Transcripts For FOXNEWSW Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo 20201227

President ial election. Here is President Trump and his director of National Intelligence, john ratcliffe. Secretary pompeo said that he has strong evidence that it did come from the virology lab. Weve been reporting this every sunday by the way from early on. You also said that you saw evidence. Can you tell us anything about the intelligence . No, no, but we have a lot of information, and its not good but you know the worst of all whether it came from the lab or came from the bats, it all came from china, and they should have stopped it. They could have stopped it at that source. I call it the source. Right there. Maria they made a decision to allow it to escape its borders. President trump i dont know if they made the decision but it got out of control. I think more likely it got out of control. They intentionally and deliberately downplayed it in their country, pressured World Health Organizations and allowed it to spread to the rest of the world, and that didnt just have the affect of wrecking the global economy. It didnt just have the effect of killing millions of people including hundreds of thousands of americans. It also had grave political consequences. You know, here in the United States, the pandemic influenced a lot about how people voted, but also how they had to vote. Maria weve spent much of the last several years studying and reporting on this threat, and as ratcliffe tells us, the cold war attacks of theft and espionage began years earlier than the coronavirus struck, as the ccp managed to w eave itself through several different administrations, and get inside some of americas most important institutions. Dni ratcliffe says we are now at a point where it is the one country, capable of destroying the american dream. China and china alone is the greatest National Security threat that we face and we see them growing their military. We see them economically, as you talked about, stealing through intellectual property, stealing through cyber warfare, stealing from our universities, stealing medical research, all to gain information which they know is what you need to dominate technologically, so china is not a good actor internationally. We need to call them out for what they are, not what they pretend to be, and again, going back to covid its a perfect example of showing theyre not a Good International actor, their intent on dominating the entire world, not just the United States, and the intelligence tells us that, so from my unique vantage point, i want to make sure that the American People are warned about this threat, because its clear. Maria one thing that really struck me is that u. S. Intelligence shows that china has conducted human testing on military power. The u. S. Intelligence shows that chinas conducting human testing on members of the Peoples Liberation army in hopes of developing soldiers with biologicallyenhanced capabilities. There are just no ethical boundaries to this. In other words, they want to create new humans that can handle extreme weather, handle chemical attacks, is that right . So one of the things i did in this piece was to work hard, to try and get information declassified to a level that i could talk about, and one of the things you just mentioned its called gene editing, is altering dna and its one of the things that our intelligence shows that china is doing. Theyve got the prc, the people s republic of china, has 2 million strong in its military and its trying to make them stronger through gene editing and thats just one of the ways that china is trying to essentially dominate the planet and set the rules and the world order and why its so important and people need to understand is this is an authoritarian regime, it doesnt care about peoples individual rights. Weve seen what theyve done to the wegers. Weve seen what theyve done in hong kong. Its about putting the state first and that is the exact opposite of what has always made america great. Individual liberties, freedoms, free enterprise, those things are all at stake if china dominates. Maria in fact, jimmy lie, whose a media tycoon is now sitting in jail, because china took him in, detained him and now the word is hes going to be there until his trial, april 2021. We had him on mornings with maria over on fox business last week and its really a disgusting story whats happening to jimmy ly, but i want to get your take on joe biden naming a cabinet and expecting that he is going to have a National Security team and here are this obamaera pick s and i want your take on whether or not they agree with you and understand the threat. We got Jake Sullivan for nsa, he sent classified emails to Hillary Clintons server. He hyped the russia gate hoax, coauthored the essay calling china an essential u. S. Partner, Anthony Blinken for secretary of state named in senator johnsons report was in contact with hunter biden and his Burisma Holdings colleagues. As alexandra for dhas found to have sold green cards to chinese nation les on behalf of democratic donors and then neera tanden and of course, admiral haines, who wants your job as dni, the former deputy of john brennan and susan rice who were deeply involved, we understand, john brennan was, in the russia hoax so does a potential Incoming Biden Administration agree with this , about china . And will they change policy . Well, these election issues, well see who is in what seats, and whether there is a biden administration, but the point of what ive done here and how ive addressed this and why its different for a director of National Intelligence to take this approach is i want to make sure that the American People are clear on the threat so they can hold whoever holds these important National Security positions is held accountable, so that the things that the trump adminitration has done so successfully that is