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“Citing security fears, Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, who fatally shot Michael Brown Aug. 9, has resigned from the police department,” reports stltoday.com, a move that should surprise no one with a pulse and even minimal brain wave activity. While in his resignation letter (after the jump), Wilson cites the risk to residents and fellow officers should he go back to work on the streets of Ferguson – all true, no doubt – by returning to his former job, Wilson himself would have had a target on his back every minute of every day . . .

I, Darren Wilson, hereby resign my commission as a police officer with the City of Ferguson 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. For obvious reasons, I wanted to wait until the grand jury made their decision before I officially made my decision to resign. 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. I would like to thank all of my supporters and fellow officers throughout this process.

59 COMMENTS

  1. Officer Wilson, you are more than welcome to move out to West County. You will be welcomed with open arms. and some of the police depts. there are hiring.

    • He’s be welcome in Spokane County or even North Idaho, in Kootenai County. They have an officer shortage who have left for lateral hires with better paying position in law enforcement. I know Spokane County would hire him. They have a cop who left a California Department after choking people to death and killing a family dog when he showed up at the home during a medical call of a heart attack. The peoples dog barked at him and he killed it in the home. He came here to Spokane County and then killed a pastor here on the pastors own property. The sheriffs office got sued and paid out 2 mil. and he’s STILL on the job!!
      Come to Spokane. The cops around her shoot people left and right.
      http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/jun/21/spokane-county-settles-creach-shooting-case-2-mill/

        • As unfortunate as it is, yes I do. I have four dogs and take them lots of places, so I am always hyper vigilant of my surroundings and for any douche bag cops or other nitwits out to cause trouble. I carry full time, even home carry, so being vigilant is of critical importance. Noticing a cop long before he even get’s near me provides me ample opportunity to make myself and my animals non-accessible. I will not be victimized with some moron with a badge.

        • I’m guessing “Mark Lloyd.” To even compare that officer with Wilson is a disgrace! Based on the evidence, and independent witnesses (some of who were black) that supported Wilson’s testimony, he doesn’t appear to be an officer that just randomly shoots people (or animals). He’s just a victim of a President and an Attorney General that would like to beef up the race wars for their own agenda . . .

          To Officer Wilson, I think it is very sad that he is having to forfeit his career due to bigoted people that can’t look at physical evidence, and independent witness testimony as the “facts” of the case.

  2. If his continued presence on the police force to the police, what does that say about th people there?

  3. “Breaking?” How did anyone NOT see this coming? They wouldn’t have fired him unless he was sentenced.

  4. More specifically, I saw a story a week ago that it was his stated intention to resign. That he followed through on that intention is newsworthy, I suppose, but hardly “Breaking.”

    • ABC News paid him six figures for that interview. . . . wonder how much he got. he already raised $400k on the go fund me website

      • Really… I was wondering about his financial situation given that he may become a civil target. Also, aren’t the feds looking at him? I’d be surprised if they didn’t charge him with some federal crime. Not that the feds would get (or expect) a conviction. Just make an example of Wilson with a (legal defense) financial beatdown and bad publicity.

        • The feds have no case. The civil question is always a concern. Normally i would say that no lawyer would take a civil case against Wilson because i don’t think there is any way they would win but in this case i am sure someone will do it just for the exposure. Costing Wilson a bunch of lawyer fees. I am not far from where this is all taking place and supported Wilson because i still believe you are innocent until proven guilty. My gut from all the rumors told me that it was a justified use of force but that Wilson my have escalated the situation instead of deescalating it like all LEO should do in any encounter. But what i have read from the Gran Jury documents it almost seems like it Brown was acting in a suicide by cop situation. I cant find any fault in Wilson’s actions.

      • Wilson paid the ultimate price. His life will never again be normal. Whatever money he got won’t go far.

        For the record, I do believe that “innocent, unarmed folks” of various ethnic groups are mercilessly blown away by the cops from time to time. I don’t believe the evidence in the case shows this was one of those times.

        The protesters lost all legitimacy when they took a “facts don’t matter” attitude and “burnt the bitch down” long after the autopsy results directly conflicted with just about every witness and completely supported Officer Wilson’s account. Then you add the ABC interview and it all seems clear to me. The man is a patriot.

        Wilson needs our prayers. He certainly has mine.

        • you and i have a different opinion of the ultimate price, and it wasn’t this suddenly wealthy cop that paid it.

      • Citation for ABC paying Wilson for that interview? I’ve seen it both asserted and refuted.

        Contrary to some reports, Wilson denied he had been paid for the ABC interview. “Absolutely not,” he said Saturday. “I wouldn’t jeopardize my integrity for a dollar.”

