Shots fired in Ferguson

Shots fired during a confrontation between protesters and police critically injured at least one person on Sunday night in Ferguson, Missouri, where 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed one year ago.

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said over a short period of time there had been a "remarkable amount of gunfire" into separate shootings in the city.

"Even with the folks on the street last night, there was a lost of emotion, but this is something different," Belmar said. "This level of violence is untenable."

'This was avoidable'

Plainclothes detectives monitoring the protests saw an individual they deemed suspicious as well as what appeared to be an argument between two groups of people. During a press conference early Monday morning Belmar did not provide additional details about the groups of people concerned but did say they were not protesters.

"The suspect engaged [police] in gunfire almost from the grill of the car, striking the hood and windshield," Belmar said, adding that four detectives in the vehicle returned fire.

Detectives, who had between six to 12 years experience on the police force, followed the suspect behind a building and returned fire when the man shot at them again. The suspect is currently in surgery and in critical, unstable condition, Belmar said.

"While this is a tragedy for family of this man and the officers involved, there is a small group of people out there intent on making sure we don't have peace that prevails," he said. "This was avoidable. This did not have to happen. This is really an impediment to positive change. "

The detectives involved would be placed on administrative leave until they are deemed fit for duty.

Shots fired on Sunday night had sent police and protesters running for their safety as helicopters circled overhead and police in body armor and armed with assault rifles surrounded the area the shots were thought to have come from.

'Please stop killing us'

The night-time violence was a stark contrast to the rally held earlier in the day where some 300 people stood in silence for four-and-a-half minutes at the spot where Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was killed August 9, 2014, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer. The moment of silence stood for the four-and-a-half hours Brown's body remained on the street after he was killed.

Participants in the rally shouted slogans including "Hands up, don't shoot," "Please stop killing us" and "We do this for who? We do this for Mike Brown."

"If it wasn't for y'all this would be swept under the carpet," Brown's father, also named Michael, told demonstrators. "So I just want to give my love out to y'all."

A grand jury and the US Department of Justice declined to prosecute Wilson, who later resigned in November. While Wilson was exonerated in the shooting, a separate report by the US Justice Department cited racial bias and profiling in the area's police force, as well as a profit-driven municipal court system that often targeted black residents.

The shooting, and the decision not to indict the officer who shot him, led to violent clashes between protesters and police and called attention to US race relations and police violence, particularly against unarmed black men, giving rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Black leaders in the United States said they have seen a dramatic change in Americans' views of race, but little action by lawmakers to reform police practices. The head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of the country's oldest civil rights groups, called the pace of legislative change "glacial."

"In terms of legislative action, 40 legislators have taken up some measure of holding police departments accountable but only a tiny fraction of which actually moved towards holding police departments accountable," said NAACP President Cornell William Brooks in an interview with CBS's "Face the Nation."

Erica Snipes, the daughter of Eric Garner, another unarmed black man who died after being choked by police in New York, also attended the rally in Ferguson and called for reforms of policing standards.

"This year has just been so hard. No accountability, no justice. Police are still killing us - it's a crisis that's going on," she said at the rally in Ferguson.

sms/kms (Reuters, AFP, AP)