clear that this was wrong and it needed to be corrected. >> race in america. >> do you think the president is a racist? >> in the south, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's usually a duck. >> and whether he will run for president in 2020. >> mitch, i want to ask you this, how seriously are you thinking about the? >> welcome to "the axe files." >> mitch landrieu, good to see you. we're here in your hometown of new orleans, in the cafe reconcile. tell me why this is such a special place to you. >> well, when i grew up, there was a jesuit priest, father harry thompson, who became the pastor of a downtown inner city church, and started talking about ways to help kids and to connect people with money with people who needed money. and he wanted to start a place where kids could have a better future. and he said, look, we've got to

go to, you know, the toughest of the tough places and find the people who need help most. the children and young people that are working here are kids who have lived the toughest of the toughest lives in america. some of them have been shot. some of them are parents of children that have been shot. some of them are young men and women that have served time in jail and have come out and now are running the facility. >> and they go on. >> they go on generally, every restaurant, hotel, looking for great employees, these kids, because these kids, one of them who hwas shot three times, is nw working hard and has a family and is stable. >> i read your wonderful memoir, "the shadow of statues: a white southerner confronts history." it seems as if racial

reconciliation has been a mission of the landrieu family for 60 years. your dad went to the legislature, your dad moon landrieu went to the legislature at the height of the battle for civil rights, he led the fight and became mayor and desegregated the workforce. you grew up around this issue all your life. >> yeah, i can't remember a moment in my life where race was not a part of it. it wasn't all reconciliation. it was a lot of battles. my dad was very interesting because he was 29 years old, he was married. he had four babies. my mother had nine children in 11 years. they're both still alive, they have 38 grandchildren right now. but back in 1960, when things

were really intense, how he found the courage to vote against the segregation package. i asked him, what are you thinking about? he said, i was really fighting for my friends. he had befriended a young man on the first day of law school, norman francis. norman was better looking, faster, and smart than everybody else. i asked my father, he said he taught me what it was like to walk in somebody else's shoes. he said, i wasn't just fighting for norman. i was fighting for my right to be with my friends. and we just kind of grew up in that ethos. there have been a number of examples throughout our life where white people have been angry at us. >> you experienced that as a kid. >> i did, when i was 13 years old, back then it was white people in the council chamber really trying to get after the city of new orleans because the city was becoming majority 1

african-american, it was on its way to it, and there were wild people in the streets yelling about segregation. the priest who started this facility came to my classroom, and he said, you know, i need to walk you across the street to the gym because there's been a death threat. when i got over there, i was in the locker room. all my friends come in and say, there's some woman outside who says she wants to kill you. it was this angry white woman who was just as angry as she could be. she went to reach in her purse and one of my friends said, she has a gun. of course they did what great friends would do, they scattered to the winds and left me standing there by myself. she took out a card and threw it at me. it had written on it, your father is an "n" lover, he ruined the city. i wasn't an adult but i was mature enough to get what that was. even back then, it was part of

all of our lives. i wasn't unique, it happened to lots of people in the city. >> you say "back then," but when you made the decision to remove statues from places of honor in new orleans, you met with some of those same reactions, your children met with some of those same reactions, and that was 40 years later. >> that makes you understand that we're not really through the issue of race. when president obama got elected, the country said, thank god, we're past it. and that's not true, every day in america african-americans continue to suffer discrimination, we continue to tear ourselves apart on the issue of race. it's the greatest fault line of american politics. i've come to learn you can't go over this, you can't go around it, you have to go through it, you have to talk through it and

work through it. i made a political miscalculation. i had assumed that we were further along. then after the shootings in charleston, when governor haley and the entire folks in south carolina, in south carolina, finally took down the flag, i said -- >> the confederate flag. >> the confederate flag, i said, number one, it's time to take the monuments down, but secondly, everyone will get it. but everyone didn't get it. and it's much too hard a fight to have in that year than we should have. >> you got elected and reelected with overwhelming support of both white and black residents of the city. your support among whites in new orleans dropped by half. >> the city was racially united when i came. when i got reelected, it was for the most part the same. when i took those monuments down, though, it really, really, really touched people in a much deeper way. and i didn't lose all of my white support.

but i lost half of it. in a way that will never come back to me. and what was curious to me as a politician is, i've been involved, as you know, for 30 years. i was a legislator for 13 years. >> that's when we both had hair. >> that was a long time ago. and i've voted on some tough issues. and i have had people come up to me and say, i didn't like the way you voted on the abortion issue or capital punishment or whatever, but i generally like you and think you're a good guy and will vote for you again. on this thing, it was much deeper than any other action that i've taken, where people said to me, i'll never, ever support you again. which i thought was really curious. >> you wrote that today's public square is teeming with hatred we haven't seen since the 1960s. why do you think that is?

