Police Kill Unarmed Teen In Ferguson, Missouri

Darren Wilson’s first job was on a troubled police force disbanded by authorities 

FERGUSON, Mo. — The small city of Jennings, Mo., had a police department so troubled, and with so much tension between white officers and black residents, that the city council finally decided to disband it. Everyone in the Jennings police department was fired. New officers were brought in to create a credible department from scratch.

That was three years ago. One of the officers who worked in that department, and lost his job along with everyone else, was a young man named Darren Wilson.

Some of the Jennings officers reapplied for their jobs, but Wilson got a job in the police department in the nearby city of Ferguson.

On Aug. 9, Wilson, who is white, killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown after Brown and a friend had been walking down the middle of a street.

Wilson, 28, has completely vanished from public view. He has not explained publicly what happened in that brief, lethal encounter.

Video shows Officer Darren Wilson receiving a commendation months before Michael Brown’s death. Residents say they saw a different image of the officer after the shooting. (AP)

His lawyer did not answer phone calls or e-mails. The police union is mum.

His ex-wife is publicly silent. His friends aren’t speaking out.

His mother is long deceased, and there is no sign of his father or either of his stepfathers.

Wilson is under the protection of the Ferguson Police Department, which has chosen from the beginning of this case to opt for obscurity rather than transparency. The department did not reveal Wilson’s identity for nearly a week after the fatal shooting of Brown. By that time, his social media accounts had been suspended.

But everyone leaves a record, and Darren Dean Wilson is no exception.

People who know him describe him as someone who grew up in a home marked by multiple divorces and tangles with the law. His mother died when he was in high school. A friend said a career in law enforcement offered him structure in what had been a chaotic life.

What he found in Jennings, however, was a mainly white department mired in controversy and notorious for its fraught relationship with residents, especially the African American majority. It was not an ideal place to learn how to police. Officials say Wilson kept a clean record without any disciplinary action.

Angry aftermath of the Missouri shooting View Graphic

The job in Ferguson represented a step up and likely a significant salary increase.

Wilson has had some recent personal turmoil: Last year, he petitioned the court seeking a divorce from his wife, Ashley Nicole Wilson, and they formally split in November, records show.

Wilson won a commendation this year after he subdued a man who was found to be involved in a drug transaction, and he was honored in a ceremony in the Town Council chambers.

He seemed to be doing pretty well as a police officer — until shortly after noon on that Saturday when he passed two young black men walking down the middle of the street, put his police cruiser into reverse and said something to them.

Problems at home

Wilson was born in Texas in 1986 to Tonya and John Wilson, and he had a sister, Kara. His parents divorced in 1989, when he was 2 or 3 years old.

His mother then married Tyler Harris, and they lived in Elgin, Tex., for a time, records show. Tyler and Tonya Harris had a child named Jared.

The family later moved to the suburban Missouri town of St. Peters, where Wilson’s mother again got divorced and married a man named Dan Durso, records indicate.

Wilson attended St. Charles West High School, in a predominantly white, middle-class community west of the Missouri River. He played junior varsity hockey for the West Warriors but wasn’t a standout.

There were problems at home. In 2001, when Wilson was a freshman in high school, his mother pleaded guilty to forgery and stealing. She was sentenced to five years in prison, although records suggest the court agreed to let her serve her sentence on probation.

She died of natural causes in November 2002, when Wilson was 16, records show. His stepfather, Tyler Harris, took over as his limited guardian, which ended when the boy turned 18.

A family friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of threats, said Wilson sought out a career in law enforcement as a way to create a solid foundation in his life that he’d been missing.

“He had a rough upbringing and just wanted to help people,” the friend said. In Wilson’s childhood, “there was just no structure.”

After going through the police academy, Wilson landed a job in 2009 as a rookie officer in Jennings, a small, struggling city of 14,000 where 89 percent of the residents were African American and poverty rates were high. At the time, the 45-employee police unit had one or two black members on the force, said Allan Stichnote, a white Jennings City Council member.

Racial tension was endemic in Jennings, said Rodney Epps, an African American city council member.

