Darren Wilson, 28, the white officer who shot and killed unarmed black youth Michael Brown, 18, has resigned from the Ferguson, Mo., police force. His Nov. 29 resignation came five days after the Missouri grand jury decided Wilson’s fate: no charges. It seems to me that Wilson should take his family, move far away and change his name. Otherwise, he will always be looking over his shoulder, and no one could call that paranoia.
Wilson’s resignation came after threats of violence were made toward other police officers. “It was my hope to continue in police work,” he said, “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.”
Wilson was on paid leave since the Aug. 9 shooting (the average annual salary for a Ferguson cop is $66,000). He resigned with no severance package or pension and has a baby on the way. To help with his newly unemployed status, donations have poured in from a number of sources — including the Ku Klux Klan. In recent reports, Wilson donations have been estimated at just under $1 million, eclipsing the funds raised for the Brown family.
Read more: Ferguson Police Chief Lied About Michael Brown Surveillance Tape
The Internet remains ablaze about the racial unrest and riots. Buildings and police cars were set on fire and The New York Times ran an article on Monday about the underreported death of black youth Deandre Joshua, 20, who was shot in the head and then set on fire inside his car. It is unclear exactly when Joshua was killed or why his body was burned. The police have given only slim details about the killing and haven’t named any suspects.
Meanwhile, public nuts like the KKK and Jew-hater Louis Farrakhan praise violence. Farrakhan wants African-Americans to “tear this goddamn country up.” During a recent speech he held up a Quran and said, “The Bible says an eye, a tooth, a life … As long as they kill us, and go to Wendy’s and have a burger and go to sleep, they gonna keep killing us.” He told his audience, “Teach your baby to throw a bottle,” and pantomimed throwing a Molotov cocktail.
Great. Just what we need: The fire-and-brimstone God from the Old Testament being promoted by the self-proclaimed minister Farrakhan and the wrath of the lunatic fringe KKK. Oy.
What I’ll never understand is how anyone thought that setting their own community on fire was a step toward any solution, and now we’ve got big blowhard Al Sharpton fanning the flame of racial unrest. “We were not after Wilson’s job,” said Sharpton. “We were after Michael Brown’s justice.”
I can’t help but wonder why the grand jury was made up of nine whites and only three African-Americans. Wilson has been judged by the media, but, by law, he was innocent until proven guilty. It seems there was enough evidence to cause reasonable doubt. I urge you to read this account in The Washington Post about what transpired during the grand jury hearing.
At this point, Wilson and Brown have become almost mythological symbols. People don’t want to be confused with facts; absent logic thrives in today’s snippet of an attention span. A well-written tweet is enough to send citizens ranting, opinions running willy-nilly based solely on media-pumped emotions.
The biggest positive that I see coming out of this whole tragic mess is that it has brought to the foreground our nation’s shameful racism and a reexamination of our grand jury system (See “Ferguson Proved It: Our Grand Jury System Needs Fixing” by TheBlot Magazine’s own Matthew Keys). As for installing camera’s on all police officers, I’m all for it. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to judge cases on evidence?
And now I leave you with President Obama’s Dec. 1 speech about Ferguson:
Dorri Olds is a contributing journalist for TheBlot Magazine.
