monitoring the stores to ensure the safety of employees and customers and their thoughts are with the people of baltimore. again, they've closed a number of stores, c.v.s. has in baltimore and they are reporting that no customers or employees have been injured. leon: all right. we're getting word that the white house is also keeping an eye on what's happening in baltimore. loretta lynch in her first meeting with president obama as attorney general. she's watching it from her perspective and the white house as well is watching what's happening playing in the streets of baltimore. the white house senior advisor has been in touch with maryland's governor larry hogan and as we've said moments ago, the governor has announced that even though he has not called yet a state of emergency or has not deployed the national guardsmen in maryland they have been put on alert so the guard can be called to deploy as rapidly as needed. maureen: we know there's a huge police presence in baltimore this evening. the maryland state police have about 42 officers there. we understand that 40 more are on the way to be present this evening. the baltimore police all hands on deck. that means 3,000 baltimore police officers and the prince george's county police also have a contingent of special operations officers there. so a large, large contingent of police and as leon said no national guard callups as of yet. leon: joining us on the phone is vincent henry, expert in the use of force by police at the homeland security manage institute at long island university. tell us about the tactics that we've been watching these police, different agencies and jurisdictions using on the streets here in baltimore. have you been watching it yourself? guest: i've been trying to -- i'm actually in new york. i've been trying to watch it. i'm not seeing the same coverage obviously than you're getting. what i have been able to see, it looks like the police are trying to establish a perimeter around the protest which is what you know, kind of the theory in practice tells you to do. basically establish a perimeter, isolate and contain the protests and kind of try to gradually shrink that area. at the same time, always allowing kind of an escape route for the protesters. you don't want to bottle them up completely and completely surround them. i understand that reinforcements have been called in quite a few and it's basically an all hands for the baltimore officers. i don't know how many are there present yet but the overall approach is to create a show of strength. not necessarily a show of force. but a show of strength and to have the resources ready to deploy typically in addition to the establishing the perimeter, you would have mobile response teams. vans full of officers ready to respond to a particular location very quickly. for example, you know i've been hearing about this c.v.s. store that was looted and the drugs were taken and, apparently, that's not the only place that was looted. leon: we've been watching quite a few scenes there. they've established a perimeter but it appears they haven't done anything to curtail that kind of activity inside that perimeter. guest: i don't know. you're close to her the situation. they may not have the reinforcements in place yet to actually try to contract that and try to move in. leon: how long do you think we could expect that to take? guest: you know, the national guard, i understand is on alert. and that's really the last thing that you want to bring in. the national guard as good as they are are not police officers. they don't have the self-restraint and they're not trained to be restrained in a civil unrest situation as the police are. you know i understand prince george's county and a couple of the surrounding areas and some state troopers have been called in. how long it will take to mobilize them is also the issue of communications. you know which is a perennial problem with police agencies when they're working off different radio frequencies, different chains of command, you know all of this by the way kind of illuminates the need in a civil unrest situation to have a good civil unrest plan in place. where all these things are accounted for. where you have an agreement in place with neighboring agencies. you may not want to just send some of the officers that are on duty. you may want to have a van mobilization kick up and do an all hands. maureen: let me ask you a question about timing. this chaos has been going on much of the afternoon. the sun is going to set at just before 8:00 tonight. what changes in police tactics when it becomes dark outside? guest: it becomes far more dangerous for police and i would imagine their tactics would become far more defensin nature. once darkness falls, you have the potential for people you know god forbid you have snipers or you know debris from rooftops. leon: right we're seeing more and more looting. we saw live shots of people breaking down the door of rite aid and going inside. we want to get back to our tom roussey standing by where that fire is burning at that c.v.s. how close are you to that building, tom? tom: we've been able to get a lot closer to it leon. you can see the fire coming out of it to my right over here. this is the c.v.s. that was looted and then somehow it caught fire. possibly set on fire. we don't know that for sure but something happened. i don't know if you can see through the smoke, there's firefighters just arriving on the roof. baltimore fire has arrived and you can see somebody just took a ladder up there to the roof of the building. look likes he has a hose or something that he's going to use there. i don't know what he has exactly. trying to get that fire out. this c.v.s. is going up in smoke. you have the police line protecting the c.v.s. there's not much more to protect there. you have the police line not letting anybody get any closer to it at this point and you've also got a lot of sirens in the distance and firefighters arriving on scene. starting to fight this. they have a big job ahead of them and they have to make sure they stay safe because you can see that building is just going up in smoke right now and it has been burning for at least probably 10 minutes at this point. all i can say is the city it almost feels like a war zone at this point where everything that's going on. just so many police and we saw a few minutes