Darren Wilson Now: After New Ferguson Video, Where Is The Officer Who Shot Michael Brown?
This story was updated March 14, 2017 with details about newly revealed court documents pertaining to Darren Wilson.
More than two years have passed since the death of Michael Brown, a black 18-year-old who was killed in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 by white police officer Darren Wilson, but new information continues to be revealed in the case. A court document showed that the former officer admitted that he and other officers had used the n-word to describe African Americans during their time on the force, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
“I have repeated a racist remark made by someone else, but I have not made a racist remark against another individual while on duty as a police officer,” Wilson responded through his attorney, according to the document.
The documents were introduced in court Dec. 28, 2016, during a civil lawsuit against Wilson. When asked if the officer had ever used the word to describe African Americans and if other officers did so, Wilson twice replied, “Admitted.”
Over the weekend, video emerged of Brown just hours before his death. The footage, revealed Saturday in Jason Pollock’s documentary "Stranger Fruit," showed Brown inside a convenience store exchanging marijuana for cigarillos. Brown was not, as previously alleged, robbing the store.
“They wanted us to think Michael robbed the store because they needed us to think that Michael was aggressive. Michael was handed the bag in the video, the clerk puts it in a plastic bag and hands it over the counter to Michael Brown,” Pollock said on Good Morning America Monday. “That’s not stealing [from] the store.”
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Though it’s been more than two years since the shooting, the incident never faded from public memory, galvanizing social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and increasing calls for police transparency and reform. The officer involved, Darren Wilson, however, has stayed largely out of the public eye.
In March 2015, a grand jury opted not to indict Wilson for the shooting. An investigation by the Department of Justice found that there was no evidence to contradict Wilson’s story about the incident: He said Brown attacked him and reached for his gun, prompting him to shoot. Since he was legally cleared, Wilson returned to the public eye just once, appearing in an August 2015 profile in the New Yorker.
In the profile, Wilson defended his actions and said he wanted to move on from the incident. The officer revealed he hadn’t been able to find a job in law enforcement. Wilson married Barbara Spradling after the shooting and is the father of a daughter and two-step children. He has kept his exact whereabouts private.
“Do I think about who [Michael Brown] was as a person? Not really, because it doesn’t matter at this point,” he told the New Yorker. “Do I think he had the best upbringing? No. Not at all.”
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