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Baltimore Orioles Will Play Tomorrow at Camden Yards; Game to be Closed to Public; Baltimore Vows to Rebuild. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired April 28, 2015 - 15:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[15:33:12] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: I'm Brooke Baldwin live here in Baltimore. And we are just referencing this with the congressman a moment ago. We're getting word here now that the Baltimore Orioles will be playing their game tomorrow here at Camden yards, but it will be closed to the public. What exactly does that mean? How's that going to work? Let me go to CNN sports' Rachel Nichols.

Closed to the public. Does that mean they will play the game, but no one will be in the seats?

RACHEL NICHOLS, CNN ANCHOR, UNGUARDED WITH RACHEL NICHOLS (via phone): Yes, Brooke. As surreal as it sounds, they will play baseball game in front of a completely empty stadium. Now, the game will be broadcast on TV and radio. It's not like it's going to be in secret or anything. But this has never happened before in the history of major league baseball. It's going to be different and strange for anyone watching. And then the Orioles were supposed to have a home stand in Tampa this weekend. And then it is actually going to be moved to Tampa. They can't do that with this game, though. It's too short notice to visiting Chicago the white sox are already in town here. So having the game, closing it to the public, at least doesn't put the public at any risk. It means that a lot of the stadium workers, ticket takers, concession stand workers, they don't have to come in either.

The other night, we had police in riot gear on Babe Ruth Plaza. That's where fans come into the stadium. It's not a situation anybody wanted.

BALDWIN: Can I ask you this, Rachel. So since this seems unprecedented, as you're pointing out, can you walk me through as much as you know the decision process, who helped in the decision. I imagine the top brass at the Orioles, they were speaking with what, the mayor?

NICHOLS: Yes, absolutely. Look, this is a consultation between the major league baseball offices in New York. They are the ones who make these final decisions. They, of course, spoke to the Baltimore Orioles at length about this. They spoke with city officials about this. They really trying to manage a bunch of competing interests. Obviously, the most and highest level of concern is for the safety of the people involved and what does that entail. Then in a much lower level of concern, these baseball games are hard to make up. But they've got to figure out where and how they can do thing in their schedule. Remember, it is 184-game season, when they just cancel them, down the road, month and month from now when the pressing concerns have passed, they would have a whole bunch of other lesser concern to deal. So this was their way of trying to make some of that into account while also taking the much more primary concern of public safety.

And look. This has been difficult for players, Brooke. This is their home. This is their community, too. Last night the game wasn't canceled until about 45 minutes before the first pitch. So these guys are in the clubhouse. They are trying to go through their regular routine while they're watching all of this unfold on the clubhouse television.

And remember, on Saturday night, during that game, the city actually locks fans in the stadium for about 30 minutes because of some rioting has broken out nearby. So, it's been an incredibly sad couple of days for the Orioles like everyone else in Baltimore.

And from major league baseball, too, I want to read you the statement from the commissioner after he did decide to close this game to the public. He said, quote "after conversations with the Orioles and local officials, we believe these decisions are in the best interests of fans' safety and deployment of city resources. Our thoughts are all those who have been affected by the violence in Baltimore and everyone in our game hopes for peace and safety of a great American city." So, a strong reaction from one of America's major sports.

[15:36:30] BALDWIN: That is stunning. Rachel Nichols on the news that the game will continue without anyone in the stands.

Rachel, thank you so much for that.

Let me just get some quick reaction and bring in my next student guest. I got David Miller, community activist and leader. And also I have Betsy Knicks, assistant professor at University of Baltimore. And we'll talk about the '68 riots because I know you wrote a book on that.

But first, David to you, I don't know if you were ever hear my last interview with our sports anchor, but I mean, it's pretty stunning to hear that the city of Baltimore and MLB have decided they are going to play this game against the Chicago white sox tomorrow. So the game will continue, but no one can be in there watching the game. Obviously they want to protect the public. We saw what happened here last night. But what -- what sign do you think that sends the city of Baltimore?

DAVID MILLER, COMMUNITY ACTIVIST/ LEADER: Well, I think it sends a clear message that there are some parts of the city that out of control. And I think we saw based on what happened yesterday, I think today you saw resilient people in communities cleaning up and trying to maintain and restore order. I think them canceling the oriole game speaks to the fear in the minds and hearts of officials in Baltimore city. BALDWIN: Professor, I think for people who maybe don't quite remember

'68. I was just talking to a councilman and said yes, who remembers, he was in high school -- it was in the wake of Dr. King's assassination. It was, say, month April. It started similarly with peaceful demonstrations, and then what happened?

