Ferguson Police Chief: 'It's a Powder Keg'

Thursday addressing protests over the shooting death of an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, Ferguson, MO Police Chief Thomas Jackson told reporters he recognizes the situation was turning into “a powder keg” so he is “changing tactics” after the fifth and most violent night of tear gas and rubber bullets being unleashed on protesters and journalists.

Jackson said, “Last night we started getting rocks, bricks, bottles thrown at us and a Molotov cocktail and gunfire went off. We need to get everyone to calm down and try to bring some peace to this. we want everybody to be able to protest. We know they’re going to protest. We want to facilitate their ability to protest because it’s a constitutional right. So working with these leaders, we’re going to try and put this together and hope that everyone will take the opportunity to get the message out that they want to get out. We understand everybody’s anger and need to have questions answered answered. So we’re going to hope for the best. We’re changing our tactics.”

“It’s a powder keg. We all recognize that. And that’s why we’re going to try to facilitate the protests tonight and we hope that the protesters will recognize that we are trying to facilitate, to help everybody bring this down. Bring all the tensions down.”

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