That happened today. Several with broken bones this evening to tell you about. Businesses are burned as weve been showing you. Businesses have been looted as we have been showing you. Police cars are burned as well and destroyed. A day of shock and chaos, rioting and violence happening all over baltimore. But in the middle of all that in the middle of all that there is some reality, a good reality. There are people here citizens here who are trying to stand up to that violence including the pastors of some of the neighborhood churches in the area some of the leaders here. Well get to all of that this evening and take you through all of it and give you the information you need to know like no other network can do. I want to get straight to my colleague, Miguel Marquez, hes been out in the neighborhoods all day, witnessing whats going on. What are you seeing where you are right now . We are at the Southern Baptist church near downtown baltimore. As you can see, what was going to be a home for the elderly is completely in flames. They were about nine months from finishing this facility. There were 60 units here they were hoping to be able to house people in. Its a transitional neighborhood in baltimore, very up and coming and good neighborhood. The pastor dante hickman, told us a short time ago, that he believes it was set intentionally because of the situation regarding the violence farther north from here. I can say throughout the day we have seen just unbelievable scenes of lawlessness in baltimore. Two and a half miles north of here near the area where freddie gray was arrested and driven around. We saw shop after shop that had the windows broken looted. Some of them looked like they were fine from the front side. But there were looters going in through the back side. Soon as police left the scene, the looters would just descend on these shops and start picking them to pieces. Farther up the street near the mall where all of this began, there was just a massive number of police and rioters in an open brawl almost at one point. We found ourselves sort of stuck in the middle of many of the people on the street. And they were young people male and female with bricks with rocks, with sticks with bats. Anything that they could grab to go fight the police. And that took the police several hours to finally quell that situation. Meanwhile, cars were burning, just down the way. A cvs was being looted and then eventually burned. Police taking a complete defensive sort of position tonight, not going after protesters throughout the day, and this just spiraling throughout the afternoon and into tonight. Don . Miguel youve been out there talking to people in the community. As i said witnessing a lot of this. The question is though and we heard from the mayor, that the curfew in full was going to start tomorrow. Why wait until tomorrow . Why not do it tonight as soon as possible . It is shocking that they would not do it tonight. The city is the people who are doing this and it is not everybody because in these neighborhoods, you have people who are absolutely angry by what they see happening, and they are trying to literally collar young people and pull them out of the crowd and get them to go home. The nation of islam was up in the north avenue and pennsylvania avenue section, literally grabbing young people by the collar and trying to take them home and keep them off the streets. It is not clear why the police here and the mayor have taken such a i dont want to say handsoff, but a soft approach to what they are seeing happening in their city. It was angry, but Peaceful Protesters for six, seven days here. The police took only a defensive position allowing protesters to go at them even when they marched, unlike new york as you remember when the protesters went out there, the police followed alongside them blocked traffic, that didnt happen here. Thats the level of the situation between police that the police didnt feel they could put their own officers out there in the street with the protesters for fear of them being injured. Its just a very bad situation. Protesters felt they had the upper hand and its gone step by step greater and greater. After saturday i think folks thought it would settle down because they had spent a lot of their anger in going at police on saturday. But that is not the case. On the day that freddie gray was buried just a conflagration here in baltimore, don . Thank you very much miguel. Well get back to you throughout the evening. Thats the whole point of contention here about what happened with the police tactics, what happened with the mayor, why werent people called in earlier reinforcements . Joe, tell us what youre seeing and what you experienced today. Hi don. Okay well give you just a little bit of a sense. Here we see another line of Police Officers blocking off the street the next block over or perhaps two blocks down. Theres more Police Officers blocking off the street. But heres the problem. Right through here we drove coming back from one of sort of the war zones this evening and there is a block not too far from here, within walking distance of where i stand, where people have just essentially taken it over. Theyve got street fires going. There are people standing on the streets, obviously in an angry posture, with no police intervention. Because its pretty clear that there are some blocks that police are taking over and some blocks that are being left for people to sort of fend for themselves. We did come from one of the neighborhoods where there has been some looting. We saw looting just a little while ago over at a liquor store and around the corner from there, a Beauty Supply store that had been completely ransacked and trashed. There have been fires in sporadic and different places around this neighborhood. Its not just confined to one, two, or threeblock area. Fires, you know a couple miles apart and so on. So its a very strange and disturbing night here in the city of baltimore. You know its