Michael Brown shooting: Tension on the streets of Ferguson after second night of unrest

Dozens of arrests were made and a squad car tipped over and torched outside city hall

The town of Ferguson, Missouri endured yet another tense night on Tuesday, as more than 2,000 National Guard troops joined local and state law enforcement agencies in policing streets that had been engulfed by chaos and violence a mere 24 hours previously.

Though 44 arrests were made and a squad car tipped over and torched outside city hall, the unrest was as nothing compared to the events of Monday night, when at least a dozen buildings went up in flames, looters ran rampant, and gunfire rang out across this St Louis suburb.

Meanwhile, mass demonstrations continued to grow in cities across the US, following the announcement on Monday that a St Louis grand jury had decided not to bring charges against Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot dead Ferguson teenager Michael Brown in August. The controversial shooting has come to symbolise the troubled relationship between law enforcement and the black community not only in Ferguson, but across the US.

In Los Angeles, a rally in front of police headquarters went on to block traffic on the 101 freeway, while demonstrators also caused the shutdown of major thoroughfares in New York. More than 1,000 people marched to protest the grand jury decision in Washington DC, while Oakland endured a second successive night of fires, vandalism and looting.

Protesters gathered throughout Tuesday evening outside Ferguson’s police department, as they have nightly since 9 August, when the 18-year-old Mr Brown was killed. It was here that the angry response to the grand jury verdict had first erupted. Unlike on Monday, however, the area was last night being policed in part by the Missouri National Guard, whose troops were dotted across the city on the orders of Missouri Governor Jay Nixon. West Florissant Avenue, site of some of Monday’s worst violence, was closed entirely by the authorities throughout Tuesday.

One protester said she had been standing close to Michael Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, when the grand jury decision was announced. The verdict was “devastating”, she said, but so too was the violent response. As she tried to stop one young man razing a pizza restaurant on Monday, she said, “I told him, ‘Don’t destroy our neighbourhood.’ And he said, ‘This isn’t our neighbourhood; we don’t own any of this. This is their neighbourhood and they don’t want us here.’ That’s how a lot of these young men feel; they don’t feel like they have a place in America.”

For the most part, Tuesday evening in Ferguson was peaceful, if rowdy. At one point the crowd broke away and moved to city hall, where the cruiser was set alight, but police responded quickly and in force, clearing the street using tear gas, armoured vehicles and a loudspeaker threatening arrests. Outside the police department, some of the crowd later began throwing bottles and other items such as bottles, to the dismay of peaceful protesters. Finally, the police declared the demonstration an unlawful assembly, cleared the area and forced most of the crowd home.

A 48-year-old protester from Jennings, who gave his name as Michael, had come brandishing a placard that read: “That bullshit jury was fixed!” Of the looting and arson of Monday, he said, “I don’t condone it, but that’s how a lot of young people react to frustration.” He added: “There’s going to be a lot more protest, not just here in Missouri but everywhere.”