>> i don't know. >> it's too glib to say it's because of donald trump. donald trump saw something and exploited it. >> i didn't vote for the president. he didn't cause it. he's a symptom of it. he's a perfect fit for exacerbating it, and he knows that strategically, division is working for him, even though it's working against the country. there's a much deeper thing going on. and so the reason -- i don't want to concentrate for the moment on president trump, other than to acknowledge he has been complicit and has put the accelerator on it. because it's a bigger issue for all of us and not just him. but it is worth noting, the germ, the seed of all this is racial hatred and a sense of white supremacy, which is why in the book i talk about david duke. when david duke was in the legislature with me -- >> white supremacist. >> he was a neo-nazi, the leader of the ku klux klan.

he got the elected to the legislature in 1990, ran for governor and united states senate and got two out of every three white votes. i have said in the book that we're not seeing anything now on the national level that we haven't seen in louisiana relating to that racial issue. but it's critically important. it is critical to talk about the cause of white supremacy, because we have seen examples in our history that when one group of people think they're superior to another, atrocities occur. and one of them is slavery. one of them is the holocaust. one of them is apartheid. you can see examples of where we has human beings have allowed ourselves because we didn't check our worst impulses and got to a place unique in history. >> you said, his great america great slogan is the dog whistle of all time. >> if you spend any time in the south, and you go speak to most

people, and particularly african-americans, and you say, i want to make america great, they'll go, me too. but if you put the comma and "again" next to it, that is a dog whistle of epic proportions to people in the south, who say, when were we great, exactly what years were we great, what were we doing, and do you know what i might have been doing at that time? so taking people back to a time when they didn't have a right to vote, taking them back to a time when people couldn't work, to slavery, jim crow laws, nobody wants to go back there. we all, i think, accept the fact that america is an exceptional country primarily because the idea of america, one that's based on freedom, not race, not creed, not color, not sexual orientation, not nation of origin, but the need to feel free and have liberty and justice, that's what makes america the greatest country in the world. when people in the south hear

that, they go, that's a dog whistle. >> do you think he's a racist? do you think the president is a racist? >> let me answer that question this way. if i said yes, the headline would be, mayor calls president something, and we never get to the issue. i would recommend that people judge other people based on their behavior. when you see an individual who is speaking in a way or creating a policy based on race, creed, color, sexual orientation, check off the definition, that -- check off the boxes, that is by definition racist behavior. when he began running for office and said all mexicans are racists, or talking about muslims as being evil terrorists, or the false equivalence in charlottesville between white supremacists and the protesters, anybody that reads a book on racism would say, that kind of, you know, looks pretty good. and in the south, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a

duck, i mean, it's usually a duck. >> i'll take that as a yes. you wound your way around. >> i think i explained myself. we ought to judge him -- it's not about calling people names. it's about accurately and without judgment describing behavior. >> you watched what's going on at the border. do you think that's part of dog whistling? >> the answer to the question is yes. these are all different ways of exhibiting the same heart or the same mind, is that somehow these people are evil. this zero tolerance policy is premised on the simple notion that if you come into our country, whether you are trying to evidently flee persecution or not, by definition, remember, they used the word "criminal." it's a misdemeanor offense. that would be like calling your mother a criminal for running a red light and getting pulled over. when you continue to judge

people based on those characteristics, it makes americans afraid of them. because if you can make them afraid, then you can get rid of due process, you can get rid of constitutional requirements, you can get all of those things and begin to oppress. that's not a good place to be for our country. >> you were elected lieutenant governor of this state, a state that gave a 20-point victory. and where he's still very popular. >> he's doing well here. >> and you wouldn't call all those folks who voted for you and voted for him racist? >> no, i would not. >> what is it that is provoking his support? >> that's an excellent question. not every person that voted for donald trump is a racist. there are some people -- not everybody that was against taking the monuments down was a racist. they in essence are frustrated with the fact that washington is broken. and you know what, they're right. congress is completely incapable