sort of ironic now that were calling it charm city this evening, don. I want to ask you, joe, i dont know if youre able to get that information where you are. But how are they making those decisions as to where to send the officers where theyre needed . Well i know that where we started out, they sent Police Officers to essentially lock down the block so that the Fire Department could put out fires. And the second location we went to not too far from here probably a couple miles, same thing. There were Baltimore CountyPolice Officers there with mobile transport units, you know the Armored Transport units, and they were there in support of the Fire Department, which was trying to put out fires. So firefighters come unarmed and they need help when there are people rioting. And thats what were seeing. As far as this location i cant tell you for sure but i do know that they have been sent in support. Joe, what am i hearing . Im not sure if im hearing a generator or a motor, a motorcycle or a Police Chopper overhead. What are we hearing . Helicopter. Is that a Police Chopper . Yeah. Its a Police Chopper thats buzzed us a couple times. Weve seen probably two or three in the neighborhood. Also i cant say certainly thats a police helicopters, because there are news helicopters up in the air all day and into the evening, don. Joe, well get back to you. Stand by. I want to get into this with sunny hostin. Neil franklin is a retired state police major. And rob wine hold a former chief spokesperson for the Baltimore Police department and a crisis and Public Safety expert. So glad you could join us. Neil why not send in the National Guard quicker . He said he needed a call from the mayor before sending in reinforcements . Right. Theres a process for declaring a state of emergency. And ill tell you, i, for one, beginning the day, i didnt think that would end up where we are now. Okay with the funeral occurring today with the request from the family, you know for peace. I for one, did not think it would happen, until we started getting the intelligence from over social media regarding what the schoolchildren were going to do. You didnt think that we would be at this point today. Because this weekend, we saw that there was unrest over the weekend. And you said you didnt expect that, but why did it take so long today even to get people and police out on the street . Yeah i mean thats a very good question. But the Baltimore Police department in and of itself doesnt have the resources to do whats needed to be done here. I mean as you saw on the map, the different locations so is that a failure then . Was that incompetence on the governor the mayor, the Police Department . Thats clearly a breakdown. I think it could be a breakdown. A lot of it depends on how much intelligence they had. They had the people out, gathering intelligence from a number of different sources. So it really depends on what intelligence they had. We would like to know what that intelligence is. Weve asked the mayor to come on. Weve asked the police chief and the governor to come on. We would like and im sure america would like them to explain themselves. This did not happen in a vacuum. It started in ferguson and it continued to now. Its not like this wasnt a possibility. Heres the thing. Having people on standby is one thing, but being able to deploy them effectively and quickly throughout the city is another thing. And that tends to be what were seeing is a difficult thing to do here in the city right now. I think they made the calls and contacts with local Police Departments and having people on standby and at the ready. The question is where were they . Okay. Where were these standby locations and what was the communication set up . How was that set up we have people working on trying to get some answers to that again. Again, any official who wants to come on theyre welcome to come on and give us some answers. Rob, i have to ask you about this curfew. And chris cuomo is going to come here in a short time and talk to me about an experience he had, witnessing Police Officers in a confrontation with people saying we dont have to go anywhere. There is no curfew. And then the Police Officers drove away. Why no curfew in full until tomorrow . It doesnt seem to make sense. I think the mayor and city council wanted to give folks a chance to plan but the fact of the matter is its important for parents, faithbased leaders and everyone to try to get everyone off the street and allow Police Officers to do their job. The first order of leadership is to provide a safe place to live work and raise your family. Right now, its important for people to go back to their homes, allow the officers to deal with folks who are out there, starting fires, looting, and destroying property and hurting others. I have to ask sunny about the citys response. There were hours where nothing really happened where they were trying to coordinate this afternoon. And they began moving police into place. The mayor finally came out, sunny, and spoke. Did that delay allow things to escalate to the point where they escalated today . I think its anyones guess. Certainly we can quarterback this on monday night, right . But the bottom line is that i think no one has ever seen rioting happen like a welloiled machine. Theyre chaotic by nature. This has been a very fluid situation. I think weve seen the unrest. I dont think that anyone could have predicted or well let me say, i dont think that we i at least for myself didnt think that we would be seeing baltimore burning today in light of the fact that the funeral was today, that the family had asked for no protests. There were calls for peace. Sunny, i know you have a relationship with the mayor, but do you think the mayor did the right thing today . I do have a relationship with the mayor. I have not spoken to her and questioned her about why she made these decisions, so i would just be guessing. I did ask why the curfew is not in place until tomorrow and the answer i