by Our Foreign Desk

POLICE officers in Ferguson, Missouri, marked the first anniversary of shooting unarmed black US teen Michael Brown dead by critically wounding another young African-American.

The authorities said that officers had returned fire after the man had shot at a police car.

St Louis county police chief Jon Belmar told a news conference that officers had been tracking the suspect, who they believed was armed, during a protest marking Mr Brown’s death.

The authorities didn’t immediately release the identities of anyone involved, but Tyrone Harris told the St Louis Post-Dispatch that the injured suspect was his 18-year-old son, also called Tyrone.

Mr Brown’s killing by a white Ferguson police officer brought greater scrutiny on how police treat black communities and touched off a national Black Lives Matter movement.

His father Michael Brown Senior had earlier led a march through town from the site where his son was fatally shot by officer Darren Wilson. A grand jury and the US Department of Justice declined to prosecute Mr Wilson, who resigned in November.

A few hundred people turned out at Greater St Mark Family church later for a service to remember Mr Brown.

The anniversary has sparked days of renewed protests, largely peaceful without any arrests. But for the first time on Sunday in three consecutive nights of demonstrations, some officers were dressed in riot gear, including bullet-proof vests and helmets with shields. Police fired smoke capsules early yesterday morning to disperse a lingering crowd, said Mr Belmar.

At the height of what he called a rowdy protest in which rocks and bottles had been thrown at officers, gunshots rang out from the area near a row of shops, including some that had been looted. Mr Belmar reported that shots had come from about six different shooters, which he explained as feuding between some groups.

At one point, Mr Harris crossed the street and apparently spotted the plain-clothes officers arriving in an unmarked van with distinctive red and blue police lights, he said, after which he is said to have shot into the vehicle’s bonnet and windscreen.

The officers fired back at him from inside the vehicle before pursuing him on foot when he ran.

The suspect supposedly again fired on the officers when trapped in a fenced-in area and all four officers fired back. He was struck and fell.

Mr Harris was taken to a hospital, where Mr Belmar said he was in “critical, unstable” condition. All four officers were put on standard administrative leave. “It was a poor decision to use plain-clothes officers in a protest setting because it made it difficult for people to identify police officers, which is essential to the safety of community members,” said Organisation of Black Struggle field organiser Kayla Reed.

She said that the force shown by police had been “excessive and antagonistic.”

Ms Reed was also critical over police failure to wear body cameras, but Mr Belmar cited lack of funds as an explanation.