of solving any problem. this last election to me was really not about donald trump. it really wasn't about hillary clinton, although those were the two, you know, personages in whom people could vent their anger and frustration. but when you look at operation wall street, look at the tea party, that whole thing, it is fair to say that people in america are feeling alienated and forgotten and left out. and all of that frustration found itself and manifested itself in the election of president trump. >> announcer: next on "the axe files." >> collusion in motion is what we witnessed this week. you can't have a coach playing for the other team.

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-you don't have to buzz in. it's not a question, gary. on march 1, 1810 -- [ ding ] -frédéric chopin. -collapsing in 226 -- [ ding ] -the colossus of rhodes. -[ sighs ] louise dustmann -- [ ding ] -brahms' "lullaby," or "wiegenlied." -when will it end? [ ding ] -not today, ron. a book that you're ready to share with the world? get published now, call for your free publisher kit today! i worked for a guy who made a speech that catapulted him into the national conversation. >> there is not a liberal america and a conservative

america. there is the united states of america. >> you made a speech when you took these statues down that went viral. >> these monuments celebrate a fictional, sanitized confederacy, ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, ignoring the terror that it actually stood for. >> why were people so hungry for the message of that speech? >> first of all, when i gave this speech, i gave this speech in new orleans to a local audience. i was actually delivering a speech not only to the people of new orleans, but to white working class people as an invitation to see things in a different way, to explain the facts that had never been explained to them, inviting them to think about things differently in an effort to reconcile. i was really shocked that anything that i said went viral, because as you know, 30 years of public service, you give a lot of speeches.

and some of them you think are pretty good. >> so mitch, i want to ask you this, and i don't want you to be -- i don't want you to go into politician evasive tactics here. people talk about you as a presidential candidate. and partly because of this message, and because there is this sense that we are deeply divided, and it's not healthy for the country. how seriously are you thinking about it? >> it would be disingenuous for me to tell you that i don't hear that, a lot of people call and ask and talk. but i've been doing this for 30 years now so i listen to that with skeptical ears. i know, first of all, how hard it is to get elected, and second of all, how hard the job is, and how many people there are out there who would like to do the same thing. so when you're thinking about something like that, you have to think about it hard, you have to be 100% in. i am not doing what other people

are doing, which is to say that i'm not running and then setting up all these apparatuses. a lot of good people are thinking about it. the most important thing, and i'm not trying to skirt the issue, especially given this week, the way the president handled himself on the world stage where he humiliated the united states of america, and as i said before, took a knee to putin, collusion in motion is what we witnessed this week. that has got to be clear even to some of president trump's most ardent supporters, those who supported him because of trade or the economy, that this week was a bridge too far, that you can't have a coach playing for the other team. we just witnessed something that no other president of the united states has ever done. >> why do you think -- >> i'm not interested in figuring it out. president trump has us spinning in circles trying to get why he does what he does. we have to focus on what his behavior is, what his decisions

are, and ask us does he make america stronger or weaker. i think he weakened us in a way we never have been before and he should be ashamed of himself. putting that issue aside, we have to figure out how to work around him. >> hard to work around a president. >> it's not impossible. it is possible for the speaker of the house to grow some courage and to start checking the president's power. and there are lots of different ways we can do that. some republicans will have to hold their noses and vote for democrats in the congressional race because congress, if it will not do its job, and it has not done its job, they're going to have to change them. if those folks don't do their jobs, they'll have to change them as well. this isn't about party anymore. this is about country. the republican party has always prided itself as being the party of faith, family, and country, although i think the democratic party is as well. but how do you maintain that sense of i'm a true patriot when you're allowing your leader to

actually give to russia whatever it is they think they need? ronald reagan is turning over in his grave, i can assure you of that. >> so you think this is a watershed moment? >> i have no idea. how many watershed moments can you have before people -- >> this one feels different. >> a lot of them have felt different to me. everything we thought we knew about politics has not come to be. there is a silver lining, that the country is tougher and more resilient than we thought it is. at some point in time, though, it becomes clear and obvious whether the president is working on behalf of the american people or against them, whether he's making us stronger or weaker, whether or not we're heading in the right direction or wrong direction. the more important question is, why his base will stay with him no matter what. and you know what, even if they will, it is incumbent on those people who are not in his base but like him for certain things to finally say, listen, this

