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 President Barack Obama appealed for dialogue, and his attorney
general promised that a federal probe into the Aug. 9 slaying of
18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, would be rigorous.
Officer Darren Wilson, the policeman who shot him, said his
conscience was clear.
Despite a beefed-up military presence in Ferguson, a police car was
torched near City Hall as darkness fell, and police fired smoke
bombs and tear gas to scatter protesters. A crowd of demonstrators
later converged near police headquarters, scuffled with officers who
doused them with pepper spray, then smashed storefront windows as
they fled under orders to disperse.
Still, the crowds were smaller and more controlled than on Monday,
when about a dozen businesses were torched and others were looted
amid rock-throwing and sporadic gunfire from protesters and volleys
of tear gas fired by police. More than 60 people were arrested then,
compared with 44 arrests on Tuesday night, police said.
"Generally, it was a much better night," St. Louis County Police
Chief Jon Belmar told reporters early Wednesday, adding there was
very little arson or gunfire, and that lawlessness was confined to a
relatively small group.
Police and Guard troops mounted a vigorous defense of City Hall out
of concern it might come under attack by arsonists, but damage to
the building was limited to some shattered windows, Belmar said.
"We saw some protesters out there that were really out there for the
right reason," he said. "Unfortunately, there seems to be a few
people who are bent on preventing this from happening in the most
ideal way that it could."
The unrest surrounding Brown's death in Ferguson, a predominantly
black city with a white-dominated power structure, underscored the
often-tense nature of U.S. race relations and strained ties between
African-American communities and police.
Monday's racially charged protests were more intense than
disturbances that followed the shooting itself, though much smaller
than widespread rioting and looting that followed the acquittal of
police officers in the beating of black motorist Rodney King in Los
Angeles two decades ago.
An enlarged contingent of National Guard troops surrounded
businesses damaged in Monday's violence. Groups of men also gathered
on the roofs of some boarded-up stores to protect the buildings from
further damage. Armed with fire extinguishers and, one said, guns,
they planned to stay all night.
DEMONSTRATIONS SPREAD
Elsewhere, protests swelled from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., on
Tuesday.
In New York, police used pepper spray to control the crowd after
protesters tried to block the Lincoln Tunnel and Triborough Bridge
and marched to Times Square. Several hundred also marched in Harlem,
chanting "Racist police!"
Protesters in Los Angeles threw water bottles and other objects at
officers outside city police headquarters and later obstructed both
sides of a downtown freeway with makeshift roadblocks and debris,
authorities said.
In Oakland, California, protesters set rubbish on fire in the middle
of a street and swept onto a downtown stretch of Interstate 980,
briefly halting traffic. Demonstrators also blocked traffic in
Atlanta, where 21 arrests were reported.
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Four people were arrested for blocking a roadway in Denver, where
police said several hundred people turned out for a protest march.
In one of the night's biggest rallies, an estimated 1,500 people
took to the streets of Boston, though police there reported just a
handful of arrests. Inmates at a correctional facility in Boston
taped Brown's name on a window in solidarity with protesters who
marched outside.
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said about 2,200 National Guard troops
were to be deployed to the Ferguson area by late Tuesday, more than
triple the number from the day before, to help protect homes and
businesses and to support local law enforcement.
While no serious injuries were reported, police were investigating
the discovery of a body in a car in Ferguson, saying they could not
rule out a possible link between the death and Monday night's
rioting.
The grand jury decision shifted the legal spotlight to a U.S.
Justice Department investigation into whether Wilson violated
Brown's civil rights by intentionally using excessive force and
whether Ferguson police systematically violate rights through
excessive force or discrimination.
Wilson, who could have faced charges ranging from involuntary
manslaughter to first-degree murder, told ABC News there was nothing
he could have done differently in his confrontation with Brown that
would have prevented the teenager's death. "The reason I have a
clean conscience is because I know I did my job right,” he said,
adding he would have acted no differently had Brown been white.
Wilson's lawyer, Jim Towey, later told CNN that his client's life as
a police officer was over.
Documents released by prosecutors said that Wilson, who was placed
on administrative leave after the shooting, told the grand jury
Brown had tried to grab his gun, and that the officer felt his life
was in danger when he fired.
"I said, 'Get back or I'm going to shoot you,'" Wilson said,
according to the documents. "He immediately grabs my gun and says,
'You are too much of a pussy to shoot me.'"
(Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Julia Edwards
in Washington, Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, Carey Gillam in
Kansas City, David Bailey in Minneapolis, Fiona Ortiz and Mary
Wisniewski in Chicago, Jonathan Kaminsky in New Orleans, and Laila
Kearney and Letitia Stein in New York, Eric M. Johnson in Seattle.;
Writing by Jon Herskovitz and Cynthia Johnston; Editing by Will
Dunham, Bernard Orr,Ian Geoghegan, Ralph Boulton and W Simon)
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