“You’re dealing with white cops, and they don’t know how to address black people,” Epps said. “The straw that broke the camel’s back, an officer shot at a female. She was stopped for a traffic violation. She had a child in the back [of the] car and was probably worried about getting locked up. And this officer chased her down Highway 70, past city limits, and took a shot at her. Just ridiculous.”

Police faced a series of lawsuits for using unnecessary force, Stichnote said. One black resident, Cassandra Fuller, sued the department claiming a white Jennings police officer beat her in June 2009 on her own porch after she made a joke. A car had smashed into her van, which was parked in front of her home, and she called police. The responding officer asked her to move the van. “It don’t run. You can take it home with you if you want,” she answered. She said the officer became enraged, threw her off the porch, knocked her to the ground and kicked her in the stomach.

The department paid Fuller a confidential sum to settle the case, she said.

“It’s like a horror story in my mind. I never thought a police officer would pull me off my porch and beat me to the ground, for just laughing,” Fuller said in an interview.

The Jennings department also had a corruption problem. A joint federal and local investigation discovered that a lieutenant had been accepting federal funds for drunken-driving checks that never happened.

All the problems became too much for the city council to bear, and in March 2011 the council voted 6-to-1 to shut down the department and hire St. Louis County to run its police services, putting Lt. Jeff Fuesting in charge as commander.

Fuesting, who overlapped for about four months with Wilson during a transitional period, described him as “an average officer.”

“My impression is he didn’t go above and beyond, and he didn’t get in any trouble,” Fuesting said.

He said of the department during its difficult period: “There was a disconnect between the community and the police department. There were just too many instances of police tactics which put the credibility of the police department in jeopardy. Complaints against officers. There was a communication breakdown between the police and the community. There were allegations involving use of force that raised questions.”

Robert Orr, the former Jennings police chief who retired in 2010, said of Wilson: “He was a good officer with us. There was no disciplinary action.”

Tense policing

The structure of policing in these small St. Louis communities, as in many places in the United States, is innately combustible.

Officers rarely stay in the same police force for a long time, much less for an entire career. This means police and residents are typically strangers to one another — and not simply from different social, ethnic or racial backgrounds.

Ferguson is an example of a police department staffed predominantly with white officers, many of whom live far away from, and often fail to establish trust with, the predominantly black communities they serve. Policing can become a tense, racially charged, fearful and potentially violent series of interactions. Distrust becomes institutionalized, as much a part of the local infrastructure as the sewers and power lines.

A newly released report by a nonprofit group of lawyers identifies Ferguson as a city that gets much of its revenue from fines generated by police in mundane citations against residents — what the group calls a poor-
people’s tax.

The civil unrest that followed the shooting of Michael Brown suggests a deeper problem with the city’s police department, said Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina professor of criminology who has studied police shootings for decades.

“In order for a police department to weather a storm like that, it has to have social capital. And this police department didn’t have social capital in that community,” he said.

The Ferguson shooting became a national story in part because of what happened in the days afterward, when the country witnessed street protesters chanting “hands up, don’t shoot” as they faced heavily militarized police units in armored personnel carriers. The images shocked Americans across the ideological spectrum and prompted President Obama to order a review of federal programs that supply military weaponry to police departments.

The protests have grown smaller, and the looting and street violence that flared late at night have subsided, and so the community is renewing its focus on the original Aug. 9 incident and to the question of how the criminal justice system will handle Wilson’s use of deadly force — six bullets fired in a matter of seconds — against 18-year-old Michael Brown.

Grand jury reviews evidence

Behind closed doors, meeting once a week, a grand jury has been hearing evidence about the shooting from St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch. He has said he does not expect the grand jury to finish its deliberations until October.

Meanwhile, the FBI is interviewing witnesses as part of a Justice Department investigation that could potentially lead separately to federal civil rights charges.

There are two competing narratives about what happened Aug. 9.

Dorian Johnson, 22, was walking with Brown when, he said, Wilson instigated a confrontation by pulling up to the pair in his police cruiser and telling them to get out of the middle of the street. Johnson said Wilson pulled up so close to Brown that when he opened his car door, it bumped into the teenager.

