U.S. authorities need to build trust on race issues: U.N. rights chief

GENEVA (Reuters) - U.S. authorities need to tackle a "deep and festering" mistrust in some sectors of the population and examine how race relations affect law enforcement, the U.N.'s human rights chief said on Tuesday. About a dozen buildings in surburban Ferguson, Missouri, burned overnight and police fired tear gas at protesters angry that a grand jury had cleared police officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein at the United Nations said he was "deeply concerned at the disproportionate number of young African Americans who die in encounters with police officers, as well as the disproportionate number of African Americans in U.S. prisons and the disproportionate number of African Americans on Death Row." Under U.N. rules, police officers may only resort to intentional lethal use of firearms when strictly unavoidable to protect life, Zeid said in a statement, while protesters have no right to cause harm even if they disagreed with the verdict. He added: "It is clear that, at least among some sectors of the population, there is a deep and festering lack of confidence in the fairness of the justice and law enforcement systems." (Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Alison Williams/Ruth Pitchford)