Missouri Guard ordered to exit after calmer night in Ferguson

Holder: History’s simmering; it’s time for nation to talk

Participant Michael Washington holds his hands in the air during a rally in Oklahoma City, Thursday, Aug. 21, 2014, in response to the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. The Oklahoma City rally called "Hold Your Hands Up, Don't Shoot! Make Your VOTE Count Rally," featured speakers from groups including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, American Civil Liberties Union, Council on American-Islamic Relations and the gay rights organization - Cimarron Alliance. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Participant Michael Washington holds his hands in the air during a rally in Oklahoma City, Thursday, Aug. 21, 2014, in response to the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. The Oklahoma City rally called "Hold Your Hands Up, Don't Shoot! Make Your VOTE Count Rally," featured speakers from groups including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, American Civil Liberties Union, Council on American-Islamic Relations and the gay rights organization - Cimarron Alliance. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

FERGUSON, Mo. -- As tensions on the streets seemed to ease Thursday, Gov. Jay Nixon ordered the Missouri National Guard to begin withdrawing from Ferguson, the St. Louis suburb that had been rocked by protests after a white police officer killed an unarmed black teenager.

"I greatly appreciate the men and women of the Missouri National Guard for successfully carrying out the specific, limited mission of protecting the Unified Command Center so that law enforcement officers could focus on the important work of increasing communication within the community, restoring trust, and protecting the people and property of Ferguson," Nixon said in a statement.

He said order in the city had been largely restored by Thursday and that the National Guard was no longer needed.

The governor had dispatched the National Guard on Monday, after days of chaotic and often violent clashes between the police and protesters after the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old who was preparing to enter college.

As events spiraled out of control after the shooting, Attorney General Eric Holder ordered a federal investigation and visited the city Wednesday.

On Thursday, he said the unrest the country has witnessed over the past two weeks was emblematic of deeper problems that exist across the nation, where a corrosive mistrust exists in some places between the police and the people they are meant to serve.

"History simmers beneath the surface in more communities than just Ferguson," Holder said during a news conference in Washington.

"The national outcry we have seen speaks to a sense of mistrust" that exists beyond Ferguson, Holder said Thursday.

"This has engendered a conversation I think we should have," he said. "It is time to make concrete steps."

One day after meeting with Brown's family, Holder vowed that "the Justice Department will continue to stand with Ferguson."

U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill said Thursday that all of the physical evidence from the case was being flown from St. Louis to the FBI forensics lab in Quantico, Va. The evidence includes shell casings and trajectories, blood patterns and clothing, the Missouri Democrat said.

McCaskill also announced that next month she will lead a Senate hearing to look into the militarization of local police departments after criticism of the law enforcement response to the protests in Ferguson after Brown's death.

As the federal authorities look into the Ferguson shooting, the St. Louis County prosecutor, Bob McCulloch, started to present evidence regarding Brown's shooting to a grand jury.

Some critics have called for McCulloch to recuse from the case. They have questioned his ability to be unbiased, since his father, mother and other relatives worked for the St. Louis Police Department. His father was killed while responding to a call involving a black suspect.

McCulloch has rejected that notion and said he has no intention of stepping aside. On Thursday, he released a statement expanding on comments he made a day earlier and urging the governor to either dismiss him from the case or say that he has no intention of doing so.

Nixon said this week that he is not asking McCulloch to recuse. But a McCulloch aide, Ed Magee, said the governor "didn't take an actual position one way or the other."

McCulloch called for a more definitive decision and said in a statement that Nixon must "end this distraction" or risk delay in resolution of the investigation.

On Thursday, Nixon said he had no plans to take the case from McCulloch, noting that "we're all trying to do our jobs."

In addition to the local and federal investigations into Brown's shooting, Missouri's lieutenant governor said Thursday that he wants state lawmakers to look into events related to it as well.

Peter Kinder on Thursday called for the creation of a bipartisan panel of state House and Senate members to review Missouri's law allowing the use of deadly force by police officers.

Kinder also wants the panel to investigate what he describes as a "failure in communication" by state, local and federal law enforcement agencies investigating Brown's shooting and the response to the protests.

He said lawmakers also should review the state's open-records law for police investigations, to ensure the public has access to information.

St. Louis shooting

Even as calm returned to the streets, the mood in Ferguson remained tense. On Wednesday night, the St. Louis department released a cellphone video taken by a witness showing the shooting of a black man by police Tuesday.

In contrast to the slow reaction by officials in Ferguson to the shooting of Brown, Sam Dotson, the police chief in St. Louis, rushed to the scene of the shooting to provide information to the public and try to prevent the episode from fueling tensions in the community.

Dotson said two officers were confronted by Kajieme Powell, 25, who was behaving "erratically" and brandishing a knife. The officers repeatedly warned, "Stop, drop the knife," but Powell refused, Dotson said. When Powell got within 3 or 4 feet of the officers, the chief said, they shot and killed him.

Dotson has said video taken by the bystander confirmed the department's version of events. Although the video showed the man walking toward the officers and saying, "Shoot me now," it was unclear whether the knife was raised when he was shot. At least 12 shots can be heard in the video.

Dotson said the police released the video in the interest of transparency.

"I don't think any of us can deny that the tension, not only in St. Louis but around the country and the world because of the activity in Ferguson over the last 10 or 12 days, certainly has led to us making sure that we got this right," he said.

By Wednesday night in Ferguson, some of the energy had gone out of the demonstrations, and there were no clashes between the police and protesters.

Capt. Ron Johnson of the Missouri State Highway Patrol described the gathering, held on the same site as many of the recent confrontations, as calmer and smaller than in the past.

It was a night during which "there were no confrontations," he said, other than a single bottle thrown at police officers and a tense moment when two protesters turned out in support of the police officer, Darren Wilson, who killed Brown.

All told, officers made six arrests related to the protests Wednesday night. About four dozen were detained Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, said Johnson, whose agency is overseeing security in Ferguson.

Since the protests began, authorities have arrested at least 163 people in the protest area. Data provided Thursday by St. Louis County showed that while the majority of those arrested were Missourians, just seven lived in Ferguson.

The vast majority, 128 people, were cited for failure to disperse. Twenty-one face burglary-related charges.

Johnson said Thursday that the decrease in arrests showed progress was being made.

"The trend is good," he said, noting that the number of protesters also had diminished compared with recent nights.

A brief but drenching rain might have had some effect, although a few protesters spoke of weariness, too.

"I feel like they're kind of giving up," said Terrell Wilheight, an 18-year-old resident who went out to support the protests but mostly watched from the sidewalk.

Standing shirtless under a golf umbrella, he said his friends had stopped going to the protests after police shot tear gas at them.

Many of the protesters have called for the prosecution of Wilson.

To the surprise of onlookers, a man and woman showed up Wednesday holding signs in support of Wilson. Both declined to give their full names. The man, who identified himself as Chuck, 57, said he grew up in Ferguson. His partner, Dawn, 39, said they now live in St. Louis.

The pair said they had gone out to remind everyone that there was another side to the tragic story.

"We want to know what happened," Chuck said. Of Wilson, he added, "He's pretty much been persecuted in the media."

At first, passing protesters gently encouraged them to be careful. As more protesters gathered around them, shouting and jeering began.

After a water bottle was thrown and a man was placed under arrest, police officers formed a ring around the two and then drove them away in a police vehicle.

Information for this article was contributed by Joseph Goldsteing, Marc Santora, Mosi Secret and Dan Barry of The New York Times and by Alan Scher Zagier, Jim Salter, Nigel Duara, Jim Suhr, Sara Burnett and staff members of The Associated Press.

A Section on 08/22/2014

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