Two police officers were shot and seriously injured early Thursday near the Ferguson, Mo., police headquarters, after a tense evening in which protesters and police--and, at times, protesters and other protesters--had faced off outside the building.
Police said both of the wounded officers were still in serious condition, but their injuries did not appear life-threatening. One, a 41 year-old officer on the St. Louis County police force, was struck in the shoulder. The other, a 32-year-old on the police force of Webster Groves, Mo., was struck in the cheek. The bullet wound up lodged near his eye.
“Fortunately, with both officers, we don’t have any remarkable long-term injuries,” St. Louis County police chief Jon Belmar said in a news conference Monday. “We’re lucky.”
The shots were fired after midnight, after a night of demonstrations that followed the news that Ferguson’s police chief, Thomas Jackson, would step down next week.
Social video of the demonstrations outside police headquarters in Ferguson, Mo., captures the scene before and after two officers were shot. (The Washington Post)
[WATCH: Video shows moment of Ferguson shooting]
Jackson was in charge last summer when a white Ferguson officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, setting off months of protests. He had also been blamed in a Department of Justice report that said the Ferguson police had disproportionately targeted black residents.
The Ferguson police building had been the scene of regular nightly protests since November, when a grand jury declined to indict the officer, Darren Wilson.
But the protests that began Wednesday evening were different, witnesses said: the crowd was bigger, swelled by some out-of-town protesters who’d come after the news of Jackson’s departure. The police seemed more aggressive, and there was infighting between protesters.
“It was a bad atmosphere, you could feel it in the air,” said Rasheen Aldridge, a key protest organizer
At one point, one protester actually struck another over a longstanding fight over who was financially benefiting from the events of Ferguson, and who was truly there for the community. Another larger scuffle broke out a short time later.
St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar says the two officers shot during a protest in Ferguson, Mo., aren't expected to have long-term injuries. (AP)
Aldridge said he and others tried to refocus the crowd’s attention on the police department, with chants that would remind them of their common cause. Police began to make arrests, and at one point a line of officers advanced with riot shields, to push protesters away from the headquarters building, and into a parking lot across the street.
Around 11 p.m., the crowds and police began to dissipate, but Johnetta Elzie and several other protesters stuck around in hopes of securing the release of three people who had been arrested that night. Elzie said that about 40 protesters were left when shots rang out.
Police and protesters both said the shots did not come from the crowd still remaining outside the station, but rather from a street that ran away from the station, up a nearby hill. The shots were fired from about 125 yards away, police said. The bullets struck officers who were standing in front of the station.
Belmar, the county police chief, described it as “an ambush.”
“These police officers were standing there and they were shot,” Belmar said at an earlier news conference Thursday morning. “Just because they were police officers.”
Elzie, the witness, said she looked back at the police.
“As I’m turning to look at the police, I see protesters on the ground crawling, trying to get to their cars,” she said. “I saw the police were on the ground too.”
A minute later, Elzie said, the police who had been on the ground stood up with their weapons drawn, pointed uphill. She saw one officer being dragged back through the grass. Her immediate fear, she said, was that the police would respond with force and that she might get caught in the crossfire. But police did not shoot back.
Eventually, she said, a pastor and another protester escorted her across the street from where the bullets came so she could retrieve her car and leave.
Belmar said police believed the shots were fired from a handgun, and that they had recovered shell casings that might have come from this shooting. Although the sound of gunfire has been reported several times during the months of protests that followed Brown’s death, this is the first time that anyone has been reported shot.
The FBI is also involved in investigating the shooting, a law enforcement official said Thursday.
[Visualizing the rapid racial change in Ferguson over the past decade]
At mid-day Thursday, the county police descended on a house in the area as part of the investigation into the shooting, and have brought people in for questioning, according to Sgt. Brian Schellman, a spokesman for the department. But he said no arrests have been made so far.
Belmar was careful not to assign blame to the protesters themselves. But he called the atmosphere surrounding the protests “very troubling” and said it can be difficult for officers to properly police these gatherings.
“The responsibility of last night’s shooting lies with whoever did that shooting,” Belmar said. “I want to be very clear about that. But it is a very difficult environment to work in.”
Thursday night’s shooting seemed to revive a bitter debate about American policing, which began with Brown’s killing, and the hyper-militarized response of local police to protests in Ferguson.
Since then, there have been outcries after police killed a 12 year-old in Cleveland and an unarmed man in Madison, Wisc.--and after a New York police officer was not indicted for the choking death of an un-armed man in Staten Island.
There have also been violent episodes aimed at police in recent months. In September, two police officers in the St. Louis area were fired upon, and one of them was hit in the arm; police said the separate incidents did not appear tied to any protests.
Two New York police officers were gunned down in their squad car in December, an episode that garnered international attention and was followed by officers speaking out about feeling targeted and dehumanized.
On Thursday in Missouri, Belmar pointed to what happened in New York, saying that his department came very close to seeing what happened there.
“We could have buried two police officers next week over this,” he said.
In Ferguson, Brian Fletcher--a past mayor and a candidate for city council--said his adult daughter was on the family’s front porch with a friend around midnight when they heard the gunshots.
After learning from Twitter that police officers may have been shot, she immediately woke up her parents.
Residents and local business owners are “angry and they’re starting to become very bitter” toward the protesters, said Fletcher.
He defended the leadership’s response to the DOJ report. “It’s been a week and several resignations, which is pretty fast action, and yet it seems like the protesters want blood, literally.”
Michael Brown’s parents condemned the shooting of the two officers.
“We reject any kind of violence directed toward members of law enforcement,” Brown’s parents said in a statement released through their attorney on Thursday. “It cannot and will not be tolerated. We specifically denounce the actions of stand-alone agitators who unsuccessfully attempt to derail the otherwise peaceful and non-violent movement that has emerged throughout this nation to confront police brutality and to forward the cause of equality under the law for all.”
Although the motive and identity of the shooter in Ferguson is not known, Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, blamed leaders of anti-police protests.
“What we have are hatemongers and race baiters who are exploiting the tragedy of Ferguson to their advantage, who make people who have been oppressed feel empowered to act against authority figures,” Pasco said. “This has been playing out to varying degrees around the country. There has been a spike in these attacks against police since Ferguson, but it certainly isn’t anything knew.”
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. condemned the shootings in a statement Thursday, saying that the Justice Department was ready to help in the investigation.
“This heinous assault on two brave law enforcement officers was inexcusable and repugnant,” Holder said. He added: “Such senseless acts of violence threaten the very reforms that nonviolent protesters in Ferguson and around the country have been working towards for the past several months.”
Wesley Lowery, in St. Louis, and Kimberly Kindy, Sari Horwitz and Justin Moyer, in Washington, contributed to this report.
Mark Berman is a reporter on the National staff. He runs Post Nation, a destination for breaking news and developing stories from around the country.
Sandhya Somashekhar is the social change reporter for the Washington Post.
David A. Fahrenthold covers Congress for the Washington Post. He has been at the Post since 2000, and previously covered (in order) the D.C. police, New England, and the environment.
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