FERGUSON,
Mo. — The white police officer a grand jury declined to indict last
week in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager has resigned
from this city’s Police Department, his lawyer said on Saturday night.
The
officer, Darren Wilson, who had worked in the department since 2011,
submitted a resignation letter, said Neil J. Bruntrager, the lawyer. In
the letter, first published in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
Mr. Wilson said: “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.”
For
months, some here had called for Mr. Wilson, 28, to step down or be
fired following the killing of Michael Brown and the unrest that
followed, in August and then again last Monday, after the grand jury
decision was announced.
Adolphus
Pruitt, of the N.A.A.C.P.'s St. Louis chapter, said the resignation
“not only fulfills one of the demands of the protesters, but also
provides for one of the steps necessary for the wholesale
reconstructions of law enforcement in Ferguson.”
Yet
on Saturday night, as protesters gathered near the police station here,
as they have on most nights since Mr. Brown’s death, many seemed
unsatisfied with the news, which they said was inevitable. “We want an
indictment and we’re still going to stand for that,” said Alicia Street,
29, who lives in nearby Florissant.
Late
on Saturday night, there were reports of shots fired near the police
station, sending the authorities speeding along South Florissant Road. A
short time later, officers appeared to be searching for bullet casings
in front of City Hall, as National Guard soldiers, their rifles visible,
protected the building.
It was not clear whether the reported gunfire was related to Saturday’s protests.
Earlier
in the day, about 100 marchers led by the N.A.A.C.P. set off from the
street where Mr. Brown was killed on a weeklong walk to Missouri’s
Capitol, 120 miles from this fractured city. They invoked the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1965 march in Selma, Ala., the Freedom Rides
and other civil rights-era pilgrimages for justice.
The
group sang as it made its way up West Florissant Avenue, past the
burned-out husks of an auto-parts store, a beauty parlor and other
businesses destroyed in the chaos after the grand jury’s decision. A
trumpeter played “We Shall Overcome.”
“It’s
going to communicate that black lives are important, that police
officers are here to protect us,” said Mary Ratliff, the N.A.A.C.P.'s
Missouri president, who walked near the head of the line. “We are here
to say we’ll no longer stand for this.”
On
Saturday, for the first time since the unrest, West Florissant was left
open to traffic and pedestrians in the evening, as National Guard
soldiers and police officers stood watch. The decision to leave the
street open after dusk was made with little fanfare.
During
the march, police cruisers crept along with the crowd, and organizers
exhorted the line to keep a tight formation. The marchers paused to
speak with a woman standing along the side of the road whose antiques
store had been destroyed in the looting and arsons. When the marchers
raised their arms into the warm November afternoon and shouted, “Hands
up, don’t shoot!” two little girls watching from their front yard did
the same, before ducking into their garage.
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