BERKELEY, Mo. — The mayor of the St. Louis suburb of Berkeley urged calm Wednesday after a white police officer killed a black 18-year-old who police said pointed a gun at him, reigniting tensions that have lingered since the death of Michael Brown in neighboring Ferguson.
A crowd of about 300 people gathered at the gas station where Antonio Martin was shot late Tuesday, throwing rocks and bricks in a scene reminiscent of the sometimes-violent protests that followed Brown’s death.
But unlike the shooting of Brown, which was not captured on video, Berkeley Mayor Theodore Hoskins said surveillance footage appeared to show Martin pulling a gun on the unidentified 34-year-old officer who questioned him and another man about a theft at a convenience store. Brown was unarmed.
“You couldn’t even compare this with Ferguson or the Garner case in New York,” Hoskins said, referring to the chokehold death of Eric Garner, another black man killed by a white police officer.
Hoskins, who is black, also noted that unlike in Ferguson — where a mostly white police force serves a mostly black community — more than half of the officers in his city of 9,000 are black, including top command staff.