Two officers shot outside Ferguson police department

Two police officers were shot during a protest outside Ferguson, Missouri, police headquarters at about midnight on Thursday, police said. They were hospitalized in serious condition.

The two officers were a 41 year old from the St. Louis County Police Department who was struck in the shoulder and a 32 year old from nearby Webster Groves Police Department who was hit in the face, said St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar. He did not identify the officers by name.

The shooting came hours after the city’s police chief Thomas Jackson resigned, following a critical report about the police force from the Justice Department.

They were the latest developments stemming from the August shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown by officer Darren Wilson, who a grand jury decided not to indict. Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced it would not bring federal civil rights charges against Wilson.

Several dozen protesters had gathered in front of the Ferguson police department on Wednesday night when the shooting occurred.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called the assault “inexcusable and repugnant.” He said in a statement: “I condemn violence against any public safety officials in the strongest terms, and the Department of Justice will never accept any threats or violence directed at those who serve and protect our communities — from this cowardly action, to the killing of an officer in Philadelphia last week while he was buying a game for his son, to the tragic loss of a deputy U.S. marshal in the line of duty in Louisiana earlier this week. Such senseless acts of violence threaten the very reforms that nonviolent protesters in Ferguson and around the country have been working towards for the past several months.”