Police used smoke bombs and tear gas Wednesday, Aug. 13, at people who gathered to protest for a police shooting and killing an unarmed black teenager in Missouri.
Read also: Renewed Rioting After Killing of Missouri Teen
According to CBS, the protest became intense after police told the protesters to go home. The heavily armed police also used smoke bombs and tear gas to the crowd after several people threw Molotov cocktails at them.
About 50 people were protesting in the middle of a street, along with a few hundreds people on the side.
“We have to stand and fight here right now!” the crowd shouted after police start throwing tear gas at them.
Two reporters, Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post and Ryan Reilly of The Huffington Post, said they were detained while reporting the incident. Lowery said he was slammed against a soda machine and handcuffed. The two were released without any charges.
Detained, booked, given answers to no questions. Then just let out
— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 14, 2014
He’s about to walk through the door that, just a few minutes later, he would slam my head against on purpose. — Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 14, 2014
Every single officer we came into contact with ignored my repeated requests for a name or badge number of the officer who assaulted me.
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 14, 2014
Martin D. Baron, The Washington Post’s executive editor, said there “was absolutely no justification for his arrest,” and the publication was terrified by the police’s action.
Anonymous, the hacker group, released a possible name of the officer Thursday and warned it would release further personal information of the person if the police department did not respond.
Missouri authorities insisted Thursday they would not release the name of the officer, who was suspected to fire at the teen Michael Brown, and said the name released by an online hacker was “not even an officer with St. Louis County or Ferguson,” RushHourDaily reported.
“We can’t let anonymous groups or even public groups pressure us into doing anything we don’t think we should do,” St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office Spokesman Edward Magee said.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Robert Cohen / St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP
