Protesters are not destructive or violent. But a little more than an hour ago despite that relative peace police fired tear gas where ali was reporting in minneapolis, an action he said was unprovoked by protesters. Nobody was doing anything. They opened fire, theyre aiming their fire now, theyre working towards us. Get back, get back, youre hit, hes hit. Step back. Watch it, guys. We got gas here. All right, back up, back up, back up. Theyre now moving toward us. Theyre now moving toward us. Yeah, theyre shooting, guys. Put your helmets on. Miguel, stay with me. We got gas. Highly dramatic situation as you can see and tensions have flared in other cities from pennsylvania and pittsburgh and columbia and freeways were blocked, windows shattered and authorities deployed tear gas and even rubber bullets. Nine states, georgia, kentucky, wisconsin, colorado, ohio, utah, washington, texas and tennessee are all joining minnesota in calling their National Guard forces to respond to those protests. George floyds brother told reverend al sharpton earlier tonight he spoke with both president and former Vice President joe biden. This is what he said he told joe biden. I asked could he please, please get justice for my brother, please because i need it, i need to. I do newt want to see him on a shirt just like the other guys. Nobody deserves that. Black folks dont deserve that. Were all dying. Were all dying. Black lives matter. Joining me now is Msnbcs Ali Velshi who was on the ground in minneapolis as he has been for days. Ali, you and what was a peaceful crowd were fired on. We saw that clip with tear gas just a little while ago. Whats the situation now, and how did all of this unfold . Reporter very unusual. Hard green light back there but thats where the fifth precinct is. Thats where peaceful protests were being held all day. Much larger crowd than weve seen in the past couple of days. 8 00 p. M. Our time, 9 00 p. M. Eastern the curfew went into effect. Everyone stood up and started marching peacefully through town. We probably walked a couple of miles. There was no incident, no violence, no looting. Nothing was going on, and then at some point we were about a half to two thirds of the way back of the march. We werent anywhere close to the front and suddenly i saw in front of me about 500 feet, maybe further in front of me police cars suddenly move u move into the intersection, no warning. The group behind we were in were now in front of the police line and they opened fire within seconds of getting out on the street they opened fire with tear gas as you saw. And then flash bangs and other projectiles. I got one of them in my leg. It must have ricochetted off something and hit me but we were doing nothing. We were just trying to get out of there. And you and i talked very shortly after and we were all walking backwards. The same thing happened at another intersection. The Police Closed it off. So now we were sort of trapped, we couldnt get out. And there were some other media people there and we walked towards them with our hands yelling we were media and the police or the National Guard, we were together, yelled we dont care and opened fire a second time. So weve been weaving our way around minneapolis for the last hour or so trying to avoid interactions with the police. We just saw a convoy of National Guard and Police Moving this way. The helicopter has been up there for a while. They have dispersed tre are peo the move tonight. Theyre trying to enforce this curfew, but the big take away tonight, chris, is that these protests were peaceful. Morgan chesky and i were on two parts of it. These were peaceful protests. The police without warning weve got people coming toward us again which makes me nervous right now miguel, lets move. Without any provocation and warning opened fire lets move back here and started firing into the crowd. As you know you mentioned earlier i had my tear gas mask. I didnt have enough time to police come down here to see what theyre up to. Thats the story, christine. Lets just watch whats happening here. Thois is what theyve been doing. Theyve been moving around the city and suddenly stopping and get out of their vehicles. Thats fire. All right, so this is a different story. One of the problems is and i can see a fire burning over to our left in the direction that the fire trucks are going in. You can see now this is National Guard escort. This is part of the problem that the fires as theyve been started have not been able to have been put out because the fire trucks cant get in there to put the fires out. So weve got another vehicle coming this way. So theyre not able to get in without military, National Guard or police escort. So it does seem like theyre being fairly aggressive about this tonight because last night, again, there were a lot of fires. Weve got more military coming in this way, more National Guard. These are meant to be escorting the fire vehicles. Everything coming down here now is National Guard following the police. So theres a lot more activity here. The curfew, we dont have a good enough picture of this because im standing on a random corner in minneapolis. But like i said entirely unprovoked, opening fire of tear gas, rubber bullets and flash bangs into a crowd that was walking, very, very peacefully, chris. First of all, im glad youre okay and we hope other people who got caught up with that as well as you are aokay. And i will continue to watch this scene, but i also dont want us to lose sight of why all those people who came out today and as you have pointed out came out peacefully were there we got more coming here. Hang on a second. All right, thats the county ems heading toward theres a fire there which looked like it may have been the Police Station. The last few nights the third precinct has been the focus. It changed to the fifth precinct last night. We were there until about midnight last night. There was a very large crowd that gathered there. And shortly after i left the scene Bryan Williams who listens to the scanners was telling me the National Guard had been activated to that point. Yesterday we had 500 National Guard members and then they upped it to 700 last night. This morning they activated another 1,000 bringing it to 1,700. And by noon today the governor activated every last National Guard member in the state. 