doesn't work anymore. it doesn't matter how high the stock market is or what the return to the shareholders is or what the unemployment rate is. you cannot basically undermine the very essence of what the united states of america is, because that can't last for a long time. >> leave yourself out of it for now. what kind of candidate do you think needs to run in 2020, to be an effective counterpoint to trump? >> that's an excellent question, because the democratic party can always be counted on to shoot itself in the foot. if it was a constructive primary, then, as you know, the democratic party, much like the republican party, in a family food fight, you have an oman of iterations. the progressive side of the party is tilting to the left. then you have the moderates. then you have the people who fall in both categories, who are inside and outside players. just for me, this notion of having a new, young, macron come

along, that may happen. i'm more of a traditionalist. i would like somebody with great experience. i would like somebody that could restore america's stature in the world from day one. i would like to know somebody who knows exactly what they're doing, that has done it before, that can restabilize the country. >> it sounds like you're describing joe biden. >> i think i am, honestly. if i had to pick today, and he could take over tomorrow, life would be a lot better for everybody. plus he understands working class folks in a way that most people don't. for my liking, i think stability, i think certainty, i think a good world view, i think experience, all that stuff should matter more to the world at the moment than anything else. >> you know, a number of mayors are considering -- >> some really good ones. >> but what you're describing doesn't seem to speak to the mayors. no one's ever been elected president as a mayor. >> that's true.

>> and do you think mayors have the experience necessary to run the country? >> yes, actually. yes. but i want to state clearly about this, if we were in a normal time, and we're not in a normal time, we're in an abnormal time, then my view might be different about who should ascend to the nomination of the democratic party. as for mayors, i don't think there's another job in america that prepares you to be president better than mayor of a major american city. mayors are executing every day. they're in fact ceos. >> you're also more exposed, you get feedback from your constituents. >> i've gotten laced more times than i've wanted to. in the morning if my wife said, we need bread and milk, can you run to the store, by the time i

get back, i have been spoken to in ways that would make you blush. when i'm at the cleaners, at a restaurant, what happened to sarah huckabee sanders, it's happened to me. i didn't like that, that made me completely uncomfortable. obviously i don't agree with sarah huckabee sanders. but she's doing a job. and there has to be some private space for individuals that are working on behalf of the public to live. i fully believe that people ought to have a right to protest in a reasonable time, place, and manner. you can be as vociferous as you want, as passionate as you want. but at some point there has to be a line. plus i thought it was just plain rude. we're not going to beat them by being like them. >> what's your reaction to the movement among some democrats to abolish i.c.e.? >> that's a bad idea. i had, as you know, when i was mayor, a consent decree on our

police department. we have to completely reform the way our police intact and engage in community policing. we never said we were going to get rid of the police department. we said we were going to fix it. the border agents are operating at the direction of the president of the united states. everything they do is at his direction. that's where the problem is. i would not abolish i.c.e. i would refocus their attention on taking care of people and not hurting people. i can't think of a crueller thing that i've seen a politician do than separating mothers from their children. i think that really speaks poorly of the president. it doesn't reflect well on our country and it was really wrong. >> announcer: next on "the axe files." >> one of the issues that i still don't have a handle on, don't understand, and won't accept, is the number of deaths of young african-american men on the streets of america.

>> announcer: this is cnn breaking news. you're live in the cnn newsroom. i'm alex marquart in for ana cabrera. breakdown news out of los angeles where there is a possible hostage situation unfolding at a trader joe's just north of downtown los angeles, california. these are i can't really pictures from the scene, from our affiliates. but they're not live, because we have witnessed what could possibly be bodies being carried from the store. you can see there, a heavy police presence. several people have been climbing through a window and down a ladder. it is just before 4:30 p.m. in california right now. joining us on the phone is cnn national correspondent miguel marquez, based out there in l.a.

