FERGUSON, Mo. — The governor of Missouri was the first person to speak at the news conference on Friday morning. But as has been the case since Capt. Ronald S. Johnson of the State Highway Patrol first entered the drama of race, violence and trust swirling in this St. Louis suburb, the veteran trooper dominated it.

Captain Johnson, a burly and plain-spoken Missouri native, cited the Bible, preached tolerance and simultaneously represented both law and order and the fear and anger of seething residents. He turned a news conference into a town hall meeting, waded into the crowd and seemed to listen as much as he spoke while he stood at the podium, the governor by his side, to discuss the fallout from the shooting death of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer.

He listened as resident after resident voiced angry and emotional concerns about law enforcement tactics. He made plain his frustration with the local authorities. And he pleaded with a city to maintain the order that on Thursday night allowed the air to be filled with honking horns and cigarette smoke, not cries of pain and plumes of tear gas.

“We have to make sure that we don’t burn down our own house, that we don’t go down there and vandalize our own buildings,” Captain Johnson said. “We can stand on the sidewalk and we can talk about our issues, we can talk about what we want and what we need, and a conversation that needs to happen, we can make that happen. What I don’t want is us to go down and burn our own neighborhood. That does not prove a point.”