Transcripts For MSNBCW MSNBC Live With Ali Velshi 20180214 :

Theyve come into here live at the msnbc newsroom, i personally have not seen anybody taken away in an ambulance. Ali velshi, it is all yours. Thanks. Ill pick it up from here. Might need help. So we are looking at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School. This is in parkland, florida. This is in broward count for county and it is north of miamidade county. This is west of boca. North of Coral Springs. If you know the area around there, it is northwest of pompano beach. What we are looking at are there is Police Activity at this high school. We know of reporting that there was an active shooter nearby and then other reporting of an active shooter on the property. Now what were hearing from the Broward County Sheriffs Office is to avoid the area of Stoneman Douglas high school while police try and figure out what is going on. Now there is a weve unfortunately covered too many of these active shootings. You are looking at a combination of live footage and footage that we bring back. But what were looking at here is a number of tactical officers around an armored vehicle. Could you see that they are staying to one side of the armors vehicle. We do not see other activity. We dont see anybody being taken out. We dont see anybody who has been arrested. We dont even see students. So were trying to get information from the Broward County Sheriffs Office. You will see you have images coming from a Television Helicopter. We were seeing people earlier there are reports of people who were being taken on gurneys into rescue ambulances but again, we dont see that right now. So were not quite sure where this is. For people where the situation stands. We do know where it is. In fact, there you see a fire rescue vehicle and some more Police Officers around here. This is a local Television Helicopter pulling back a little bit taking a look at the situation. Theyre approaching a car. You could see that. And well just keep an eye on what is going on. By passing that car. This is in parkland, florida. This is the Marjorie Stoneman high school and weve got there are a bunch of reports that have been coming in and theyve been a little bit different. Weve been hearing about reports of a gunman near the area and then reports of a active shooter in the area. Some of these reports are coming from twitter, there are people reporters on the scene who are putting out word of what they understand. But again, it is remarkably vague. We are seeing for instance some some of what were seeing on twitter is that there are reports of an active shooter in in the school, the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School. I would judge from the activity and the movement that they do seem to have a handle on things. You see the school buses stopped there. And you see people who have been moved out in vehicles. You see those people passing by that fire vehicle. But the urgency does not seem to indicate that of a current active shooter. But we dont know there isnt one. All we know is that there were reports of an active shooter at this margory Stoneman Douglas high school in parkland, florida. Were going to try and get some we are trying hard to get information about what is happening there. We do not have reports at the moment of injuries but there were reports of people having been taken away. The Broward County Sheriffs Department, which is investigating this, has asked people to stay away from the area. The spokesperson from there said the s. W. A. T. Team was called to the school, for those of you that know the area, it is pine island road. That is the tweet, avoid the area, and bso, that is Broward County Sheriffs Office is working a developing incident regarding a report of a active shooter. So we dont have confirmation of an active shooter, however Broward County spokesperson kayla conception said there are reports of victims. So this is the first were getting of reports of victims. There has been one image that we have seen go by that is it on your left of a person being placed on to a stretcher. They appear to be moving that over to a fire rescue vehicle, an ambulance that is set up for that. So that is the one person that weve seen. They are asking teachers and students to remain inside of the school until officers can reach them. So that may be why were not seeing activity outside of the school. It is likely on shutdown. These are now live pictures again that you are seeing. That is the high school campus. Nobody there. The school is i dont have this information officially. But im going to surmise it is on shutdown because you are not seeing anybody Walking Around the school. We have marco rubio tweeted he is monitoring the horrible unfolding situation in Broward County, florida, with reports of a shooting at a local high school. Ill tell you what we are getting information that marg ate fire rescue Coconut Creek in the area is confirming they are responding to an active shooter at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School and the chief there is saying they are assisting Coral Springs Police Department with several rescues and staff crews. So i did look on the map and this did seem to be the closest to Coral Springs. It is just north of Coral Springs. There is the highlighted area of the high school. So Coral Springs Police Department as well as Broward County Sheriffs Office are responding. Coral springs said they have several rescue and staff crews on the scene. And