Obama dispatches U.S. attorney general to Ferguson

FERGUSON, Mo. -- President Barack Obama Monday dispatched the attorney general to personally oversee the government's response to the fatal police shooting 10 days ago of an unarmed black teenager, the latest step in an extensive federal investigation that was expanding even as National Guard troops moved onto the restive streets of this St. Louis suburb.

Attorney General Eric Holder will meet Wednesday in Ferguson with some of the FBI agents and prosecutors who have already interviewed more than 200 people as they scour the area where Michael Brown, 18, was killed by a white police officer.

Holder pledged "the full resources" of his department to investigate Brown's death, which has triggered unrest so severe that Missouri's governor Monday called in the state's National Guard.

Behind the scenes, the administration worked to reassure some in the civil rights community that the nation's first black president sees the Ferguson crisis as an important moment. In a conference call Monday with civil rights groups, Holder and White House adviser Valerie Jarrett said the case is a top priority.

"We are working tirelessly," Holder said, according to people on the call. He said the investigators are trying to determine if there is enough evidence that Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson used excessive force and deprived Brown of his civil rights to support a federal criminal prosecution.

The developments came on a day when Obama addressed the chaos in Ferguson in starkly emotional terms at the White House, and Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, lifted the overnight curfew he had imposed on Ferguson.

The day also featured results from competing autopsies of Brown's body -- the official St. Louis County autopsy and another requested by his family -- both of which concluded that the teenager had been shot six times. Holder said a third autopsy was conducted Monday by the U.S. military.

Nixon had ordered the midnight-to-5 a.m. curfew two days earlier after a week of clashes between demonstrators and police following Brown's death on Aug. 9. He brought in National Guard troops after the most chaotic night yet Sunday, one marked by protesters shooting and throwing Molotov cocktails at police and officers deploying tear gas.

On Monday, the Guard's role contributed to what appeared to be the latest example of federal-state tensions in the response to Brown's death, which is also being investigated by state officials. A White House official said Nixon did not notify the administration before announcing his decision to call up the Guard.

And at his White House news conference, Obama was notably cool in his response and offered only lukewarm support. The president said he had told Nixon in a phone call Monday that the Guard should be "used in a limited and appropriate way," and he told reporters that he will be watching in the coming days "to assess whether in fact it is helping rather than hindering progress in Ferguson."

Obama was more emotional in talking about Brown's death and what it shows about the state of race relations in America five years after he took office. While acknowledging that "there are young black men that commit crime," the president lamented statistics showing "you have young men of color in many communities who are more likely to end up in jail or in the criminal justice system than they are in a good job or in college."

"As Americans, we've got to use this moment to seek out our shared humanity that's been laid bare by this moment," he said. "The potential of a young man and the sorrows of parents, the frustrations of a community, the ideals that we hold as one united American family."

As he has before, the president said that while most demonstrators are acting peacefully, "a small minority of individuals are not. While I understand the passions and the anger that arise over the death of Michael Brown, giving in to that anger by looting or carrying guns and even attacking the police only serves to raise tensions."