http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/225529-st-louis-alderman-more-resignations-neededNovember 30, 2014, 09:36 am
St. Louis alderman: More resignations needed for 'healing' in Ferguson
By Kyle Balluck
St. Louis Alderman Antonio French (D) on Sunday called for more resignations in the wake of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson’s decision to quit the force.
“I think there are many more resignations that need to happen in order for this community to begin healing,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
French said Ferguson’s police chief should resign. He added that adding that “there still need to be some people” in the St. Louis County Police Department ”who need to “answer for how the police responded to peaceful protests in August, which really escalated the situation.”
“Frankly, the thing we haven’t seen is a lot of government accountability,” he said. “Not many people have taken responsibility for what’s happened, and people are still waiting for answers and change.”
French said it would have been “impossible” for Wilson to return to the force.
“I find Officer Wilson to be remorseless, cold, and frankly, a lot of his answers sounded like they were prepared by a lawyer,” he said.
French said the decision by the county prosecutor to present the case to a grand jury, which did not indict Wilson in the slaying of Michael Brown, “really does not give what the community needs in order to move forward. No closure, no resolve, and in fact, just creates more anger.”
French said the prosecutor, who released the grand jury’s decision and night, and Gov. Jay Nixon (D-Mo.), who pre-emptively called a state of emergency, failed to “grasp the situation.”
“And so the fires that we saw, that violence that we saw, was unfortunate. It is – it really hurts our hearts,” he said. “We’ve gone through a tough week here, but we know that a lot of people were very angry and we knew a lot of people were coming from other places. So we should have been prepared for this.”