different than any other administration has done before, sanctions against china, tariffs relating to china, holding them accountable on the world stage, calling out Companies Like huawei and zte that are veneers for the Chinese Communist party in a way that they can obtain information. You know, all those things are Holding China accountable for who they really are, and letting the world know who china really is. That has to continue regardless of who holds these very important National Security positions and thats why im going about this the way that i am. Maria coming up, china is strengthening military, secretary of state mike pompeo on beijings bullying, but first , gop Intel Committee congressman devin nunes on the ccps power grab at the worlds ports. China has a big problem. We actually are running an investigation on many aspects of china at the House Intelligence Committee and i think most americans know that china is in fact stealing our intellectual property, theyre spreading globally. We believe that they are looking at investing in ports and infrastructure around the globe, not just for military capabilities but also to control those governments, to have the ability to lobby and manipulate governments, when you invest in things like Financial Markets or the energy sector. We made usaa insurance for members like martin. An air force veteran made of doing whats right, not whats easy. So when a hailstorm hit, usaa reached out before he could even inspect the damage. Thats how you do it right. Usaa insurance is made just the way martins family needs it with hasslefree claims, he got paid before his neighbor even got started. Because doing right by our members, thats whats right. Usaa. What youre made of, were made for. Usaa Maria Hong Kong in 2020, protests against a crackdown on freedom. Media tycoon jimmy ly woulds on the front lines of those protests earlier this year when he was arrested and taken to a hong kong prison, on charges of breaking the new National Security law, which punishes anyone who speaks against the communist party. We dont know if he will be forced to be tried in a china court or even when we will see him again. His last interview was with me, on mornings with maria on fox business right before his arrest todays back drop feels very different than past decades of u. S. Engagement with china. Here now, the secretary of state , mike pompeo. So its a different Chinese Communist party today than it was 10 years ago and i think the remarks that President Trump gave on friday of this past week reflect that. This is a Chinese Communist party that has come to view itself as intent upon the destruction of western ideas , western democracies and western values that puts americans at risk. The list is long, whether its stealing American Intellectual property, destroying hundreds and millions of jobs here in the United States, or their efforts to put at risk sea lanes in the South China Sea denying commercial traffic the opportunity to move through armed encampments in places that china has no right to be. The list of actions from the Chinese Communist party is for the first time, the first time we have a president of the United States whose prepared to pushback against that and protect the American People. Maria it was back in 2015 when you were talking about chinas i p theft. Back in 2012 when you were talking about chinas cyber activity. Did something change during this administration though that you learned something about huawei and the Chinese Communist Party Tracking americans . The Chinese Communist party has become much more aggressive. Youre right. This issue has been out there for a long time as far back as 2012 for sure, but theyve become more aggressive. Theyve become more aggressive in their efforts to do Disinformation Campaigns like we saw when the coronavirus was moving around the world, when they closed down their own province but allowed travel around the world infecting hundreds of thousands of people. We saw the Disinformation Campaign trying to deflect attention. Weve seen their increased cyber activity as well, their efforts to be in position to do true disruptive harm in different places all across the world. This is a Chinese Communist party that is very aggressive and President Trump, on friday, announced a series of responses to not only what happened in hong kong, the destruction of this great free place, this great place of enormous commerce over these last decades , but not only with respect to hong kong but with respect to the chinese companys ability to be listed on american stock exchanges under a different set of rules, you seen the president take action on trade to try and get reciprocity back into the system, so american businesses and American Workers are treated fairly. These are the kinds of actions of a president who understands the risk, that the Chinese Communist Party Presents and is prepared to take action to respond to it. Maria the president , on friday, went through those actions, in particular saying that we be treating hong kong differently. Listen to the president. I want to get your take on exactly what this means in a practical sense. Watch the president friday. President trump we will take action to revoke hong kongs preferential treatment as a separate customs and travel territory, from the rest of china. The United States will also take necessary steps to sanction prc and hong kong officials directly or indirect ly involved in eroding hong kongs autonomy and just if you take a look, smothering, absolutely smothering hong kong s freedom. Our actions will be strong. Our actions will be meaningful. Maria secretary, what does this mean on a practical basis in terms of treat hong kong differently . How will things change . So the background, of course , is that the Chinese Communist party entered an agreement with the United Kingdom that they would allow hong kong to have