Darren Wilson, the former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, in August 2014, believes systemic racism is a thing of the past. Wilson, who has been cleared of wrongdoing in Michael Brown's death, gave The New Yorker a rare interview in a profile published Monday:
"I am really simple in the way that I look at life. What happened to my great-grandfather is not happening to me. I can't base my actions off what happened to him. We can't fix in 30 minutes what happened 30 years ago. We have to fix what's happening now. That's my job as a police officer. I’m not going to delve into people's life-long history and figure out why they're feeling a certain way, in a certain moment." [The New Yorker]
Wilson also admitted that he hasn't read the Justice Department's report on systemic racism in the Ferguson police department because he doesn't want to "keep living in the past."
Another striking detail from The New Yorker profile: Mike McCarthy, a field-training officer who helped guide Wilson in a previous job, conceded that the escalation of Wilson's confrontation with Brown probably could have been avoided. Check out the whole profile here.
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