Transcripts For WRC NBC Nightly News 20150427

What were noticing the crowd is on the move again. It was kind of stationary for a couple of minutes and now appears to be on the move again. Tish do you have any idea to what they may be eve heard reports, wbal channel 11 up in baltimore our sister station heard reports they might be moving south towards Martin Luther king but its hard to tell why they are going. Thats why they took the preventative measures. Theres a good map. That gives you and idea. They are moving south below that yellow section on the bottom. They began at the Mondawmin Mall by the zoo and then they walked ten blocks south. The governor larry hogan has declared a state of emergency and activating the National Guard. Thats a very significant event to activate the National Guard. We were there last week. We were interviewing linda singh. She was put in that position in january. Shes the first woman and first africanamerican agitant general. She lives in Prince Georges County and her headquarters are just down the street why where all of this is happening, some people may be familiar with Maryland Health department complex in the city. They may have to do business up there. Shes right across the street in a very large castle looking building the Maryland National guard armory. This will be interesting to see what happens next. Tisha and wendy thank you very much. Youre looking at live pictures right now of a rather large crowd and growing. Moving towards a liquor store and seemed to be trying to crowd their way into that store. There they go. Presume it is to continue the looting process that began, i dont know maybe a couple of hours ago now. We understand shomari stone has an interview with somebody. Hes talked to on the street. He just spoke to a baltimore resident about what he sees happening in his town tonight. Lets listen. A lot of craziness going on. But its understandable. People say out here they are armed protesters its no longer protesting itsbout breaking things. But why we came out here in the first place. Which is why . To show the police that you know they cant do whatever they want whenever they want and not get punished for their wrong acts. Do you think this will make a difference . Its really hard to say, you know. Its really hard to say. All right. Thats somebody shomari has talked to on the street expressing his feelings. He just wants to let the police know they cant do whatever they want to. By that abuse in the past has certainly been a goodly number of young black men in baltimore and in many other areas all over this country. Youre looking at live pictures now. This is baltimore. There are protests under way or certainly activity all over well not all over but certainly the downtown part of the city Tisha Thompson has described it. Almost in the middle of the city. A number of people after the funeral of freddie gray but not people who apparently were attending the Funeral Services. Disrupting businesses traffic, and other activities in the city of baltimore. Number of policemen injured. Eight so far were told. We dont know what their conditions are. The crowds have been moving. They are mobile. And as has been said this is a fluid situation. And wendy right now is at our live desk. Governor hogan has declared a state of emergency. Hes activated the National Guard. They are holding the governor the Lieutenant Governor and National Guard agitant linda singh will hold a press conference at 8 30 tonight. They will describe whats the next move by the state now that they have declared a state of emergency and are activating the National Guard. Back to you. Thank you, wendy. Now we want to go to another reporter Andrew Mullen bach from wtop radio. Andrew what are you seeing . Reporter im in west baltimore on west north avenue. This is where the protests and looting have taken place this afternoon. I have to say it is a striking image to see police in Tactical Gear surrounding a building thats burning and thats really the situation right now. Just a couple of blocks way from where i am right now, the cvs has been on fire and fire crews have been working to put it out all while police are surrounding it to protect it from any more damage than has already happened. So this has been an area where store front after store front has been looted and from my observation many appear to be mom and pop stores not like a cvs but family owned businesses that have been looted. All of their items broken or destroyed. Really for the community here whether you live or work here its an absolutely heartbreaking day on a day that the family of freddie gray just wanted peace. Its heartbreaking to all of us to watch, andrew. Are you getting a sense that the crowd, the disruptors have moved away from your scene, from up above in the Helicopter Shot it looks like they are headed in another direction. Reporter thats what i see as well. It was really in the last two hours where a lot of the store fronts where i was where vehicles were burned. I saw two or three vehicles burned. One of them i believe to be an Unmarked Police cruiser. But those things all happened in the past couple of hours. Most recently i havent seen more damage apart from the cvs going up in fire. We appreciate that very much. Be careful out there, andrew. Youre right, it is heartbreaking situation when you see mom and pop stores being looted and pretty much destroyed as we have seen here but the even sadder fact is that its such an old story. Its a story that goes back at least 50 or 60 years and from which good lessons not seemed to be learned. This kind of violence didnt used to get this kind of coverage 50 or 60 years ago. And we got this covered from every angle on the ground in the air. Its all over twitter. And social media. And you wonder what kind of an impact all the coverage and all the twitter, all the chatter on social media, how much of an impact that has on this thing as it develops. Well lets hope that we have some own that it might make a difference. In a positive way. In positive way is what i mean. Tisha thompson is at our live