about what you saw on the streets of Dallas to know this is different than anything that we've seen grown out of a protest --

FERGUSON: Absolutely.

CUOMO: -- from the way they were armed and equipped, the way they moved. There are a lot of open questions.

But one thing we can take from this -- it's always good to think before you speak. It's always good to think about the impact of your words. It's terrible that it takes something like this to bring that lesson into focus.

Ben, Bakari, thank you very much. Appreciate the discussion this morning.

FERGUSON: Thanks, Chris.

BERMAN: We want to focus on what was lost last night, the five lives that were lost. Not just officers, but people.

We know the identity of one of the people killed so far. Brent Thompson, 43-year-old officer for the Dallas area rapid transit. We want to learn about him, know who he was.

The chief of the Dallas Transit Police joins us after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:53:29] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BERMAN: Our breaking news: five Dallas area police officers killed overnight following protests in that city. We don't know the identities of all of them. We do know the identity of one.

He worked for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Police. His name was Brent Thompson, 43 years old.

Joining now is Gary Thomas, the president and executive director of DART, and James Spiller, the chief of DART's police force.

Chief, let me start with you. First, our hearts go out to you, your entire force, and your entire community this morning.

Brent Thompson, 43 years old. We just learned that within the last two weeks, he got married to another officer. Heartbreaking.

What more can you tell us about this man?

JAMES SPILLER, DART POLICE CHIEF: Brent was a great officer. You know, he came to us from Corsicana, Texas, Police Department. He was an outstanding patrol officer as well as a rail officer. We have the highest respect for him.

I just spoke with him a couple weeks ago. He was in great spirits from his recent marriage. He was just a great officer overall.

CUOMO: And obviously we're going to learn more identities of other officers, but can you tell us, what was he doing there? What was his job for the protest?

SPILLER: Well, what our primary function is, is to making sure we're taking care of our assets. Our assets being buses, train stations, and rail line.

[06:55:03] At that particular time, our plan was for them to be at one of our transit centers, which is where the trains will stop. They were there simply watching the protest, making sure no one got in the way of our trains or our buses. More importantly to make sure the egress and ingress of passengers getting off the trains, they were able to do that safely and unimpeded by other things going on.

Subsequently as they were standing near their car, watching all those things happen, that's when the shots started ringing out.

BERMAN: And, Gary, we learned that Brent Thompson had worked overseas as a security officer in Iraq and Afghanistan. He wanted to keep people safe overseas, wanted to keep people safe at home. He lost his life doing his job last night on your streets.

GARY THOMAS, PRES/EXEC DIR. OF DART: He did. He was a dedicated officer, dedicated to the safety of Americans, all over the world certainly, but we had the opportunity to have him with us since 2009. A great officer and did a great job for us. We'll miss him very much.

CUOMO: Chief, have you ever seen anything like what the officers had to deal with last night in terms of the type of equipment they were up against, the type of coordinated movements that they seemed to be up against?

SPILLER: Not in the city of Dallas. This was a horrific event that took place, something that's totally out of character for the Greater North Texas Region, especially in the city of Dallas.

But our officers, along with the Dallas police officers, responded appropriately, making sure that we took care of those protesters, getting them out of the way of fire, and allowing other officers to come in to address those suspects.

So, the training kicked in. Two departments working together between Dallas Police Department and DART Police Department. And that happens all over the country. That happens especially well here in the North Texas Region. Our hearts are out with the Dallas Police Department personnel that were killed or injured, as well as our personnel also.

BERMAN: Chief, I wonder if you can just tell me what the emotions are this morning in the department. I imagine there just has to be so much grief for the loss of your brothers and sisters but also pride in the job that was done overnight, making sure that this attack, this war that took place on the streets of Dallas wasn't even worse.

SPILLER: The emotions are running high, you know, because of the loss, because of the situation that took place. But the pride remains. The officers are there doing their job.

We're making sure we have all of our employee assistance programs in place as well as medical personnel there to provide counseling. I have met with the families of all of the injured officers as well as Officer Thompson's family. We have officers assigned with them.

You know, we're worried about their care and well being, as well as those of the officers that are yet out there performing their duties. And we're working closely, hand in hand, with the city of Dallas throughout this investigation and helping them as we continue to keep the streets of Dallas safe as well as through our 700-square- mile area that we cover with our 13 cities and six counties.

CUOMO: Mr. Thomas, what can you tell us about where the hearts and minds are of the officers under your control right now, coming out of something like this? We've seen the scenes at the hospital where medical personnel and before that lines of officers were saluting and were holding hand in hand in solidarity.

THOMAS: Well, the well being of our entire DART family is first and foremost in our minds. And, certainly, when it comes to our officers making sure that they're taken care of during this period of time. But as the chief said, they take a great deal of pride in their job. They know they have a job to do. They get up and do that every morning. They're prepared to do that again today.

I was at the hospital talking to many of them.

CUOMO: Go ahead.

THOMAS: They're very proud people.

CUOMO: Well, I know this is very difficult for you gentlemen. It is unimaginable what your officers had to fight their way through last night. And all along not putting the defense of themselves first but the defense of the citizens that they were there to protect.

Thank you for being with us this morning. Please send our condolences to the families and let us know what we can do to help. Gentlemen, thank you.