they have a level three a level three incident. It doesnt mean we know the number of victims, it means they are preparing for a level three incident. That means possibly more than 21 victims. Now we have no information on whether there are any victims. We know weve seen one person come out on a stretcher. But they are preparing and i suppose that is Jim Cavanaugh is joining me on the phone. Jim, i would suppose that means hes on camera. We may put you on and keep these shots up. The idea that they are preaching for more than 21 victims is a category. Mci three and that largely means because it is a cool, theyre going to prepare for a bad outcome. Yeah. Exactly. I dont think that necessarily tells us there is that many injured. It is preparation of the Emergency Rooms and the paramedics to be able to deal with that level. So theyve got initial reports from responding first patrol officers an maybe a little deeper in that because as you were showing on the feed, it looks like s. W. A. T. Had arrived. So they have a pakt a picture and do they have a shooter. They looked like they had someone wounded loaded into the Fire Department ambulance. So do they have a shooter located . Right there you see them searching the perimeter with the dog and some officers with long guns. You are looking at the same feed i am. Let me ask you this. We are there is a local news station that is reporting at least 20 injured. Now i want to say, i just wonder whether and i hope that is not the case, and we dont have those reports, i just wonder whether someone misenterprets the release from Coconut Creek margate fire rescue to say possibility of more than 21 victims, i think you are right. I think youve been a reporter a long time and know how the emergencies are. There is initial confusion. And also injuries can occur from running and tripping and falling and so forth. So i think it is preliminary there. We dont see a lot of wounded from the feed as you pointed out. And so i think there is good news here. We dont see any large trauma tents or we dont see massive people being treated for wounds. So right now we dont know. We see all of the patrol cars and we see the evacuation. We know s. W. A. T. Is on the scene. And the on scene commander from s. W. A. T. Will have a handle. This is Coral Springs, Broward County, Broward County, s. O. , i was a Florida Deputy and 3000 deputies. They have a top s. W. A. T. Team, theyre going to be able to deal with it but theyve got to get in there and locate one or more people if theyre shooting inside of the school. We are going back and forth between live images and things that have just happened to give you as complete of a picture as we can get. But as you see the movement of either the s. W. A. T. Team or some of the teams that were on the field with dogs, what at what point in the in this incident does this look like . There is slow movement. Now obviously in many cases there could be a danger and there will be slow movement of Police Officers. Because they like to do this in a controlled fashion. It doesnt look like mayhem. Right. Well you have to remember now, the job of the commanders on the scene is to make order out of chaos. You see somebody else in a gurney going to i think that might be the same the same one that were showing again. So we dont know that we have more than one person who weve seen go into a gurney. That doesnt mean that others havent gone in. Right. And that may be the same person that was shown earlier. But the commander will make organization out of chaos. So they seem to make it look easy. But what they have is you saw that bear cat parked next to the building with the tactical officers next to it. A lot of activity now is happening inside. They sweep those buildings and try to locate someone. Now if they get a shooter or multiple shooters barricaded in a building, it can look pretty static for a while. Because what theyre doing is organizing, theyll get theyre negotiating team, called noc, a joc, a joint Operations Center and set up in a classroom next to the truck or in a tent like the paramedics do. That is a paramedic tent. But you could see they are setting up. There is a triage blanket set up to treat wounded if they have to. So a lot of this is going on inside. It doesnt mean it is really more serious, it just means there is tactical activity going on inside. Some Perimeter Security searching as well. And again i want to repeat, we dont know and while there is always a temptation to surmise, jim and i have done this a few times, we dont want to because there will be facts and well know those facts. I will tell you something that may be true and leading to confusion and that is that Coconut Creek margate is helping Coral Springs p. D. And broward Sheriffs Office are on the scene. But they have said that this is a level three mci, which is the possibility of multiple victims, more than 21 victims. That means that they are preparing for an incident that may have more than 21 victims. Which is probably prudent to do if you hear of an active shooter at the school. Some reporters are interpreting that to mean that there are more than 20 people injured. We do not have that information yet. Stand by, jim. Tammy leitner is headed from miami up to parkland, florida. Tammy, i guess that is if you were starting in miami, that is about a 30 minute drive four . Actually it is a a little bit longer. Were about 30 minutes out right now. You guys, i can tell you that we did speak with a mother whose daughter is