Ferguson leaders urge residents to stay home and "allow peace to settle in"

Community leaders call for calm amid violence in Ferguson, Missouri

FERGUSON, Mo. -- Ferguson's leaders urged residents Tuesday to stay home after dark to "allow peace to settle in" and pledged several actions to reconnect with the predominantly black community in the St. Louis suburb where the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown has sparked nightly clashes between protesters and police.

Ferguson pleads with residents to stay indoors

According to a statement from the city, Ferguson's mayor, City Council and other employees have been exploring how to increase the number of African American applicants to the law enforcement academy, develop incentive programs to encourage city residency for police officers and raise funds for cameras that would be attached to patrol car dashboards and officers' vests.

"We plan to learn from this tragedy, as we further provide for the safety of our residents and businesses and progress our community through reconciliations and healing," according to the statement released Tuesday.

Ferguson's mayor, James Knowles tried to explain the lack of black officers in his town.

"We continue to try and diversify our police department," he explained to CBS News correspondent Mark Strassman. "It's very difficult to get. There's not a huge pool of applicants we can get interested or involved in police work in the African American community."

The National Guard arrived in Ferguson Monday but kept its distance from the streets during another night of unrest.

Protesters filled the streets after nightfall Monday, and officers trying to enforce tighter restrictions at times used bullhorns to order them to disperse. Police deployed noisemakers and armored vehicles to push demonstrators back. Officers fired tear gas and flash grenades.

31 arrested overnight in Ferguson, Missouri

Capt. Ron Johnson of the Missouri Highway Patrol, who is in charge of security in Ferguson, said bottles and Molotov cocktails were thrown from the crowd and that some officers had come under heavy gunfire. At least two people were shot and 31 were arrested, he said. He did not have condition updates on those who were shot. Johnson said four officers were injured by rocks or bottles.

However, St. Louis County spokeswoman Candace Jarret says 57 people were booked at the county jail, that does not include people taken to municipal jails elsewhere in the region. She did not have information on how many additional arrests were made.

Just four of the 57 arrested had Ferguson addresses. Fifty-four were cited for failure to disperse, two for unlawful use of a weapon, and one for interfering with an officer. Sixteen of those arrested are from out of state.

One peaceful demonstrator, Charles Bourrage, told CBS News correspondent Vladimir Duthiers that a small group of violent protesters were working against the message of the larger crowd.

"We grabbed those that were trying to move the violence forward and moved them back. We grabbed them literally," Bourrage said.

CBS affiliate KMOV reports that a "Code 2000" was issued around 11:30 Monday night, meaning 50 additional officers were requested to come to the scene.

Does Ferguson's police force have a race problem?

Demonstrators no longer faced the neighborhood's midnight-to-5 a.m. curfew, but police told protesters that they could not assemble in a single spot and had to keep moving. After the streets had been mostly cleared, authorities ordered reporters to leave as well, citing the risk from the reported gunfire.

A photographer for Getty Images was arrested while covering the demonstrations and later released. Two German reporters were arrested and detained for three hours. Conservative German daily Die Welt said correspondent Ansgar Graw and reporter Frank Herrmann, who writes for German regional papers, were arrested after allegedly failing to follow police instructions to vacate an empty street. They said they followed police orders.

Johnson said members of the media had to be asked repeatedly to return to the sidewalks and that it was a matter of safety. He said in some cases it was not immediately clear who was a reporter but that once it was established, police acted properly.

Citing "a dangerous dynamic in the night," Johnson also urged protesters with peaceful intent to demonstrate during the daytime hours.

The latest clashes came after a day in which a pathologist hired by the Brown family said the unarmed black 18-year-old suffered a bullet wound to his right arm that may indicate his hands were up or his back was turned. But the pathologist said the team that examined Brown cannot be sure yet exactly how the wounds were inflicted until they have more information.

Witnesses have said Brown's hands were above his head when he was repeatedly shot by an officer Aug. 9.

The independent autopsy determined that Brown was shot at least six times, including twice in the head, the family's lawyers and hired pathologists said.

Private autopsy conducted for Brown family unlikely to carry much weight

The St. Louis County medical examiner's autopsy found that Brown was shot six to eight times in the head and chest, office administrator Suzanne McCune said Monday. But she declined to comment further, saying the full findings were not expected for about two weeks.

A grand jury could begin hearing evidence Wednesday to determine whether the officer, Darren Wilson, should be charged in Brown's death, said Ed Magee, spokesman for St. Louis County's prosecuting attorney.

Wilson has been provided legal counsel through the Fraternal Order of Police's union office in St. Louis, Duthiers reported.

A third autopsy was performed Monday for the Justice Department by one of the military's most experienced medical examiners, Attorney General Eric Holder said.

Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Brown's family, said Michael Brown's funeral and memorial service would be Monday, though the time and location haven't been finalized.

A Justice Department official confirmed to CBS News that Holder spoke Tuesday afternoon with the federal medical examiner who conducted the autopsy to discuss the results of the examination. The autopsy results will not be made public.

Holder was scheduled to travel to Ferguson later this week to meet with FBI and other officials carrying out an independent federal investigation into Brown's death.

The Justice Department has mounted an unusually swift and aggressive response to Brown's death, from the independent autopsy to dozens of FBI agents combing Ferguson for witnesses to the shooting.

Obama said he also spoke to Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon about his deployment of the National Guard in Ferguson and urged the governor to ensure the Guard was used in a limited way.

Crump said Brown's parents wanted the additional autopsy because they feared results of the county's examination could be biased. Crump declined to release copies of the report.

"They could not trust what was going to be put in the reports about the tragic execution of their child," he said during Monday's news conference with forensic pathologist Shawn Parcells and Dr. Michael Baden, who has testified in several high-profile cases, including the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

The second autopsy, Crump said, "verifies that the witness accounts were true: that he was shot multiple times."

Parcells, who assisted former New York City chief medical examiner Baden during the private autopsy, said a bullet grazed Brown's right arm. He said the wound indicates Brown may have had his back to the shooter, or he could have been facing the shooter with his hands above his head or in a defensive position across his chest or face.

"We don't know," Parcells said. "We still have to look at the other (elements) of this investigation before we start piecing things together."

Meanwhile, the start of fall classes has been postponed again in Ferguson.

Classes in the Ferguson-Florissant School District were scheduled to begin on Aug. 14, five days after 18-year-old Michael Brown's death. The district initially postponed the start of school until Monday due to safety concerns, then decided to wait another full week until Aug. 25.

The nearby Jennings and Riverview Gardens school districts have also canceled classes Tuesday after starting back up just days earlier.

Classes in the Normandy school district began as scheduled on Monday. Brown was a 2014 graduate of Normandy High School.

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