JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — St. Louis-area authorities planning for a grand jury announcement sought unsuccessfully to station National Guard troops and armored Humvees in the Ferguson neighborhood where Michael Brown had been shot by a policeman, according to records released Tuesday detailing the state’s preparations.
The Guard wasn’t pre-emptively deployed to Ferguson’s most troubled spots, because Gov. Jay Nixon preferred to place police on the front lines for the Nov. 24 announcement that Darren Wilson, a white officer, wouldn’t be charged for killing the unarmed black 18-year-old.
Protesters upset by the grand jury decision looted stores and set fire to businesses and vehicles as images of the destruction were televised nationwide. Some residents, local officials and state legislators have since questioned why Nixon didn’t more quickly deploy the National Guard to those areas.
Nixon’s office provided hundreds of pages of documents to The Associated Press on Tuesday in response to an open-records request that had been pending since early December. The materials also were given to a legislative committee that has been holding hearings on Nixon’s use of the National Guard.
The records show that security planning began long before the grand jury announcement, as officials sought to avoid a repeat of the sometimes-violent protests that occurred after Brown was shot Aug. 9.
An internal National Guard memo, dated Nov. 18, said the proposal to send eight armored Humvees and 64 soldiers to the Canfield Green apartments “does not appear to meet Governor’s intent for initial National Guard use.”
Nixon has said that he wanted to avoid the potential for soldiers to point guns at — and potentially shoot — American citizens. He has noted that no one was killed in the Nov. 24 riots, even though many buildings were burned and vandalized.
“I think when people look back on this, they will appreciate that we showed an incredible amount of discipline,” Nixon told reporters last week.
The Guard eventually was sent to the Ferguson areas that were burned and looted after much of the damage had been done.
Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says he expects the Justice Department to announce before he leaves office the results of separate federal investigations into the Brown shooting.
