Law enforcement in Ferguson, Missouri, has repeatedly blamed
outside instigators for violent acts that have led police to use
teargas, rubber bullets, and pain-inducing sound cannons against
protesters. Last night was no exception.
I arrived at the main protest site at about 7:30 p.m. and encountered
a calm scene – West Florissant Avenue was empty of traffic, the police
having blocked off a mile-or-so-long stretch of the thoroughfare.
Demonstrators who stopped there were reminded by police, and at times by
clergy or other community members, to follow a new police rule:
to keep moving. The National Guard arrived in Ferguson yesterday, but I
didn't see them. Their duties are purportedly limited to guarding the
temporary police command center, a grouping of trailers in the parking
lot of a nearby shopping center.
The peace did not last. Later last night, I joined a scrum of
reporters gathered around Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson as
he gave a press briefing a few feet beyond the internal perimeter,
surrounded by a line of about a dozen police officers. The press
briefing ended abruptly when Captain Johnson, whom Gov. Jay Nixon put in
charge of security in Ferguson last week, broke away from the group and
rushed back to the protest area, and was quickly surrounded by a crowd
of protesters. It was difficult to see what was happening in the crowd,
but by 10 p.m. Johnson had parted from the protesters and a line of
about 150 police officers wearing riot shields and holding batons was
facing off against a crowd across a distance of about 10 feet.
Police officers point their
weapons at demonstrators protesting against the shooting death of
Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri on August 18, 2014.
© 2014 Reuters
