Videos posted to Twitter by McKesson show St. Louis police and Federal Protective Service officers arresting people who sat down outside the courthouse.
Advertisement
County officials say that they are bracing for another turbulent night.
Some protest groups were critical of police.
In a statement on Monday, St Louis County executive Steve Stenger said county police would immediately take charge of “police emergency management” in Ferguson and surrounding districts.
“It was a remarkable amount of gunfire”, Belmar said.
No officers were injured, the department said.
St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar gestures during a news conference, Monday, August 10, 2015, in Clayton, Mo. All 10 charges are felonies.
The elder Harris told the newspaper shortly after 3 a.m. that his son had just gotten out of surgery.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch condemned the overnight violence in prepared remarks to the Fraternal Order of Police, Reuters reported.
“My son was running to the police to ask for help, and he was shot”, Mr Harris said. The man fired again on the officers when he became trapped in a fenced-in area, the Belmar said, and all four officers fired back. All four officers have been placed on administrative leave. “It’s all a bunch of lies…”
Belmar told The Associated Press: “They’re not going to take the street tonight”.
The shooting happened around 11:15pm. He said his son, who planned to attend a St. Louis technical college to train as an electrician, was shot between eight and 12 times, an account that has not been confirmed by police.
“There is a small group of people out there who are intent on making sure we don’t have peace that prevails”, Belmar said.
The violence, according to Belmar, erupted Sunday when two groups of agitators apparently began shooting at each other, disrupting what had been peaceful demonstrations.
Nonetheless, Gaskin says he expects Monday night to be free of reactive violence, thievery and destruction.
Sunday’s day of remembrance for Brown had been peaceful until a handful of protesters grew rowdy later in the evening.
Harris was charged with 10 different crimes as a result of the shoot out including four counts of assaulting police officers.
The shooting of a suspect by plainclothes officers in Ferguson is drawing criticism from protest leaders.
Earlier Sunday, the situation was peaceful as marchers began at the site where Michael Brown was shot on August 9, 2014.
She and others were also concerned because police were not wearing body cameras.
“There are a lot of emotions – I get it”, the police chief said. He said police first increased their presence after reports of looting. Stokes’ family disputes that he had a gun and said he might not have heard the commands. Five people were arrested, according to records McGuire released. Brown’s death also prompted greater scrutiny of racial bias within the US criminal justice system, giving rise to the “Black Lives Matter” movement that gained momentum from other high-profile killings of unarmed minorities by white police in cities such as New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Cincinnati and most recently Arlington, Texas.
At least one of the incidents was an officer-involved shooting that occurred after police came under heavy gunfire, said St. Louis County Police spokesman Shawn McGuire.
Jeff Roberson/AP County police said they arrested protesters who wouldn’t disperse from the roadway. The officers returned fire from inside the vehicle. They then pursued the man on foot. Belmar said it is common to use plainclothes officers.
“He was running for his… life because someone was shooting at him”, Tyrone Harris, Sr., said in a telephone interview from his St. Louis-area home. Protest groups were quick to criticize the police response to protesters who gathered late Sunday along West Florissant Avenue.
Advertisement
Brown, 18, had committed a strong-armed robbery of a store minutes before having a confrontation with Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