and heading to the scene. miguel, what do we know right now? i know details, there are few details, but what have we learned so far? >> reporter: very few details. we believe that this was somebody who was running from the police, possibly a car chase that went into the trader joe's. it is not clear whether shots have been fired, though there are some reports of shots being fired in the area. it is very disturbing, this is not just a trader joe's in los angeles, this is a trader joe's that i actually go to. it's a very, very dense area of los angeles. this is a very heavily-used trader joe's on a saturday afternoon. it would be packed with shoppers. there's another grocery store right across the street from it. it is a very busy section of los angeles between hollywood and downtown, an area of town called silverlake. it is shopping that this is happening in my own neighborhood.

int it's not the sort of thing one is typically accustomed to report on, alex. >> we're looking at aerial pictures, it looks like there's a golf course, very residential. what can you tell us about this neighborhood? >> reporter: it's an old, lovely neighborhood in los angeles, a very -- it's a very big neighborhood, a very large area. there's a big lake that used to be a reservoir for the city. it's now used as mainly a recreational area. it's a very hilly part of town, in the hollywood hills, on the east side of town. it is an area where just, you know, tens of thousands of people live. it's a very densely packed area as well. this is a trader joe's that would be very, very busy at this time of the day, on a saturday. >> we're looking at aerial pictures from this possible hostage situation just north of downtown los angeles in silverlake. these are not live pictures.

they are on a delay because of possible victims. what you're looking at there are people coming down what looks like a very flimsy rope ladder outside of this trader joe's. when the camera has widened out, we have seen cars essentially that have come to a standstill. there is a heavy police presence that will only grow in the coming -- well, grow very soon. we also have james galiano on the phone, a former special agent at the fbi. james, again, we don't know all that much right now. but we've seen these situations playing out time and time again. from what we do know, what is your assumption about what is happening? >> sure, alex. that's the most difficult part. the earlier reports in these kind of crisis incidents, it's difficult to distill what's actually going on. as you pointed out, we're looking at some pictures we've gone on tape delay.

a couple of things, a couple of takeaways here. the first is, any time police are in pursuit, you know, we don't understand what the motivation was for this person running. we don't know if the police had a warrant. we don't know if they saw him conduct some type of criminal activity. we don't know any of those things. they're in pursuit. what they want to do is stop that as quickly as possible. to your point and miguel's point, moving into a residential area, a place that's heavily populated, that is our number one fear. we don't want to move a situation or a potential crisis situation into that area. the police have a number of techniques to stop somebody, a pursuit intervention technique, it sounds like the suspect's vehicle crashed and they entered a trader joe's. that brings another level of fears for law enforcement in that now you're going to

introduce potential hostages into the situation. the good news is it's no longer a mobile crisis site. the bad news is you've introduced innocent folks into this, and that makes law enforcement's job in this type of situation exponentially more difficult, alex. >> very, very complicated. it's not a mobile -- it does appear to be centered around this trader joe's. james, i don't know what you can see, but what we're looking at in these aerial images, it was at least one person, it looked like a man, coming out of the front of the sliding doors of this trader joe's with his hands up. he walked around the corner about 20 feet where we can see a line of heavily armed police. it looks like they have shields and certainly are armed. james, the fact that there might be hostages, how does this impact the police response? clearly they're not going to go storming in there. >> oh, it changes it, it changes it drastically. if it's simply a barricaded

subject, you can be patient. police are looking to contain and negotiate, because there's no concern of anybody being killed either from an active shooter or somebody that's taking hostages and electing to try to hurt somebody or hurt multiple people. as we determining, post-columbine on, we're determining that there are a lot less opportunities for the negotiation phase. law enforcement has to immediately go in and interdict in these situations. what we're telling people that could potentially be caught in this, the people in trader joe's, the civilians, we're telling them run. if you're able to, run, or move, because it is much more difficult for somebody to shoot a moving target. i think the hit rate is about 4% successful on a moving target. so don't stay stationary. in too many of these instances, people are hiding behind desks,

hiding behind things that are not really cover, they're just concealment. we encourage people to run, and if you have to fight, as you see some of these people that are brought out or being gotten out, they should immediately find law enforcement and share details. what do we need to know, who are the bad guys, what kind of weaponry do they have, what did they say, was there anything that you heard? and then finally, what is the layout of the location that you are in? are there back doors, are there other entrances or exit points, are there different floors here, how many people are in the building, and those type of things. as this thing starts to develop, hopefully more information is being given to the police and they can make an assessment. i guarantee you, they're not going to sit around, they're going to move to the sound of the guns and try to stop this before anybody else gets hurt. >> james, you bring up a good point about the layout of the sto store. we all go to grocery stores,

