US Attorney General Eric Holder was due to visit Ferguson, Missouri, yesterday, hours after nearly 50 protesters were arrested in the 11th straight night of demonstrations over the killing of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer.
The St Louis County prosecutor’s office also was expected to begin presenting evidence to a grand jury investigating the Aug. 9 shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in a case Governor Jay Nixon vowed would be treated as a “vigorous prosecution.”
Holder said he planned to visit Ferguson, a predominantly black St Louis suburb of 21,000 residents, to be briefed on the progress of a separate civil rights investigation he has ordered into the Brown killing.
In Ferguson, some said they hoped Holder’s visit would lead to a speedy arrest and prosecution of the police officer involved in the shooting, while others cautioned against hasty justice.
Jason Schmidt, a 28-year-old black man who works for a temporary agency, said he hoped the federal government’s involvement would lead to “the killer paying for his actions.
“... If this was done to any other race, to any other place, in any other situation, I don’t think it would have taken this long to get justice,” Schmidt said.
Another resident, 66-year-old retired Vietnam War veteran Walter Garrett, also black, called for patience.
“I hope that they don’t move too fast trying to get this guy but take their time to get all the facts in,” he said. “You don’t want to rush it and have him get off if it turns out he is guilty.”
In a special message to the community published online by the St Louis Post-Dispatch, Holder said about 40 FBI agents have been assigned to the case, along with prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office in St Louis.
Hundreds of people have already been interviewed, Holder said, and federal medical examiners have performed an independent autopsy, the third conducted in the killing.
“Our investigation into this matter will be full, it will be fair, and it will be independent,” Holder said.
Eyes of the world
The turmoil has generated international headlines and exposed simmering racial tensions in Ferguson, whose police force, political leadership and public education administration are dominated by whites.
The case also has re-ignited a national debate over racial disparities in the US criminal justice system, even drawing sharp words on Tuesday from top United Nations human rights envoy Navi Pillay, a native South African.
“I condemn the excessive force by the police and call for the right of protest to be respected,” she said in Geneva.
Police and the governor have insisted that thugs or outside agitators have caused most of the trouble.
On Tuesday, demonstrators were noticeably fewer in number and more subdued than on previous nights. Onlookers milled about as civic activists and members of the clergy mingled with protesters.