desk. We have heard from spokeswoman from one of the local hospitals up there and they say its a pretty fluid situation but right now fewer than 15 injuries thats a quote. The range of injuries range from lacerations to head injuries and its a mix of patient, some protesters possibly some Police Officers. Tisha, there are a number of schools in that Baltimore Area not too far from where this is all going on. Can you tell us anything about the situation there . Have they been locked down . Im talking about colleges. Right. So throughout the course of the afternoon most of the major universities in that area have decided to close or have asked their students to not leave campus or to not come to campus depending on where they were. Some that dome mind is the Maryland Institute for college of art. It asked its students because they are located there right off the north avenue corridor. They asked their students to stay on campus. They decided to cancel classes after 5 30 and those who were not on campus to refrain from coming to campus. Loyala university put out a memo. Maryland zoo is another interesting location. We called them because this was happening so close to them and they said that they didnt necessarily evacuate. They didnt close early. What they did is they just closed the gates of a their last activitior left at 3 00 this afternoon when this all started. Right now they have security staff on the premises but able to account for all their employees getting home safely. Thank you, tisha. Were looking shots now of near that cvs store, that was set afire a short time ago. Looks like the smoke is gone. Fire engines out in front of the cvs. You see the line of police trying to secure the scene so firefighters can do their job. We mentioned before that a protester cut one of the fire hoses as the Fire Department was trying to get this fire under control. You can imagine the stressful job they are doing in addition to the police. And, i guess on the brighter side if there is any such thing as regards these kinds of events we can note that thats pretty much the only fire that weve seen so far. And i hope im not like the broadcast announcer when somebody is throwing a nohitter and call it up. But it has been lets say it could have been so far much worse than it has. Now, night fall is about to fall in a short time from now. We have not heard any word yet about anything having to do with curfew or any other edict from city officials. In fact weve not heard from the mayor as far as i know in quite some time. We do know that the governor has called up called a state of emergency and that the National Guard has been called in. Were expecting an 8 30 News Conference tonight and we expect to get some more information about just what that state of emergency will entail whether there will be a curfew. Or what kind of restrictions will be put into place and what kind of traffic control, that sort of thing. We just dont have that information yet and as soon as we get it well be sharing it. Programming note. Well stay on the air covering this situation up in baltimore right now, those of you tuning in nor nightly news can find nightly news on the cozi channel. We are going to stay here because theres quite a bad situation going on up in baltimore right now. It has been going on for much of the afternoon and into the evening, shortly after 3 00. Protesters demonstrator whatever you might want to call them began disrupting traffic and began violent activities as regards throwing bricks bottles, every other thing they could get their hands on at police who were responding at the time eight officers seven with the Baltimore Police and one from the Transit Authority have been injured and taken to hospitals around the area. The demonstrations then continued. Its kind of again, a fluid situation. There you see a live picture of a car pulling up dropping those drive by break in couple of guys in ran in the liquor store to see what they can get out of there. Thats about social media. You can see where things are happening. Were seeing live pictures. We want to switch for a moment over to some videotape we have of one of the confrontation as police try to control these gangs of people breaking into stores. This is a video from the liquor store that we just saw a few minutes ago. And you can see this is the kind of thing weve been seeing throughout the afternoon. First it was one store then another. We saw they were they were going into the cvs before and carrying out all kinds of stuff. That went on for quite some time more than an hour i would say with no interference by police. We do want to note that there have been some grown ups in baltimore who have been doing the very best they could to put a damper on this kind of activity. Some of them may have been appeared they have been from the nation of islam. Others from other places. There they go fighting among themselves now in order to get access to the liquor store. Anyway there have been adults black men who have been Walking Around the streets and trying to stop the mostly young people who have been disruptive from behaving in such a way. At some points they have been more successful than others. But what generally what happened is that the youngsters would hear what the adults were saying and move on down the street and attack yet another store. As someone noted earlier they appear to have been, many of them mom and pop stores with whatever damage they sustained might put them out of business. As you watch this you wonder what connection does this have to any cause, going in and tearing up somebodys store, stealing the merchandise, even setting things on fire. What does that have to do with anger at the Police Department . Obviously very little which is why as we have pointed out earlier, the ministers who were involved with running the Funeral Service for freddie gray when they came outside and saw what was happening were very upset. Quite upset. And outspokenlyso. And once again as they have in the past pleaded for these mostly very young people to find some other way to express their anger and