2014/11/25 – The streets were quiet but fires continued to burn Tuesday following a night of violence triggered by a grand jury’s decision not to indict white police officer Darren Wilson for the August shooting death of unarmed, black teen Michael Brown.

Demonstrators taunted police, shattered windows and set fire to two St. Louis County police cars at the protest’s furious peak. Scattered, intermittent gunfire was also reported.

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said at a news conference early Tuesday that at least a dozen buildings were set ablaze and that he had heard at least 150 gunshots, none fired by police. A police officer was shot but not seriously hurt, Belmar said, although authorities later determined the shooting was unrelated to the protests.

Police had made 61 arrests; 59 of those arrested were from the area.

“I’m disappointed,” Belmar said, adding that it would have taken “10,000 policemen” to control the mayhem. “What I’ve seen tonight is probably worse than the worst night we had in August.”

The turmoil began after St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch announced that the grand jury of nine whites and three blacks, who met on 25 days over three months, had determined that Wilson should face no charges.

“They are the only people that have heard and examined every witness and every piece of evidence,” he said.

McCulloch released more than 1,000 pages of documents and testimony from the grand jury proceedings. That included testimony from Wilson, who said Brown attacked him in the patrol car, forcing him to shoot. Witnesses accounts differed on whether Brown’s hands were raised moments later when Wilson fired the fatal shots on a street, McCulloch said.

Brown’s parents have scheduled a noon ET press conference Tuesday with Al Sharpton. Benjamin Crump, a lawyer representing Brown’s family, said Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, was “absolutely shocked” when they received the news.

“She believed he would at least be charged with something,” Crump told NBC’sToday show. “She was overcome with emotion. We had just prayed before the announcement came and she really believed the system was going to work equally for her child.”

Scores of police officers in Ferguson, armed with riot gear, dispersed a crowd of about 300 overnight with volley after volley of tear gas, pepper spray and bean bags. But not before looters plundered a Walgreens, a Family Dollar and an AutoZone outlet. Other protesters torched a Little Caesars pizza restaurant and local beauty shop — among several buildings set ablaze that were continuing to light up the sky early Tuesday morning.

The chaos grounded flights in and out of St. Louis’ Lambert International Airport airlines until early Tuesday “to provide a safe environment for law enforcement activities,” the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Much of the crowd had been dispersed by about midnight. There were no other official reports of arrests or injuries.

Monday’s violence — reminiscent of the unrest that rocked this St. Louis suburb for several days following Brown’s death last summer — came despite efforts by Brown’s family, civil rights activists, local and state authorities and President Obama to tamp down anger in the wake of the grand jury’s findings. “There’s never an excuse for violence,” Obama said.

Still, Ferguson resident Malik Rhasaan, a community organizer with Hands Up United, said the carnage was nothing compared with the sight of Brown’s body lying in the street for several hours following his death. “They have insurance. They can rebuild,” said Rhasaan, 42. “The life of Mike Brown can’t be rebuilt. Our patience cannot be rebuilt.”

Richard Royal, a manager at a local Sonic restaurant who was told by police to close up early Monday, said he understood the frustration and anger at the grand jury’s decision, but said the violence was unnecessary. “We could have done something better, like a boycott, that would have hit them in their pockets,” said Royal, 32.

Demonstrators reacted more peacefully in several other cities, where police were braced for raucous protests. Authorities initially reported that gatherings were mostly peaceful.

Immediately following the announcement, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri said the decision “does not negate the fact that Michael Brown’s tragic death is part of an alarming national trend of officers using excessive force against people of color, often during routine encounters. Yet in most cases, the officers and police departments are not held accountable.”

The ACLU said that while many police officers “carry out their jobs with respect for the communities they serve, we must confront the profound disconnect and disrespect that many communities of color experience with their local law enforcement.”

Ron Hosko, president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, described Wilson as “a victim of a politicized agenda that deemed him guilty until proven innocent.”

“Although he will walk free, his life has been forever changed, as he has been exploited in a cynical effort to turn civilians against cops in fulfillment of an anti-law enforcement agenda,” said Hosko, a former FBI assistant director.

U.S. Conference of Mayors President Kevin Johnson, an African American who is mayor of Sacramento, said in a statement, “The nation’s mayors strongly believe that there should have been open-court proceedings in the case of the officer-involved shooting of Michael Brown so that the evidence could have been presented in a public forum, and a verdict could have been rendered by a jury.”

Source: Yamiche Alcindor, Greg Toppo, Gary Strauss and John Bacon

USA Today