it's a series of aisles with one main entrance. miguel, if you're still there, you mentioned this is where you shop, you and thousands of others in the silverlake area. is there anything else you can tell us about this shop in particular that is special or what the layout is and what the people inside might be dealing with, where they might be? >> reporter: it is not an enormous store. it is by most american standards, a fairly small building. lots of aisles, lots of spaces in between. lots of areas where one could take cover. but it's not an enormous store. there are -- it's kind of a warren, basically, with lots of different counters and spaces scattered throughout the store. so it wouldn't be easy for anyone to negotiate through

there. there would be ample spaces for people to get out. i don't know how much access there is out the back of the store, though. there is a parking lot, there is a shopping mall or strip mall alongside of it, so there is probably areas where they would be able to escape, where they bring the goods and groceries into the back part of the store. but it's not clear that there are employees back there that would be able to help out. trader joe's is a place that has lots and lots of assistants and help when you're in there, so hopefully there would be people to help direct them to safe parts of the store or possibly to escape as well. >> we don't really have a sense of the back of the store. what we're really seeing is the front of the store. these are shots from a helicopter. we're watching now a man come out with his hands up. i believe this is the same shot as we saw moments ago, because we are, as i mentioned before, we have a delay on these pictures. but james, back to you, what's

interesting here is we have seen at least this one man come out of the front of the store and then be met by what looks like 15 or so heavily armed police officers to the side of the store, so they are not in a line of sight to the front of the building. at the same time, to the left of the store we have seen multiple people come out of raised windows, about 15 feet or so off the ground. it could be a second floor of this store, we simply don't know. but they are coming down what looks like a rope ladder. they are being greeted at the bottom by police officers. james, if people are coming out seemingly safely from windows and from the front of the store, from those front doors, is there anything we can glean from that? >> first of all, alex, we have to acknowledge and understand that police have to treat everyone coming out of that crisis site, and i'm going to refer to it now as a crisis site, they're going to have to treat everybody with the

suspicion that they don't know who is involved in this. they don't necessarily know if the subject or subjects have additional accomplices. they have to treat everybody coming out of that as a potential armed aggressor. once they can do the sorting or triage, if you will, then make a determination on who are potential victims, can they help them by giving police the layout, giving indication of where the potential shooter or aggressor is, so they can put together what we call a hasty assault plan to make entry. another thing you're pointing out about the level of the second floor, a second floor window is generally speaking you know, 10 to 20 feet off the ground level. now, people that would be jumping or trying to get out of that, that's a concern and consideration for injuries, because anything that is twice your height, awe fa fall from t level could be a major potential mechanism of injury. police have to be, a, concerned about stopping or interdicting

whoever the perpetrator is, and b, how they're going to extricate people from second, third, however many floors of the building there are and make sure they get those folks out safely. so there's a lot going on right now for law enforcement. there's got to be an inner perimeter established and then a larger, more encompassing outer perimeter, so when they bring these folks out, they can move them outside the outer perimeter to debrief them and try to get more intelligence, and then focus in on basically closing the net, making the inner perimeter tighter and tighter around the building and potentially make entry to attempt to either extricate hostages or interdict the gunman or gunmen. >> that's what it looks like we're looking at, a growing police presence with police officers heavily armed in bulletproof gear. james, i was speculating that might be a second floor, who knows?

but the windows are fairly high off the ground, that's why they were using a ladder that police were presumably able to get up to them and get some people near those windows out. james, at this point, or at what point do the authorities try to make contact with any hostage-taker? and i need to remind our viewers, so far what we know from the lapd is just a simple tweet, where they said this is an active police incident at trader joe's near the intersection of hyperion avenue and griffith park boulevard in silverlake in los angeles. they ask people to stay clear of the area. this is clearly an active situation. james, again, at what point would they try to make contact with any sort of hostage taker and what would they first say to that person? >> alex, that is the most difficult part of these type of crisis incidents, is making those assessments in it real time. tomorrow afternoon, it's easy to sit down and say, wow, this is