to calm down. The family also is pleading for people to demonstrate peacefully. Lets find out a little bit more about the people the people in this neighborhood. Tisha thompson worked for years in baltimore and has been looking into just you know who lives in this neighborhood thats being so unfortunately affected by whats going on here. All afternoon weve been talking about how the neighborhoods in baltimore really vary very quickly from block to block. Theres nothing more i love than real data. Lets look at the census data. This is the most recent census data. It began at Mondawmin Mall. In that area the average income is about 31,000. The rent is about 519 for a unit. Theres an even distribution between married and single folk. Most of the folks average are about the mid to late 30s. Compare to just ten blocks south where we are now on north avenue where these live pictures are coming from the average income there, 17,000. Its a much Younger Group of people. These are all averages of course. This is the middle this isnt either end of the extreme. But they are more in their early 20s. More singles. Very few married folk. And a town home in this area costs about 60,000 according to the most recent census data. What we are looking at now is some very interesting video, its hard to make out what they are doing, but this is different from what weve seen throughout the course of the afternoon. It looks like people are starting to make human chains holding their arms. There is that Baltimore City Armored Vehicle up in the lefthand corner of your screen. That vehicle has been at the center of the action throughout the afternoon. Here are some uniformed officers and we cannot make assumptions any more about who they are whether they are Baltimore City or some other unit because as weve been reporting we have Police Officers from all over our region including Montgomery County Prince Georges County Anne Arundel County Howard County and Baltimore County have contributed resources as well as mta police and now, of course, the Maryland National guard have been activated. Thats an Armored Vehicle and it appears these officers are holding weapons. The question is whats inside those weapons. Earlier today the Baltimore City Police Reported that officers would consider these folks to be criminals. That they were breaking the law. That they would use pepper balls and tear gas to try to quell the demonstrations. So its difficult to tell from this video, of course about exactly what they are holding, but that Armored Vehicle sure seems to be center of all the action. Is this live . We have shots being fired. Yeah. Pepper balls, jim. Im not saying its live ammunition. This is a tense and dangerous situation. Its escalated from everything we saw earlier. A great deal rapid fire. A great deal of restraint as we noted earlier. And now it seems as though at least one of the gloves is coming off if not both of the gloves and we have not seen any body being arrested but rather it appears to be something having to do with crowd control but that is very different from everything thats happened since we started watching this about four five hours ago. Tisha, lets talk about what we heard about the use of pepper balls. For people who missed that earlier, what are your talking about . Reporter so at about 3 00 is when all of this began. I would say about an hour into it the Baltimore City police did have a press conference and its the only real source of information weve had in terms of interviews on camera. We have been getting information through tweets and facebook but they did say during that press conference which now has been close to three hours ago that they were using tear gas and pepper balls to try to disperse the demonstrators. This of course was before the large vehicle fires, this was before the fires at the cvs, before a lot of the looting. This was when it was still mostly up in the Mondawmin Mall area. You know, its interesting, jim, when they were holding those weapons they had very specific markings on them. It looked to be a yellow or green color. You dont see guns painted like that very often and that says to me it probably is some kind of pepper ball you know, they want to distinguish the guns with live ammunition from those that shoot pepper balls. Yes, i agree. Whatever it was, though they were actively firing and interesting they then all got back into the truck and seemed to retreat. Can somebody can somebody explain to us what were seeing. Is this live some kind of a live picture or is this video . It appears to be live. I will get you some details about it. Tisha, were just being told this is live video coming from shomari and his cameraman. And at some point well find out exactly what that situation was right there a couple of minutes ago when the officers were in fact rapid firing whatever it was that they were shooting out of those guns. This is a different part of not different, but couple of blocks removed, i would imagine, where now people have formed a circle in the middle of an intersection for exactly what were not sure. But it would seem that theres pockets of unrest and activity popping up all over that section of town. We might want to point out that eight officers have been reported injured when this whole thing first started about four five hours ago but we have not heard any reports of injuries that i heard from since then. Which is interesting and we certainly would hope that that would continue as the hours go on. Tisha did mention 15 injuries what one local baltimore hospital told her and so that would indicate maybe a few didnt sound like i dont think we have details on how serious those injuries are. Wendy is at our live desk. We were just talking about what we saw that fairly dramatic video of officers firing. We dont know what they were firing. If they were firing pepper balls its like firing a paint ball at someone. Obviously not lethal but hit you and then it releases this irritant as sort of an individual releases it on you so that you really are sort of incapacitated by the irritant itself. That could