Nixon said the National Guard would assist state and local police in case the grand jury’s decision leads to a resurgence of the civil unrest that occurred in the days immediately after the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
“My hope and expectation is that peace will prevail,” Nixon said. “But we have a responsibility — I have a responsibility — to plan for any contingencies that might arise.”
There is no specific date for a grand jury decision to be revealed, and Nixon gave no indication that an announcement is imminent. But St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch has said that he expects the grand jury to reach a decision in mid-to-late November.
The U.S. Justice Department, which is conducting a separate investigation, has not said when its work will be completed.
Before the shooting, Wilson spotted Brown and a friend walking in the middle of a street and told them to stop, but they did not. According to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report based on sources the newspaper did not identify, Wilson has told authorities he then realized Brown matched the description of a suspect in a theft minutes earlier at a convenience store. Wilson backed up his police vehicle and some sort of confrontation occurred before Brown was fatally shot. He was unarmed and some witnesses have said he had his hands up when he was killed.
Brown’s shooting stirred long-simmering racial tensions in the St. Louis suburb, where two-thirds of the residents are black but the police force is almost entirely white. Rioting and looting a day after the shooting led police to respond to subsequent protests with a heavily armored presence that was widely criticized for continuing to escalate tensions. At times, protesters lobbed rocks and Molotov cocktails at police, who fired tear gas, smoke canisters and rubber bullets in an attempt to disperse crowds.