Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson Fired From Previous Police Department Shuttered Due To Race Issues

A history of officer Darren Wilson has previously been published here on The Inquisitr, but not known until yesterday was the fact that Wilson was previously fired from a Missouri police department disbanded due to racial issues, among other reasons.

The news that Darren Wilson was fired was first reported by The Washington Post, which detailed some of the background regarding his release from his first police department position.

“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.”

Despite having been Darren Wilson’s being fired, the Post reports that he did not have any disciplinary issues.

“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.”

Among the problems in Jennings that lead to Darren Wilson being fired, along with the rest of the police force, was a beating of an African-American woman by a white police officer that resulted in a lawsuit.

“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 report comes the same time as news that three White House officials will attend Michael Brown’s funeral Monday, NBC News reported. Wilson shot Brown nearly two weeks ago. Brown was unarmed.

[Image via New York Daily News]