Police are additionally coming face-to-face with another enemy: hopelessness.

“There are two kinds of demonstrators out here,” Lyfe Yusen, 40, of Jennings, said as he stood on the sidewalk watching the West Florissant protest Monday night. “There are the ones that are here to make a stand over injustice. And the ones who don’t give a (expletive) and think they have nothing to live for.”

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Washington-based Police Executive Research Forum said differentiating between the two groups is the greatest challenge facing officers on Ferguson streets.

“Most people are there to protest,” Wexler said. “But you can’t make the mistake of treating everyone the same way. The police need to appeal to community leaders. They are critical to establishing calm.”

Houston said the role social media has played in bringing outsiders to Ferguson cannot be discounted.

Twitter in particular, he said is “intimately” connecting people around the world to the situation in the no longer obscure St. Louis suburb.