autonomy for 50 years. Half way through it or so, theyve now broken those commitments those promises that they made to the world. The United States had a series of preferences we treated hong kong more favorably than we did china for all of those years because of that treaty. The Chinese Communist party has now broken its promise and the United States will respond as a practical matter the president laid out a couple of things that well do. Hes asked us to review every preferential treatment that hong kong had and work to eliminate no longer makes sense if the chinese are going to treat hong kong the same way that they treat mainland china, theres no basis for the United States to treat it differently as well. Second, the president made clear that were going to look at a number of things. Were going to look at Chinese Students who are studying who have connections to the military civil fusion projects inside of china and were simply not going to let them come study here if they are threatening to take American Technology and transfer it into chinese Peoples Liberation army and then too, he made very clear, were going to take a look at whether we ought to go and sanction individuals who destroyed this freedom inside of hong kong. Maria are you expecting the cc p to use this opportunity , whether its the chaos going on in america or the covid situation that is dominating the world right now . Are they using that as an opportunity to gain more territory . We see troops on the border right now with india. We see the militarizing of the South China Sea, and now, of course, we know that taiwan is also looking and watching what will happen next. Are you expecting the ccp to invade taiwan . Maria the Chinese Communist party has been on this effort, on this march for an awfully long time. They will certainly use a tactical situation on the ground to their advantage, but each of the problems that you identified there are threats that theyve been making for an awfully long time. For the first time we have an administration thats prepared to actually respond to say this is unacceptable and to take responses that are measured , appropriate, but reflect the seriousness with which we take the obligation to protect the American People from these Chinese Communist party efforts. You talk about using whats going on on the ground today. They are using disinformation about whats taking place in American Cities and trying to equate that somehow to whats happening in hong kong. These are completely different rule of law. We have decent americans all across this country who are troubled by what happened and they have the opportunity to speak freely about that. None of that exists inside of china. The Chinese Communist party prevents that kind of freedom of expression, and the results, the risk to america as a result of that are real and were going to respond to them. Maria will the u. S. Back taiwan , should china go into taiwan . Maria theres a long history there. You know the story. Each time i speak with my chinese counterparts we make clear the commitments that weve made to them that have been made as far back as the Reagan Administration and that we stand by those commitments. The good news is the Chinese Communist party has told me directly, they will as well. We have every expectation they will live up to those commitments. I work nearly every day with partners around the world who understand the risk that is presented from the Chinese Communist party whether its my australian counterparts or partners in europe, they have all come to see the risk to their countries to freedom, to democracy, to the rule of law, that is presented by the Chinese Communist party and were going to layout a detailed plan to make sure that we protect the American People. President trump has been serious about this and has taken important measures to protect the American People. Maria coming up chinas pandemic power grab and the u. S. Lawmakers who first saw it coming. Senator tom cotton is coming up. Irresistibly smooth chocolate. To put the world on pause. Lindor. Made to melt you. By the lindt master chocolatier. If you think about what china did over the course of this thing, they did four things that led to the deaths of many people worldwide, and first of all, the virus was spauned in china, second of all they hid the virus behind the shield of the world health organization. The third thing they did was basically horde personal protective equipment and now theyre profiteering from it. Maria that was white house trade advisor Peter Navarro on china handling of the coronavirus initially misleading the world as to its severity and origin an issue that senator tom cotton spotlighted on this program as he first traced it to a wuhan lab. So maria i want to distinguish between the origins of the virus and chinas reactions to the virus so right now as you say the most plausible explanation supported by literally all of the circumstantial evidence is that the virus originated in one of those two laboratories in wuhan all the way back in january, it was pretty well documented by chinese scientists that it did not originate in the food market, but wherever it originated, maria, we know that the Chinese Communist party was both criminally neglect and incompetent at first and then deliberately, deliberately in the way they responded this virus for their own people and the world, as early as the second week of december it was clear that this virus was spreading from persontoperson and by late december it was spreading to doctors in wuhan hospitals. Some doctors were trying to blow the whistle on these facts, and the secret Police Arrived at their doorsteps in the middle of the night so only after china fe ssed up to the w. H. O. On december 31 did the world know what was happening yet still they continued to deny it was spreading from person to person into midjanuary. That allowed millions