Devil’s Night in Ferguson: Paramilitary Men Set Car on Fire

On the night of November 24, 2014, after St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s announcement of the grand jury decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, the Missouri cities of Ferguson and St. Louis ignited in a conflagration of riots, looting, and burning.

Note: Ferguson is part of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area, with a majority Black population (67.4% in the 2010 census).

Most of the destruction took place within two square miles, centering on Florissant Ave. and Chambers Rd. in northern St. Louis (with a majority Black population), right on the eastern edge of Ferguson.

I don’t watch network TV, so the images captured in the video below are the first I’ve seen of the mayhem.

It was a Devil’s night of hell on Earth.

Here’s a breakdown and analysis of the video:

The video begins with a fire burning inside and smoke billowing out of the building of the Auto Zone store.

Three men dressed in black hoodies and pants are outside the TitleMax Title Loans store. One of them smashes the glass door.

Another store, Auto Parts, is engulfed in flames.

Throughout all this, the voices of black men are audible, as cars drive past, honking, as if this was some ordinary night on the busy main street of some small town in America. Who are the people in the cars? Are they rioters or gawkers?

At the 0:52 mark in the video, four white men wearing facial masks, dark caps, dark jackets with some insignia on the front and back. One man is carrying a rifle.

Who are these men?

At the 1:05 mark, a fire is burning inside TitleMax Title Loans.

Beg. at the 1:10 mark, we see an extraordinarily brave unarmed woman determined to protect a Papa Johns store. A man (#1) in a dark jacket and backpack, wearing a light-colored cap and face mask, is breaking the glass window of the store. A white woman with short dark blonde hair confronts the man. A black man (#2) joins man #1, shouting at and arguing with the woman. Man #1 defiantly throws another rock at the window. More shouting at the woman. Man #1 kicks the window and shoves the woman against the boarded-up door. She stands firm.

At the 2:13 mark, a group of five (including a couple holding hands!) stand in front of the Fashion R store. One of the group smashes a window with a garbage bin, as looters go in and out of the store’s broken door carrying armfuls of clothes.

At the 3:15 mark, things get really interesting.

A group of seven men in military-green jackets and pants, light-colored head gear and white face masks, carrying backpacks and assault rifles, stand around a car parked to the side of the Advance Auto Parts store. One of the men, dressed in black, throws something incendiary (a flashbang grenade?) into the car.

By the 3:24 mark, the video camera has moved away from the paramilitary men.

I cropped the second picture above to get a closer-up view of two of the men. Note the military field-green color of their uniforms, the big backpacks, white masks, and white shoes.

They look paramilitary. What were they doing, throwing a grenade into a car?

The video camera then pans across the Advanced Auto Parts store, showing a fire inside.

At the 3:28 mark, three more paramilitary men (inside the yellow circle I painted) are walking on the sidewalk past a row of cars parked in front of the auto parts store.

At 3:37, the video camera comes in for a split-second close-up of three of the paramilitary men who had been standing around while the black-garbed man threw a grenade into the car.

At 4:47, another business completely engulfed in flames.

At 5:09, a man wearing a gas mask and dark clothes with the word “POLICE” in white on his back, walks past with a German Shepherd dog on a leash. Note that he looks nothing like the paramilitary men at Advanced Auto Parts.

At the 5:27 mark, TitleMax Title Loans is now completely engulfed in flames. You can hear the crackling sound of the fire. Next door is Hunan Chop Suey Chinese Restaurant, which also was burned down.

At the 6:26 mark, Taco Bell is also burning.

At the 6:48 mark, a group of men in dark clothing and helmets are standing next to two black police cars with flashing lights at a Mobile gas station. You can hear a black man’s voice saying they are “SWAT team.” Note that the SWAT men look different from the paramilitary men at Advanced Auto Parts.

At the 8:06 mark, a big store with the words “LOVE” on one of its windows looks ransacked and looted.

The video ends with the image of a white man dressed all in black with short dark hair, wearing dark glasses and a black mask over his mouth, carrying some sort of weapon. Is he one of the SWAT team? Note that he does not look at all like the paramilitary men.

Here’s a side by side comparison of paramilitary dudes vs. SWAT dude:

Nor do the paramilitary men in Ferguson resemble the Missouri National Guardsmen who, despite having been activated by Gov. Jay Nixon, were nowhere in sight on the night of Nov. 24, 2014. Ferguson Mayor James Knowles says National Guard troops were purposely held back. Missouri Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder has accused Gov. Jay Nixon of holding back the National Guard troops because of pressure from Obama’s attorney general Eric Holder.

The National Guard were deployed only the next day. This is what the Missouri National Guard look like (source of pic: USA Today). Note that they don’t look anything like those paramilitary men at Advanced Auto Parts.

So what were those paramilitary men doing at Advance Auto Parts, throwing an incendiary bomb into a car near Advanced Auto Parts? Had they set the store on fire earlier, out of the sight of the video camera?

To add to the suspicion, in the video below, a man who identifies himself as a former fire chief, firefighter and a fire academy certified instructor, tells Alex Jones that in his expert judgment, the fires in Ferguson were the work of TRAINED arsonists.