what we should have done or this is what we could have done. but right now, you have potential hostages, innocent folks that you're trying to save their lives, police, law enforcement, have to make decisions in real time and it's really, really difficult. to your question with regards to how they're going to make a determination whether to go into extended negotiation, they have to get in touch with him immediately. in the 1975 movie "dog day afternoon" where police throw in a phone and wait for the bank robbers to pick up the phone, we've moved past that now. there's a number of ways to communicate. obviously they're going to call into the store and speak to witnesses who come out and find out if there's desk numbers or other ways to access. the crisis team or hostage negotiators are doing that. the cops can use megahorns or

bullhorns and call out to the person. but in this situation, where it's fluid and dynamic, as a former fbi s.w.a.t. team leader, i would want to get inside as quickly as possible. we simply cannot sit back and wait anymore while someone could go in with the intent of racheting up the body count, if that's what their intentions are. from the police perspective, this looks like a selection of a venue of opportunity. this is not an inside job. it doesn't appear that the individual or individuals that are involved in this from the bad guy perspective had time to select this venue, meaning they knew the layout and they had a plan in place or there were possibly some obstacles or barricades that were in place that they could reinforce to prevent police from coming in. if that's the case, that gives the police the opportunity to move quickly, do not give the

bad guys a chance to set up and hurt more people or to barricade doors or blockade doors. you have to move to the sounds of the guns, alex. unfortunately, in the 21st century, this is how law enforcement has to handle these things. >> if you're just joining us, we're following a possible hostage situation at a trader joe's in the silverlake area of los angeles. stay with me, we'll have much more ahead when we come back. (vo) i was born during the winter of '77. i first met james in 5th grade. we got married after college. and had twin boys. but then one night, a truck didn't stop. but thanks to our forester, neither did our story. and that's why we'll always drive a subaru.

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i am alex marquart. we're following breaking news out of los angeles where there may be a possible hostage situation under way in a trader joe's in the silverlake area of los angeles. you're looking at we have seen people coming out of this store. what you're looking at are side windows. going out of those windows, going down a rope ladderer about enit or 15 feet. we've seen several people coming out of the side as well as at least one person out of the front. as people come out of that window, out of that front door, they are running away and being -- running into the arms of police officers who will surely be asking hem what they saw, what they heard.

so far all we know from the los angeles police department is that this is an active incident at the corner of hyperion avenue and griffith park. heir asking people to please stay clear of the area. as we have been on the air we've seen the police presence growing. you can see heavily armed police officers there with their guns drawn. the police have established a perimeter. they have their bullet proof jackets on. this is clearly an active situation. i want to go back to our law enforcement analyst who spent decades in the fbi, led a s.w.a.t. team, worked on hostage rescues. what can we take away are from the fact -- beyond the very good news that several people at least have come can out of this trader joe's unharmed. is there anything we can learn from hat? >> obviously you count the mb of innocent soles you can save or

rescue or get ectruicated in a situation like that. but two they are a wealth of human intelligence. and police negotiators and officers and law enforcement members are debriefing those folks right now to find out how many folks are inered the building, what are they armed with, what were their demands. did they say anything? what's the layout of the entire building is. upstairs, down stairs. what the floor plan is. are there locked doors where people could be hiding themselves in behind some and as a former s.w.a.t. team leader, we work through these things sekwengsally and there's three things in this order that has to be done. the first is crisis resolution. we have to get in there and stop the person whossers are potentially trying to harm innocents. the consequence management.

god forbid the mursen purp traiting this has explosive devices where you need a bomb squad and those kind of folks. and last important in the chronology of these things. the last thing is the evidence collection. trying to find out the who did it and the why. what was their motivation? this appears, this venue appears to be venue of opportunity. i don't know if all was any previous history between had person that was involved in the police pursuit that ended up crashing the vehicle and enter itting. i don't know if there was previous history there. that would be interesting to be looking up and finding out. police can do that by doing all the other kinds of forensic behind the scenes look to identify who this person is and police may know who it it is. maybe there was a puengs ittal stop and the suspect ended up taking off. the main thing right now is to prevent innocent people from getting hurt.

