It's not the most surprising thing. It's not uncommon for gangs to demand protection money from local businesses, to protect them from being robbed and harassed. Normally it's just extorting money out of local businesses, but those same businesses usually comply, and if looters/protesters were stealing from them it wouldn't exactly make sense for them to keep paying people to protect them.
the police are sure doing a great job of making sure no one involved in this ever sides with them again. Outside of the exposure this is getting, imagine all the word-of-mouth these people are going to start based on their experiences. Having guns pointed at them for doing essentially nothing? Not being allowed to publicly state your dissatisfaction with how the police are handling a situation? Press being told where they can and cannot report during a nonviolent protest? what a fucking mess :\
Yea, the Ferguson PD needs to be relieved of their current operations and a third party (I believe I heard the National Guard was called in) needs to take over. Theyhave managed to suck on every level of this case and the proceeding events. Shot an unarmed civilian, leave his body in the middle of the street for hours, then they gave zero information for days about everything that happened. After that people started peacefully assembling and demanding answers, so naturally the Ferguson PD showed up in fully military gear like they had just been air dropped into Gaza, and start pointing their guns at every and bossing them around.
This police department may be one of the most incompetant and idiotic in the entire country. It is like, next level fail. If they had made any effort to be transparent, or treated their citizens like actual people instead of bossing them around in fully body armor with M4's pointed at them, maybe the situation would have never gotten so bad. This isn't even considering the bullshit curfew and arresting of journalists. One of the people they arrested during said curfew was in his car, in his diveway, smoking a cigarette with his girlfriend and a friend. Police swarmed his car and arrested him at gunpoint and held him for hours before letting him go--he was charged with "failure to disperse".
It's starting to really work against them though. For the first time American's are taking a step back and realizing the Police across the entire country treat the citizens they are sworn to protect and serve like absolute trash. We went from having Police forces that upheld the law to having veritable militias patroling the streets, and with Ferguson people are finally starting to notice how big of an issue it is. There is a weird sort of "hero worship" when it comes to Police Officers, and it makes it nearly impossible to be critical of the police force in this country. Once we get rid of that idea that they are better than average civilians we will finally be able to fix the issues that exist.
Why were they trying to "keep protesters moving" and not allowing them to stay in one area? You would think they would want to keep everyone in one area. Right?
I think the intention is to tire them out and keep them moving in hopes someone messes up and they can act with excessive force.