Resignation of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, unlikely to halt protests
[video news clip]
City officials in Ferguson, Mo. were due Sunday to address the resignation of Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed teenager Michael Brown in a confrontation in August that fueled protests in the St. Louis suburb and around the nation.
Stephanie Karr, Ferguson city attorney, told the Associated Press that city officials planned to make a statement regarding Wilson's resignation. Karr earlier this week said Wilson had been on paid leave pending the outcome of an internal police investigation.
Wilson's resignation was announced Saturday by one of his attorneys, Neil Bruntrager, who said his client's decision was effective immediately.
"I have been told that my continued employment may put the residents and police officers of the City of Ferguson at risk, which is a circumstance that I cannot allow,” Wilson said in his resignation letter released late Saturday.
“It was my hope to continue in police work, but the safety of other police officers and the community are of paramount importance to me. It is my hope that my resignation will allow the community to heal,” the letter read.
Meanwhile, Brown's parents planned to attend services at the church where their son's funeral was held, with the Rev. Al Sharpton scheduled to preach.
"We were not after Wilson's job," Sharpton wrote in a statement. "We were after Michael Brown's justice."
On Saturday night, more than 100 protesters gathered near police headquarters, where they were outnumbers by officers, following the news. At least one person was arrested after a brief standoff with officers, while others wearing white masks sat in a nearby street blocking traffic. Another protester burned an American flag. By midnight, only about two dozen protesters remained.
But many seemed unfazed by the resignation. Several merely shrugged their shoulders when asked what they thought, while Rick Campbell flatly said he didn't care about the resignation, noting: "I've been protesting out here since August."
A grand jury spent more than three months reviewing evidence in the case before declining in November to issue charges against Wilson. He told jurors that he feared for his life when Brown hit him and reached for his gun.
The U.S. Justice Department is still conducting a civil rights investigation into the shooting and a separate probe of police department practices.
After the shooting, Wilson spent months in hiding and made no public statements. He broke his silence after the grand jury decision, telling ABC News that he could not have done anything differently in the encounter with Brown.
Wilson said he has a clean conscience because "I know I did my job right." Brown's shooting was the first time he fired his gun on the job, he said.
Asked whether the encounter would have unfolded the same way if Brown had been white, Wilson said yes.
Away from the protests Saturday night, resident Victoria Rutherford said she believed Wilson should have not only resigned, but been convicted of a crime.
"I'm upset. I have a 16-year-old son. It could've been him. I feel that he was absolutely in the wrong," she said.
Another resident, Reed Voorhees, said he hoped Wilson could find similar work "someplace where he would enjoy life, and move on with his life."
In the days after the shooting, tense and sometimes violent protests popped up in and around Ferguson, a predominantly black community patrolled by a mostly white police force. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon called in the National Guard to help.
Then on Monday night -- when prosecutors announced that a grand jury declined to indict Wilson -- the St. Louis suburb of 20,000 residents was ravaged by looting and violence.
At least a dozen commercial buildings were destroyed in Ferguson and neighboring Dellwood, mostly along West Florissant Avenue, not far from where Brown was killed. By Tuesday, Nixon had sent more than 2,200 National Guard members to the Ferguson area to support local law enforcement.
Demonstrations, which also have been held other U.S. cities, are expected to continue, though a sense of normalcy -- or at least a new normal -- has begun to settle on the city.
Police earlier Saturday reopened several blocks of West Florissant that had been barricaded off since Tuesday. Although most store windows were still boarded up, many have been decorated or spray-painted with messages saying the stores are open and welcoming shoppers.
Some business owners spent an unseasonably warm day Saturday tidying up, hoping customers soon would return.
Tracy Ballard, 44, brought her 7-year-old daughter to a store on West Florissant to buy candy and soda, before a trip to the beautician up the street.
"I feel sad for the business owners," Ballard said. "It's really sad it had to come from this. We just wanted justice. If we'd have had justice, none of this would have happened."
____
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Un-frigging-believeable.
Wilson is exonerated of any charges, and he STILL is not allowed to return to his normal life, and both he and his family are subject to constant death threats.
And Holder's Justice Department is constantly scheming ways to find an alternate way to level federal charges at Wilson.
I will never understand how black America can attach itself to this Michael Brown lowlife, who violently robbed a store and roughed up the convenience store clerk, and barely 10 minutes later violently attacked a police officer, that Michael Brown in that attack took 9 rounds and still advanced on Wilson, and it took a 10th round to stop Brown about 8 feet from officer Wilson, and
Wilson is accused of acting innapropriately?!?
Further, the state prosecutor, with the lack of evidence, could have dismissed charges, but went to the extra step of putting the facts before a grand jury, who interviewed 60 witnesses, INCLUDING Darren Wilson, in about 70 hours of testimony, and again found a lack of evidence to prosecute Wilson.
How much is enough?
And why is black America so obsessed with lynching this officer, despite overwhelming evidence that he did not act innapropriately? It's absurd.
If I were officer Wilson, I'd move to Alaska or Idaho or Montana, or some other part of the country where there's virtually no blacks. Because clearly reasoning with black America is not an option.
AGAIN:
- at least 93% of blacks are killed in black-on-black shootings.
- As O'Reilly editorialized in a Youtube clip I posted above, there are only a tiny fraction of police shootings, and even less of blacks, that are even questionably justified.
- In Ferguson, Missouri specifically, there are no previous police shootings of blacks, ZERO.
- As the Salt Lake City case I cited above proves (a black officer who shot a 20-year-old white kid), it is not blacks alone who are shot by police. But that Salt Lake City case is ignored by the liberal media, only even mentioned in the conservative media, because it doesn't fit the "white racist" narrative the mainstream partisan media like to lyingly project.
The best explanation I've heard is that blacks want to change the subject from their disproportionately high levels of crime, teen pregancy (76% born out of wedlock), rap/hiphop culture that promotes criminality, disproportionately high welfare use, their having the highest ratio of high school dropouts, and their overwhelming self-annihilation in 93% black-on-black shootings.
They want to believe anyone else is responsible, and dismiss the facts as "racist lies". Blaming "racist" cops is an easy conspiracy theory that allows them to retain their African-American pride, despite the overwhelming facts that cultural propblems in Black America, not the cops, not whites, are responsible for their own lack of education, crime, and black-on-black murders. Even Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson get nervous when they see a young black male approaching them on the street.