of people to leave wuhan and then finally, china continued to pressure the w. H. O. And other countries know the to stop International Travel from china. That meant that hundreds of thousands of persons left china after this virus was spread far outside of wuhan which allowed the virus to escape chinas borders and get to the United States and get to europe and get to essentially every country in the world. I believe that was a deliberate and conscience choice by the Chinese Communist leadership because they did not want to see their relative power and standing in the world decline because this virus was contained within china. Maria so a deliberate move because they expected this virus to cause Economic Contraction in china. Tell me what they expected in china and what they didnt want to see , they didnt want to happen with the rest of the world being fined. So maria, again it was obvious, by middecember the chinese authorities that this virus was highlycontagious , and very deadly. They also knew that once this virus began to spread outside wuhan it would wreak economic havoc throughout china and in fact china had the first contraction in the First Quarter of this year since the cultural revolution ended in the 1970s. I believe the Chinese Communist leaders when they were aware of those facts by midjanuary, made the conscience decision, not to explain to the world that it was transmissible between humans, not to shutdown travel, not to ask for american or other kind of International Scientific help but to allow this virus to escape their borders, because if they were going to suffer an Economic Contraction, they were not going to allow the world to continue to prosper and china be the only country whose economy was declining. They might see an absolute decline in their economy but they refuse to see a relative decline, especially relative to the United States. Maria in other words they didnt want to see the chinese economy contract 20 with the rest of the world contract ing 2 . Thats exactly right. It was inevitable that we would have Economic Impacts all around the world, because so much of the world has outsourced manufacturing, productive capacity to china, so it was inevitable if chinas economy was declining it would have effects all around the world but what was not inevitable was that we would lose 26 million jobs in america in a month. I mean, if china had been upfront about this virus from the very beginning, some studies suggest that they could have reduced the number of cases in china itself by 65 to even 90 . Imagine what that would have done for the spread of the virus not only in china, but more importantly, for us, all around the world, but once they knew that it was spreading all around china, they were not going to take the responsible action of bringing in International Scientists and shutting down International Air travel. Rather they were going to let the virus escape their borders so the rest of the world would suffer along with china. Maria so one of the issues that weve spoken about in the past is this inlet youll property theft that has been going on for decades. The Chinese Communist Party Continues to steal intellectual property, you believe they are stealing intellectual property right now as we speak. Lets talk about that because the whole world is looking for a vaccine and i wonder, is china trying now to come out of this , trying to save face looking better than the rest of the world while coming up with a vaccine before the United States whats happening right now with regards to that kind of science . Well, maria, the Chinese Communist party has been steal ing americas intellectual property for decades and they arent going to magically stop in the middle of a pandemic. In almost every state in the union, there are active cases against chinese nationals. In arkansas, for instance they are accused of having stolen proprietary genomes of our farmers in east arkansas, but in the middle of a pandemic, whats the mostvaluable intellectual property in the world . Its the research our great laboratories and Life Science Companies are doing on pro pro flack ic t drugs and vaccines so i have little doubt the Chinese Intelligence Services are actively trying to steal america s intellectual property as it relates to the virus they unleashed on the world because of course they want to be the country that claims credit for finding those drugs or finding a vaccine and then use it as leverage against the rest of the world. Maria so i want to ask you about your three pieces of legislation that youve already put out to keep china accountable. Im going to get to that in a moment but just what you just said that is why you believe we should not be giving visas to Chinese Students who want to study advanced sciences. They want to get into the gilea d sciences and the googles of the world to steal that research is that right . Yeah, maria its a scandal to me, that we have trained so many of the Chinese Communist partys brightest minds to go back to china, to compete for our jobs, to take our business and ultimately to steal our property and design weapons and other devices that can be used against the American People , so i think we need to take a very hard look at the visas that we give to chinese nationals to come to the United States to study, especially at the postgraduate level in advanced scientific and technological fields if Chinese Students want to come here and study shakespeare and the federalist papers thats what they need to learn from cerologic m. They dont need to learn quantum computing and Artificial Intelligence from america. Maria coming up the lengths the Chinese Party will go to get a leg up on america, deploy ing spies using bribery and blackmail, to put china first. Eric swalwell and his special friend from china, who helped get him elected to congress and hunter biden, and his emails asking for millions of