Hours earlier, the police chief had said race relations were the top priority in the town, where a white police officer fatally shot the black teen. Authorities have vowed to reach across the racial, economic and generational divide in a community in search of answers.
Activists were attempting to organize vigils nationwide for victims of police brutality, to begin at 7 p.m. EDT, with a moment of silence 20 minutes later.
In the streets of Ferguson, the polite dialogue heard at community forums and news conferences was nowhere to be found.
Instead, officers from multiple departments in riot gear and in military equipment have clashed nightly with protesters, who chant, "Hands up, don't shoot."
Wednesday saw more tense confrontations and further volleys of tear gas from police -- this time paired with smoke bombs in response to what authorities said were flaming projectiles and other objects lobbed from the crowd. Protesters faced heavily armed police who at times trained weapons on them from armored trucks.
Two reporters said they were detained by police for not clearing out quickly enough from a McDonald's where they were working, near the protests but away from the more volatile areas. The two, who work for The Washington Post and The Huffington Post, were released without any charges. Both say they were assaulted but not seriously hurt.
St. Louis County Police say 16 people were arrested during the latest round of protests, and one officer was injured, reports CBS St. Louis station KMOV-TV. The station says St. Louis Alderman Antonio French, who has been chronicling the demonstrations on social media, was among those arrested. There was no initial word on charges against any of the 16.
Residents in Ferguson have complained about what they called a heavy-handed police presence that began with the use of dogs for crowd control soon after Brown's shooting -- a tactic that for some invoked the specter of civil rights protests a half-century ago. The county police force took over leading both the investigation of Brown's shooting and the subsequent attempts to keep the peace at the smaller city's request.
