For the seventh straight night, protesters took to the streets of Ferguson, Mo.
Despite a short-lived calm Thursday, the protests have taken a violent turn in the past 48 hours — with reports of looting and rioting on Friday.
One person was shot during the unrest Saturday and is now in critical condition. Police were not able to track down the shooter, but did arrest seven others arrested for failure to disperse the scene. (Video via The New York Times)
Officers were again in riot gear and driving armored vehicles. Police later confirmed they'd fired some tear gas to disperse the crowd surrounding the wounded shooting victim. (Video via RT)
This, despite an earlier promise from the state Highway Patrol's Ron Johnson that the police response would no longer be heavy-handed. The show of force Saturday night, he says, was necessary.
JOHNSON: "It was effective. We sustained the health of those businesses, and we also sustained the safety of the protesters that were out [and] around tonight.” (Video via CNN)
Saturday's tense standoff came after Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and imposed a five-hour curfew for the city’s 20,000 or so residents.
That move appeared only to further anger residents, already upset over this press conference from Friday. Ferguson police identified the officer who killed Michael Brown, and revealed Brown was a suspect in a robbery. (Video via PBS)
Many Ferguson residents, Brown’s family included, saw it as an effort to smear the teen's name. (Via The Daily Beast)
Forty FBI agents are now in St. Louis reportedly going door-to-door looking for witnesses of Brown's shooting death. The governor, meanwhile, has not said how long the curfew is expected to last.
