Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Dallas Police: Killer Planned Larger Attack; Hundreds Arrested in Protests Over Police Shootings. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired July 11, 2016 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:02] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The whole damn system is guilty as hell!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The whole damn system is guilty as hell!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The whole damn system is guilty as hell!

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: There is too much senseless killing, too many people dead who shouldn't be.

DIAMOND REYNOLDS, GIRLFRIEND OF PHILANDO CASTILE: Oh, my God. Please don't tell me he's dead.

If he would have never been in the wrong place at the wrong time, none of this would have happened.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Black lives matter! Black lives matter!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Black lives matter! Black lives matter!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Black lives matter! Black lives matter!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This kind of behavior is unacceptable.

(CHANTING)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As a people, as a race, as a United States, we all need to do better and change things.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY, with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. Alisyn is off, Poppy Harlow joining me this morning.

Good to have you, my friend.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good to be with you. Good to be back.

CUOMO: And we do have a lot of news to talk to you about in Dallas, where we're learning more from police about the gunman who killed five police officers and injured seven others. The city's police chief says the Army veteran was planning a larger attack.

HARLOW: Meantime, hundreds and hundreds were arrested in protests across the country over the weekend. Many of those protests over the killings of two black men, one in Louisiana, one in Minnesota. The national debate about race and justice in this country hitting an inflection point, as many call for unity.

We have it covered the only way this network can. Let's begin with Victor Blackwell this morning, live for us in Dallas.

Good morning, Victor.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Poppy, good morning to you.

Police say they found evidence or suggestions that this shooter had been practicing detonations before this attack on Thursday night, which convinced them that he'd planned for this attack to be so much larger. In his estimation, a righteous act of revenge.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHIEF DAVID BROWN, DALLAS POLICE DEPARTMENT: We're convinced that this suspect had other plans and thought that what he was doing was righteous.

BLACKWELL (voice-over): Dallas Police Chief David Brown telling CNN the killer was plotting larger scale attacks.

BROWN: He was going to make us pay for what he sees as law enforcement's efforts to punish people of color.

BLACKWELL: Bomb-making materials and a journal found inside the home of the deranged gunman suggest he was practicing detonations and aiming for larger targets.

BROWN: The materials was such that it was large enough to have devastating effects throughout our city and our north Texas area.

BLACKWELL: Police say the killer told them why he did it during a standoff, saying he was seeking revenge for the shooting deaths of two African-American men last week. Cornered in a parking garage, negotiations with the killer lasted about two hours.

BROWN: He just basically lied to us, playing games, laughing at us, singing, asking how many did he get and that he wanted to kill some more and that there were bombs there.

BLACKWELL: Officers ultimately using a robot armed with a bomb to end the gunman's life, a first for law enforcement in the U.S.

At the scene, an ominous message written in the shooter's own blood on the walls near his body. The initials "R.B.," a message police are still trying to decipher.

This as we're learning more about the five officers whose lives were cut short protecting a peaceful protest. VALERIE ZAMARRIPA, SLAIN OFFICER'S MOTHER: No, not my baby. Not my

Patrick.

BLACKWELL: Thirty-two-year-old Patrick Zamarripa, the engaged father of two, was a Navy veteran and just weeks away from his 33rd birthday. His family says his dream was to become a police officer.

LAURA ZAMARRIPA, SLAIN OFFICER'S SISTER: My brother loved his country and his community. I just can't wrap my mind around it. It's just so unreal.

RICK ZAMARRIPA, SLAIN OFFICER'S FATHER: Since day one, since he was born, he was a hero. He was my little hero. And he's a big hero -- he's a big hero now.

BLACKWELL: Those who did survive the ambush, like Shetamia Taylor, are grateful to be alive. The Dallas mother protected her four sons when shots rang out. She was hit in the leg as officers were shot in front of her. Taylor thanking police for their heroism in the hail of bullets.

SHETAMIA TAYLOR, DALLAS SHOOTING VICTIM: It hurt. Of course I'm thankful that my babies are OK, but somebody's dad, somebody's husband isn't.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will be here in Dallas tomorrow to pay homage and to honor those five officers killed and to help this community heal.

We've also learned that Dallas residents former President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush will be in attendance at that memorial, and the former president will speak to the crowd there -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Victor, thank you very much.

