News desk :The US police in Missouri have clashed with protesters for a fourth night amid growing anger at the fatal shooting of a black teenager by police.Heavily armed riot police fired tear gas as they moved in on demonstrators in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson who had defied and used smoke bombs an order to disperse.Several people were arrested, two of them journalists who said they were assaulted before being released.The tension was sparked by the death of Michael Brown, 18, on Saturday.Details about the incident have been disputed but eyewitnesses said the unarmed teenager had his arms raised when he was shot multiple times by a police officer.Police say there was a struggle and the officer suffered facial injuries.Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post and Ryan Reilly of The Huffington Post said they were handcuffed and put into a police van after officers came in to quickly clear the fast-food restaurant where they were doing some work. The Washington Post reported that Lowery said he was slammed against a soda machine and plastic cuffs were put on his wrists. Reilly told MSNBC that an officer slammed his head against the glass “purposefully” on the way out of the restaurant “and then sarcastically apologized for it.” The reporters were subsequently released without any charges. Martin D. Baron, The Washington Post’s executive editor, issued a statement saying “there was absolutely no justification” for Lowery’s arrest and said the organization was appalled by the officers’ conduct.Ryan Grim, Washington, D.C., bureau chief for The Huffington Post, said in a statement that “compared to some others who have come into contact with the police department, they came out relatively unscathed, but that in no way excuses the false arrest or the militant aggression toward these journalists.”As the outrage showed no sign of dissipating, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said he would travel to the area on Thursday and called for “patience and calm” from members of the community. “While we all respect the solemn responsibility of our law enforcement officers to protect the public, we must also safeguard the rights of Missourians to peaceably assemble and the rights of the press to report on matters of public concern,” he wrote in a statement.”I am committed to ensuring the pain of last weekend’s tragedy does not continue to be compounded by this ongoing crisis.”Of those young black men and women taking to the streets, many say they have no other outlet to show their objection – not just to the way Michael Brown died, but to the way the police treats them as a community – and that they will not stop protesting until they are listened to.While demonstrations throughout have been vociferous, for the most part they have been peaceful. They were again during the day on Wednesday. But after dark, police seemed intent on enforcing what had earlier been a request that “all those wishing to demonstrate, disperse well before the evening hours”.Tear gas was used and police lines swept through roads in the suburb of Ferguson that have been the focus of the confrontations.Requests for calm have come even from the White House, but there is a sense that the young people on the streets have the moral support of many among the older generations within their community here, who also see this as an opportunity for long overdue change.
