2,200 troops deployed in Ferguson

Police officer says his conscience is clear, in first public statements on TV

Some 2,200 US National Guard troops sent to the St. Louis area helped police stave off a second night of rioting and arson after a grand jury declined to indict a white policeman in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager.

Meanwhile, sympathy protests spread to several cities in the United States.

President Barack Obama appealed for dialogue, and the US attorney general promised that a federal probe into the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in August will be rigorous.

Officer Darren Wilson, the policeman who shot Brown, said his conscience is clear.

Wilson made his first public statements on Tuesday during an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos.

He told Stephanopoulos he has a clean conscience because "I know I did my job right".

Wilson was placed on leave on Aug 9, the day on which he fatally shot Brown.

Career is over

Wilson had been with the Ferguson police force for three years before the shooting. He told Stephanopoulos that Brown's shooting was the first time he had used his gun.

Wilson's lawyer, Jim Towey, later told CNN that his client's life as a police officer is over.

Despite a beefed-up military presence in Ferguson, a police car was torched near City Hall as darkness fell, and police fired smoke bombs and tear gas to scatter protesters. A crowd of demonstrators later converged near police headquarters, scuffled with officers - who doused them with pepper spray - then smashed storefront windows as they fled under orders to disperse.

Still, the crowds were smaller and more controlled than on Monday, when about a dozen businesses were set ablaze and others were looted amid rock-throwing and sporadic gunfire from protesters and volleys of tear gas fired by police. More than 60 people were arrested then, compared with 44 arrests on Tuesday night, police said.

"Generally, it was a much better night," St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar told reporters early on Wednesday, adding there was very little arson or gunfire, and that lawlessness was confined to a relatively small group.

Monday's racially charged protests were more intense than disturbances that followed the shooting, although much smaller than widespread rioting and looting that followed the acquittal of police officers in the beating of black motorist Rodney King in Los Angeles two decades ago.

Elsewhere, protests swelled from Los Angeles to Washington on Tuesday.

Protests spread

In New York, police used pepper spray to control the crowd after protesters tried to block the Lincoln Tunnel and Triborough Bridge and marched to Times Square.

Protesters in Los Angeles threw water bottles at officers outside police headquarters and later obstructed both sides of a downtown freeway with makeshift roadblocks and debris, authorities said.

In Oakland, California, protesters set rubbish on fire in the middle of a street and swept onto a downtown stretch of Interstate 980, briefly halting traffic. Demonstrators also blocked traffic in Atlanta, where 21 arrests were reported.

Four people were arrested for blocking a road in Denver, where police said several hundred people turned out for a protest march. In one of the night's biggest rallies, 1,500 people took to the streets of Boston, although police reported just a handful of arrests. Inmates at a correctional facility in Boston taped Brown's name on a window in solidarity with protesters who marched outside.

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said about 2,200 National Guard troops were being deployed to the Ferguson area by late Tuesday, more than triple the number from the day before, to help support local law enforcement.

"Lives and property must be protected," Nixon said. "This community deserves to have peace."

AP - AFP - Reuters

(China Daily 11/27/2014 page12)