dollars in payouts, from chinese companies, senator ron johnson and vest it gate ever journalist on the tactics but first here is senator ted cruz on the cost of changing President Trumps tough stance on china. China is, i believe, the singlegreatest geopolitical threat facing the United States for the next century. Donald trump, one of the most significant things hes done as president on Foreign Policy is stand up to china and hes changed the debate. He has stood up vigorously to china. Now i think in the second term he needs to stand up Even Stronger to china, but joe biden has spent 57 years, 47 years rather just kissing up to china saying chinas not a threat saying china is our friend saying we should be in bed more with china, dont worry about the communist murdering and torturing and stealing, lets go make some money. This election if you want communist china to have more power in america, joe biden is your guy. Were going to find the perfect tree. Were going skating. Were going to nanas. Wherever you go this holiday, chevy can help you get there. Which is why were making our chevy. Employee discount available to everyone. The chevy price you pay. Is what we pay. Not a cent more. So wherever you go, happy holidays from chevy. Use the chevy employee discount for everyone to get over six thousand eight hundred dollars below msrp on this equinox. Get the chevy employee discount for everyone today. Maria welcome back. Joe bidens son hunter biden revealed a federal investigation into his tax affairs earlier this month, and records indicate that a. G. Bill barr did not want to reveal this criminal probe during the president ial election , so as not to impact it but senator ron johnson is chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, has been investigating hunter ties to International Companies and the money he was paid for them, for over a year. Senator ron johnson and peter schwezier, author of secret empires walk us through their findings. I take no joy in uncovering revealing the truth about the bidens im sure peter does neither. Those of us who are investigat ing this were doing it for a very serious purpose because this is a mess. Its a huge mess and its a mess thats not going away particularly if Vice President biden becomes president. Its one of the reasons ive been saying for quite some time that i never felt that Vice President biden should ever run for president. This is probably one of the reasons that president obama did not encourage the Vice President to run, so this is a huge mess. Here is further evidence of it that the fbi apparently opened up an investigation in 2019. One of the questions i would have is why didnt they open it up in 2018 . You know, this is when they convicted devon archer of the indian bond fraud. I think a lot of this information was probably available. Some of these transactions were occurring back then and the question i have, did they not look into hunter biden because of his last name . Its a serious question. The fact that we might, we probably have two systems of justice. One for democrats and the well connected and one for republicans like President Trump. Fox news alert good morning, im Leland Vittert in washington we take you now to nashville, where theyre getting ready to introduce us to the six Nashville Police officers who responded that 911 callerly on christmas morning, and then began evacuating hundreds, perhaps, of people from downtown nashville, saving them from that rv explosion. When they arrived on the scene they heard a recording from the rv saying that it was going to explode and that there was a bomb and then they reacted. Now well listen to the officers and the chief explain what happened next. Update on the infrastructure. As we work with our federal partners, Law Enforcement partners, and the footprint shrinks as far as the investigation, they will release the properties back to metro. Once that happens, we will do a preliminary sweep. Well have our public works, code department, Fire Department along with our utility districts , they will go into the effective area just to make sure that it is safe. Then we will release that back to our Business Partners, and residents owners so im happy to announce this morning, between fourth and fifth avenue down to broadway will be open, so as of 10 a. M. , we will release that, were doing the sweep right now, as far as our preliminary sweep, were following our partners as i mentioned earlier. Well let our Business Partners come in. The liason will be from the office of Emergency Management working with our downtown partnership. As far as the communication update, we know that at t yesterday as of 8 30 last night, theyve restored all of the mobile communication and then this morning, they got back into the work flow and there will be times where we will lose communication because they are trying to restore the fourth floor. Its the fourth floor well get our Critical Infrastructure back into play and thats internet, along with our land lines and our 911 system. Theyre feeling very confident by the end of the day, they will have us up and running at full capacity but please remember that there are a lot of moving parts and there are a lot of things that happened and we will try to address that as it happens. So again, we appreciate everybodys patience and we will proceed with getting nashville back on the road of reopening. Thank you. Thank you, chief, and then very quickly, this morning i just talked to senator blackburn , and she was reporting to me una conversation she had with the president , grateful to her. Governor lee, the delegation, congressman cooper, fleischmann, rose, that federal help will be a priority here for rebuilding in nashville, and of course, it needs to be, our businesses have suffered a lot with covid and this doesnt need to add to that difficulty, and so everybodys working together really well to try to