Joining us now is the deputy chief of the Dallas Police Department, Malik Aziz.

Deputy chief, thank you for joining us this morning.

MALIK AZIZ, DEPUTY CHIEF, DALLAS POLICE DEPARTMENT: Glad to have -- be here.

CUOMO: The role that the chief and the mayor have played in this situation has been indispensable. How much coordination is going on to kind of help this community stay together at this time?

[07:05:00] AZIZ: I think what you've seen in this type of leadership from our mayor, Mike Rawlings, and our police chief, David Brown, it has given reassurance to this city. It has given the citizens of the great city of Dallas a reason to embrace us and come forward. And behind me, we see a major show of love from not only this city but the cities across Texas, the nation, and the world. So their leadership has been nothing short of impeccable and phenomenal.

So we're leaning our leaders, our mayor, and our police chief, and they've remained stoic. We have to remember, our mayor and our police chief has -- has lost five officers in this city. And no police chief wants to lose any officer doing his tenure. And so it's a major, major blow to a chief.

And yet, you've seen him stand tall and keep his composure and so nothing less than he's my leader. As the chairman of the National Black Police Association, I'm proud to say that the mayor, Mike Rawlings, and our police chief, David Brown, are showing this type of leadership to the world.

CUOMO: How -- how close do you think this situation came from blowing into something even bigger? How big do you think the plans were that this madman had?

AZIZ: Well, I think you heard from, you know, our chief yesterday; and what he described and what we heard should have been shocking. I think that we were fortunate to disrupt this, that we were fortunate to be able to -- to not, you know, go through something of a terrible ordeal. Because I think what he was planning, he used Black Lives Matter as an opportunity to seek some further havoc.

And he would have -- if he would have -- if he would have been able to carry that through, then we would have saw, probably, mass devastation, from the description from our chief. And I think we're fortunate that he didn't -- he was not allowed to do that. Playing with explosives or building explosives is no light matter. And it's scary.

He used a peaceful protest of 1,500 to 2,000 people that was, you know, at the culmination. And in the end, he plotted, he planned. And he was looking for a greater destruction.

CUOMO: Right.

AZIZ: He just used that as the foundation for carrying it out.

CUOMO: The...

AZIZ: I don't think this city would have recovered from something like that for a long time.

CUOMO: The tactic of how you got rid of this guy, using the robot with the explosive, I don't think we've ever seen that before. What went into the thinking of using that, and is it a new technique that you guys have?

AZIZ: Well, let me speak on -- I don't speak on things lightly with Dallas police and speaking from my perspective as the national chair.

I was the former squad commander here in Dallas. Sometimes extreme measures like this, extreme circumstances will call for extreme measures.

I've heard our police chief say that he would make that decision again. And I would fully stand by that decision, because when you're boots on

the ground and you're inside of that -- and I've been there. And you have to trust your people to make a call and come up with the words -- creativity been used. I would much rather see us not sacrifice another officer and have another fallen hero and use that kind of means.

I'm sure it will be studied by SWAT operations and police chiefs around the nation and criminologists and others, but those are the kind of things that you have to do in order to stop someone who is acting in an insane manner who had put down five officers. He killed five officers, and he was ready to kill more.

And so I would say readily that we needed to meet that kind of force with a -- with a greater amount of force to stop that threat. Unconventional? Yes. But unnecessary? I don't think so.

CUOMO: He killed five. He shot seven more. He shot civilians, and obviously, he had bigger plans. There seems to be no questioning that assumption.

Let me ask you something else. There is a very terrible irony involved in this situation, that Dallas was the location of where police officers were killed for doing their job, but Dallas is also a city that has shown tremendous progress and wherewithal in dealing with many of the systemic issues that are driving protests all over this country.

What was done in Dallas? What did you learn about policing and policing specifically in black areas that reduced the numbers of excessive force?

AZIZ: I think from Dallas since 1993, when Chief Van Klimk (ph) came here and introduced community policing. It's gotten better under Chief Bolton, definitely better under Chief Kunkel. And Chief Brown expanded that and expounded upon community policing and community engagement.