you want to get the amsent folks out, you want to attempt to establish communication with with the subject and if it's not a barricaded subject but somebody acting as an active shooter, meaning that is going about rying to take lives, police have to make entry. you mention the folks showing up now. now is when the tactical teams are arriving because they're mot the first responders necessarily. they're showing up with the ballistic vests, heir showing up with potentially the mechanical or breaching techniques that police may need oo use to enter. the heavy weaponry, those kind of things. so we're moving into that where we have a tight inner perimeter. so hay can end up rabbiting out of the place a outer perimeter where you want to make sure you keep all the innocent bystanders away and where you bring all the folks that were potential victims towards their potential

dedebriefi dedebriefings, alex. >> it does sound like this is what you have called a target of opportunity. meaning this was not the inend itted target. we're learning from the los angeles times that has just tweeted this began as a pursuit from hollywood. we're lake. but this was a pursuit from hollywood which can ended with a car crashing next to this trader joe's. eling the l.a. times that gunman -- and they only talk about a single gunman opened fire on police officers and then ran inside the store. we have also confirmed that a 20 year old female has been taken to a -- what we assume is a nearby hospital but taken to hospital in what they say is fair condition. so that's good news can combine would the fact we have seen people coming out of this store. james, i want you to help me desiefer what i'm looking at. what i'm looking at is scores of police officers in their

ballistics and we're looking for any glimpses of good news and what i'm seeing is a lot of -- dozens of police officers without their guns chron. kind of standing around. about 50 feet from the front of this store. should we assume that their calmer posture means anything? if this was much more serious, would they all have their guns drawn? standing about 50 feet back, what does that tell us some. >> alex, i always caution our viewers that if you try to dist iltoo much from either aerial shots or video camera footage from the scene, be careful. because just because there might be a relaxed pausher on the outside, the police might have put an innerperimeter inside. and maybe they have somebody in an office but that office is surrounded so they feel

comfortable enough on the outside of the building. and that's a possibility. so i wouldn't be too much am to that, thinking there's some folks standing around outside in a relaxed poster. because this is the way we do law enforcement. if you bring one bad guy, we're bringing 100. every law enforcement agency whether it's feds, the locales, the state police, they're going to converge on that site because this started out as a hot pursuit, a police pursuit, which is exceedingly difficult for law enforcement because you take vehicle and turn that into a rolling crisis site. had it greatest fear we have is that vehicle rolls into the it a are resident's neighborhood or as in this instance crashes into a business and the person jumps out of the vehicle and iners that business. now the kn news is you've gone from a rolling crisis site to a stationary crisis site. had bad news is we don't know

yet the motivation. was this person being pursued because he had committed some heinous crime somewhere else and thought the police were responding to that and now he figures he's knot to go out in a blaze of glory? is this person had a grievance there? as you pointed out looks like by all indications this was a venue of opportunity. he just ended up there after the police pursuit. that helps law enforcement again because he's not going to be as familiar with the floor plan, the location, where people are. he probably didn't do a casing job there. but there's still other issues and considerationses. we live in an age of mass casualty incidents. we have to automatically presume that's what's going on until others with ruled out. >> and james, as you've been speaking we saw at least two more civilians being run away

from the site by police officers. i want to remind the viewers what is being reported bhie local paper out there is that this is an incident that ended -- rather it started when a car crashed into the store. it was a pursuit from hollywood and they're saying law enforcement there is saying that gunman opened fire on officers and then ran inside the store. so two more people, we think prom that scene. we've seen a number of others coming out from that store. i want to bring in our other cnn law enforcement analyst, charless ramsey, the former police commissionerer in philadelphia. when you look at this scene and i'm looking at much -- a growing law enforcement presence both medical and police for now. if you're the commissionerer in l.a., are you just pouring every resource you have into this

area? >> first of all i don't have it the it advantage of seeing what's going on. but you try to get the resources needed there as quickly as possible. and then there's always an over response sw that can cause more congestion and confusion that scene. the key is to get the right peepthral to be able to contain the scene so that the individual cannot get out. if they need go in and get any additional people out, they have to be able to do it. it's hard to tell the initial response. you're going to get a lot of police officers to move towards the scene. they have to take control of it and make sure they don't have tootoo are rr many people. >> charless, thank you. i'm getting a little bit of information from my colleague who is on the scene. he says that he sees an lapd special weapons and