The governor of Missouri, Jay Nixon, on Sunday blamed the local police chief in Ferguson for renewed violence in the city, as the US department of justice stepped in to order an independent autopsy on the body of the teenager shot dead by a police officer a week earlier.

Nixon condemned the release by the local Ferguson force on Friday of security camera footage and a police report that implicated Michael Brown, 18, in a petty theft at a convenience store a few minutes before he was shot dead. The DoJ, which is leading a civil-rights investigation into the killing, also made it clear at the weekend that it had opposed publication of the pictures.

“I think it had an incendiary effect,” Nixon said in an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation.

The unrest in Ferguson continued on Sunday night when police fired smoke canisters from armoured vehicles into a crowd of about 400 demonstrators, including families with children, and watching media.

The Missouri Highway Patrol said it was using the smoke canisters to disperse “aggressors” who were trying to infiltrate a law enforcement command post.

In Washington, a spokesman for Eric Holder, the attorney general, cited the “extraordinary circumstances” of the case for the decision to order the postmortem examination, which will be carried out by a federal medical examiner. The circumstances of Brown’s death remained murky and Brown’s family demanded a federal autopsy in an attempt to bring clarity.

The recriminations flew after police were forced to fire teargas at a hardcore of demonstrators who had refused to obey a midnight curfew imposed by Nixon on Saturday in an attempt to restore order in the town, which has been rocked since Brown was shot on 9 August by a Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson.



In the early hours of Sunday, as the midnight curfew took effect, police in riot gear fired teargas at protesters who defied orders to leave the centre of Ferguson. About 200 demonstrators ignored an order to return home at midnight made under a state of emergency declared earlier by Nixon.

Seven people were arrested for failing to disperse, according to Johnson, who had earlier promised that the curfew would not be enforced with teargas. One man was shot and is in a critical condition, and a police car was shot at. On ABC, Nixon pointed out that “not a single shot” was fired by police.

“I thought that last night with the help of the community a solid step forward was made,” he said.

Making the rounds of the US talk shows, Nixon expressed concern about the release by the Ferguson police of the surveillance footage and police report, at the same time as the officer involved in the shooting was named. Asked on ABC’s This Week whether he knew or approved of the release, he said: “We were unaware that they were going to release it and we certainly weren’t happy with that being released, especially in the way that it was.”



Nixon said there had been “serious discussions” between his office, county and local law enforcement officials after the local police released the video. “I disagreed deeply. To attempt to disparage the victim, well it’s just not right and it put the community on alert again,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press.

Earlier in the week, Nixon had replaced the St Louis County force, which had been patrolling the protests in a manner criticised for being overly militarised, with a commander from the Missouri state highway patrol, Captain Ron Johnson, an African American who grew up in Ferguson. That resulted in a calmer atmosphere on Thursday, but violence flared again on Friday after the release by Ferguson police chief Thomas Jackson of the information that implicated Brown in the robbery.

The governor drew a direct link between Jackson’s actions and the renewed violence: “It made emotions raw and one of the reasons why … that second night, we saw folks getting upset,” he told ABC.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Missouri state highway patrol captain Ronald Johnson, left, and Governor Jay Nixon answer questions during a Saturday news conference. Photograph: Zuma/Rex

The governor promised action to improve the approach of the largely white police force operating in the majority black community.



“These are deep wounds and when you scratch them again they hurt. We all know there has been a long history of these challenges. I hope that we can get justice and move forward but there are deep, long-term wounds,” he told CNN’s State of the Nation.

“When justice is had, I hope the people who have spoken out will be part of the effort to help bridge these gaps.”

Nixon noted the difference in approach of Johnson, who made a point of walking with the crowds, dispensing with military hardware and using “less hard” tactics. “When Captain Johnson arrived, he came right into the community, he did not roll up in MRAV [armoured vehicle],” Nixon told NBC. “It’s very important that our officers are in the communities, to be part of the community when they need protection and not feel like an external force. Across the country, that’s a task we have to address.”

The Ferguson police has 55 officers, of whom only three are black, policing a largely black community; there have long been allegations of racism and abuse by the police.

Nixon repeatedly said he was grateful the Department of Justice has begun an investigation into the shooting, in parallel to county prosecutors, and that it had sent an additional 40 FBI agents to Ferguson to speed up the justice process.



By contrast, he said several times on CNN and NBC, the St Louis County prosecuting attorney, Bob McCullough, needed to “step up” and “do his job”.

McCullough said last week that he disagreed with Nixon’s decision to override the local police and put the county highway patrol police in charge in Ferguson. He has in the past faced accusations of soft-pedalling police abuse complaints and in recent days has been criticised for not yet bringing evidence in the Brown case before a grand jury, as the next step on proceeding towards a possible court case against the officer involved.

Nixon said: “When you see the FBI working in the community, I think having dual investigations will make sure it happens in a timely fashion and we get justice.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest People defy a curfew in Ferguson. Photograph: Charlie Riedel/AP

Cedric Alexander, president of the National Organisation for Black Law Enforcement Executives, met Ferguson’s police chief, Thomas Jackson, this week and was advising him. He told ABC: “We certainly do agree there has been some missteps that he has made but the thrust of the conversations we have had has been around how does his department begin to develop a relationship with the community as they move forward.

“It’s clear there has been a lack of communication between police and community.”



Alexander said representation had to be improved. “How do they begin to diversify their department [so that it’s] more representative of their community? That will occur over time but they are going to have to develop a strategic plan on how to deal with that.”



Cornell William Brooks, the new president of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, appeared on CBS to implore people to “turn your anger into action”, while condemning a violent response to Brown’s death.

“To sneak around under the cover of darkness, to steal, to loot, to burn down your neighbourhood – this does not require courage,” he said. “Courage is when you strive for justice.

“Martin Luther King did not live and die so that we may steal and lie in the middle of the night.”