_{Some Ferguson residents accuse police of aggressive arrest tactics}

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Some Ferguson-area residents arrested during racially charged protests in the Missouri town last week told Reuters they were unlawfully arrested by police and were just trying to get home when they were picked up and taken to jail.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the allegations from the six individuals interviewed. Their accusations come amid an investigation by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder into potential civil rights abuses by police in Ferguson during protests that first erupted over the summer following the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager.

Kayla, a 17-year-old high school senior who did not want to give her full name, and Yetta Young, 23, a home health worker, said they were picked up by police as they walked home from work. They were arrested separately and charged with second degree burglary.

Police said in sworn statements that Kayla was charged with burglarizing a Toys R Us and Young with burglarizing a convenience store 2 miles away. Both stores were looted during last week's protests, according to the police.

The manager of the Ferguson Toys R Us said surveillance video from the night of Nov. 24 had been given to the police and declined to discuss what it showed. The owner of the convenience store, which was boarded up and locked on Monday, could not be reached for comment.

In a third incident, three men and a woman told Reuters police pulled them out of their car at a gas station and repeatedly used a stun gun on one of them after zip-tying his hands behind his back. The four said they were there to buy gas and were doing nothing wrong. They were arrested for trespassing but released the next day without being charged, according to the police report, which made no mention of the tasing.

"There is more than one side to each explanation of the incidents," said Rick Eckhard, a spokesman for the St. Louis County Police, the force that made the arrests. He declined to comment on the individual cases, saying they were all active investigations.

It is not uncommon for innocent bystanders to be swept up by police trying to keep protests under control, according to Matthew Horace, a former Virginia police officer who is now the senior vice president at New York-based FJC Security.

Horace was not in Ferguson at the time of the arrests but said he was drawing on his experience policing in the Washington area, where protesters routinely gather.

POSSIBLE LAWSUIT Young's mother Helen said she watched as a crowd of people being chased by police ran past Yetta, knocking her daughter to the ground. Police then grabbed and arrested her.

Reuters could not find anyone else who witnessed the incident and was not able to speak Young, who is still in jail, unable to post the $36,000 cash-only bond a judge set based on her second-degree burglary charge.

Kayla said she was arrested as she was leaving a clinic where she is an intern. Two police officers chasing a crowd grabbed her and held her with others in a Toys R Us parking lot. She was later charged with burglarizing the store and released on a $2,200 bond paid by the bail fund established by a network of lawyers representing scores of those arrested.

The lawyers' group said it was investigating the circumstances of each arrest, adding that a number of protesters were claiming they had been arrested without probable cause.

"Most everyone tells the same story," said Brendan Roediger, an assistant professor at St. Louis University School of Law, who is part of the group. "Police rounded up a number of people who just happened to be in the area."

Roediger declined to provide other examples of allegedly unlawful arrests, saying the lawyers representing those arrested did not want to make public their clients' information. He said his team was preparing a lawsuit on behalf of people who say their civil rights were violated during the protests.

A grand jury's decision on Nov. 24 not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown ignited violent protests that led to more than 100 arrests.

Alexander Freeman, 21, said he was in his car with three friends at a gas station on Nov. 24 when police blocked off both exits. Others at the gas station fled, he said, driving over sidewalks to get away, but he couldn't move fast enough.

Freeman said police ordered him and his friends out of the car and onto the ground. "They zip-tied our hands, they didn't read us our rights, and they searched the car," he said, adding that he watched police use a stun gun on a friend because he continued to curse at the police officers after being restrained. His three friends gave the same account to Reuters.

Police say they are still investigating the incident and that charges could still be brought. The gas station owner told Reuters his surveillance cameras were turned off at the time of the arrests.

Civil rights lawyers filed a $42 million suit in Missouri federal court in August that alleges the Ferguson police and the St. Louis County police illegally arrested and abused several people during the protests following Brown's death. Spokesmen for the county police have not commented on the suit.
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_{Little money for Ferguson, scene of rare U.S. suburban riots}

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Sonya Roberts' liquor store in Ferguson, Missouri was vandalized during rioting in August and November, and with no government aid available, she is relying on Internet crowd-funding and a credit union loan to keep afloat.