inside of the school right now. She is actually trapped inside of the school. According to her, there are still at least about 20 kids and teachers inside of the school. Theyve barricaded themselves inside there. We know that they are on not on the first floor and im not going to say where they are just in case the shooter is listening. We do know that some of the students have gotten out, but there are still at least about 20 people in there hiding and we do know that some people are injured as you mentioned. The s. W. A. T. Is surrounding the school right now but obviously this is still a very tenuous situation. Patients right now a parents trying to get ahold of kids an the mother that we spoke with was texting her daughter inside of the school and she hasnt heard from her in a few minutes and shes very concerned. And i just asked my director, are these live pictures . There are students leaving and arms raised above their heads. That may have been an instruction by police to come out with your heads above your heads and we do see what appear to be about a dozen students leaving the school. And now more. These students do not have their arms raised. But they are coming out in large numbers. What do you make of this . This is a typical evacuation. When these things are done by the tactical teams, they they do in a system what we call live and locate and evacuate, eliminate the threat. They are trying to get everybody away. They locate, they isolate, they eliminate the threat, and they evacuate. So let me tell you what we are getting here. Broward county sheriff tweeted shooter is still at large. Shooter is still at large. They do not have somebody either neutralized or in custody. As of now. But they are letting students out. And i want to ask jim for your interpretation but i want to give everybody more news and for those of you joining us, this is parkland, florida. North of Coral Springs florida. West southwest of boca. It is in Broward County. There has been an active shooter at this school. This is the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School. Marco rubio tweeted we are monitoring the unfolding situation in broward with reports of a shooting at a local high school. We have a tweet from Debbie Wasserman schultz who said im monitoring the Development Situation in Broward County. The victims are weighing heavy in my heart as is the courage of the First Responders on the scene. This senseless violence must end. And we have information that fbi agents from miami are on route to the school. They do not have details. They are being evacuated by the tactical units. They are raising arms as being asked to do so. And the president has been briefed on this. That is right. Were just hearing from president secretary Sarah Sanders that the president has been told about this. Hes been made aware of what is unfolding right now in florida. That the white house is monitoring it. As youve been reporting here live on our air, this is still unfolding, details are still sketchy. But we know that the white house has eyes on this and that the president as hes been in the meetings today talking policy and infrastructure, has been told about what is unfolding in front of our eyes and this is now become an all too common occurrence. The president being made aware of another shooting. This year, in 2018 let as listen in nbc 6 in miami for their coverage. We have several friends with kids at that school and one text and said her son is hiding inside of the closet at the school with other friends. So hes still on campus hiding in the closet. And the teachers have told them not to leave the school. It is not safe. And the suspected shooter is a white male wearing a burgundy shirt or sweater and he was headed in the vicinity west glades. That is another school. And so im not exactly sure what that means. Were seeing movement of students coming out of the school and so that is a good thing to see that so to see that kids are actually coming out of the school so maybe some is of the buildings there are getting the allclear and it is safe enough that police think that they could come out with their hands up. They do that so that one of the students does not have a weapon. Just putting their hands in the airshow shows the police they are not the gunman and because the gunman might try to mingle in and get make an escape. Again we dont have a location of the shooter. Perhaps they do but this is not information they are passing along. It is believed he is still on the school grounds, possibly still inside of the building. So weve been with this for probably about almost an hour now that we got the first reports. And actually before we even got reports i started getting phone calls from parents saying that there was some kind of situation at Marjorie Stoneman high school. My girlfriend called and she was running to the school to get her son. She was turned away and he is still in that building. And in addition to that, as i said, i got calls from another a text from a parent that her son is hiding inside of the closet with other students in that school. They are looking for a white male in a burgundy shirt and they believe that hes somewhere in the vicinity of the school. This is a very residential area. It is very spread out. Across the street is haron bay, the country club and golf club and a Marriott Hotel connected to it. We have christine the mayor of parkland. Are you with us . Yes, i am. Could you give us the latest youve been made aware of. Im right