With the news breaking overnight that police officer Darren Wilson resigned from the Ferguson, Missouri police department just days after a grand jury’s decision not to indict him in the August shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown, many of the Sunday talk shows tried to put the shooting and the protests-cum-riots into perspective.
Wilson’s resignation was reported Saturday evening and confirmed by his attorney, Neil Bruntrager, who said Wilson’s ability to serve in Ferguson had been compromised by his killing of Michael Brown in an altercation over the summer.
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Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Bruntrager said Wilson, 28, did not feel he could safely and effectively work in the community any longer. “That’s something he’s going to have to live with for quite some time,” he said.
In his resignation letter, Wilson wrote, “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.”
He also wrote, “It is my hope that my resignation will allow the community to heal.”
In an interview with ABC News earlier in the week, Wilson expressed no remorse for the shooting, claiming he believed his life was in danger during the altercation with the 6’4” Brown. Wilson said that if the circumstances were repeated, his training would have dictated the same response.
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The decision not to prosecute Wilson, made under an uncommon situation in which the grand jury saw all available evidence and heard testimony from Wilson that included no cross-examination, infuriated many in the country, particularly the African American community.
While Wilson’s resignation was welcomed, representatives of the Ferguson community believe it may not have gone far enough. “There are many reasons that Officer Wilson should have resigned and quite frankly that Officer Wilson and others should resign,” said Antonio French, a St. Louis alderman who represents Ferguson. He called on the Ferguson police chief to resign and for “accountability” for those in charge of the larger St. Louis County Police Department.
Speaking this week, President Obama acknowledged the anger in minority communities, saying, “The frustrations have deep roots in many communities of color who have a sense that our laws are not always being enforced uniformly or fairly.”
Some senior members of the law enforcement community, however, expressed the hope that something positive might be salvaged from the turmoil in Ferguson.
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In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Malik Aziz, deputy chief of the Dallas Police Department and chair of the National Black Police Association, said he believes Ferguson could be a turning point for policing in the U.S. on the scale of the riots that followed the exoneration of the police officers who were videotaped beating Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1991. The King beating eventually led to a major overhaul of the Los Angeles Police Department as well as a national examination of police practices.
Aziz said he hopes Ferguson “sparks a national conversation on police shootings,” and argued that police departments that don’t begin adopting more community-focused tactics will eventually be left behind.
On the same panel as Aziz, Thomas Manger, police chief of Montgomery County in Maryland, said he has already seen the effects of Ferguson in the communities his officers serve. “I think it’s had an impact on just about every police department in this country,” he said, calling it “a shot in the arm” for those advocating better police-community relations.
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“Ferguson started a lot of conversations about policing,” Manger said. “We’ve had folks reaching out to us.”
Other law enforcement experts, such as former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, said they hoped the incidents in Ferguson would cause police departments to renew their focus on recruiting minority officers
Speaking on ABC’s This Week, Kelly noted that even though the Ferguson riots constituted a “major-league event happening in a small town” that was unprepared to deal with it, a lack of diversity was still at play.
“You can’t have a city that’s two thirds African American policed by a police department with 53 officers, only three of [whom] are a minority,” he said. “It makes no sense. It will refocus law enforcement on the issue of diversity because a department that reflects the city or the municipality it serves is much easier to police. It’s smarter policing.”
Kelly also called on the federal government to help pay for retraining in Ferguson and the hiring of more minority officers. “I hope that the Justice Department is going to contribute, or Homeland Security will contribute some money to the effort,” he said.
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