BETSY KNICKS, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF BALTIMORE: Well, Dr. King was assassinated on a Thursday night. And so, Baltimore remained peaceful for Friday and Saturday. And other cities were erupting. Baltimore was peaceful. And then on Saturday night, on Gay Street, looting, a fire started. There were furniture stores there on Gay Street. And that's where it started and it continued for about the next week.

BALDWIN: On almost some of the same blocks, correct, that we have seen these fires started here?

NICKS: That's right. Definitely the same streets.

BALDWIN: Do you remember this?

MILLER: No. I was born in 1968.

BALDWIN: Forgive me, I didn't -- wasn't going judge your age there. And so here, what I was reading in one of your interviews was that at the time, in the 20th century issues with changing of laws, certain races, living on certain blocks. There was some sort this tinderbox, right, that was bubbling and bubbling, and perhaps it was the Dr. King assassination such as the Freddie Gray death here. That you have this bubbling, and then poof.

NICKS: Right. There were certainly historical trends that had been taking place in Baltimore for decades. And red lining which may be difficult for people to get loans in certain neighborhood to fix up their houses or to buy a house. You had, in 1910, the first laws in the nation that said there would be some blocks in Baltimore that were white, and some blocks in Baltimore that were black. And that was eventually overturned. But then we had residential covenance that said in certain neighborhoods you couldn't sell a house to a black person or Jewish person. And so all of that really led to racial segregation that went on for decades. And we're still seeing the effects of that.

Seeking the sense of justice here. Final question to you, sir, just quickly. You are talking to folks in the community, I mean, do you think people will respect this curfew tonight and keep the peace?

[15:40:01] MILLER: Yes, I think people will respect the curfew. I just think it's critically important that we connect with families and we connect to children. So today we delivered water to churches and other organizations.

BALDWIN: Wonderful.

MILLER: Who were working with children since schools were closed. I think families are the key. Baltimore has to rebuild family. And children in Baltimore are not thugs, they're just dealing with insurmountable pressures and stresses and challenges.

BALDWIN: David Miller, thank you very much.

MILLER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Betsy Knicks, thank you, as well. I appreciate both of your time here.

Coming up, we have another police news conference expected to begin soon here in this city. So we will watch out for that and take it live.

Also, Don Lemon will join me next. You know, he was here in Baltimore last night. He was on TV for a number of hours. He had a pretty compelling interview with both the mayor and the governor of the state. We'll share that with you. They, you know, stayed and talked for 10.5 minutes and then they walked away. We'll chat with Don next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:45:11] BALDWIN: Back live in Baltimore. I'm Brooke Baldwin. And as we've been watching the pictures the last two hours or so, peaceful protesters out on Baltimore city streets for the most part, peaceful, and so are police. You know, obviously, that in clearer contrast from the pictures we saw playing out last night, the looting, the arson, the criminality. You know, one of the differences, group of men in different parts of the city, but especially West Baltimore, by the CVS that's burned down, they called it the love line. They are trying to serve here as buffers and taking back their community from some of this criminal element and then of course police.

The Maryland governor here, Larry Hogan, has vowed there will not be a repeat from what we saw from last night. My colleague, Don Lemon, actually talked for quite a while to the governor and also to the mayor here, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake about the response to what was happening as the city began to burn.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR, CNN TONIGHT: What do you say to those people who are in the middle of them, you are saying we are gaining control, we've got it under control, we acted (INAUDIBLE), what do you say to those people? Those people are scared. They're losing their businesses.

(CROSSTALK)

MAYOR STEPHANIE RAWLINGS-BLAKE: They're afraid. The children I spoke to today are afraid. But we will bring order. We will do it collaboratively. I am determined that this darkest day will not define our city. We will have order. We will have control. And those individuals who we have caught on camera destroying our city will be brought to justice.

GOV. LARRY HOGAN (R), MARYLAND: I assure you that we're taking over the situation. This is not going to continue. People will feel that the city's safe. I'm moving the governor's office to Baltimore city first thing in the morning. We're bringing our entire cabinet. We are bringing all the assets we can. We are going to get this under control. The city will be safe. And Marylanders will be proud of the effort once we get this cleaned up.

LEMON: How are you going enforce a curfew tomorrow -- how are you going to enforce a curfew tomorrow whether kids are out of school and they've said that many of the young people are -- the people who will are doing this?

You say what? Say again, Mayor, I'm sorry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So I've got Don now with me live. Also, I have former CNN hero Joe Jones who is from here. And your organization is center for urban families. And so, I want to talk about your work and also especially who you were talking to last night.

