FERGUSON, Mo. — They stood in the cold in front of the Ferguson Police Department, listening on radios as the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, Robert P. McCulloch, read his statement on Monday, reality dawning that they were not going to hear what they wanted to hear.
During McCulloch’s announcement, Michael Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, and stepfather, Louis Head, stepped up onto a platform where protest leaders were standing.
“Defend himself from what!” McSpadden yelled, when McCulloch spoke of Officer Darren Wilson defending himself.
She bowed her head and tears started streaming down her cheeks.
“Everybody wants me to be calm,” she said, her eyes covered with sunglasses. “You know [what] them bullets did to my son!”
“They still don’t care,” she yelled. “They never going to care.” McSpadden then sank her head into her husband’s chest and wept vigorously.
Head then turned and began to yell. “Burn this down,” he repeatedly shouted.
The crowd then began to roar. Some rushed toward the fence near where the police were lined up. Representatives for the family helped them down off the platform and ushered them away, through the crowd.
Officers in riot helmets and shields came out. Soon came the tear gas and smoke bombs, the random sounds of bullets, the chaos that was almost as predictable as the verdict everyone expected. Cars and buildings were set ablaze, and businesses vandalized. And no one in the crowd seemed quite certain how it would play out.
It was part of a daylong scene of chaos and seething anger, frustration, and grief, a mix of emotions that ebbed and flowed all day before the announcement and after it. Head, before and after was talking about system change, not violence, but like most in the crowd he battled his emotions, not always winning.
As day turned to night on Monday and the prosecutor’s announcement got closer, the frustration and fury swelled on the streets here in the heart of Ferguson, setting the stage for an outburst that had been months in the making.
Several hundred people were massed outside the county courthouse in Clayton and near the Police Department to hear the decision. After the announcement, the crowd erupted in anger, converging on the barricade where police in riot gear were standing. They pushed down the barricade and began pelting police with objects, including a bullhorn. Officers stood their ground.
Some in the crowd reportedly tried to stop others from taking part in the violence.
As a couple of demonstrators approached the Police Department building, a woman asked them to protest the right way and pulled them into a prayer circle. Shortly after that, 15 uniformed officers came out to monitor the protests.
Barricades were erected outside the county courthouse earlier, and more than 20 Missouri state troopers assembled with rifles, 3-foot batons, riot shields, and other equipment. Several nearby businesses boarded up their windows.
In other US cities, including Los Angeles and New York, thousands of people rallied late Monday passionately — but initially peacefully — to protest after the grand jury declined to indict Wilson, the Associated Press reported.
About 100 people holding signs that read ‘‘The People Say Guilty!’’ blocked an intersection in downtown Oakland, Calif., after a line of police officers blocked them from getting on a highway on-ramp.
In Los Angeles, which was rocked by riots in 1992 after the acquittal of police officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, police officers were told to remain on duty until released by their supervisors.
While about 100 people gathered in Leimert Park, others held a small news conference demanding police change their policies and release as quickly as the names of those killed the names of the officers who shot them.
At Cleveland’s Public Square, at least a dozen protesters held signs Monday afternoon and chanted ‘‘Hands up, don’t shoot,’’ which has become a rallying cry since the Ferguson shooting. Their signs reference police shootings that have shaken the community there, including Saturday’s fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who had a fake gun at a Cleveland playground when officers confronted him.