received was that people have to have reasonable notice that there is a curfew, before you can impose a curfew and that makes sense to me legally. You cant start arresting people if they dont know if theres a curfew. So that makes a lot of sense to me. So reasonable notice is not a press conference that goes out to the city a press conference that goes out to america and on cnn to the world, saying are police going around saying theres a curfew tonight, you need to get off the streets. Theres facebook twitter, social media. Thats reasonable notice in this modern day and age. Its not like were not doing it by horseback anymore. Its not just three News Networks anymore. Thats reasonable. Yeah i think that certainly people will feel that way. My understanding is that the answer that i got was, that is not the practice. The practice is you do have to provide reasonable notice. And i suppose the city felt the reasonable notice would be this 24hour notice. But as someone who was a resident of baltimore, i worked in baltimore, i lived there. I have several friends that are still there. Im just so saddened by what im seeing which is baltimore burning. Because the bottom line is, the message is lost. The message of people seeking justice for freddie gray. The message of wheres the investigation . All those answers and those messages are lost now. All we are talking about and framing this discussion is rioting, fires, and looting. And that saddens me. I think it saddens everyone president not to. Not to put you on the spot, but because you have a relationship with the mayor, i feel like you can provide us with answers that others cant. But i think youre exactly right, it is sad. And im not sure its framing it in that way, when you have a major American City thats on fire, thats what people are going to be talking about. And it distracts from the larger issue, the young mans funeral was today. The city said they were doing everything that try to get to the bottom of the investigation. People need to deal with the issues between police and certain members of society. But all of that gets overshadowed in rioting, in pictures of looting, in pictures of people who are slashing water lines for fire hoses, and people running in and out of businesses with trash bags and grabbing 40 ounces of beer and liquor. It doesnt seem to make any sense to anyone, sunny. Thats right. And i dont want to namecall, but im seeing arson. Im seeing assault. Im seeing crimes. These are criminals. And were seeing criminal action. I said earlier that Martin Luther king said riots and rioting is the language of the unheard. And that sort of puts it into context. It doesnt make it right certainly. I dont think anyone is going to say that looting and criminal activity is right. It is wrong. But i think that the larger issue is where does this helplessness come from . Why do people feel that this needs to be done . We all know that burning your own Community Just doesnt make any sense. Sunny, youre exactly right. We need to get to the bottom of it but its hard to do when you have this as a distraction. And i will quote someone who i respect today, a major civil rights leader who said today he feels that dr. Martin luther king would be rolling over in his grave if he actually saw what was going on in the city of baltimore. What do you think about all of this when you look at whats burning . Does this distract obviously it does from the larger issues . The poverty with the city the history with the Police Department those are all legitimate issues but as were talking, were looking at fires and smoke. Yeah i grew up in this city just blocks away from where this kicked off. My mother still lives up there. So they renovated and it was helping the community in a way. It really was. The area had changed and it was continuing to change. And i must say that again, it not only overshadows the death of freddie gray and the systemic problems and issues were having across this country with policing today, but it also takes away from those protesters who were doing the right thing. And the family said this is the last thing we want . Absolutely. So what we see out here with the looting and the burning, those are opportunists. These are folks who really dont care about their communities. Theyre just taking advantage of whats happening. And i dont want that to overshadow the good folks that are out there doing this the right way. Go ahead, rob. I was just going to say, there are so many wonderful people in the city of baltimore and the surrounding area. Folks who have worked for generations to revitalize the city and so on ando forth. And this type of evening is a setback, and it will be for years to come. But ive got to tell you, the fiber of this city has been strong. People want to be heard, they want to be validated, they want to create steps to make the relationship between the community and the Police Department much better. Come around here chris. Both you and i have been talking to some of the people here. Ive spoke to a Police Officer. Ill share my conversation with the Police Officer in just a moment. But as you were coming in and witnessed a confrontation, tell our viewers about that. And about the curfew. 600,000 people live here. Many people are safe here and under control. As we go west of here the complexion of the city changed in terms of stability. When i was driving around trying to find my way here i did see Police Coming into contact with some young men, saying get out of the streets and theres a curfew and they gathered around and said there is no curfew you cant make us go anywhere. And the cops left. As we move around and see the officers trying to seal off streets and frankly tactical decisions being made that its not worth what increased violence may occur if they try to settle a street. Has to be surprising to see that type of interaction with officers. Two things are surprising to see these young men come towards police and see the police leave, spoke to inst