MOSCOW, August 21 (RIA Novosti) - A police officer keeping order at a protest against the police killing of an African-American teenager in the US town of Ferguson, Missouri was suspended from duty after pointing a gun at a protester and threatening to kill him, NBC news reported Thursday.
Wednesday night, an unidentified officer pointed his semi-automatic assault rifle at a protester and threatened to kill the unarmed man in abusive language, St. Louis county police representative Brian Schellman told NBC. Footage of the incident has been uploaded to YouTube.
Local law enforcement commanders “strongly feel these actions are inappropriate,” said Schellman, assuring NBC that the officer was suspended and the episode would be investigated.
On August 9, Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old African-American, was shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. The killing has triggered a wave of mass protests against police brutality and racism in Ferguson, which have been continuing for 12 nights in a row. The authorities have deployed the US National Guard to the town, while the police have used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds. Many African-Americans, which comprise more than a half of Ferguson’s population, claim police officers, mostly Caucasians, harass them on a regular basis.