13,100. We dont know whether being activated means theyre out on the street tonight. But what youve not seen a National Guard presence. That fifth precinct has been the attention and unlike the third precinct it does seem the police are very, very determined to make sure another Police Station does not fall into the hands of the protesters. There are police there and that does seem to be where the action is. Now, were seeing some smoke from there. I dont know and cant tell you whether thats the Police Station. The Police Station is a brick building so the amount of smoke im seeing from that doesnt suggest that would be a Police Station on fire. For obvious reasons, were not actually interested in walking down there to find out. Cannot say it again because ive been saying it for three days and ive been getting a lot of flack from it the majority of the people here are protesting peacefully. Theyve been giving speeches, say black lives matter and things like that and the police fired on that crowd tonight, chris. Do you find a difference in the mood of the crowd today and also you talked about the raw and then the governor activated every last member of the National Guard. But have you noticed just visually a major difference in the Police Presence today . Reporter yes, tonight was the first night i saw minneapolis city police. Ive not seen them at all for the last three nights. Theyve been entirely absent from the third precinct. We have seen state police and supporting National Guard members. What we have seen now is remarkably heavy presence of militarized vehicles. That is the National Guard. And the group that shot into the crowd we were in were minneapolis city police. Here we go. Weve got more coming down the road. Typically we wouldnt move out of the way for this sort of thing because were not on the road, so we let them go. But this is exactly what happened two hours ago. We were literally standing there, police pulled up, got out of their car assumed a position in front of the crowd and started firing. So everybody is a now a little bit skittish what happens when police come. They spent three days not getting into a confrontation with protesters. Thats a firecracker. Not getting into confrontations with protesters. The police did go up on the roof and fired tear gas and flash bangs into the crowd, but there seemed to be some deliberate strategy not to actually engage with people where not necessary. Yesterday you had protesters coming right up in their face and criticizing and getting up in their face and they didnt do anything about it. Something changed tonight where police drove into an intersection and opened fire on a crowd. So i dont know what the strategic change is, but something is very different in the air tonight. And i will tell you the mood of the crowd was very different, kris. This was an entirely peaceful not agitated crowd, so the Police Reaction to this crowd surprised me more. Two nights ago it may not have surprised me. We continue to hear noise over there that might be flash bangs. We dont know what it is and we see some smoke, but theres some action behind us, kris. Yeah, and if youre able to determine safely what that is youll get back to us. I want to thank you and your crew who are under extraordinary circumstances have kept your cool and gotten us information, and we do appreciate that. So, ali, thank you. Im sure well be talking to you later on tonight. Where im sitting is new york city and behind what you see behind me are the windows to my apartments. What i have not heard are sirens. And all throughout the night and moments ago while ali was on the air i heard sirens. In new york city hundreds of protesters have been gathering, many of them in brooklyn earlier before marching across the brooklyn bridge. Over 70 protesters have been arrested and a number of nypd officers have been injured. Msnbcs Richard Louie is with another group of protesters in brooklyn. Whats happening where you are . Obviously a lot of folks there. Reporter you were talking about the group that was walking across the bridge. That was actually a splinter from the group we were with about 2 1 2 hours ago. Were still with the group and this group has since grown in size and brought in other ad hoc protesting groups. Were now about a five block long group. The police just arrived down the block there. It has been pretty much i dont know if we can see it here, but its been pretty much a quiet protest until about 30 minutes ago. We were at the target and there seemed to be some conflict within the protesters, should we stay away from the glass doors, windows of the target here or should we do something. And then quickly the tension peaked and everybody ran away, and then were now here. And as you know covering so many of these yourself these ebb and flow. Weve had some quiet moments. They had a candlelight vigil about 20 minutes ago where they held up their phones and that accelerated again. I think it was earlier in the evening if you remember last night at this hour here in brooklyn there was a lot of conflict. So i think now that the police have arrived that there is going to be certainly a change, and here come the