[07:10:07] We went down to areas, socioeconomic depressed areas, and we decided that we would reach down and pull in the youth. And we have robust youth programs. We engage the community at every angle. We try to have a conversation about policing and community and show people, the citizens here, that we are part of the community, the fabric of the community.

Our chief grew up here. He was here. I grew up here from the southern side of town. So we have commanders here who have embraced this city. We come from this city. We were birthed in this city. And these are the kind of interactions that we can speak to youth about, we can speak to a wide range of young adults about; and have an interesting dialogue about where we're going in the future and about what it means to be in this city and make this city a progressive city. So we don't push away from the tough conversations.

And I will be the first to say we're not without our errors. We're not without our flaws. We're not flawless. No police department is. But what we seek to do is have a dialogue based upon what we've done in order for us to get better. And the only way for us to get better is to talk about some of the things that we have done wrong, some of our failures. And we need to embrace those successes also.

CUOMO: Well, Malik Aziz, it sounds simple, hard to achieve, and not done enough across this country. Thank you for being with us this morning.

Go ahead.

AZIZ: Chris, can I add this?

CUOMO: Please.

AZIZ: You know, the violence that was visited upon our city with the killing of five police here, I want to say because around the nation, I mean, people are suffering, and people are upset. And the Castile family and Sterling families have suffered losses in a different way.

But in violence, you know, as a means to an end, we should find some kind of silver lining in us having a dialogue to progress this great country.

Dallas didn't have anything to do with those things that happened in Minnesota and Louisiana. But as we can put these community policing, community engagement in the bank. But it came back to visit us, even though we're doing a robust job here. It came back to visit us, and we didn't have anything to do with that.

But we're all one now. Eight hundred thousand police officers are not monolithic. Eighteen thousand police departments, we're not monolithic. But those things came back to visit us, so it would tell us that police and community all over this nation, we're in this together; and we must resolve this together.

CUOMO: Important point to make. Thank you for making it. We'll talk again. Malik Aziz, thank you.

HARLOW: Absolutely important conversation.

Also over the weekend, more than 300 people were arrested across the country. They were protesting those two police shooting deaths of two black men in Louisiana and Minnesota. Nearly 50 of the arrests were in Baton Rouge last night. That's where we find our Nick Valencia this morning.

Good morning, Nick.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy.

It has been, no doubt, an emotionally exhausting week all across the country. Here in Baton Rouge, that has been underscored by a series of demonstrations. In the last three days, nearly 200 arrests in this city alone.

Police attribute that, in part, to organizers who have arrived here from out of state to protest against police.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whose street?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our street!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our street!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our street!

VALENCIA (voice-over): Protests over police-involved shootings growing louder and more widespread. Thousands taking to the streets over the weekend...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Black lives matter!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Black lives matter!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Black lives matter!

VALENCIA: ... in cities across the country. The demonstrations mostly peaceful.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look at this.

VALENCIA: In Atlanta, nearly 10,000 protesters shut down major highways, the standoff ending with few arrests.

But elsewhere, violent clashes between heavily-armed police and protesters led to over 300 arrests. In Baton Rouge, police in full riot gear arresting over 100 protesters...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is private property.

VALENCIA: ... and storming onto people's front lawns.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, no, no, no, no!

VALENCIA: Thousands on social media sharing this photo of a young woman, stoic as officers rush towards her. Activist DeRay McKesson was among those arrested Saturday night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't fight me. Don't fight me. Don't fight me.

DERAY MCKESSON, BLACK LIVES MATTER: I'm under arrest, y'all.

VALENCIA: McKesson, a prominent face of the Black Lives Matter movement, was released 17 hours later.

MCKESSON: I remain disappointed in the Baton Rouge police, who continue to provoke protesters.

VALENCIA: In St. Paul, Minnesota, Saturday night, protesters throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at officers from a freeway overpass after shutting it down, according to police. CHIEF TODD ADELL, ST. PAUL POLICE: It's certainly not life-

threatening, but they're significant enough to go to the hospital.

VALENCIA: One officer suffering a broken vertebrae after a 25-pound rock was dropped on his head.

[07:15:02] ADELL: I'm absolutely disgusted by the acts of some.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VALENCIA: This week the country was seemingly strangled from within by violence. All of it starting last Tuesday with the shooting death of 37-year-old black man Alton Sterling at the hands of two police officers. That shooting death, that fatal shooting death still very fresh in people's minds. Police here anticipate even more demonstrations -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Nick Valencia live for us on it this morning in Baton Rouge. Appreciate that, Nick.

