soaring. plus, employers asking job applicants for their facebook passwords, shocking, but likely legal. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. captions by vitac www.vitac.com this is cnn breaking news. let s get right to the breaking news this hour in sanford, florida. just moments ago the chief of police announced he s temporarily stepping aside, a move over the handling of the trayvon martin shooting death. martin is the unarmed black teenager killed by a volunteer who has not been charged. update our viewers on the very latest. reporter: wolf, the city manager in sanford has long said he will not fire the police chief bill lee. he would wait until federal investigators looked into this case and looked into his department to determine whether to fire the police chief, but we are hearing the police chief will step down temporarily and scott cotter will step in as interim chief. we ll hear more about what the police chief had to say as he decided to step
this will be a topic of heated debate here in the city of new orleans. sean payton has been a beloved figure ever since the saints won the super bowl after the 2009 season in the years after hurricane katrina. sean payton and quarterback drew brees, you know, were the faces of this team and in the city for a team that had done so much to kind of bring this city out of the doldrums here. so the punishment against him, i think, will be a hot topic of debate here in the city. a lot of people, new orleans saints being one of my favorite teams having my family being from new orleans. culturally it is a part of that community there. do we know if any of the players are also going to be suspended, if there s going to be any kind of punishment for the players as well? reporter: there s no question that players will be punished somehow, but in this statement that s just been released by the nfl it says discipline for the players is still being looked at, and none of those announce
well, we know there s something wrong with this. we know from this tape everything he knew about trayvon martin. and this is it. he looks black. that s it. that s everything he knew. from what you re hearing in these tapes, dan french, do you see the elements to make a hate crime case here because that s the only thing he knew about who he shot? there s only two elements. they couldn t have written a more simple federal statute. if you commit a crime, you willfully do it, you injure somebody or kill them because of their race, that s a hate crime. if you kill them, you face life imprisonment. it s that simple. in the u.s. department of justice, the attorney general has the right to investigate that case in the interest of justice. i think in this case there is an interest in justice in doing so. the congresswoman has asked for this. the black caucus has asked for it. more importantly, the mayor of that city flying here tomorrow to talk to the justice department, i think you r
why did you pursue him? he was walking home. was he committing any crime? no. well, we know there s something wrong with this. we know from this tape everything he knew about trayvon martin. and this is it. he looks black. that s it. that s everything he knew. from what you re hearing in these tapes, dan french, do you see the elements to make a hate crime case here because that s the only thing he knew about who he shot? there s only two elements. they couldn t have written a more simple federal statute. if you commit a crime, you willfully do it, you injure somebody or kill them because of their race, that s a hate crime. if you kill them, you face life imprisonment. it s that simple. in the u.s. department of justice, the attorney general has the right to investigate that case in the interest of justice. i think in this case there is an interest in justice in doing so. the congresswoman has asked for this. the black caucus has asked for
toss the head set fell. zimmerman says he was acting in self-defense and has never been arrested or charged, but martin s family and their many supporters claim that racial bias in the shooting and the investigation. so now the fbi has stepped in and the justice department has opened a civil rights investigation. cnn legal analyst sunny hostin joining me now with more on all of this. why don t we go ahead and start with trayvon s cell phone friend. i understand you actually have a copy of her sworn affidavit. give us the details, sunny. we ll kind of unfold the conversation from there. good morning, kyra. i do not have a copy though of the sworn affidavit but i did speak to one of the martin family attorneys this morning for at least half an hour, and she and i discussed this phone call. apparently trayvon martin on that night had been trading phone calls with a 16-year-old friend, a girl, and as they traded phone calls, one of the last phone calls, w was at abou 7:04. tr