        Source: St. Louis Compost-Disgrace

  5. What a pansy. Afraid of big black boogie man, er. make that boogie boy. What in hell is tear gas, tasers, batons, fighting skills and all that other BS they teach them if they shoot people because he got bitch slapped?
    Maybe he should do something completely different than law enforcement. Maybe take a class in floral design!

    • right. he should be a man like you and go back to work in Ferguson, and like most officers there (in a dept of 50), work his shift and take a run . . . alone. .. . and end up in a dark alley with 3 in the head.

      maybe my math is off, but 50 officers, minus detectives and command staff, tells me there are about 13-14 officers available for a shift. if there are a ton of runs called in (not hard to do), voila, someone is gonna have him. alone. in a dark alley. boom boom boom boom. Maybe they use the AR-15 stolen from the STL County police car before it got torched. Either way, he is a dead man. maybe he can work elsewhere in Missouri, but anywhere near ferguson, he is marking time.

      • I was speaking of the original incident, not going back to work for them. Obviously he can’t be employed there anymore.
        However, after a few years, people won’t remember anything, (in other localities) People have short memories.
        As far as being a big man, I’m a smaller guy with a piss poor attitude.

        • Regardless of size, weight, skill, attitude, or presence of weapons; in a fight for your life, unconscious = dead.

    • “What in hell is tear gas, tasers, batons, fighting skills and all that other BS they teach them if they shoot people because he got bitch slapped?”

      Those things are useful sometimes. Sometimes not. Most normal people never find out the difference. Some thugs do.

    • Well, someone else just took the mantle of Stupidest Person on the Internet. There is NO WAY that this man could go back to his job as an officer in Ferguson, and most likely he won’t be able to work on any police force anywhere due to the attention. Because of what happened, and he was found to be doing his JOB, he is losing his job, he is probably going to have to uproot himself and his family just for their safety and completely change his life. Because he chose to be a public servant and a horrible situation happened to him his life is ruined too.

    • LOL. Yeah, fighting skills, yo. Because all police officers are trained to be like Bruce Lee and take down people way bigger than them, using Kung Fu and quickness. Get real, guy. Police officers aren’t trained to win unarmed fights. They’re taught to survive them, to prevent their sidearm from being taken and used against them, not to go UFC and start throwing arm bars and triangle chokes.

      There are very few police officers who can stand toe to toe with a guy bigger and stronger than them in unarmed combat and come out ahead. It’s not like your everyday patrol officer is an expert MMA combatant, or even as good as your average amateur boxer.

    • I tell you what, let me corner you in a car and start beating the f_ck ot of you and try to take your side arm and the see if you want to try and get to your taser or baton in the back seat. You can’t effen call time out when a SOB is trying to kill your ass. What an asswipe.

    • What a pansy. Afraid of big black boogie man, er. make that boogie boy. What in hell is tear gas, tasers, batons, fighting skills and all that other BS they teach them if they shoot people because he got bitch slapped?

      Does it take a lot of work to be this ignorant of the facts of the case, and the statutory requirements for use of force, including deadly force, in self-defense? Or does it just come naturally?

      On the other hand, if you want to speak with moral authority, you need to volunteer to undergo exactly the same situation, and only then claim that the victim of a violent assault was a “pansy”, and had the means, opportunity, and obligation to use less-than-deadly force in self-defense.

      Otherwise, you might want to let Mike McDaniel impart some wisdom about the use of force in self-defense.

  6. Wilson’s boss is probably the next to go. The long knives have been out for him since Day One.

    No federal charges will be brought against Wilson, period. But the Feds will probably be up the @ss of the Ferguson PD. It might be broken up.

    The town will be the final casualty. It’s dead. All over a brainless thug.

    • correct, but I don’t think they will break up the dept. I don’t think the feds will have enough for 42 USC 1983 charges against Wilson, but. . . . the dept. has some issues. Minor, but given the feds, I think they will weigh on them. the dept. should have never let Wilson drive himself to the dept. and wash his hands off and put his own service weapon in the evidence bag. They don’t have enough detectives, which is why Brown’s body was in the street for 4+ hours (they were on another “run”) so they will have to enter into a cooperative agt with other depts. Also, they probably will have to demonstrate their “outreach” efforts for minority recruitment. Unfortunately, all of this stuff is minor, but it will cause the DOJ to force a federal patronage appointment, I mean a federal monitor, onto Ferguson at their expense for a 3-5 yr period. They will also enter into a consent decree.

      Chief Jackson will retire within the year.

      • Minority outreach would not be a bad thing for the Ferguson PD. It might be more “cosmetic” than salutary, but even so, it might help.