ago when all the police from prince george's county arrived as reinforcements. even with every baltimore police officer that they can have working. it's still not enough. they need help from other areas trying to stop this unrest here and our kevin lewis told me he was in this area when the building was being looted. he literally saw guys sitting on the street going through prescription medicine after that building was looted and again on fire. right now and the firefighters are start to go try to put it out, maureen? maureen: tell us a little bit about this neighborhood. are there -- is this completely commercial neighborhood or are there people's homes in this neighborhood? tom: a lot of homes, maureen. you can get a sense of what the neighborhood looks like. we have a lot of row homes in this area. it's mostly a residential neighborhood. that c.v.s. is the exception and not the rule. a lot of people live around here. and a lot of the homes are board up. however, a lot of them are lived in as well. this is a neighborhood. this is a place people live and it's going up in smoke right now. filled with police. we showed you earlier cars burning. we talked to one man who lives in this general area here and he's just furious because he said now people are destroying their own neighborhood. and you see evidence of it right there with what's going on. i had a gentleman just below here who said exactly as i said that, sir you said when i said people are destroying their neighborhood. you said -- what did you say? >> i said exactly. tomorrow, when all this is gone where are we going to go out to eat? with the old people here in building, going to get their medicine? this is ridiculous! tom: are you angry with what's being done to your neighborhood? thank you very much, sir. thank you very much. you can a lot of people upset at police but then there's a lot of people upset at the people who are upset at police and what they've done to this section of west baltimore. fire truck pulling up now with the hose hooked up to a hydrant already. they're going to do a little more to get this fire out here at the c.v.s. that is still smoking quite a bit. baltimore city fire has a big job on its hands here. but again, a lot of police protecting them. earlier, we were at a car fire and the fire department didn't want to come until they can assured by protection by police. the car burned itself out. still so much going on right now in west baltimore. it's calmed down in some areas but then other areas blow up of that maureen? leon: what's unfortunate about that is it's such a waste of police resources to have 100 officers standing think to protect firefighters to put out a building fire when they could be out stopping some of the looting and some of the other mayhem that's under way in the streets right now. tom, make sure you stay safe and keep us posted on what you're seeing there. we were just seeing tom was talking about the people who were looting that c.v.s. store and they were taking prescription drugs. we may have been seeing the same thing in the other camera shot. a man had broke not down the door of the rite aid with their shoulders, shoving their way into the store and began making their way through that facility as well. we'll keep an eye out and see how many more scenes that we see. maureen: let's go to horace holmes that have been keeping in touch with what the authorities in maryland have been saying about this. i understand you have some word from the governor of maryland? horace: the governor and the white house a little bit more from president obama's office. the president pledging the federal government's help to respond to the situation in baltimore. his and assistants have been -- and the president actually we're seeing here has spoken to baltimore mayor stephanie rawlings-blake and the president has pledged complete and total support to baltimore saying that he will do whatever is necessary and give any resources that are necessary to help in baltimore. also, senior advisor has spoken from the obama administration with maryland governor larry hogan. now, we also heard from major league baseball. there's an orioles game that was scheduled for tonight at 7:00. that game has been canceled, postponed, may i say and at this point, major league baseball is looking for another venue to play the game the series between the baltimore orioles and the chicago white sox. that's the latest. that game tonight has been canceled. as far as the beginning of a three-game series. so as far as tomorrow night and the next night those games could be moved to another venue until things cool down in baltimore. back to you guys. leon: be some time before things calm down at least for tonight. that's for sure. thank you, horace. in the meantime we're still watching these live pictures coming in from baltimore. maureen: this is a police car that's arrived at the rite aid in baltimore that we saw being looted so easily a few minutes ago. this is one lone police car. don't see any police on fire. and the looters have left as far as we can tell from this shot. leon: any protesters walking around. maureen: no activity there at all. leon: kevin lewis has a different vantage point. let's get back to him and see what he can see from where he is. kevin? hello, kevin can you hear us? kevin: yeah, leon, are you there? leon: there you go. we've got you now. kevin: all right, leon we just was coming in front of the camera here. i'm going to step out of frame because it's what is happening behind me that is really of interest. we talked to you earlier and we were focusing a lot on the c.v.s. pharmacy that had been looted. as you can see now, that c.v.s. is on fire. i'll walk up to get a little better perspective to be able to appropriately narrate here. we've seen a handful of baltimore fire department ladder trucks come by. one actually ex tended its ladder on to the roof of that c.v.s. it has since pulled the ladder down. i don't know if the smoke was too intense or doesn't make sense. that ladder has been pulled down. got to remember this is the c.v.s. that had been looted earlier in the day. we showed you photos earlier of minivan stocked full of black plastic garbage bags the ones that you can step in and fit in yourself. that was full of items presumably from that c.v.s. and showed you a photograph of two men sorting through prescription