Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
The mayor of Ferguson, Missouri, says many of the people who smashed, looted, burned and destroyed in the aftermath of protests following a fatal police shooting of a teenager were out-of-towners.
"Once the vigil dispersed the people who showed up saw their numbers and got really brave, then people started driving in from other areas to steal stuff," Mayor James Knowles told WND.
"A lot of the people aren't even from our town, but they came in and stole from our businesses and left our town in ruins, and made it look like there are racial tensions here that simply aren't what they made them out to be. Such a shame that we have people with an axe to grind, coming here to grind it," he said.
His comments as the town approached its second night since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, 18, whose death remained under investigation with a lot of the details still unclear.
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WND had reported about the chaos that erupted late Sunday as protests over the police shooting resulted in 32 arrests and two injured officers.
Brown, a recent high school graduate, was in a struggle over a police officer's gun when he was shot, according to officials. But his mother, Lesley McSpadden, rejects the official version and wants the officer who fired the lethal shots to receive the death penalty.
"We want that cop fired!" cried 
one protester.
"We ain't gonna' hurt ya', we just want the police to feel our pain," said another to Fox 2 local news.
Knowles said hackers demanding city action crashed the city's email system.
"They have targeted the police chief and me as the mayor of the town. It is very disheartening to know that people who have no first-hand knowledge of our city are doing this," he said.