Almost two days after two officers were shot and wounded at a Ferguson. Missouri, protest, investigators were still seeking breaks in the case, authorities said Friday.
“I cannot tell you an arrest is imminent, and there’s certainly no one in custody,” St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar told reporters Friday afternoon.
“The detectives are working this investigation around the clock, and they will not rest until we have a conclusion in this investigation,” the chief said.
Authorities don’t feel that the trail has gone cold.
“We’re not there yet. We really aren’t,” the chief said.
“It’s hard to figure out exactly if it’s one day, two days or one week or whatever it is beyond that (when finding a suspect becomes more challenging for police). It’s really when you begin to get the absence of credible information,” the chief said.
“We’re not at that point yet,” he said. “We are having the ability to track down certain leads.”
Mood of a troubled town
Meanwhile, overnight in Ferguson prayers went up, the rain came down and tensions cooled.
It was a far cry from 24 hours earlier, when tempers flared and the two officers were shot in the St. Louis suburb.
Authorities changed tactics in the aftermath of the shootings.
St. Louis County Police said it had assumed “command of the security detail regarding protests,” together with the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
Ferguson Police remain responsible for “routine policing services” in the city.
A law enforcement official said after the shootings that investigators believe they have identified two people they want to question and one of them might be the shooter.
But on Friday morning, St. Louis County Police spokesman Sgt. Brian Schellman told CNN by email that “we never identified two people. Not sure how that came about. No one is in custody.”
He wasn’t immediately available for further comment, but his comments including “no one in custody” were echoed hours later by Chief Belmar.
Late night with the President
President Barack Obama, who appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” Thursday night, condemned the attack on the officers, but said it shouldn’t detract from the main issue.
“What had been happening in Ferguson was oppressive and objectionable and was worthy of protest, but there was no excuse for criminal acts,” he said.
“They’re criminals, they need to be arrested and then what we need to do is to make sure that like-minded, good-spirited people on both sides — law enforcement who have a terrifically tough job and people who understandably don’t want to be stopped and harassed just because of their race — that we’re able to work together to come up with some good answers.”
Prayer vigil
A call for calm came at a Thursday night prayer vigil. Clergy and others gathered.
“Our hearts go out to the families of the injured officers,” a statement from vigil organizers said. “Our prayers are with these officers, their families, and every victim of violence in our streets.”
Although the streets were calm, the call for action remained the same.
Many in the vigil returned to the nearby protests, but the crowds were much smaller than the night before and the rain seemed to put a damper on emotions. No arrests were made, police said.
‘We could have buried two police officers’
Chief Belmar said several people “have been very forthright” with investigators, but authorities haven’t released the names of any possible suspects.
“We could have buried two police officers,” Belmar told reporters. “I feel very confident that whoever did this … came there for whatever nefarious reason that it was.”
3 questioned by investigators
Iresha Turner says police banged on her door in the middle of the night.
“I opened the door and stood back. I look at my chest, there’s a red dot on it,” she said. “I have my hands up, start crying. I said, ‘Please, don’t shoot me.”
Turner was one of three people who were questioned for hours by investigators early Thursday and eventually released.
But they never saw the shooting and had no idea who opened fire, she said. Turner believes police questioned her because she was in a car of people who sped away after the shooting — not because they had anything to do with it– but because they were scared after hearing gunshots, she said.
It’s not known what connection, if any, the shooter or shooters had to Wednesday night’s protest.
‘Muzzle flashes … about 125 yards away’
The shots rang out from a hill overlooking the station shortly after midnight Wednesday, at the end of a protest against the Ferguson Police Department.
Officers saw “muzzle flashes … about 125 yards away,” Belmar said.
Protesters said they had nothing to do with the shooting, saying the demonstrators believe in nonviolence.
“As the protest was dying down, someone, somewhere got violent. Now who they were and what group they were affiliated with, we don’t know,” said Antonio French, a St. Louis alderman. “In no way are they representative of the thousands of people … who have been protesting.”
In the cross hairs
Belmar believes someone targeted the police, who have faced heated criticism for months, for a reason. “These police officers were standing there, and they were shot just because they were police officers,” he said.
That department has been under fire since one of its officers, Darren Wilson, shot and killed African-American teen Michael Brown in August, and more recently since a scathing U.S. Department of Justice report documented a pattern of racial discrimination. Police Chief Thomas Jackson resigned Wednesday.
While the demonstrators’ focus was Ferguson, neither of the wounded officers works for that police department.
One is from Webster Groves, another St. Louis suburb 13 miles south of Ferguson. The officer — a 32-year-old with seven years’ experience — was shot at the high point of his cheek, just under his right eye, Belmar said.
The other was hit in the shoulder and the bullet came out the middle of his back, Belmar said. He is a 41-year-old officer with the St. Louis County Police who has been in law enforcement for 14 years.
Both men were treated and released.
What’s next?
There’s the manhunt. And then there’s the likelihood of more protests and the possibility of more violence.
Even though Jackson, City Manager John Shaw, Ferguson’s top court clerk and two police officers are gone or on their way out, some activists are vowing to keep pressing for change.
Jackson expressed optimism that, in his view, the Justice Department report concluded that Ferguson “can do the tough work to see this through and emerge the best small town it can be.”
But what are the prospects after Thursday’s shooting?
Protester Markus Loehrer worried that the shooting will undercut their message against discrimination and violence.
“It’s a shame that somebody had to take advantage of this great group,” he said, “to do something so despicable.”
And Belmar said it underscores the fact that, eight months after Brown’s death, the streets of Ferguson are still simmering and law enforcement officers there are on edge.
“This is beginning at times to be very difficult for any law enforcement agencies, anywhere, to really wrap their arms around,” he said. “I want everybody … to understand how difficult this is.”