And coming up in the next half hour, an interview you won't want to miss. We speak with retired tennis star James Blake about his own mistaken arrest with police here in New York City, the excessive force that he faced and his take on what's happening in America today.

CUOMO: So you have to deal with the problems. You also have to deal with your kids. How do you talk to your children about race and policing? How do you explain what's going on in this country? It's an important issue for New York City's first family, as well. That would be Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane. They're going to talk to us about this next. Good to see you both.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Hundreds of arrests over the weekend in protests across this country over the deaths of two black men at the hands of police. Shocking videos of their death igniting a national debate on race and policing in this country.

[07:20:10] A very important discussion to have and action to be taken. So let's talk about it with the mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio. He joins us this morning along with his wife, the first lady of New York, Chirlane McCray. Thank you both for being here. I appreciate it very much.

You spent yesterday morning, Sunday morning, at church at St. Patrick's Cathedral here in New York City. And you said something that struck me. You said, "We have no choice but to build something better in our time." I think about that as a new mom for my child.

BILL DE BLASIO, MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY: Yes.

HARLOW: You think about that for your children. We saw 20 demonstrations, at least, arrested here in New York City last night. What's your message to them about how we build something better? DE BLASIO: We -- I think it's partly retraining our police, helping

our police understand there's implicit bias in all of us in this country, and that we have to work to get that bias out of our systems. And that's across all backgrounds. It's about bringing police and community together. We're instituting neighborhood policing in this city for the first time in a truly comprehensive manner. Police officers will get to know the people they serve. They will be in the same community and the same blocs all the time.

HARLOW: I think people look at cities and say, "Well, why don't we always have that?" That's, so people understand, a very expensive thing to do, a very difficult thing to do, but a very necessary thing to do.

Chirlane, I'm interested in the conversations that you've had, both of you, with your children, with your son, Dante, about this. What do you say?

CHIRLANE MCCRAY, FIRST LADY OF NEW YORK CITY: We -- we say the same thing that so many parents across the country say to their children, and that is to be respectful, be careful, and to always know where you are and have some situational awareness about the people around you. It's so important for our young people to hear. And these are conversations that Bill has had much more than I have.

HARLOW: So then on that, what does Dante say to you? Is he scared? I've had a number of people on my show last night, and their children have come to them, African-American children, and said, "I'm scared right now."

DE BLASIO: I think in some ways it's worse than that. I think it's so ubiquitous. It's an assumption. And, you know, this is something we have to come to grips with. And I think all of us in white America have to understand better that young men of color live in fear all the time. And it's something that we have to heal. It's something we have to overcome if we're going to move forward as a country.

When I talk to Dante, it's come to the point that he assumes that this is a part of life and a part of the reality. It doesn't mean he's hopeless. It doesn't mean that he doesn't want to be a part of changing the world, but I think it's a very simple equation.

If you have white children, you don't need to give them that particular warning. You've got to prepare them for a lot of other things in life, but you don't have to give them that particular warning.

And it gets back to -- you understand, we honor our police. We need our police, but also we have to have a very different relationship between police and communities around the country, and we have to recognize that police have to be trained to understand how to work with communities consistently and how to defuse potential situations that could go wrong.

HARLOW: So let's listen to what the New York City police commissioner, Bill Bratton, said yesterday morning on NBC's "Meet the Press" about the Black Lives Matter movement, which has been at the center, the organizing force behind a lot of these protests.

And also, I should note: it's so important to say condemned immediately the killing of those officers in Dallas. I don't think that is said enough, that the movement came out and condemned that violence. Here's what Bill Bratton said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL BRATTON, NEW YORK CITY POLICE COMMISSIONER: The reality of the Black Lives Matter movement is significantly focused, primarily focused on police and their efforts to portray police and the police profession in a very negative way, which is unfortunate.

There are no denying within the police profession, 800,000 of us, that we have racists, we have brutal people, we have criminals, cops who shouldn't be here, but they do not represent the vast majority of American police.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Do you, Mayor, agree with your police commissioner on that statement about the Black Lives Matter movement as it relates to police?

DE BLASIO: When you hear the whole statement, I appreciate the fact that he's saying that we have -- vast majority of police officers are doing their job. We have some who don't belong in the profession, like every profession.

I think what the protesters are doing is really about the few who don't belong. And Chirlane and I spent a lot of time working as activists and trying to change the world, so I have a respect for the Black Lives Matter movement. And I think that movement, just the very phrase "Black Lives Matter," has changed the national discussion.

Now, as with any movement, there's some people I don't agree with, but I have to tell you, they've changed the national discussion for the better. They did stop and have a moment of silence; one of the protests in New York City had a moment of silence for the officers lost in Dallas. Just like the officers in Dallas, when bullets were raining down on them, their first impulse was to protect the protesters.

[06:25:10] So we've got to find these examples of hope and possibility here, and that movement has helped move the national discussion forward.

HARLOW: But what Commissioner Bratton said in part is, he said the movement is, quote, "primarily focused on police and their efforts to portray police and the police profession in a very negative way."

DE BLASIO: See, I would...

MCCRAY: We have a different perspective.

HARLOW: What's that? MCCRAY: That Black Lives Matter is a force for good. It's about

peaceful protests. It's about shining a light on the problems that we have in race relations across this country. We've had a history of it. And it has not gone away, but we haven't had enough positive action taken on making change.

And I am very encouraged by the Black Lives Matter movement. I think that this is -- this is such, again, a force for good, to have so many young people -- and older people, too -- engaged and being civically minded and participating in the -- in the conversation of our country is so important.

DE BLASIO: And we can't move forward without it. That conversation is prerequisite to the progress we have to make.

HARLOW: Before I let you go, I want you to listen to something. Charles Blow, a contributor here to CNN, also a columnist at "The New York Times," after he was on CNN last night, took to Facebook live and made an eight-minute statement about his thoughts about what's going on in America. Here's a part that stood out to me. Let's play it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLES BLOW, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: These conversations and debates that you have on television trick people into believing that there is a way to rationalize these dead bodies, that they can make a case that those dead bodies are simply the collateral damage in a justified and honorable attempt to keep society safe.

This is about all of you, and that includes you, white America. At the moment that most Americans say this is unacceptable to us, these killings will stop.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: His argument, Mayor, is that police forces are a reflection of the societies in which they exist; and that white America, or many of -- much of America, is not doing enough to say it has to stop. Is he right?

DE BLASIO: He's right in the sense that white America doesn't understand the extent of the problem. As I said, and we know it from our own son, when the most law-abiding, hard-working young man you could imagine, but he has to worry. We've got to overcome that.

How do we make a society whole? We make a society whole by everyone having a common standard. We value all our young people. We don't care what color they are. They are the future of this country.

And it comes down to the safety we need actually revolves around bringing police and community closer. Having a kind of relationship, a kind of dialogue we just haven't hid. That history of racism in this country hangs over us to this day.

Now generationally, I think we have a chance this generation to do things our predecessors couldn't do, because we have a greater consciousness. The conversation just in the last year or two in this country has moved forward a lot.

And I actually think white America will participate in that change. I think people are saying more and more they don't want to see these things happen anymore. So what Charles Blow is talking about is accurate. And I do believe the change has begun.

HARLOW: Before I let you go, Chirlane, I want to ask you about something very close to your heart. And that is treating mental illness and drug addiction. It's been one of your main focuses throughout.

A bill passed in the House on Friday. You're hoping it will make it through the Senate and to the president's desk. What can you tell us about that?

MCCRAY: Absolutely. I want people to call their Congress members and tell them to get -- get the president to sign this. Let's pass this bill. We need much more attention paid on mental health. We need more services for everyone. And you know, I can't say enough about the folks who have gotten this to the place where it is. We need -- we need mental health. What can I say?

HARLOW: We'll watch and see what happens. Thank you both for coming in. Important discussion to have. We appreciate it -- Chris.

CUOMO: Poppy, good talk to have, and we need to have many more like them.

Remembering a fallen comrade. We're going to talk with Dallas officials about how the community paid its respects to a transit officer killed in the Dallas police ambush. We're also going to get an update on the condition of three wounded officers. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)