A policeman raised his rifle and pointed it directly at us
There was no tear gas, no gunshots overnight. But the peaceful protest in Ferguson escalated just before midnight, as police moved to clear the crowds. There was mace, and there were aggressive and physical arrests.
Among the peaceful protesters, the bloggers, the schoolteachers we met surveying views of the marchers so they could answer the questions of their students, there were two angry men of a type we hadn’t met before but who we won’t quickly forget.
One white and one black. One in a police uniform; one wearing a blue bandanna as a facemask.
The white police officer was wearing a black uniform, and training his gun on us. And the people around us. I now can’t actually remember why, but it was a moment of tension.
We were on the street filming. He raised his rifle and pointed it directly at us, at protesters, at a young social media guy. And he kept it there, sweeping it from side to side, a la some TV cop show.
One or two of his colleagues advised him to put it away, quietly, but he seemed uninterested in their advice. It was the crowd that shouted back at him, even as he had his weapon trained on them: “Put The Gun Down”.
The protesters policing the police.
Read more: police shoot dead a second black man in St Louis, Missouri
The black protester who we won’t forget, in his blue bandanna, was telling us, to “Put The Camera Down”, sounding for all the world like a policeman. But he was riled, angry, furious, staring us in the face, with the bandanna covering all but his eyes. He was screaming at our cameraman Ben that we should not take another shot. Not one more shot. “Don’t you do that,” he said, because he told us he knew what we looked like, and he meant to make good on his threats.
Within moments, he walked away to another camera crew and pulled the camera from a man’s shoulder, smashing it to the ground. He didn’t say why he felt as he does. But it was threatening and ugly and for him clearly the media are guilty of a great crime.
It was an all round ugly end to a night that at times, left you imagining that calm might be possible.
The grand jury will begin its deliberations later today to consider whether the policeman who shot Michael Brown should be indicted.
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