That's a good question. I'd like to know the "list of demands". If it is generally for justice then I can get behind that. If it is for a lynching of a cop doing his job then no, not getting behind that.
It's not that I don't think the cop did anything at all wrong, because I do; but his shooting of what appears to be a man who was trying to take the cop down seems justified. I do feel that in the beginning the cop needlessly escalated the situation by cornering the suspects. I think this was an unnecessary escalation and put the suspect and the officer himself in a bad place. That was a mistake, IMHO. Would the end result have changed? I don't know. I saw similar actions by SL LEO's with the guy with the knife at the convenience store. They pull right up and corner him. They seem to be trained to do this. Maybe there is a reason for it and I'm not privy to it, but it seems to me that you'd want to put a little distance there and try to calm the situation down if possible. I mention the 2nd incident because it also led to a dead citizen, although once the situation was set circumstances built up to both being at least probably justified. IOW, I feel the cops set the scene in such as way as to cause a build up of tension rather than to cause a calming down. That, to me, is a recipe for bad things. It's like going into a criminally mentally ill patient's room, letting the patient get between you and the door, and turning your back on the patient. You are setting yourself up for bad things. It's not your fault when it happens, but you might have done something different to set the scene better.
(First, sorry for the length of this post.) IDK. I'm not sure that the LEO asking the two kids walking down the middle of the street to move to the sidewalk is "cornering them." My thinking is colored in the direction that the kid's behavior was reminiscent of his behavior in the earlier robbery. The grand jury would have had access to that material. I don't, of course, have any knowledge about the LEO's demeanor in dealing with the kids and whether it was abrasive or not. It's just my personal opinion, but the kid's actions really seemed to indicate chemical impairment, and I doubt that it was just THC, although I have no knowledge of what drug tests they run in St. Louis county.
Look, I know as well as anybody that black folk do not get a fair shake from LEOs. I do question what the present rioting tactics really accomplish, other than gain some notoriety for persons whose main agenda is keeping their faces in front of the TV cameras. I represent an elderly black man who is widely respected in our community. He's done all the right things - successful business until retirement, solid church man, etc. Not very long ago, in his neighborhood, there was a chase of a fugitive. A neighbor told the LEOs that she'd seen him duck into my client's driveway. Two LEOs came to their door and threatened to break the door down. There was one white LEO and one black. I'm not going into a lot of detail, but suffice it to say that they handled the affair very badly, once my client admitted them voluntarily. (He could have told them to go back and get a search warrant, since their suspicions were not really based on probable cause which would have stood legal challenge.) I was able to obtain a phone call and apology from the mayor and discipline from the chief for the LEOs (meaning a lecture to not do it again). That didn't really satisfy my client, but it was the best I could do and we both knew it.
Now, there isn't the slightest doubt in the world that my client and his wife were treated very differently from the way a white couple with a similar residence, etc., would have been treated. OTOH, I don't have any idea on earth that he would agree with what's happened in Ferguson. Since we're in communication on another matter presently, I'll ask him and I'll report the result back here.
As many have pointed out, we have a large underclass, who are unemployed or under-employed, and who think they have nothing to lose by rioting. I don't know the definitive answer to that problem. However, I do feel that it has to be solved, because I just don't know how long our society can endure with the widening gap between the haves and have-nots. Watching the closest examples of the fabric of society tearing and leading to a permanent schism, leading to a permanent armed rebellion, you have to look at South/Central America. Once, we hosted a young exchange student for a while who was from Colombia. She was upper class, although I felt I could discern some NA and AA ancestry. While she was here, there was some incident which came up in her country, a riot, I think, during a strong-arm government. To my surprise, she didn't identify at all with anyone not in her class in her native land. For her, people rioting in the street were simply a threat to her privileged stratus. We must do what we can to keep class mobility in and permanent stratification out of our society. The "let them eat cake" dead end has no legitimate role in our world. Sorry for the length.