Michael Brown shooting: Governor Jay Nixon criticizes Ferguson police over surveillance video release

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has criticized Ferguson police for releasing a surveillance video which apparently shows shooting victim Michael Brown stealing from a convenience store.

Jay Nixon said the release of CCTV footage nearly a week after Officer Darren Wilson shot black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, St Louis, “appeared to cast aspersions” on the dead man.

“It made emotions raw,” Jay Nixon told ABC on Sunday.

Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered a federal post-mortem on Michael Brown’s body.

Riot police used tear gas and smoke bombs to disperse protesters overnight as they defied a curfew in Ferguson. The curfew is being extended for a second day, beginning at midnight on August 17 and running for five hours.

The killing of Michael Brown by a white policeman in a street on 9 August has inflamed racial tensions in the largely black suburb.

It caused dismay across the US while images of riot police deployed in an American city suburb have made headlines worldwide.

The video “appeared to cast aspersions on a young man that was gunned down in the street”, said Governor Jay Nixon.

On Saturday, Jay Nixon declared the curfew after looters targeted stores in Ferguson overnight.

Seven arrests were made as police used smoke bombs and tear gas to disperse a crowd of about 150 in Ferguson, after being called to the scene of a disturbance at a restaurant after the curfew started.

A police car reportedly came under fire and a person was hurt in an apparently unrelated shooting in the same area.

As police were nearing the restaurant, a man with a handgun went into the street but ran away, AP news agency reports.

Someone also shot at a police car but it was not clear if it had been hit.

In the same area, a person was shot and critically wounded and police were searching for the attacker.

Demonstrators complained that the curfew would make matters worse.

Jayson Ross, who was leading the protesters toward the police before tear gas was fired, was quoted as saying by AP: “They got guns. We got guns. We are ready.”

Local politician Antonio French, who was with the protesters, tweeted: “Too many young men talking about they’re ready to die tonight.”

The US justice department is investigating the shooting of Michael Brown, with 40 FBI agents dispatched to Ferguson to gather information.

The justice department said on Sunday that Eric Holder had ordered a federal post-mortem examination at the request of Michael Brown’s family, in addition to a Missouri state autopsy.

A preliminary autopsy by the St Louis County Medical Examiner’s office on the day after Michael Brown’s death found he had been shot, police said, without disclosing how many times.

Earlier, the lawyer for Michael Brown’s family, Anthony Gray, announced that it had hired one of America’s most famous forensic pathologists, Michael Baden, to conduct an independent examination.

Michael Baden, 80, has worked on investigations into the deaths of such public figures as President John F. Kennedy, the punk star Sid Vicious and the family of the last Russian emperor, Tsar Nicholas II, according to a profile on Fox News, where he works as a TV host.

Darren Wilson, a six-year police veteran with no previous complaints against him, has been on paid administrative leave since the shooting.

Darren Wilson had reportedly stopped Michael Brown for walking in the street, disrupting traffic.

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