Darren Wilson Resigns to Avoid Other People Getting Hurt
Darren Wilson is officially resigning from the Ferguson, Miss police department so that nobody else will get hurt because of him.
Wilson, the 28-year-old officer who was recently cleared of any charges in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, spoke to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about his reasons for officially stepping away from the police force after six years.
While Wilson insisted that the resignation was the hardest thing he has ever had to do, he also acknowledged that the police department received threats in the event that he would stay.
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"I'm resigning of my own free will," Wilson told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "I'm not willing to let someone else get hurt because of me."
Wilson's resignation comes after days of protests around the country, five days after a grand jury decided not to indict him in Brown's fatal death. In a resignation letter obtained by CNN, the police officer spoke in detail about his resignation which would immediately go into effect.
"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," Wilson wrote. "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."
He added, "I would like to thank all of my supporters and fellow officers throughout this process."
Attorney Danielle Thompson told The Washington Post that Wilson initially wanted to continue his career as a police officer in Ferguson.
"At first [his thinking] was, 'I want to go back, I'm a cop, I want to still be a cop,'" Thompson told The Post. "It took some time for him to realize that wasn't exactly going to be what happened."
Another attorney, James Towey cautioned Wilson against doing so.
"I think I expressed to him, 'Do you realize your first call [back on the job] will be to a blind alley where you're executed?' He took a pause for a minute, thought about it and said, 'Oh.' That is the reality," Towey told The Post
Wilson will be released from the police department without a severance package, according to CNN reports.