pills that we believe were taken from that c.v.s. that was one block over to the street that i'm standing on right now. they were sitting on the sidewalks sifting through the pills as if it was chalk. you know they were just like it was no big deal at all. this police line has not broken since we got here minutes ago at this point. police are standing guard to make sure no citizens no rioters can get to that c.v.s. but again, it is burning and it is on fire. we see that thick charcoaly or more kind of a gray smoke burning at this hour. leon? leon: kevin, give us a scene setter and tell us what it was like to drive to get to that location that you were at right now. kevin: ok we were talking to you at the mall in baltimore. we got there at 3:00 today. and we left the mall around 5:15. it normally would take about seven minutes to get to this location. it took us close to 30. that's because we were within the police lines so we had to gain clearance to leave the security perimeter. as we drove over we saw a vehicle burning. we tried to actually go and document that. get video of it and citizens were turning on us so we had to get back inside of our crew vehicles. we cut through a park and then we we want through this neighborhood and an attempt to get on the other side of this police line. a stoplight. maybe you can see it's red at this present moment. i don't know if you'll be able to see it. to give you perspective of how close it is where we're it's like a war zone over there. police are allowing. they were outnumbered, the residents, people to walk around in the middle of the street. you had cars driving in the wrong direction. you had individuals sitting in lawn chairs in the middle of the intersection. and you had burning vehicles. it was -- there was no civility. there was no order. and right now, leon you can see the c.v.s. is burning and the fire department is doing its best to gain control. leon: ok. keep an eye on that situation, kevin. we're watching now people and civilians in their cars being stopped at intersections but watching this happening at that rite aid drugstore we saw being looted a moment ago. our jay korff is standing outside. what are you seeing there, jay? jay: i got to be honest with you, if we have to get back in our car quickly we certainly will. we saw authorities pull up a short time ago, i want to show you what's going on here. looks like they took a bat to this. they blasted through this place pretty easily. we saw for at least 15 20 minutes, people going through this store, taking whatever they want. it lasted quite a while. you can see all the shattered glass. we did speak to somebody who was working security here at this save a lot on mcmechin. we're in northwest baltimore. trying to get a pronunciation on that. at one point, at some point, a gentleman who was working security point blank range, 10 feet away. somebody threw something at him. it looked like a water bottle or something. maybe it had rocks in it. popped him in the head. he's ok. but what i want to do not only do i want to move on from here the next thing that occurred richard, let's go this way. the police did not show up until maybe five minutes ago and everybody cleared up. i'd say maybe 20 or 30 minutes into this another group of folks came over to this rite aid pharmacy over here. so first they tried to hit this hardware store and couldn't get in the hardware store very easily. somebody crawled through there and got a few things. let's go over here real quick. the rite aid pharmacy is where things got really dicey. folks had to rip off -- there were maybe 10 to 15 men, large guys who came through here. and just ripped the whole front of this apart. it took a tremendous amount of force to get this locked door off. they came in here and the thing that they were doing is they were going in and getting cash boxes. here's where those cash boxes are. they're over here. they would run out of the store so keeping an eye on our vehicles. let's take a look at this real quick. the police left. they just came through. their presence was known. people have fled. now they've gone on to something else. here's the cash drawers. the cash boxes, they came in and threw them on to the ground with the tremendous force. you can see the change here on the ground. looting of all those stores. so we'll head back to our car but the one thing that we noticed was folks would literally pull up open up their back trunk and take stuff out of the save-a-lot and take stuff out of the rite aid and pile it into their vehicle and take off. people are yelling us telling us to lea of course this is all in the wake of the violence that has been simmering in this city for days. and erupted several hours ago. maureen: we'll let you go back to the vehicle. leon: probably the safe move now, jay would be to go back to the car. so you guys can get out of there. more people are showing up there on the scene. and we don't necessarily know what anyone's intentions are just yet and don't appear to be any other police in that area. so better be -- better to be safe than sorry there. maureen: that was an area of several stores rite aid and save a lot and all looted. apparently some people coming back to the stores. we donny know who they were. we wanted our jay korff to get out of that area. leon: live shot here again of people here making their way down the street. we don't know again what their intent is. if these are protesters or if these people are being moved down by the police. they may be a -- that may be a line of police officers between the -- under the trees there, rather. hard to tell from this angle. but what we've been seeing here is we're seeing here developing that things were starting to go calm down. and then people were able to -- in the area that was cleared of any protesters police moved in and then the police stablized everything and then something pops up some place else and what we've been seeing popping up have been these instances of looting and of fires being set. and both vehicles and structures as well. maureen: let's review quickly for our audience. you can see from this scene, this is a scene of police stretched across a street. and i believe this is in area of lexington market. that looks like the lexington market. they're lined up there to prevent protesters from moving further into downtown baltimore. the shops and