Rick Jervis

USA TODAY

Law enforcement officials had more than three months from the August shooting death of Michael Brown to Monday's reveal of the grand jury decision to prepare for protests.

Yet many of the tactics used by Missouri prosecutors and police — from scheduling the announcement at night to not deploying National Guard troops — puzzled experts and are being questioned by residents in the wake of destructive protests in Ferguson that appeared to spiral out of control.

"They said they had a plan. They said they were going to protect our businesses and community," said Rob White, pastor of Peace of Mind Church and a protest organizer. "That plan failed miserably."

Police arrested 61 people Monday night in protests that included at least 150 gunshots, tear gas volleys, looting and at least a dozen burned businesses. The protests happened shortly after St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch announced that a grand jury declined to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in Brown's death. Wilson, who is white, shot and killed an unarmed Brown, 18, who was black, on Aug. 9 after an apparent altercation between the two.

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said at a news conference early Tuesday that Monday's protests were worse than those seen in the days immediately after the shooting and couldn't have been stopped even if 10,000 officers had been trucked in. "I don't think we can prevent folks who really are intent on destroying a community," he said.

Col. Ronald Replogle, superintendent of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, was more blunt.

"Last night was a disaster," he said Tuesday. "We will work harder and we will not have a repeat of what happened last night."

On Tuesday, Ferguson Mayor James Knowles criticized the delay in deploying National Guard troops to help quell the violence. In a press conference, he called the delay "deeply concerning" and said the Guard troops were available but were not deployed when city officials asked.

The troops had been readied last week by Gov. Jay Nixon as the grand jury announcement neared. But as gunshots rang out in the night and looters torched buildings, they were nowhere to be seen. Officials with Unified Command, which include the St. Louis County Police and the Missouri State Highway Patrol, among others, did not respond to a request for interview.

Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, a Republican, also blasted Nixon's hesitancy to deploy the National Guard quicker. "Why weren't they in there at the first sign of an overturned police car or a smashed police car window with a show of force that would have stopped this?" Kinder said Tuesday on Fox News. "The governor owes the people of Missouri a lot of explanations on that, beginning this morning."

Nixon, a Democrat, promised to ramp up National Guard presence in the St. Louis region from 700 to 2,200 by Tuesday night.

"Criminals intent on lawlessness and destruction terrorized this community," he said at a press conference. "We must do better and we will."

Waiting until evening to announce the grand jury's decision also confounded some analysts, given the likelihood of violent protesters to lash out under the cover of night.

"It seemed a bizarre choice to me," said Ken Novak, head of the Criminal Justice and Criminology Department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. "There's a lot of things related to all of this that are difficult or impossible to control. The announcement was one thing you can control."

Announcing at night would make it harder for police to identify the more violent protesters in a crowd and restrain those intent on looting and other criminal activity, said Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations.

"For people who are inclined to riot and start fires, there's a feeling you can get away with it more at night," he said.

But waiting until schools were out, businesses closed and streets mostly empty of motorists may have been a smart strategic decision on behalf of prosecutors and police, said Paul Wertheimer, a crowd control expert who runs L.A.-based Crowd Management Strategies.

Wertheimer said he still remembers TV images of rioters pulling out innocent motorists in the middle of the day during the 1992 Los Angeles riots and beating them on live television. Announcing at night ensured that most residents wouldn't become entangled in violent protests, he said.

"It's a lot easier to clear a street when 90% of the people are protesters than during rush hour in a busy section of town," Wertheimer said.

It's also up to protest organizers to single out and remove hard-core rioters and looters in their midst, he said. "We can't blame the police for everything," he said. "There's only so much they can control."

As of Tuesday morning, more than 50 businesses in the Ferguson area had reported some damage from the rioting and 15 had fire damage, said Rebecca Zoll, president and chief executive of North County Incorporated, a regional economic and community development advocacy group.

After receiving assurances for months from police and state leaders that their businesses would be protected, business owners, many of whom were still rebuilding from this summer's protests, felt betrayed by the latest spasm of violence and destruction, she said. "They feel like they were sacrificed," Zoll said.

Police and state leaders appeared to be walking a fine line between protecting lives and property while not displaying an overt show of force, such as armored vehicles and riot-geared troops, that sparked such controversy and criticism during the August protests, said Novak, the criminologist.

"They learned from criticisms that they received back in August and tried to temper this a little differently," he said.

But TV images of restrained police presence didn't tell the whole story. On the ground near the police station on South Florissant Road, police were belligerent toward even peaceful protesters and blocked any demonstrations, pastor White said. Meanwhile, West Florissant Avenue, near the site of Brown's shooting, was nearly devoid of police, allowing looters to target businesses, he said.

"Where were the National Guard? Where was that police presence?" White said. "We want answers to that."

The true test comes Tuesday night, Novak said. "It'll be interesting to see what tonight brings us," he said.

Contributing: Yamiche Alcindor in Ferguson, Mo.