make that happen as quickly as possible. Today, i want to recognize our six officers who saved lives here in nashville, its a great thing that our city has such heros. Officer luellen, tapping, wells, hosey, Sargent Miller, their actions saved lives and i think they may consider what they did was just a regular part of their duties but we in nashville know it was extraordinary and its thrilling to have them in our community, and we need to recognize their heroism. I know theyre not accustomed to all of this publicity but its marvelous that we can celebrate the courage in our community and the entire nation, i think, is grateful and deeply interested in hearing from them, and with that, let me turn this over to our chief, chief drake, to do the introduction. Thank you. All right, good morning, everyone. Before the officers say a few words id like to reiterate that we feel nashville is safe. There are no known threats against the city at this time, but thats not what i wanted to talk about today. I want to talk about our men and women of our Police Department who do heroic efforts every day but on this particular incident, officers responded a shots fired call and unknowing anything else at the time, they began hearing announcements that something was about to detonate coming from an rv. Immediately they didnt think about their own lives, they didnt think about protecting themselves. They thought about the citizens of nashville and protecting them , and they went about knock ing on doors and had they not done, had they not made their efforts, wed be talking about the tragedy of people and lives lost, so with that said id like to turn it over to our heros. They may not think theyre heros because they go about this job each and every day, but they are our heros and they had a really heroic effort that morning. Thank you. Well its my pleasure to introduce you to our five officers, Sargent Miller is traveling out of town this morning, and couldnt be here, but these five officers behind me, graciously agreed to speak with each of you. What ive asked them to do is to come up one by one and talk about their response on friday morning, starting with the officer who arrived first, and then the other officers in that order. First, i would like to introduce you to officer tyler luellen. Central precinct overnight shift officer luellen. Hello, everyone im officer luellen. Initially we got a shots fired call. I was running the zone that night so i took it. Officer hosey backed me up. I arrived on scene. Initially i didnt hear any shots fired, nothing like that. We were told shots were coming from inside the building at 178 2nd avenue north. Upon arrival, i checked because its a liquor store apartment complex, an airbnb that has the same address. Checked the bottom floor, couldnt see anything immediately, couldnt hear anything. At that time, i requested code to get access into the building. Was waiting on officer hosey to show up and the code. Shortly after officer hosey show ed up, as soon as she got out of the car almost immediately, the rv started making an announcement. Somewhere along the lines, dont quote me exactly, but theres a large bomb within this vehicle, your primary objective is to evacuate. I wasnt quite sure what i heard , so i looked at officer hosey just to verify we heard the same thing and then it started over. At that time, i called and notified Sargent Miller. He said get everyone you can out there. I requested all Units Available from our precinct to come. They show up. I asked officer topping and wells to block off 2nd and broad way, 2nd and commerce. They did. Officer sipos and hosey went inside to start knocking on door s and officer wells came up. At this time, Sargent Miller is there. I asked him for any further directives, stuff like that. At that time, we setup our cars to kind of setup as much of a barricade as we can, to keep people out. We go inside just before we go inside, probably about five minutes after were there, id say that the timer then started counting down. Officer hosey and officer wells were the first ones that noticed that. In between this , i did look at the rv, noticed that all the shades were down and kind of walked around it to see if there was a tag, anything like that, to try and get more info. I did not notice one. From there, myself, officer hosey, wells, and sipos went into the building and knocked on all the doors we could to notify as many people as we could that we had a possible Public Safety concern and that we needed people to evacuate. We noticed that there was a basement exit, so we asked everyone to go down and out the basement. We essentially made contact with i believe six or seven apartments and asked them to evacuate. The rest, we never got an answer , so we moved outside and tried to move down the street. I went northbound towards the hotel, up that way and officer hosey, sipos and wells continued southbound towards the other places. From there, pretty much sometime later, the music started and i notified overtheair to notify other officers and then after the song , it continued to go back to the announcement for a little while. After it switched back, i did notice that there was a gentleman and his dog that came out of 217 2nd avenue north. I noticed him and i went up to him to notify hey, you need to get inside and notify anyone you can and please evacuate. Shortly after that, the explosion went off. I got knocked to the ground. I immediately got up. Luckily no injury, nothing like that. I noticed a gentleman in shock with his dog. I checked on him, got him inside , went back and checked on Sargent Miller who was inside his car at the time. He seemed all right i opened his door, he was cutting his airbag that went off away and then i ran down and noticed officer hosey putting out radio traffic and i noticed officer wells or sipos, sorry, to my left. At that point, they seemed okay so