According to Johnson, Wilson reached out, grabbed Brown by the throat and then grabbed his shirt as Brown tried to move away. At that point, Johnson said, he saw Wilson pull out a gun and shoot Brown in the chest or arm. Johnson said the officer hit Brown with another round as he was running away and fatally gunned him down after he stopped and raised his hands in surrender.

The police have given few details of what happened, but Thomas Jackson, the Ferguson police chief, said in a news briefing that the side of Wilson’s face was swollen and he was treated at a hospital.

The Ferguson Police Department quickly ceded the investigation to the St. Louis County police. St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said Brown “allegedly pushed” Wilson back into the car and physically assaulted Wilson. There was a struggle over Wilson’s gun, which was fired once inside the car, Belmar said. The only person to fire the gun was Wilson, he said.

Autopsies showed Brown was shot six times.

The Ferguson police report about the incident says it began at 12:02 p.m. and that Wilson called it in at 12:43 p.m. The body remained in the street for four hours.

Experts on police shootings say the investigation, including the grand jury deliberations, will focus on whether Wilson had a reasonable perception of being threatened with bodily harm. The experts say it does not matter how many bullets Wilson fired. Police are trained to shoot at the center of mass and stop the threat.

“If it’s an imminent threat of serious bodily harm, yeah, you become the judge, jury and executioner,” said Alpert, the University of South Carolina criminologist.

Richard Rosenfeld, a University of Missouri at St. Louis professor of criminology, adds, “It’s not simply that the officer perceives that he or she is under threat. It must be that the perception is reasonable. That term ‘reasonable’ is so legally freighted.”

Many African Americans here have little trust that the system is capable of reaching a fair decision. McCulloch, the prosecutor, is particularly controversial. His father was a police officer killed by a black man in 1964. He has resisted calls to recuse himself from the case.

“Why is it always in the African American community that it must be the victim’s fault if he got killed?” said Charlie A. Dooley, the county executive of St. Louis County and someone who has called for McCulloch to give way in favor of a special prosecutor. “That is just not right, and it’s not equal justice. African Americans are saying, ‘How dare you? We’re fed up with that. We fought for this country, too.’ ”

Dooley continued: “This is bigger than Mike Brown. What happened in those few seconds on Canfield is illustrative of how little value black men’s lives are worth. The message is clear: Police can kill a young black man and get away with it.”

‘We are Darren Wilson’

On Saturday, Wilson supporters staged a “Support Darren Wilson” rally at Barney’s Sports Pub, which is frequented by current and former officers.

“The people here don’t know him, but law enforcement is family,” said Rhea Rodebaugh, the bar’s owner and a former sheriff. “The poor guy is in hiding. He was doing his job.”

About 100 people, most of them white, showed up. A table held stacks of navy blue T-shirts for sale, each with a police badge on the front and the words “Officer Darren Wilson We Stand By You 8-9-14.”

Several in the crowd had connections to law enforcement, including one who said he knew Wilson from working in private security — and got a call from him on the night of Aug. 9. He said Wilson called to say he couldn’t make it to work because of the shooting.

“Really surprised me that he would think to notify somebody to cover a position that he was responsible for after being involved in what he was involved in,” the officer said.

The officers voiced their unhappiness with Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who called for a “speedy prosecution” in the case, a comment that his office later attempted to retract, saying he meant a “speedy investigation.” The cops said they aren’t buying it since it was from a prepared statement, and they worry about the effect it may have on the community if Wilson is not prosecuted.

“That just sets us up for riots,” said one of the officers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety.

As the day wore on, a counterprotest evolved across the street, growing from two young women to a group of 20 by 6 p.m. — seven hours after the pro-Wilson rally started.

Motorists began driving by and honking in support of people on both sides of the road, largely dividing along racial lines.

“You are disgusting!” screamed one protester at the Wilson supporters.

The person who started the counterprotest, NaKarla Rimson, said they began with two people, and that as motorists drove by, they parked their cars and joined them. It was hard to keep things peaceful, but she said she tried to tell people to “allow everyone to have their opinion.”

