Protests spread across US

Missouri's governor ordered hundreds more National Guard troops on Tuesday to the St. Louis suburb rocked by rioting after a white policeman was cleared in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager, while the local mayor said the governor did not do enough to protect businesses from looting. Attorneys for the family of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old shot to death in Ferguson by officer Darren Wilson in August, condemned as biased the grand jury process that led to Monday’s decision not to bring criminal charges against Wilson. The killing in Ferguson, a predominantly black city with a white-dominated power structure, underscores the sometimes tense nature of US race relations. Violent protests and looting flared after the St. Louis County grand jury’s decision, with Governor Jay Nixon calling the resulting damage ‘heartbreaking.’ About a dozen Ferguson buildings burned overnight and 61 people were arrested on charges including burglary, illegal weapons possession and unlawful assembly, police said. Police said protesters fired guns at them, lit patrol cars on fire and hurled bricks into their lines. Police fired tear gas and flash-bang canisters at protesters. Criticizing the governor’s response to the unrest, Ferguson Mayor James Knowles said the National Guard ‘was not deployed in enough time to save all of our businesses,’ according to a news agency.