        • Many, many municipalities, not just Ferguson, have been struggling to up their percentage of black cops. Black guys who fit the qualifications for most cops — some college, no prison record, no drugs, etc. — generally have better options, meaning there aren’t enough black cops to go around. Those who exist can pick and choose, so they don’t tend to end up in neighborhoods that are primarily minority and poorer. One reason more black guys don’t make that choice is pretty clear if you’ve ever heard some of the stuff they have to deal with there; anytime things go south, they’ve got people calling them Uncle Tom or traitor or the like. Cops get called names by the Bad Guys pretty much everywhere, but in those neighborhoods, even the Law Abiding often think of cops as the enemy, and despise any black man who chooses that career.

          As this article makes clear, black cops are being particularly targeted in Ferguson. That level of hatred doesn’t come out of nowhere; it’s a simmering undercurrent even in more peaceful times.

          http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/black-and-in-blue-a-ferguson-police-sergeant-reflects-on/article_b71556de-68b1-566f-a6ce-cc02c01b8343.html

      • The Ferguson PD handed the entire case over to another agency (I believe St. Louis) as soon as they realized one of their officers had shot someone. So it wasn’t Ferguson detectives who were delayed, and they already have a cooperative agreement set up.

        The body lay on the street for four hours partly because the crowd at the scene got violent. If you poke around, you should be able to find the local interview with one of the coroners who were trapped in their vehicle for over an hour, while the police tried to get the crowd settled enough that they could safely retrieve the body. Michael Brown’s family was there begging people to let them through for much of that time.

        I expect the Ferguson PD will go the route of the Jennings PD; it’ll be dissolved and the St. Louis county police will take over. Local speculation is that the city government will be dissolved, and the area end up an unincorporated part of St. Louis county as well. Meaning the locals will have considerably less control over their own fates than they did before the rioting.

        • The whole place is going to be a shell anyway. And since the voting rate there is dismal, no big deal… they don’t seem interested in representing themselves anyway.

  7. I think Dirk Diggler’s comment hits Darren Wilson’s situation and options squarely on the head, It can be no surprise Wilson resigned from the Ferguson PD. I am sure he might be welcomed elsewhere, but he is a “marked man” forever in some peoples’ book and I think it is only a matter of time before someone wanting to be a “hero” (an ideologue or crazy [little difference between the two]) tracks him down and murders him and possibly his family, too. I am sure Darren Wilson NEVER envisioned his life taking this drastic of a turn, and I feel great sympathy for his situation. I sincerely hope he can find a place to settle after this and be safe, but the ugly reality is the odds are against him. It’s a shame because to me he came off in the ABC TV interview he did as a decent, level-headed person and probably a good Police Officer. So it goes.

  8. Seems like a good guy and a decent LEO. It is a shame that politics and race-baiting have lead to this end. I would love to have him as a LEO in my community, however his days in law enforcement are obviously over. It would be neat to see him go into motivational speaking and/or self defense or use of force instruction.

  9. I’ve been following some people on Black Twitter. They post such things as “The National Guard guy in the parking lot of Walmart has an M16!”. “The National Guard just drove 2 Humvees into the parking lot”. What else would they use, Uber or Lyft?

    OMG you mean to tell me he has the standard issued rifle that all other NG have? OMG! I bet he has a knife too!

    • I saw some idiot tweeting “THIS is America???” regarding a NG Humvee.

      They’re just mad they don’t get to keep looting with impunity now.

  10. I think Wilson probably made negligent errors during the incident. Had he tried to stay on the force, I think he would have been dismissed for cause, if for no other reason than political pressure. But he still had a right to defend himself. And I’m not going second-guess someone in that situation when there is compelling evidence that his testimony was reasonably accurate.

    He’s still got civil litigation to face. Once that’s over, I have no doubt if he wants to continue his LE career, there will be a department somewhere who will take him. I would not be concerned if he went to work for my local PD. I imagine he would have learned a lot from his experience and would be a better cop for it.

    • I think Wilson probably made negligent errors during the incident.

      What errors, specifically, did Wilson make? And why were those supposed errors negligent? Does that negligence rise to culpable negligence?

  11. Wilson’s situation is even more screwed up than it first appears, as his new wife is also an officer. Taking the oath to serve and protect is a heavy burden, with high costs.

    • “Taking the oath to serve and protect is a heavy burden, with high costs”. Spare me the tears Davis.

      Maybe you should save your compassion for folks working more dangerous jobs than that of a badged thug ? Loggers, farm laborers, construction trades and laborers, and truck drivers ALL are more dangerous than your beloved badged thugs. Also, unlike the badged thug who take their salary from your forced tax payments, the aforementioned occupations actually work to BUILD something. They don’t compromise your Freedom and Liberty as the badged thugs do.