police. Weve obviously lost the audio, and our crew im sure when they have a chance to safely reestablish they will safely reestablish, but we clearly are seeing there in brooklyn a Police Presence moving in. You see richard loui and then his cameraman who started running for cover. This has been the experience. We saw it in minneapolis as well, which is that when the police start coming people start to move because they realize that tactically things have changed. While we continue to watch these pictures and maybe well get reestablished with richard at some point, i want to bring into the discussion now mark plaxton whos a retired new York City Police detective, and i want to ask you, mark, if youre there whats your reaction to what youre seeing first in minneapolis and now in new york city and we see Frank Figliuzzi with him as well, an assistant director for Counter Intelligence and an Nbc National Security analyst, but i want to start with you because of your new york city experience and because of your police experience, if i can. Something changed according to ali velshi tonight. He said a strategic change. He had a crowd that was much less agitated but a much larger crowd of police who were very quick to engage. What do you make of what you saw . Quite obviously and based on just information thats been released in minneapolis theres been a dramatic increase in man power and resource, so what theyre doing is utilizing that additional increase in man power and resources to redeploy to some Critical Infrastructure targets perhaps. Clearly they want to really take back certain sections or certain sectors of the area there. They want to absolutely be more assertive and proactive. They dont want to be caught in the heel as has been the case in the past several days. Part of the reason they say that i think what theyre doing is making a clear statement and taking back certain areas and commit to defending Critical Infrastructures. They dont want to lose another precinct. They dont want to be retreating constantly. They decided to be proactive and start to move forward and reclaim certain sections of the street. And theyre also going to develop lanes so that the flow of vehicle traffic, Emergency Vehicle traffic so i think those people on the street have to be wary because they have quite obviously decided to take back certain sections. This is Union Square West downtown in manhattan in new york city, and you can see people are blocking the street there. Frank, what do you make of this increased Police Presence and how its being used . Yeah, i think what were seeing is theres no coincidence across the country tonight that the various Police Agencies have decided this has shifted from legitimate grievance protests now to violence, suppression, and largely this is going to be based on intelligence. This is where the various Intelligence Units at the departments really earn their salary. And likely what therapy seeing was an influx of outsiders who posed too much of a risk and they decided weve allowed protest and peaceful protests to occur. Were now going to surge resources because we think a line is being crossed. We think we have people intent on violence only and were going to draw that line tonight. So when you see frank, im going to stop you if i can for a second. Frank, if i can im sorry to interrupt because i want to go back to this topic and were watching some movement there again in manhattan. But weve reestablished a signal with richard lui in brooklyn. Reporter what happened at that moment when the crowd was running towards the camera is that the crowd began to throw bottles and rocks at the police, and then the police then pursued the crowd. They ran towards us and our camera position. Thats when we got disconnected. So the crowd now has dispersed, and they have brought in another group of Police Officers from the opposite end. Youre now seeing them return back to the location where we were standing a bit earlier. And at the moment it seems that the crowd has been dispersed because theyre not behind us either. They were all running that way. So at the moment it seems that this protest group has been dispersed, but you can certainly see what was zero Police Presence has now turned into counting maybe ten on my left, ten in front of me, around 30 police vehicles, and they seem to be closing in on something there in the center of the block. We now have an ambulance here as well. We just got here, and were not sure if have identified somebody or if theyre moving towards the center of the block. It looks like theyre backing up the block. Omebody in the middle all right, it does not look like go ahead. I was just going to say while you were moving mark, a retired new York City Police detective was talking about the problem of people in the streets when you have to get an Emergency Vehicle through. And before that we saw fire trucks going through in minneapolis. Now were seeing the ambulance there. In new york city they cant do it if the streets are blocked. But there seems to be around you now a little more sense of calm although the police are moving toward you . Yes, they are, and you know how it works. After the crowd gets dispersed they find a new front, and then the protesters come back. So this latest scrum youre seeing right now is because one or two the protesters approach the Police Officer line there and began running away because they were pursued by Police Officers. Thats what happened just now. Were going to move a little bit out of the way right now. So it looks like at this point they have decided to pursue the protest group which is far down, three blocks in front of us. The original dispersement is. Explain to us, richard reporter if you can see this on camera right here what has