Tempers flared on the other side of the street, too, with some people screaming and making rude gestures of their own. By 8 p.m., the pro-Wilson organizers had moved their tables and chairs inside.

“We are trying to get everyone inside to calm things down,” said one of the organizers, who declined to give her name.
Click to expand...
 
All this mike brown had a record isn't relevant to him getting **** six times unarmed. This is they same way people blame rape victims for wearing something too provacative.

Same thing for saying he was a cocks youth .... what American male from the age of 17 to 25 ain't cocky. Soooooo the deflection the Ferguson police department is throwing out is seems to be working as black not on the ground or aware enough to see through the smoke screen

I'm not saying don't watch the anaconda video or the Floyd vs nelly just separate the real vs the non important.
 
fullcourtpress said:
 
Its not character assassination, they are actually just disbursing facts about Michael, as would the parties for Michael's camp would disburse regarding the officer or police force in that area if they had any. Is it false to say he had a criminal background as a juvenile?
Click to expand...
Juvenile records are sealed for a reason.

Nothing he did prior to meeting Darren Wilson matters. Nothing!

He was murdered, executed, gunned down, slaughtered, and every verb synonymous with being killed.

You're playing dumb and it's people like you who come in here and rile things up.

There's a rally at Barneys for DW supporters; go join that and stay out of the thread.
 
Edshoecator said:
Juvenile records are sealed for a reason.

Nothing he did prior to meeting Darren Wilson matters. Nothing!

He was murdered, executed, gunned down, slaughtered, and every verb synonymous with being killed.

You're playing dumb and it's people like you who come in here and rile things up.

There's a rally at Barneys for DW supporters; go join that and stay out of the thread.
Click to expand...
Just as any and all previous info on Officer Darren Wilson is irrelevant, correct?
 
This incident has really opened my eyes to how blatant racism still is in America today...I think it still is a little more mellowed down than in other regions of the world, but I think what makes America worst is the fact that this country doesn't own up to it, is like that bad kid in class that pinches the kid in front of him and then smiles when the teacher looks his way and denies any wrong doing, is really a smack in the ***** face of black Americans everywhere....is really sad.
 
Haven't been on this thread past few days. Mostly NT when I'm work. Did you guys discuss the race of the grand jury yet? 
 
Julius Wrek said:
 
Click to expand...
Who's the "they" that says racism is dying? 
indifferent.gif
 
Last edited:
I posted this in the "Black Culture" Thread. here are my thoughts about America and Ferguson:



At the root of every black pathology are American History and white malice. I am tired of this idea that black people's poverty is the result of some singular lack of virtue. For the sake of argument, let's forget about slavery, American History from 1865 to 1980 has been a concerted effort to give white folks land, houses, affordable education, public sector jobs, infrastructure and pensions.

Germans Americans got 160 acre gifts from the Homestead Act. Irish Americans got subsidized Levitt Towns and people like Bill O'Reilly cite that as proof of underdog status. Italian Americans GI's got subsidies for higher education for themselves and their kids. The Irish got steady jobs as cops and firemen and civil service jobs. Polish Americans in Detroit and Chicago and Baltimore, were able to carry out white flight on the back of the Inter State System. The thriftless Scots-Irish throughout the South got Social Security while black folks were, de facto, shut out from that system.

It is also telling that in 1950 and 1960, a majority of whites, a majority of white Republicans, were fine with taxes, infrastructure spending, educational subsidies, Keynesian jobs programs and full employment monetary policies. By 1980. when black folks now had a much stronger legal claim on the treasury, white Americans, even white Democrats, became libertarians. When Government worked for whites only, Government was the solution. When it looked like black folks would be able to share in the benefits of state largess, Government became the problem.

Naturally, we didn't really become libertarian. We cut taxes for rich folks and gutted public investments but when it came to civil liberties for black people, government got bigger. White Americans could hide out in the 'burbs and watch as the police and the courts and the prison-industrial complex, in the name of the drug war, re enslaved large swaths of the black community.