But first to you, Don Lemon. I mean, listen. They were on with you for about 10.5 minutes, and then you kept pushing. And then they sort of turned and walked away. What was that about?

LEMON: Well, I don't know if the governor had somewhere to go. I have no idea. But someone behind him said, "we have to go now," and the mayor followed suit. So what it was about, I don't know. You know, they answered some of the questions. I take it maybe they didn't want to answer -- I'm not here to make friends with the mayor or governor. I'm here to get answers.

BALDWIN: Right. You are here to cover the story. We all are.

LEMON: I'm going to cover the story. And the answers that they were giving me were not sufficient. And what I tried to relate to them is what the sentiment that I was getting from not only the police officers, law enforcement who are here about what happened and how it escalated but also concerned citizens, about how this escalated.

Now in all honesty, all truth, the governor came walked up. And then I guess about a minute or so later, we were in the middle of a press conference with the police commissioner. And the mayor walked up. Didn't really say anything to each other. There was tension there.

So once the cameras started rolling and they were on television, all of a sudden they were in sync. They weren't in sync. They weren't happy with each other. I don't know what's going on behind the scenes. But this is not the time for politics. This is a time to answer questions for the people of Baltimore, for the people of the country. And this is a time to -- for you to figure out, you know, what the response is going to be. The mayor said, the governor said, we had the order ready for the mayor over the weekend.

BALDWIN: Saturday.

LEMON: When there was violence. Now, I don't expect the mayor to say it's a state of emergency or what have you. But at least you can have some resources in place so that when you do put that state of emergency into effect, that you don't have to wait hours and hours and hours to get manpower on the scene.

I'm Monday morning quarterbacking, that's what we often do. But people who are positions of power, if you're the mayor of the city, you are the governor of the state, the buck stops with you. That was my questioning. So maybe he threw her under the bus, maybe she wasn't happy about. I did see an interview of her that I thought was poignant. She said, yes, in essence -- I'm paraphrasing -- he said, yes, I made mistakes. Maybe I misspoke when I said we gave people room to destroy because if you low, those were her exact words. She said misconstrued what she said. That's what she said at that point. The governor did say, listen, we had the order ready. It's up to the mayor to do it.

[15:50:01] BALDWIN: We don't know what's happening behind closed doors. An interesting point. The buck stops with them. I totally agree with you 100 percent.

Joe, you last night, I read on this yesterday. I was on TV talking about these reports from Baltimore police that there was this credible threat from members of gangs. They wanted to take out law enforcement. You because of the nature to have amazing work you do here in the city, you know those people in the streets, you know, some of these gang members because of your street outreach. And so, you were actually with members of the gangs last night who were in turn helping what, the community, stop the violence? Tell me about that.

JOE JONES, 2008 CNN HERO: Yes. And there was a group of clergy (INAUDIBLE) and others, including myself that came together at (INAUDIBLE) Baptist church. Many of us were there for the funeral for Freddie Gray in the morning. (INAUDIBLE) across the street.

And so after the funeral and later that evening after the chaos started, there was a commute and march from the church. I had not yet gotten there so there was a group of faith leaders that started the community walk. While they were walking, they engaged these gang members, right, who engaged them and came back to the church. By the time they got back to the church, I joined them back at the church. And over the course of several hours, we were there until midnight, where there was a group of color, including these brothers from gang who set in harmony with one another, talking about how do we do right by our community.

LEMON: They're working on a truce.

JONES: Yes. Correct.

LEMON: They're working on a truce which is amazing which is an incredible story.

BALDWIN: It's incredible.

Just bottom line, how do they plan on helping resolve this? 30 seconds? JONES: Well, the first thing this morning you saw Baltimore wake up

to dawn with people coming out cleaning out, not waiting for a government response. So that narrative about that the mother who you saw go out and grab her teenage son and said boy, you're going to come home and I'm going to knock you up alongside the head.

LEMON: We need more of that. Can I talk about the economic impact? I was out today talking to the business owners today, which is the original harbor twin city. You know, beautiful area. There were stores that were looted and robbed last night. Many other business owners are boarding up. I have a friend who works in the hotel industry and saying he's in D.C. and Virginia. The hotels, the convention centers, the restaurants and businesses are going to lose a lot of money. That's why I was so hard on the governor and the mayor. They're looking for other venues to go to now rather than coming to Baltimore.

BALDWIN: Don Lemon, Joe Jones, thank you both so much. Thank you for all you're doing in this community. We'll see you later on TV.

Gentlemen, thank you.

