NYTimes | Despite
persistent and increasingly angry calls from the public to release the
officer’s name, Chief Jackson said the officer required protection after
numerous death threats had been made.
Computer hackers, saying they
were outraged by police conduct, now have also joined the fray.
Anonymous,
the loosely organized group of international hackers, said on Twitter
that it had broken into Ferguson’s municipal computer system. It
released details about city workers and posted photos of Jon Belmar, the
chief of the St. Louis County police who is conducting the
investigation into the shooting, as well as his wife, son and daughter.
It also posted his address and phone number. The group threatened to
bring down city, county and federal networks if the police overreacted
to rallies and protests.
On
Wednesday night, scores of police officers in riot gear and in armored
trucks showed up to disperse protesters who had gathered on the streets
near the scene of the shooting. Some officers perched atop the vehicles
with their guns trained on the crowds while protesters chanted, “Hands
up, don’t shoot.” A police spokesman said that some demonstrators had
thrown Molotov cocktails at officers and that some had tried to set
fires. The police used tear gas on demonstrators, and some protesters
said rubber bullets had been fired at them. Police said one officer
appeared to have suffered a broken ankle after being hit by a brick.
The
police made more than 10 arrests. Among those arrested was Antonio
French, a St. Louis alderman, who had been documenting the protests on
social media, his wife said on Twitter.
Two
reporters covering the protests also said they had been arrested inside
a McDonald’s for trespassing and later released without charges or an
explanation. The reporters, Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post and
Ryan J. Reilly of The Huffington Post, both said they had been handled
roughly by the police.
