He was the man who seemed to have pulled Ferguson back from the edge.

After nights of unrest, during which police fired teargas and rubber bullets at protesters who hurled abuse, rocks and occasionally worse, captain Ron Johnson signalled that things had changed by leading a peaceful march of demonstrators through the centre of the town on Thursday.

“We’re going to have the approach that we’re in this together,” the state highway patrolman had told reporters in his deep baritone a couple of hours earlier, after being handed control of the protests over the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old, by a police officer.

Johnson won early plaudits for his hands-off strategy, and his easy manner with people who had taken to the streets persuaded many that he felt their pain. He allowed a carnival-like demonstration to swell later on Thursday on the spot where earlier clashes had raged.

“I think we handled it just right,” he said the next morning, pledging to repeat the tactics that night.

But the euphoria faded fast. Late on Friday, pockets of rioting brought back the armoured trucks, riot gear and teargas. Later still, after police retreated, small crowds began looting shops, most notably one where Brown allegedly shoplifted cigars before he died.

Governor Jay Nixon finally had enough. On Saturday afternoon, the embattled Democrat declared a state of emergency and a curfew from midnight to 5am, effective immediately, in this northern suburb of St Louis that is home to about 21,000 people.

“We can’t have looting and crimes at night,” he said. “We can’t have people fearful.”

After all the heady acclaim, Johnson abruptly found himself forced to abandon his policy of giving demonstrators the “chance to express what they are feeling”. From Saturday night, he had to enforce an order for them to stay in their homes.

Ron Johnson, left, answers questions at a news conference in Ferguson as Missouri governor Jay Nixon listens. Photograph: Charlie Riedel/AP Photograph: Charlie Riedel/AP

Johnson’s appointment seemed a savvy one. Announcing his role on Thursday afternoon, having wrested control of the protests for his state troopers from St Louis County, Nixon stressed that the trooper, who is 51, “grew up in this area”. The contrast with the outsiders who had led the earlier crackdown was clear.

Nixon and Thomas Jackson, the city’s police chief, have seemed distant and unsteady in public appearances since the shooting. By contrast Johnson speaks with a statesmanlike authority and empathy uncommon in a regional transport police chief whose job more typically involves urging the state’s drivers to stop texting at the wheel.

Hours before his appointment, he visited a local high school to reassure rattled students the violence would stop. One girl was crying, he said.

“And I can tell you that I almost had tears in my eyes,” he told reporters, as tears welled in his eyes. “But I told her we’re going to make a change, we’re going to make a difference.”

He gave the students his address, and told them to write him a letter about how the crisis had affected them. “And when this is over, I am going to read that to the troopers,” he said.

Unlike Jackson and 94% of his officers, as well as Nixon and St Louis County chief Jon Belmar, who are all white, Johnson, like most of the young demonstrators, is African American. Asked by the Guardian on Thursday night how he was managing to get his message through, he said, “I know a lot of them” and “we have to be reflective of our community.”

After marching with them, he told protesters to hearty applause they could stay as long they wanted if they kept traffic moving.

A 27-year veteran of the state highway patrol, Johnson leads almost 150 officers in troop C, which covers eastern Missouri. He began his career in the same troop, won promotions, then left in 1999 for a job near Kansas City. But, as he told reporters earlier this week: “I called my wife one day and said you know what? We need to go back home, go back to our family and friends.”

He was promoted to captain and returned to where he began his career.

But for all the emphasis on Johnson’s local roots, he has graduated to a position of authority and an affluent lifestyle from which most young men in Ferguson are far removed.

He and his wife, Lori, live in a four-bedroom house in neighbouring Florissant, in an area where the population is two-thirds white and the average income is almost $80,000 – more than two and a half times the typical earnings where Brown was killed, where 81% of residents are black. His wife has run several businesses, according to state records, and the couple have been photographed together in St Louis Town & Style.

Johnson’s daughter, Amanda, said in an interview published by the University of Kansas, where she was an honours student, that her father was one of her role models and best friends.

“I have been able to watch him continue to achieve greatness and promotions my whole life,” she said. “His leadership and advice have set a foundation and a standard for the ways that I interact with and lead others.”

