When a member of the black community was shot by a local Ferguson cop on August 9, under circumstances still undetermined, it led to several weeks of angry rioting by the largely impoverished population of this St. Louis suburb, not to mention broad popular outcry against the tactics employed by the Ferguson PD and wholesale punditry taking over primetime TV for hours on end. Fast forward several weeks when last night, Reuters reports, a police officer from the "strife-hit Missouri city of Ferguson was shot and authorities are still searching for the shooter, law enforcement officials said."
According to Lt. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar the shooting did not seem connected to protests occurring elsewhere in Ferguson. "I wouldn't have any reason to believe right now that it was linked in any way, shape, manner or form with the protests," he said. Still a question now arises: will this latest mirror image violence in Ferguson merely stoke the already latent hostilities between all members of society? Then again, the situation is not an exact mirror image as the police officer was not killed, but "merely" shot in the arm by an unknown assailant.
The details of what happened from Reuters [4]:
The officer was chasing the suspect outside the Ferguson Community Center on Saturday night when the person turned and shot him in the arm, St. Louis County Police Sergeant Brian Schellman said.
The officer, who was treated at a local hospital, returned fire but apparently did not hit the suspect, Schellman said. The shooter disappeared into a nearby wooded area, eluding arrest.
Police said earlier that there were two suspects, but detectives later determined there was only one, Schellman said.
Several hours later, an off-duty St. Louis City police officer was shot at and suffered a minor arm injury from broken glass while driving on a nearby freeway in a personal car, police said.
It was not immediately clear if the two shootings were related.
Meanwhile, a crowd of about 100 people gathered near the scene of the night's first shooting, with a group breaking off to protest at Ferguson police headquarters, according to Kareem Jackson, 27, a musician who goes by the stage name Tef Poe and is a member of the activist group HandsUp United.
"People are peaceful as a duck, just literally standing on the side of the street watching," he said in a phone interview from the site where protesters had gathered.
To be sure, if the shooting is found to have been in retaliation for the death of Michael Brown, one can be certain the duck will hardly be peaceful. Although, for the time being, when it comes to global riotwatch, all eyes remain glued to Hong Kong, where the Ferguson baton has so far been quite sucessfully passed on.
