There was no escalation in violence outside police headquarters in Ferguson, Missouri, overnight on Thursday – no shots fired, no arrests made and no one with anything but disgust for the mystery gunman who had put the city back on edge.



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Instead, anxious police and protesters showed mutual restraint as demonstrations resumed in drizzling rain and the search continued for the person who shot two police officers on Wednesday night in what chiefs described as an ambush.

“There is a sense of unease, a sense of nervousness among the officers,” Lt Gerald Lohr, St Louis County police’s commander for the night, told the Guardian. “They’re all human. They all have wives and children to go home to. The fact that two officers got shot puts everyone at unease. But the expectation is that they’ll be professional. It’s not personal.”

The injured officers were released from hospital earlier on Thursday. While one is suffering pain from the wounds left as a bullet entered his shoulder and exited his back, the bullet that entered the other officer’s face under his right eye remains lodged beneath his ear.

Confounding expectations that they would put on an angry, military-style display of strength to deter a repeat of the double shooting, a small number of officers stood quietly without riot gear beside police SUVs late on Thursday while protesters gathered on the road outside.

Lohr was heard instructing the officers to relax, stand at ease and try to radiate calm. They hung further back than in previous standoffs, avoiding traditional back-and-forth clashes that have led to dozens of arrests over intense nights of clashes since last summer.

“It’s intentional,” said Lohr, while clutching a tin of snuff tobacco. “When they’re closer and you have protesters in officers’ faces, that tends to escalate things. It’s harder to yell at somebody when they’re 30 yards away.” Some officers returned early from vacation to work the shift.

Demonstrators returned the gesture by protesting and chanting peacefully, allowing cars to pass through the main drag where they were assembled, and even agreeing to disperse simultaneously at the unthinkably respectable hour of 11pm in a show of discipline and focus.

Ferguson officer Lieutenant Gerald Lohr in front of officers guarding the police headquarters. Photograph: Jon Swaine/Guardian

“If you want to go home, this is a formal dismissal,” said Dhoruba Shakur, a 24-year-old protest leader, through a megaphone. “Usually we trickle away, the police snatch four of the last few people and then that is told with the footage of us out in the streets earlier on.”

“We’re not out here to feel good,” said Shakur. “We’re here to win. We need to be more and more strategic.”

Throughout the crowd there was a sense of sadness and quiet concern that the shootings could blight a protest movement that has remained largely peaceful through eight tumultuous months. While Jon Belmar, the county police chief, alleges that the gunman was “embedded” with the protesters, demonstrators fiercely dispute any association.

“I hate that it happened,” Michael Makin, 19, of Ferguson, said of the attack. “It could just make us all look bad. But no matter what happens, we have got to keep the movement going, keep it positive and make changes for the better. We can’t let youth go to waste.”

At a multi-faith prayer vigil earlier in the night, dozens gathered with candles in a parking lot to show their respect for the families of the injured officers and to pledge their continued support to those protesters who would denounce such violence.

Rev Starsky Wilson, who is a co-chairman of the Ferguson Commission established by Governor Jay Nixon to work out how to heal the St Louis suburb, delivered a biblical attack on the unidentified gunman. “We come to curse all of those who would stand in the midst of peaceful protest and cast forth shots that bring violence,” he said.

Later, two spotters sat atop the police headquarters overlooking Tiffin Avenue, the dark and upwards-sloping street from where the shooter is believed to have taken aim on Wednesday night. The road leads away from the police station towards several residential side streets, in which a gunman could easily have slipped away.

Earlier on Thursday, three people living on one of those streets – Lamont Underwood, Iresha Turner and Martez Little – told the Guardian they were released without charge after being questioned for hours following a dawn raid at their home by heavily armed police. Turner said she and Underwood were followed after fleeing Wednesday’s protest when shots rang out.

A spokesman for St Louis County police confirmed people had been released. “We can confirm that several people were questioned today. None are still in police custody and no arrests have been made.” There were unconfirmed reports that police had two new suspects they were trying to track down, one of whom may have been the shooter.

The incident left Underwood further disenchanted with police, nine days after Ferguson’s criminal justice system was sharply criticised in a report by the Department of Justice, leading to the departures of six senior officials and police officers including the police chief. The report was prompted by nights of unrest after the fatal shooting on 9 August of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer.

“I feel disrespected,” said Underwood, 47. “I kept telling them I didn’t know anything about who shot the cop. Eventually they said they believed me.”

Despite his regrets over the shooting, Makin, the young protester, said he would be returning to the streets again and again. “I’m sick and tired of police brutality against young black men,” he said, a Guy Fawkes mask lifted from his face and covered in scrawled slogans such as “peace ’n love”.

Yet Lohr suggested that as resignations continued to tumble out of Ferguson’s city administration and police promised to implement reforms, disgruntled residents needed to be willing to turn a new leaf.

“People in the community have to be willing to move forward, maybe to move past things that have happened,” he said. “We can all agree to disagree. There’s a perceived injustice. But at this point we have to move forward.”