Johnson hugs a demonstrator after taking over the policing of protests. Photograph: David Carson/AP Photograph: David Carson/AP

His bold decision to force the police to remove the gas masks from their belts and step back on Thursday appeared successful. Hundreds of demonstrators flocked to the centre of Ferguson, chanting in memory of Brown while honking their horns and playing music. The captain was hauled through packed crowds to appear in front of cable news cameras, frantically wiping the sweat from head and face with a handkerchief. The peace held.

But then came Friday. While some hailed Johnson as a hero – hugging him, chatting to him and even laying hands on him – other residents directed rage at him for the disclosure that morning, by the separate Ferguson police, of a report alleging Brown committed a robbery minutes before his death. Lawyers for Brown’s family condemned it as “character assassination”. Johnson was left saying he wished he had been consulted. “I would have communicated it differently,” he said.



It was an unexpected consequence of Johnson’s pointed policy of allowing residents to join reporters at press conferences. Having been pushed out in front as a public figurehead, he found himself viewed by residents unfussed by jurisdictional technicalities as the man in charge of the entire Michael Brown saga, leaving him to defend decisions over which he had no control, while attempting to prevent them fuelling further chaos on the streets.

He was to be disappointed. Following an evening of largely peaceful demonstrations, Missourians awoke on Saturday to familiar-looking TV footage. Armoured trucks and fresh clouds of teargas rolled along West Florissant Avenue soon after midnight after bottles and rocks were thrown at police. Three officers were injured. Young men had later vandalised and stolen from stores with no police to be seen. The governor decided on drastic action.

Business owner Mustafa Alshalabi cleans up his store after it was looted. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Standing alongside Nixon on Saturday, Johnson tried hard to explain that the teargas was set off by one officer acting independently. He said that he got back out of bed and returned to the scene, telling the officers: “Make sure we’re not going to use any force that’s not necessary.” But left unsaid was that what followed this call was more looting.

A humbled Johnson was forced to support a draconian Nixon plan sharply at odds with Thursday’s liberal idyll: the five-hour curfew. “We won’t enforce it with tanks, we won’t enforce it with teargas,” he said. Lambasted by furious audience-members for the lack of public disclosure about the inquiry into Brown’s shooting, which is being led, controversially, by the county authorities, he was forced to stress that he had no role in that either.

For the vilified officers of St Louis County, it was a moment of pure schadenfreude. “This has been a dismal failure,” said detective Gabe Crocker, the president of the St Louis County Police Association. “The highway patrol’s approach on Saturday was let them loose. Don’t engage them. But they still rioted, they still looted. It got so bad that the very tactics they said they wouldn’t use, they had to use.

“I get what they were trying to do with Johnson. But I think it was a cheap attempt to gain political points by putting an African American in charge. I get what they were trying to do, but it just didn’t work.”

And for some young people on the streets in Ferguson, a cop is a cop is a cop.

Johnson tried peacemaking on Friday afternoon with a group, some with bandana-covered faces, who were gathered outside the convenience store that Brown allegedly robbed. Their leader, who called himself Mike Mike, was complaining that one of the police officers guarding the store had disrespected him.

People stand in front of the store that was the scene of the alleged theft by Brown, after it was looted early on Saturday. Photograph: Charlie Riedel/AP Photograph: Charlie Riedel/AP

Johnson noted the commotion, approached and asked what had happened. As the youths clustered around he listened to the grievance, nodded and said all opinions deserved to be aired and respected, and that his officers knew that.

Mike Mike listened but did not appear mollified. His friends piped up about other alleged slights, and Johnson tried a bit of flattery. “I talked about you on CNN,” he told Mike Mike. “I think your voice is important. And remember, just now I walked over to you.”

The youth half-smiled. “OK, so I’m good with Captain Johnson. But what about these other officers?” He shook his head. Johnson was cool, he said, but it was a shame he wore a badge. “We wish you were a firefighter, or something, because you are ice.”

Afterwards, Mike Mike told the Guardian he respected Johnson as a human being. The badge, however, remained a problem. “It’s the fact that he’s a cop. It’s the company he keeps.”

A few hours later, a handful of looters attacked the store.

Some proved even more difficult to win over. As Johnson gave media interviews amid a crowd of protesters on Thursday night, Kesheara Ross, 26, listened to his remarks and snorted.

There would be no meaningful police reform, she predicted. “They’re not going to make any changes. I’ve heard all the same stuff after other shootings.” She gave the captain a withering look. “Uncle Tom-ass brothers.”