This is not Ferguson

Police in St Louis have defended themselves in the aftermath of the shooting of a black teenager who they said had pointed a handgun at an officer and made “bad choices”. The local mayor said it was "not like Ferguson".

Still reeling from the protests that erupted following the August shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson and the more recent decision not to charge the officer involved in the incident, police released video footage they said supported their claim that the white officer involved in the latest shooting in the St Louis suburb of Berkeley was acting in self-defence.

The footage taken late on Tuesday night, which appeared to show someone raising what appeared to be a gun, stops before the actual shooting of 18-year-old Antonio Martin.

The Mayor of Berkeley, Theodore Hoskins, said the incident was not the same as that which had played out in Ferguson in August. He said while Ferguson was a predominantly black town with a white mayor and white police chief, Berkeley had a Black mayor and a Black police chief. “We're different than Ferguson,” said Hoskins.

At his own press conference on Wednesday morning, Col Jon Belmar, the chief of St Louis County Police, said Martin, the young man who was shot dead, was “known” to the force and had been arrested three times since he was 17. He said the incidents involved armed robbery, assault and the illegal use of a weapon.

He said that a 9mm pistol recovered from the scene and purportedly carried by Martin, bore a serial number that had been “defaced”. It suggested the weapon was stolen and may have been traded for some sort of “contraband”, said Belmar, who said Martin had not discharged his gun.