      Remember member of the sheeple class, Don Davis…..the SCOTUS has ruled the badged thugs have no responsibility to protect the common serf, the working stiff, the taxpayer. Instead your beloved badged and gun-carrying .gov enforcers are there to protect that which you know as “government”.

      Now Davis….go opened up another box of Kleenex and have yourself another tearful session as you bemoan the departure of the government-sanctioned killer, Darren Wilson. Myself, good riddance. But rest assured there Davis, another tax-sucking, Freedom-stealing cockroach will step up to take his place.

      “Remember Jose Guerena”

      • Dan is just mad because he doesn’t feel he and his fellow loggers get enough credit doing that vital job where if you screw up, you get murdered but if you survive, you get death threats from a mob.

  12. Frankly I can’t believe he didn’t demand payola in exchange for his involuntary retirement. This is obviously a “work related” issue, and he shouldn’t be forced to whore himself out to the media to survive.

    Personally, I’d be very concerned about his legal defense for the inevitable civil suit – many professional liability policies terminate coverage when employment is terminated (even if the “event” happened during the “coverage period”.. )

    • You presume he didn’t get a severance. Don’t. That has been discussed often too. I am sure he got something to resign from Ferguson.

  13. I have some news for those of you who think that Wilson-Brown confrontation is only about the cops;. Very few white, Asian and Hispanic offices are going to stick their necks out when they see the next ghetto thug do something wrong. I am not even sure that Black officers are going to push thing to far. But this about you white, Asian and Hispanic gun owners too. When the next Big Mike decides he wants something that you have you better think twice about resisting with deadly force because the race hustler-gangbanger machine is going to target you. It would be quite ironic if some of our copping hating band of brothers are forced to put themselves at the mercy of the mob.

  14. From available public photos, how does a bruised face induce a child like fear against a demon HULK?
    maybe if the event ended in the car where the guy was going for the gun – that could certainly induce some life threatening fear, but after….
    Lots been said of the size of the deceased – was the officer 5’4″ 145 lbs soaking wet? He was what an inch or so shorter and outweighed by less than 100 lbs.
    I’m glad the officer has chosen another line of work b/c of the pictures shown of his injuries /bruises he seems unsuited to any combative type lifestyle /occupation /role.

    • First: kindly point out the severity-of-sustained-injury clause in the Missouri statutes regarding the justifiable use of deadly force in self-defense.

      Second: it is now undisputed fact* that Brown, after initially running, turned around and charged Wilson. That is, Brown – who had previously assaulted Wilson once, in a manner that reasonably put Wilson in mortal fear, who then tried to wrest Wilson’s gun from him and use it against him – then turned and charged at Wilson. It was entirely reasonable to believe that, had Brown reached Wilson, Brown would have repeated his assault and attempted murder.

      You sound like the type who claimed that Trayvon Martin didn’t bash George Zimmerman’s head into the concrete enough times to justify the use of deadly force in self-defense.

      * Credible witness accounts, location of blood splatter, locations of spent shell casings, Brown’s final position, and abrasions

  15. Re:martin
    I’ve never claimed anything of the sort. Not knowing what happened that night – my thought is that I would have preferred both individuals to be armed. My background tells me that when someone you don’t know follows you in a car then approaches on foot they are not coming to give you a hug. Also strangers in the neighbourhood.. Who are they and what are they doing, I certainly get that too.
    Regarding what the law says as to severity of injury required for self defence or lethal self defence, I have no idea. However I don’t think it matters. When has legality equalled right /wrong or however you want to say it. As an extreme example, if someone slaps an officer and in turn is shot in self defence is that reasonable? Legally is there much difference(I don’t know)? In all my self defence courses pistol and rifle, instructors have only referred to how a person FEELS about the attack. If you’re in fear for your life – justified, basically. I’m not much of a DEM, so you can imagine what I think about FEEELINGS…
    Perhaps just being where I’m from and experiencing life as I have it’s nearly impossible for me to see how such apparently minor injuries could cause such fear in a grown man of considerable size. I suppose all opinions on that will vary.
    Agreed- had brown made it back to Wilson, I would also bet that he would have continued the confrontation as he did in the car.

  16. I think the media primarily drove this story. The black community have a right to be pissed at cops but Michael Brown was not the right martyr for their cause. Whether or not you believe what they say happened, Michael Brown was casted as a guy who could never hurt a fly despite assaulting the owner of a store. The media wanted this result and they got it. Even posting Wilsons home address.

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