A show of force by police and the US national guard in Ferguson, Missouri prevented a second night of widespread rioting by early on Wednesday.
While smouldering sections of the town remained shut down as potential crime scenes, extra troops in camouflage and heavily armed police officers in riot gear appeared determined to prevent a repeat of Monday night's scenes of looting and arson.
That unrest, leading to dozens of arrests, followed the decision by a grand jury not to charge police officer Darren Wilson for shooting dead Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old, on a residential side-street in Ferguson on 9 August.
After they were accused of being caught flat-footed on Monday, law enforcement officers responded swiftly to shut down reports of criminal activity. 'I think generally it was a much better night,' St Louis County police chief Jon Belmar said at a 1.30am press conference. He said officers showed restraint and some protesters had been 'out there for the right reasons'.
Police shot teargas canisters and pepper-spray at a boisterous crowd outside Ferguson's city hall, after windows on the building were smashed and a police car outside was partly burned. Officers seized a molotov cocktail at the site, said Belmar.
In all, police made 44 arrests, Belmar said, including four for the felony charges of unlawful use of a weapon and assaulting police officers. Police also seized two pistols and collected items such as rocks, tent poles and plastic bottles full of urine that they said were thrown.
National guardsmen took at least one demonstrator into custody at the Ferguson police headquarters, where several people were arrested in the latest nightly clash. The actions were a significant expansion in the responsibilities of the volunteer soldiers.
After Missouri governor Jay Nixon ordered in 700 more troops on Monday to bring the total to 2,200 since he declared a state of emergency last week, the soldiers were also lining streets, guarding businesses and utility stations around the town.
A car was burned, and gunfire heard near the site of Brown's killing, Belmar said. A group tried to loot a Walgreens pharmacy that was robbed and torched on Tuesday. Others smashed store fronts and threw stones at police cars after being forced away from the police department
Shortly after midnight, as a crowd that had been hurling rocks at a glass shop front melted away, one police officer could not contain an emotional outburst.
'You call this peaceful protest?' he shouted at them. 'No families can get to shop. No baby food. There's no milk. They can't even go to work tomorrow. They've got Christmas coming up and Thanksgiving. All these people protesting ruined everything - everything in this city. Twenty-five years I've been in this city and this is terrible.'
When women tried to shout the police officer down, he shouted back. 'Yeah, whatever,' he said. 'Destroy our town.'
Yet incidents were kept isolated and brief by police and troops arriving in high-speed convoys and ordering people to leave. Reviving a tactic used during unrest after Brown's death in August, officers simply declared demonstrations illegal and cleared the streets. Volunteers and members of the clergy also intervened to de-escalate tensions during standoffs at the police headquarters.
As Ferguson residents and business owners attempted to count the cost of Monday's damage, police chiefs appeared to concede that they had underestimated the potential for such unrest - despite having had three months since Brown's death to prepare.
Belmar said that he and colleagues had not 'really envisioned how bad last night was,' adding: 'I think that was a scale that fortunately is seldom seen here in this country'. Captain Ron Johnson of the Missouri state highway patrol said: 'None of us could have imagined that last night was going to be what it was'.
The activity was condemned as unacceptable by Nixon during a press conference earlier on Tuesday to unveil his expansion of the national guard's mission in Ferguson. 'No one should have to live like this,' he said. 'No one deserves this.' President Obama said in Chicago that he does not 'have any sympathy' with those who resorted to violence.
At a press conference on Tuesday morning, lawyers for Brown's family sharply criticised Bob McCulloch, the county prosecutor who oversaw the grand jury system, and said that the criminal justice system was systematically failing young black victims of police violence. They called for a 'Michael Brown's law' that would see all officers forced to wear body cameras.
Anger over the grand jury's decision was further inflamed on Tuesday when Wilson made his first public appearance since the shooting. He told ABC News in an interview that he could not have done anything differently on 9 August and the incident would have been the same if Brown had been white. 'The reason I have a clean conscience is 'cos I know I did my job right,' said Wilson.
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