National Guard ordered out of US riot town

National Guard troops withdrew Thursday from a US town gripped by nearly two weeks of protests over the fatal police shooting of a black teenager, as new details emerged about the white officer who pulled the trigger. Demonstrations in the Missouri town of Ferguson cooled late Wednesday after Attorney General Eric Holder met the parents of Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old student shot dead on August 9, igniting protests that frequently turned violent and stirred racial tensions. The initial police response to the protests in the majority black town served only to aggravate demonstrators, some of whom armed themselves in response to what they said were unnecessarily aggressive tactics by the mostly white local force. State troopers and then the National Guard were sent in to improve security, and by Wednesday night, following the Holder visit, tensions on the streets of Ferguson appeared to be easing, with police arresting only six people -- compared to 47 on Tuesday. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said the National Guard, deployed on Monday, were no longer needed.  They had had the strictly limited role of protecting a police command center, allowing law enforcement personnel to deal directly with protesters and rioting. ‘As we continue to see improvement, I have ordered the Missouri National Guard to begin a systematic process of withdrawing from the city of Ferguson,’ Nixon said, according to AFP.