Authorities arrest 35 in protest over Missouri shooting

[September 11, 2014]  By Eric M. Johnson
 
 (Reuters) - More than 100 demonstrators tried to block a U.S. highway and 35 people were arrested in clashes with authorities on Wednesday in a protest over the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen by a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, police said.

Protesters sitting or standing in the road around Interstate 70 on-ramps near where Michael Brown, 18, was shot and killed by Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9 were arrested, St. Louis County Police spokesman Brian Schellman said.

The afternoon demonstration was generally peaceful, but a number of protesters hurled glass bottles, rocks and bricks at police, Schellman said.

Four people were arrested on charges they assaulted police officers, and 32 faced charges of unlawful assembly. One person was charged with both, Schellman said. Officers received minor injuries, he said.

Police closed the highway on-ramp to traffic and told demonstrators not to enter the highway, Missouri Department of Public Safety spokesman Mike O'Connell said.

Protest organizers had been warned that it would be unlawful and dangerous to enter the highway with traffic on it and that they would be arrested if they attempted to do so, O'Connell said.

Protesters were also told they could not hang signs on the overpass, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper reported.

Organizers told the newspaper the protests involved Missouri Governor Jay Nixon's refusal to replace the St. Louis County prosecutor investigating the fatal shooting.

"They are not going to allow us to get on the highway as we planned. But we did tie them up for a few hours," St. Louis lawyer Eric Vickers told the paper in the late afternoon.

The protests came after Ferguson city leaders confronted demands for reform from an angry crowd on Tuesday night at their first public meeting since Brown's death.

The shooting fueled a national debate on race relations in the United States after nightly protests descended at times into violence and rioting in Ferguson.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien; Editing by Peter Cooney and Ken Wills)

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