REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, FERGUSON -- Some 2,000 National Guard troops dispatched to the St. Louis area helped police stave off a second night of rioting and arson after a grand jury declined to indict a white policeman in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager, as sympathy protests spread to several US cities.

President Barack Obama appealed for dialog, and his attorney general promised that a federal probe into the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in August would be rigorous.

Officer Darren Wilson, the policeman who shot him, said his conscience was clear.

Despite a beefed-up military presence in Ferguson, a police car was torched near City Hall as darkness fell, and police fired smoke bombs and tear gas to scatter protesters. A crowd of demonstrators later converged near police headquarters, scuffled with officers who doused them with pepper spray, then smashed storefront windows as they fled under orders to disperse.

Still, the crowds were smaller and more controlled than on Monday, when about a dozen businesses were torched and others were looted amid rock-throwing and sporadic gunfire from protesters and volleys of tear gas fired by police. More than 60 people were arrested then, compared with 44 arrests on Tuesday night, police said.

"Generally, it was a much better night," St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar told reporters early Wednesday, adding there was very little arson or gunfire, and that lawlessness was confined to a relatively small group.

"We saw some protesters out there that were really out there for the right reason," he said. "Unfortunately, there seems to be a few people who are bent on preventing this from happening in the most ideal way that it could."

The unrest surrounding Brown's death in Ferguson, a predominantly black city with a white-dominated power structure, underscored the often-tense nature of US race relations and strained ties between African-American communities and police.

Ikuti Whatsapp Channel Republika