FERGUSON, MO, AUGUST 20 (RIA Novosti) — Deploying the National Guard to race-related rallies over the killing of an unarmed African-American teenager by a white police officer was an overreaction, local shop assistant Sylvia Ekford told RIA Novosti.
“I don’t think it was necessary to deploy the National Guard. It’s just some bad apples down there. Those folks down there trying to break windows, going into stores and looting. I don’t believe that’s people living in this area,” Ekford told RIA Novosti.
“The police department – and white people period – try to analyze us. They can’t analyze us. They don’t understand us as people. All of us is not like the little thugs and gang members. There’s gangs in every nationality. The police stereotype us and put us all in a basket and say we’re all the same,” she said.
Ferguson, a mostly African American suburb of St Louis with some 21,000 residents, has been rocked by protests since the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed teen, while walking with a friend down a residential street on the afternoon of August 9.
Missouri National Guard troops have been deployed to tackle the violence, which has grown more fierce as peaceful protestors were joined by violent looters from New York and California, police said. Law enforcers have been criticized for the heavy-handed use of tear gas and rubber bullets.