"I dont know if I am going to survive past the end of the month," said Roberts, 46, whose insurance does not cover the $37,000 worth of damage to her store on West Florissant Avenue. The roadway was the main thoroughfare for looting and arson after a grand jury last week decided not to charge a white police officer in the shooting of a black teenager.

In Ferguson, more than 50 businesses were damaged, 19 severely, according to city records. Where business once thrived, police tape flaps in the wind. Dozens of storefronts are boarded up, while others lie gutted by fire. Many residents said they were staying away from the badly hit areas.

Roberts and other Ferguson business owners are caught in a fiscal void: a dearth of local, state and federal support for the first U.S. suburb in a generation to experience racial rioting. Until now, Cicero, Illinois was possibly the only U.S. suburb to see such unrest, in 1951 after an African American family moved into the white town on Chicago's western border.

Neighborhoods in other major U.S. cities have recovered after race riots. Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore and New York all tapped political and fiscal resources for help after unrest in the 1960s, as did Los Angeles after the Rodney King riots in 1992. But there is no clear template for Ferguson and the neighboring communities of Dellwood and Jennings as tiny municipalities in search of recovery.

"Places like this have no fiscal or political capacity to go after state and federal funding," said Colin Gordon, a history professor at the University of Iowa and author of "Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City." Ferguson has little experience obtaining government aid, he said, and could lose business to surrounding cities that were not hit.

Certainly more money could come in over time, but early indications are not promising.

A state commission established just days before the grand jury's decision, was charged with addressing the city's social and racial problems, not its economic needs. Funding by St. Louis-area banks and business groups has made it possible for Democratic Missouri Governor Jay Nixon to make $625,000 in Small Business Administration loans available, but there are no outright grants.

"We don't want a loan. I don't want to go into more debt," said Buffi Blanchard, 44, a hairdresser at Clip Appeal on West Florissant whose windows were smashed and low white ceiling and linoleum floors were charred by firebombs.

INSURANCE CLAIMS

It is not clear how much the violence has cost firms in terms of lost business and damage to property. The Missouri Department of Insurance, which is helping businesses make claims, said the total number of claims reported between Aug. 10 and Sept. 3, after an initial spate of riots, was less than 30, coming to less than $250,000. But it does not have updated figures for last week's riots, which were much more destructive.

The federal government has programs to ease financial distress in cities with more than 50,000 people, ranging from stabilizing economically stricken neighborhoods to disaster recovery assistance. But as a city of 21,000 people, Ferguson is too small to qualify.

Any money available under the programs administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development would first need to go through the state of Missouri.

The state has not helped much so far.

Nixon canceled a plan to call a special legislative session on compensating Ferguson for the cost of policing the riots after Republican legislators argued there was no need to spend on security beyond the amount in the existing state budget.

Disaster aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency will not be forthcoming, the state was told in August, because such emergency aid does not cover acts of civil unrest, Nixon's spokesman, Scott Holste said.

The State Emergency Management Agency plans to assist the small business administration in determining what loans will be required for the 55 Ferguson businesses that were affected last week, but no funds have been earmarked for the city directly, said Ferguson City spokesman Jim Small.

In the meantime, Ferguson businesses wary of state-sponsored loans, have resorted to donations from strangers. The fundraising website GoFundMe has raised about $450,000 for businesses in Ferguson.

One of the first businesses to seek funding this way, and the biggest single beneficiary, Natalies Cakes and More, received $268,000 from 8,260 donors, according to its GoFundMe page.

The rioting in Ferguson, just north of St. Louis, caps a period of financial decline, made even worse by natural disasters. Tornadoes hit the small city of roughly 9,000 homes in 2011 and 2013. Its most recent budget, published in June, describes its recovery from the recession as "glacial" .

Sales tax receipts, the largest revenue source, fell to $5.9 million in the 2013 fiscal year, ended June 30, down 21 percent from the recent high of $7 million in fiscal 2006. Citywide revenues in fiscal 2014 are forecast to slip to $18.6 million, down 4 percent from the previous year.

State Senator Regina Walsh has called for loan forgiveness plans for small businesses affected by the riots.

"The challenges are economic. These people do not need financial burden, they need help," Walsh said in an interview. "The big chains will be ok, but it is the small ones that will struggle."
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