BALDWIN: Quick break. We're back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:53:35] BALDWIN: This is east Baltimore and this is absolutely heartbreaking. This is a $16 million loss. Would have been affordable housing for senior citizens in this community, helping them with their mortgages and it's now all gone. You can still smell the fires from last evening and some of it the smoke, still smoldering. Still. I spoke with the reverend here who says to me they still plan to rebuild from the ash.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: How does your heart feel?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A little disheartened and bewildered about what has taken place. Because we've been so engaged in the community and trying to rebuild it with all of the vacant rots and empty buildings. We saw hope and we saw potential in transforming this community by restoring people and rebuilding properties.

BALDWIN: So you saw hope. And when you spin around and all you can see this charred mess, what do you see now in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I see the hopelessness and the mentality and the emotions of the people. But I still see hope in God that we can rise from the ashes and we can rebuild. We have to rebuild. This cannot be the legacy of Baltimore. This cannot be the testimony of a church that has existed for 80 years in the community. This is our opportunity to overcome, to rebuild and to show the community we really care in spite of the negativity that's taken place.

[15:55:06] BALDWIN: I know you're a man of God and you're a strong man. But we're not even 24 hours since this happened. How do you find that strength?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Well, it took God less time to start creating the earth. And so, my faith in God is what sustains me and what gives me this sense of resilience, a peace that we say surpasses all understanding. That even in the midst of this, I know that we can build something greater.

BALDWIN: Is there any piece of your heart that's angry?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I first arrived my human emotion was anger and bewilderment, and confusion. The people in the community know me. They know southern Baptist church. They know that we stand for the community. In fact, I was just leaving an organization of pastors that were rallying were peace last night and for justice and to come over and see someone who did this, it must have been someone who didn't understand that we are fighting on behalf of the people.

BALDWIN: Isn't this all about justice, though? From who I've talked to, they're losing sight of what this was about. This was about a 25- year-old young man who lost his life. There are so many questions about that. But now this narrative is about Baltimore burning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. This is absolutely about the injustices that have taken place. And not only injustice but disinvestment, lack of quality education and employment. Many of our citizens have gone unheard and unnoticed. They have been left with dilapidation (ph). They have been let without a voice and without people that would listen to them.

But we stand as visionaries and witnesses that we're not going to allow the injustices to persist. Tomorrow, we are going to be meeting at the state's attorney's office even in the wake of this to pursue justice. We are going to (INAUDIBLE). We haven't heard from her. We don't want this swept under the carpet? We don't want our political official to think that we're going to passively sit by and idly watch this happen. But this should be a wakeup call to every politician, to every faith leader, to every business person that we have to mitigate against these injustices that cause stuff like this from happening.

BALDWIN: Are you nervous about this evening?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not nervous at all. I'm really hopeful that we're going to experience some break through. And that last night as we were meeting with gang leaders and gang members, young people just need somebody to sit and talk with them and hear their cry.

BALDWIN: Instead of do this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Instead of do this. This is reactionary. This is emotional. This is frustration. This is -- I don't what else to do. But if we can do something else. If we can rebuild Iraq, we can rebuild east Baltimore.

BALDWIN: So we just wanted to hope in the car to show you how far spread from one example of destruction in the rioting from last night is to the next. We're in east Baltimore. We're now in west Baltimore. And we've seen people hanging out. You can see the helicopters buzzing above, police, the news, a lot of people actually out in this community today. You can see them cleaning up bottles.

I want to take you now to the CVS that's just up the street that was burned down. This is or really was the CVS that you saw being burned last night, condemned. People inside cleaning it and really take a spin with me, this was the epicenter of much of the rioting and the criminal activity from last night. And now we're surrounding by members of the media, by people in this community. I want to show you something really quickly. See over there? A number of demonstrators on one side. Police are their shields on another and armored vehicle. The city is now under state of emergency. You have a city wide curfew for the rest of the week. The question is, is this over?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Welcome to "The LEAD." I'm Jack Tapper.

We're going to begin with our national lead of course. A state of emergency in Baltimore. You're looking at live pictures right now from Baltimore, from WJZ TV. Today Baltimore residents are of course concerned about what comes next. The city is bracing for further possible unrest. The Baltimore Orioles taken an unheard of step in American spots, announcing they will play tomorrow's game in an empty cam den yards, no spectators allowed.

Meanwhile, others of course are picking up the pieces in that city. Protesters linked arm in arm to peacefully express their frustration with police, a far scene from last night's lawlessness, looting, robbing, burning down businesses, assaulting ordinary citizens and police officers alike. Baltimore police say 20 police officers were injured in the riots last night, one remain in critical condition.