iran forward into kind of the debris area and i noticed what appeared to be four people that came out of, i believe, 178 2nd avenue north that we werent able to get contact with they seemed in shock and in awe of what was going on. At that time, to get their attention, i yelled at them and told them they need to get to safety and run. They took off running northbound on 2nd. Im not sure where they went from there. From there, i did a quick sweep of the roads and Everything Else to see if if i could see anyone else and i noticed that the other cars were on fire in the area. Wasnt sure if possibly they were going to explode too so at that time i pulled back and resources started coming to us and i just assisted the best i could with keeping people back from that point. Thats essentially the role i played and im going to turn it back over. [applause] thank you, tyler. Officer brenna hosey was the second officer on 2nd avenue that morning. Officer hosey is a fouryear Police Department veteran and also assigned to the midnight shift at the central precinct. Officer hosey . Good morning, everyone. Im brenna. Like tyler said, we got the shots fired call, so i was going to back him up on 2nd avenue north. As he said, as soon as i got there, and stepped out of my patrol vehicle we started hear ing the announcements being made, kind of had that confused look on is this really what were hearing right now . After he notified Sargent Miller , we were trying to think of the best way of action, we were making sure the entry code worked. As soon as sipos showed up, he and i started knocking on doors, waiting for Sargent Miller and everyone else to arrive onscene we were able to clear the first floor and then Sargent Miller in his thinking had us come back out and move our patrol vehicles to a more strategic position so if we needed to go back to our patrol cars we wouldnt be affected at all, so im giving him credit for that for probably not only saving our lives but saving our patrol vehicles and the way that he had us positioned, so we go back in, start clearing floorbyfloor on the 2nd avenue north apartments. Once we made contact with everyone we could, and made sure that they were getting out of the building is when we started to move down, keeping in communication with dispatching trying to get entry codes for all of the airbnb that were on 2nd a avenue north trying to make entry. At this point is when we heard the 14 minutes until detonation announcement, so were moving as quickly as we can. We make it all the way down to 2nd and commerce. Theres actually a detail officer ive been in contact that lives in one of those apartments asking him if he was okay, telling him what was going on and if he could start epidemic hadding evacuate people out of his building, because we did not have access to it at that point. Once we made it to 2nd and commerce, we realized there wasnt much else that we could do once we evacuated and made contact with everybody that we could, so i told everyone its probably best we just go back to our vehicles and regroup until the bomb squad gets out there and we figure out what we need to do from there. At that point we heard the three minutes until detonation, so myself, luellen and sipos had headed back northbound on 2nd. I had made the turn on to Church Street while tyler went to go back to Sargent Miller and thats when the explosion happened. I was thrown forward, knocked to the ground but i was able to catch myself. I was fine. At that point in time, i tried to get the air but amanda had beaten me to it letting dispatch know like what had happened. I made a phone call to loved ones to let them know i was okay and then i ran to the intersection to check on miller and luellen to make sure they were okay, saw sipos running towards the intersection as well sorry. Thats what i got on the radio to make sure wells was okay, couldnt get a response from him , but from the blast, he had some hearing loss, so thats when amanda got on and said that he was okay. So i was just trying to make sure all of our people were okay going from there trying to figure out what was the best course of action to keep everyone that was either in the immediate blast area that we werent able to evacuate or anyone that was coming in and how to best keep them safe. [applause] now id like to introduce you to officer james wells also assigned to the central precinct midnight schiff. James has been with us just under two years, officer wells . Good morning. Im officer james wells. Shortly after shots fired call came out, officer luellen came over the radio and said that i needed everybody here immediately and just by the tone of his voice, we knew it was serious and he said it was a possible bomb situation and that Sargent Miller was aware. At the time i was sitting right next to them so we got over there as quick as we could, not knowing that the rv was the vehicle in question at the time, we actually pulled right in front of it, so right across the street we pulled up and then we heard the announcement, and we were like is that the vehicle in question and luellen said yes , so we hopped in our cars and backed out and then so we started setting up the perimeter to start shutting down commerce and broadway, to make sure nobody could come in or out, and then luellen called for more people to come help evacuate the building which i did. At that point, is when i heard you have 14 minutes to evacuate the area and at that point is when i started to prepare my mind for secondary things to happen. I actually told everybody when we come out to make sure we look at the high ground and the parking garages just in case , as i felt like maybe an active shooter might have followed that just because it felt at that moment it felt real and like there was going to be secondary activity, so every time we came out of the building we made sure that we were looking around and checking