be. We have not confirmed it. When you hear this talk of pepper balls thats what one is. Were hearing from the colonel charles cohler of the Maryland National guard. They are monitoring the situation until they get orders to get in. This group of Maryland National guard coming from all parts of the state is trained in crowd control and use of force specifically only the use of the amount of force needed to control the crowd. They are monitoring. So they are preparing prepared to go in. In this day and age National Guard troops including at the Maryland National guard have seen real action in recent years. Theyve done tours of duty in iraq even afghanistan. The Maryland National guard went to kosovo a few years ago. These are guys and women who have seen some pretty violent places in the past. But they are also the same folks that were digging us out of snow snowmageddon. They took shovels and other heavy gear to help us get through our streets. Maryland National Guard gets called up for a variety of things. For a state of emergency to be declared is a significant event. We want to give you guys a heads up that were getting reports of a possible armed person investigation happening at the cook library at Towson University. San antonio midst of all of this up the street a significant ways up the street at Towson University at towson north dakota which is at the northern border of Baltimore City police are dealing with a situation up there. Theres a lot going on in Baltimore City now. Indeed and most unfortunate. There an ambulance come through. Again, these are live pictures from our crew on the ground in baltimore. We see the ambulance going through but also were seeing regular traffic going through which indicates that theres a pretty daunting job ahead for police trying to get this whole scene under control. Also not a bad sign to see some of the guys out on the street actually getting people to make way and waving the ambulance through and not trying to stop it and disrupt it. Good point. What were watching there now is activity from the camera that shomari stone and his crew have had while they have been on the street right there in the middle of all this activity in baltimore. Right now jim handly is joining us with yet even more information and some rather startling images. Reporter we got a timeline of stills we put together the images keep coming in and they will stay with us and the residents of baltimore for some time come. I want to take you back to 3 30 this afternoon. Students were getting out of the Frederick Douglass high school. Officers in riot gear were around the shopping mall. Bottles, bricks rocks were thrown at the officer. It wasnt long before we saw this image of a city Police Cruiser the windows shattered, people jumping on the roof of the car and bashing it in. Crowds gathered around that car. No officer was inside. In the sandtown area at a popular metro stop at North Baltimore and pennsylvania avenue a maryland Transit Authority cruiser and a small bus from mta go up in flames. Three metro stops around it are closed. A popular waiting point for people in that neighborhood. Eight officers as we mentioned received injuries. This officer coming up was carried away by about a dozen officers. He was said to be unresponsive at this point before he was put into an ambulance. Again, most of those officers injured had broken bones. A cvs goes up in flames a short time later after dozens and dozens of people had gone into this stores front door and back looting it. All the windows were blown out. A Check Cashing store too. This is the most massive looting situation that we found. This harry potter about a half hour after the cvs looting situation. Broke the doors. All the glass windows shattered and came pouring out too. The clean up on this story will be massive to say the least as is the Economic Impact from this tragic day and be interesting to see, jim, what you mentioned earlier what nighttime brings and ill be back at 11 00 with more images when it gets dark out there. We have more. Theres another car fire going on. Theres the scene right there, looks like we lost it. Anyway another car has been set on fire. Its not clear. Does not look from this Vantage Point like a police car, but hopefully theres nobody in that car. Thats outside the liquor store that huge crowd hit just i dont know maybe 20 minutes ago, half an hour ago at the most and somehow or another and for whatever reason that car now has been set afire as well. Shomari stone has been out there on the street. Thats a look now from the camera view that shomari and his crew have been serving us for quite some time. Shomari was hit by some pepper gas, pepper spray a little while ago. Shomari are you okay now . Reporter im fine now. Now you can see a man lifting what appears to be chair and throwing it. Those chairs were thrown at officers. Now, they are very heavy and can hit an officer. Police have had to move people back away from here and they were using, you know devices that were exploding in the air to try to disperse this crowd. It looks like whats bad out here it looks like a hurricane swept through the area. Theres debris all over the place. Theres a man standing. People went in and picking out everything inside. Hes standing there and texting someone. Hes upset about all of this. Nothing key do. A lot of folks are using the freddie gray situation as a way to try and get freebies whereas you have other legitimate protesters who are concerned wanting to know what happened to him, what caused this final injury. A lot of folks are talking about, you know, having a lot of activity once the sun goes down and my concern is that you have a lot of people who actually stole liquor and drinking a lot and somebody who might not try and cause trouble but ini had bigs goes down once you have that alcohol and people throwing things at Police Officers. Shomari, i got to ask you. Were seeing a lot of traffic moving through a spot where theres a good deal of disruption. One car thats even been sitting there right in the middle of that intersection for quite