Photos of Darren Wilson, Officer in Ferguson Shooting, Published Online
Photos of Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Missouri police officer who shot unarmed teenager Michael Brown last week, have been published online by Yahoo! News. The slightly blurry photos, which show Wilson receiving a commendation for “extraordinary effort” in the line of duty, were published by Wilson’s father on his Twitter account.
Yahoo! also published the public meeting notes from the city hall meeting where Wilson and other officers were recognized by the Ferguson police chief.
The identity of Darren Wilson was withheld for days after the shooting. The incident ignited a week of still-ongoing riots in the St. Louis suburb. On Saturday night, protesters broke a curfew was imposed on the city and several were arrested, according to the New York Times.
PHOTO HANDOUT: video stills of alleged altercation between Brown and Quick Trip worker pic.twitter.com/i2ZIyBQ0BK
— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 15, 2014
The fact that police refused to release Darren Wilson’s name caused more protest and outrage. When Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson did release Wilson’s identity on Friday, he also said that Brown had been identified as a robbery suspect, according to the Washington Post. Photo stills and video of the robbery were released to the media.
The police chief also said, however, that the robbery was not the reason for the encounter between Wilson and Ferguson. Darren Wilson had no disciplinary record on his 6-year record with the police force.
In an odd twist, though Wilson’s record with the police force is clean, the Daily Mail reports that his mother is a “serial con artist.” According to the MailOnline, Tonya Durso was allegedly involved in a credit card scheme that left neighbors defrauded of several thousand dollars. Durso, who died when Wilson was only 18 years old, was on parole for similar crimes elsewhere at the time. She died at age 35 under mysterious circumstances.
Durso’s former neighbors said that they were initially shocked when Darren Wilson became a police officer because of his mother’s criminal record.
After announcing Darren Wilson was the officer who shot Michael Brown, police also told the media during the Friday press conference that the encounter between the two men was based on a fairly innocuous reason. According to the Post, Wilson confronted Brown because he was “blocking traffic.”
According to a police report that was released to the media, Wilson had been responding to a different call when he heard the call about a robbery at a convenience store. The report further states that Wilson also had a description of the suspect and the man’s location, and then came upon Brown in the road at about 12 noon. It only took a few minutes for Wilson to shoot Brown.
Brown’s family said they were angry over the timing of the release of Darren Wilson’s identity and the release of robbery video, saying it was a strategic move by police to damage the boy’s reputation.