high areas just making sure nobody was peaking around looking at us so, we continued to go doortodoor, trying to get calls from dispatch and get codes and we get down to 2nd ane three minutes as were coming out of the building and at that point i told them i was going back to my car and get my heavy plates, just mentally getting prepared for whatever was about to happen, and so as im putting my heavy plates on, luellen tells me that Sargent Miller told me to pull my car back because i was actually in the intersection at first, so then i pulled my car back in between the buildings, and went to the parking garage and then 2nd and commerce, get out of the blast radius, and at that point, i get out and im starting to go back toward luellen and hosey and as im getting ready to walk toward them, walking back toward the r v, this might not be politically correct but this is my truth. I literally hear god telling me to turn around and go check on topping who was by herself down on broadway, and as i turn around, for me, it felt like i only took three steps and then the music stopped and as im walking back toward topping now, i just see orange and then i hear a loud boom and as im stumbling, because it rocked me that hard, i started stumbling i just tell myself to stay on your feet and stay alive and i just take a fullout sprint and im running toward topping to make sure shes okay, and we kind of meet in the middle and we just grab each other, check each other, and im yelling at her to get our gun out because i just had a feeling that it was just weird. It fell like some kind of a movie and so were checking on each other, and shes asking, and telling me they are trying to reach me on the radio. I couldnt hear, so lost temporary hearing in my left ear so shes yelling, im saying what and a couple of things telling her i couldnt hear and get me to a paramedics or call my wife immediately to let her know before anything got out to let her know i was okay and while i was in the ambulance, they were trying to get me to go to the hospital and i just didnt want to be by myself at the moment, didnt want to leave them and i heard there were three people that were injured so i told the paramedics to take care of them and per policy i got 10 days to get checked out so you all go check on them and check on the civilians, and then i immediately went to go find topping, just kept asking where topping was and we found her and that was my part in it. [applause] officer michael sipos, assigned to the central precinct s midnight shift. Michael has been withs also just under two years. Officer sipos. Thank you. So, i was i believe the third or fourth officer onscene of what at the time was a shots fired call. I pulled up in front of the building that the initial call came from. Didnt know at the time i was almost directly across the street from the rv. Exited my vehicle, heard it making the announcements essentially telling us there was explosive device in the vehicle, not to approach it, that we should be evacuating the area. At that point i moved up the street a little bit at which point i met up with officer luellen, officer hosey, we started making plans to get into the buildings, start knocking on doors to let families know what was going on and get them out of the building. I dont have the address off the top of my head but the first building we went into was the one that the initial call had come from. Between myself and all of the other officers knocking on doors i think we made contact with six or seven families and informed them they needed to exit the building to what would have been the 1st avenue side to keep them off of the street with the rv. After we worked our way through the initial building, knocking on doors, we went back outside at which point we started working our way southbound on 2nd avenue north. Like these other officers said, we were in communication with dispatch who did a fantastic job through the whole incident. Im trying to get door codes to get in and alert more families. I believe we made it into one more Apartment Building if i remember correctly. I dont think we made contact with any families in that building. At that point officer luellen who was outside let us know the recording had changed i believe thats when a song started playing. I dont know what the countdown was at that point. I know by the time we maderna it back outside after the last building we had checked it was down to three or four minutes, i believe. At that point we decided to work our way back up 2nd avenue northbound. We had decided, like officer wells said, to get our heavy plates on, to prepare for whatever might come after the countdown ended. At that point, i made it back up to Church Street. I rounded the corner to head towards 1st avenue where my car towards 1st avenue where my car i just popped the trunk on my vehicle to get another piece of equipment out at which point i felt a push basically. I was thrown into the trunk a little bit. Turned around to see a very orange sky, a lot of smoke. Twipat which point i ran back towards Second Avenue north as all the other officers did. Wanted to make sure all the officers i knew that were in the area were safe. Like officer luellen said, there were a few people that came out of an Apartment Building. We did our best to get them out of the area as quick as possible. At that point, we spent time keeping residents that had come outside as well as pedestrians had that were just trying to enjoy their morning, keeping them away from the area, trying to carefully explain what was going on and to stay away for safety. Thank you. [ applause ] our fifth officer is amanda topping, amanda has been with us for just under two years, also assigned to the central precincts midnight shift. Im closing this thing out. Oh, my god. All right. So i remember that morning, i was sitting with james wells, we were talking over my zone and