After vigil and looting, the people of Ferguson try to pick up the pieces

FERGUSON, Mo. — Erica Hampton cried when she saw what was happening in her town Sunday night: looting and violence after a vigil for Mike Brown, the 18-year-old African-American unarmed teen who was shot and killed by police on Saturday.

“It broke my heart,” she said. “I cried watching the news.”

So on Monday morning, she tried to make it right.

She took her two young children to a QuickTrip convenience store that had been looted and burned in northern St. Louis County. She and a few other people were sweeping the parking lot, picking up trash and moving large pieces of debris out of the area as others swung by to view the damage.

“I just felt like it was only right to get up here and help clean up the community,” she said. “I just felt like I need to get up with my kids, and we’re going to come out here together, and we’re going to help and show people that everybody is not like that. There are some good people around here. Let’s show them the other side of us.”

Ferguson, a mainly African-American municipality of just over 20,000 people, is a few miles north of downtown St. Louis in St. Louis County. Reports of looting spread to neighboring municipalities of Delwood and Jennings, south along West Florissant Avenue. Auto shops, restaurants and beauty salons were among those businesses damaged.

Business owners up and down this main stretch of road through the area were boarding up windows and sweeping up broken glass this morning. Christy Zisser and her husband arrived to see their family-owned tire and auto shop looted and the front windows broken. Security footage shows looters, including children, taking tires and rims from the building.

“I’m just glad our employees weren’t here,” she said. The business has been open for 30 years. Zisser, who is white, said that when they got there this morning, some individuals walking by shouted at them, telling them they had gotten what they deserved and to “get out of our [expletive] neighborhood.”

But longtime customers showed up all morning to help out and offer reassurance. Zisser, who reviewed the security footage from the looting, said customers she recognized drove their cars to block the shop’s garage doors so looters could not steal the cars inside.

“It’s not the community here,” she said of the looters.

Nearby, protests outside the Ferguson Police Department continued as police in riot gear looked on. Approximately 100 protesters, mostly African-American, were shouting phrases such as “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” alluding to the fact that Brown was unarmed at the time of his death.

Protest leaders urged the crowd to remain calm and peaceful and not to provoke the police. Many government officials, including the mayor of a nearby municipality, arrived and begged the protesters to disperse.

But the group’s frustrations were clear. To many, the police response was just more of the same.