hotels down there. tear gas canisters fired. and as it gets darker it could get more difficult for the police. it could get -- it could get pretty dicey because the police cannot see, obviously, what is going on around them. so i suspect that they're trying to do their very best before it gets dark 8:00 to contain the agitators and to make sure that they do not go further into downtown baltimore. it will be south and west of where the rioters have been all day. leon: what's interesting here is it appears these tear gas canisters apparently are being thrown back at the police it appears. the police are making their way towards where the tear gas is coming from. that vehic there is obviously a police cruiser that has been completely destroyed by all the debris you see there in streets and it appears there has been a lot of activity like that going on for sometime for hours now and now we're seeing more of the canisters being fired and they're being fired there now down towards the bottom of the screen there and we see there's a -- it's kind of hard to tell. it looks as though it's those people that are picking up the canisters and throwing them back at the police but the police are slowly and methodically making their way down that street near the licking ton market, you said that is? maureen: i believe that is. leon: we'll keep our eye and see what's happening on that scene. we have not seen many clashes with the protesters and police in the last couple of hours. last hour and a half or so and in fact, as a matter of fact not even sure we can call them protesters at this point. what we've seen here is clearly agitation. basically by -- and commotion being caused by people who are trying to create some conflict there with the police. we are a little concerned about that because we had -- the police, i should say are quite concerned because they had a report earlier today that they qualified as a verifiable report of a threat being made on the police in baltimore, a threat being made by gangs and there's a credible threat being made by a number of gangs that had pledged to work together to target white police officers. they said they wanted to target police officers. they were actually -- one of the words was to take out police officers and they wanted to target white officers specifically because they wanted to "send a message. "we've seen as of the last report, we understand that some seven police officers from the baltimore city police have been injured. one was unresponsive as of a couple of hours ago. we do not have a further updated status information on those officers. we do understand they have been moved from the scenes where they had been injured and may be in the hospital at this point. we do not know of the status of those officers at this point. we'll try to find that out for you. but the thing is there was quite a lot of concern as to whether or not the attacks that we're seeing playing out here in front of these cameras on the police have anything to do with the threat that was made by a number of gangs. maureen: the picture that you're seeing in the lower right-hand corner of your screen is the c.v.s. that was looted earlier and has apparently caught fire or been put on fire. kevin lewis is there with an update on the situation for you. kevin? kevin: hi maureen. this is a tactical vehicle from prince george's county. we saw a long line and caravan of prince george's county police vehicles that have called in to add reinforcement to this rioting situation. i want to show you on the side of this vehicle, i'm going to keep a distance. you can see what appears to be water marks and it looks almost like residueszsidue from a rock on the passenger side window here. these vehicles while very well fortified are targets. people see them. and they throw everything and anything that is in sight at these vehicles. we saw it today at the mall. where the tactical vehicle or one of them was there and like i said it's just peppered here with liquid and bit of rock residue. and we are standing and this vehicle is blocking the view by only feet from that c.v.s. pharmacy that was l and now on fire. this right here is a tire and auto mechanics shop. right around 6:00 the employees here were frantically locking up the gates because they knew what happened at the c.v.s. and they locked up the gates. we haven't seen them leave and we're wondering if they're kind of harboring inside fearful that their business could be looted as well. we've seen so much uncivility tonight and these are groups of residents of baltimore that are stanning here peacefully. there's a woman there with a cell phone, light coming from her cell phone. and there are some children with the woman that might be their mother. these people have been kind to us. they're just standing here looking at what's happening to their neighborhood which any of us would do if this type of chaos and pandemonium was happening on the block that we lived on. i do think that amid all of this drama that is unfolding, it's worth poin pointing out there are people that are being civil and not doing anything wrong. that's what we're seeing here in baltimore on the west side. for now we'll send it back to you in the studio. maureen: can you give us an update on the status of the fire in the c.v.s.? kevin: i'll walk and check it out and give you an idea. we don't see smoke at this point. there are a few ladder tr we'll carry the camera over here. that is the view. you can see two ladders that are extending into the air and one over the c.v.s. there is from vantage point light white smoke that is going into the air here. that fire is most isly out. that's the last thing they need to deal with at this point. leon: we just learned words maybe about 10 minutes ago that word was out that the baltimore orioles game that had been scheduled for tonight has just been cancelled. or postponed i should say. they'll find another way and place to play that game. brad bell has made his way down to camden yards and from what we have been told and had been hearing earlier, brad throughout the evening people were -- a lot of people were making their way down into that area. brad: if they were here, they left in a hurry. it's otherwise quiet. these fences have been put up to keep people from putting on. and now this is a bizarre sight.

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