If dates like 1865 or 1950 or 1985 seem like distant Antiquity to you, let us go back to the bygone days of 2005. Bank executives held minority financial education classes by day and by night, boasted about making "ghetto loans" to "mud people." That is a microcosm of the history of black-white relations in this country. get rich by stabbing black folks in the back and simultaneously, maintain the fiction that black folks are doing just fine and all they really need is more education, more thrift, more virtue. Ignore the knife in your back and just be more Victorian, black people. Just tip your hat and curtsy and hold doors for ladies and that will offset being gutted.

Here we are, nine years later and an eighteen year old young man is dead, riddled with six bullets and all white Americans can say is that the young man's real problem was a lack of discipline, thrift, sobriety and virtue. White conservatives demand that black folks ignore the bullets and wear more form fitting pants. As his mother and father grieve, white conservatives lecture blacks about the importance of fathers. It is truly a privilege when you can make large swaths of reality totally optional.

Every community can get better but the fact that black people fail to be perfect should not be a free pass for white Americans to humiliate, subjugate, plunder and abuse black Americans.
 
Yeah with jury and the prosecuter I dont see Wilson being convicted and doing time sad to say. But I know the locals wont just sit around if that happens. I was gonna go down there this weekend but had to work today. I am def taking a trip down during the trial or something. 
 
The day Wilson walks clean will be a very sad day...lettuce be cereal, this man hasn't even been brought up on charges, why are we even discussing a trial...this situation is nauseating with all the evidence that point to this as being nothing but a hate crime and execution....how can dude live with himself knowing in his heart what he did.
 
oneilmatt said:
Just as any and all previous info on Officer Darren Wilson is irrelevant, correct?
Click to expand...
This is the last time I address your racist self.

Darren Wilson is a cop, genius. Everything he's done as a cop is relevant. His history is relevant because he's a public servant. It's relevant because these towns are allowing officers with psychological problems and overt racism to hold a position in the police department.

The only thing that matters about Michael Brown is him have a propensity of being unarmed while being shot to death by a racist, white officer.
 
Apparently there is a march today at 5 with the parents of both Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin.
Solidarity! #Turkey #Istanbul to #Ferguson [emoji]128151[/emoji][emoji]128151[/emoji][emoji]128151[/emoji][emoji]128151[/emoji] #mikebrown #stl this is beautiful.
Click to expand...
 
Edshoecator said:
Juvenile records are sealed for a reason.

Nothing he did prior to meeting Darren Wilson matters. Nothing!
Click to expand...

This is not accurate. It would generally be true if these prior records were to be used in case against MB, but MB isn't the one on trial for a crime. The records would not be admissible to make a case against MB, but they're not being used for that purpose; they'd be used as support by the defense on whether DW was justified in his actions.

Regardless, I think it's been discussed on a bunch of other sites I've been following on MB that the alleged criminal records belong to a different Michael Brown in MO, and not to this MB, so it doesn't matter.
 
ThEPoiNTGoD said:
This is not accurate. It would generally be true if these prior records were to be used in case against MB, but MB isn't the one on trial for a crime. The records would not be admissible to make a case against MB, but they're not being used for that purpose; they'd be used as support by the defense on whether DW was justified in his actions.

Regardless, I think it's been discussed on a bunch of other sites I've been following on MB that the alleged criminal records belong to a different Michael Brown in MO, and not to this MB, so it doesn't matter.
Click to expand...
This pisses me off too. Why assume he HAD a record.

Just like the alleged robbery has nothing to do with the shooting, neither would him having a juvenile record.

The boy was unarmed and executed. There is no justification for that to occur
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

B
Black woman calls cops only to be killed by cops.
Replies
11
Views
2K
1995
1995

The ultimate sneaker enthusiast community.

NikeTalk was created as a way of giving back to both the sneaker enthusiast community and to the greater global community of which we are all a part.

NikeTalk is NOT affiliated with Nike Inc. in any way, shape, or form. All opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of Nike, Inc.

© 1999-2024 NikeTalk.com

Share this page

Back
Top Bottom