Ferguson officer won’t get severance package
Ferguson officer won’t get severance package
FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson did not receive a severance package when he resigned over the weekend, the St. Louis suburb’s mayor said Sunday.
Wilson, 28, won’t receive any further pay or benefits, and he and the city have severed their ties, Mayor James Knowles told reporters a day after Wilson tendered his resignation, which was effective immediately.
Wilson, who is white, had been on administrative leave since he killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, during an Aug. 9 confrontation. A grand jury decided last Monday not to indict him, sparking days of sometimes violent protests in Ferguson and other cities. Wilson wrote in his resignation letter that his “continued employment may put the residents and police officers of the City of Ferguson at risk, which is a circumstance I cannot allow.”
His lawyer, Neil Bruntrager, told The Associated Press that Wilson decided to step aside after police Chief Tom Jackson told him about the alleged threats on Saturday.
“The information we had was that there would be actions targeting the Ferguson (police) department or buildings in Ferguson related to the police department,” Bruntrager said. He said Wilson, who had worked for the department for less than three years, and the city were already discussing an exit strategy, acknowledging that staying on as an officer there would be impossible.
Towns test oil and gas supremacy on fracking
RENO, Texas (AP) — A Texas hamlet shaken by its first recorded earthquake last year and hundreds since then is among communities now taking steps to challenge the oil and gas industry’s traditional supremacy over the right to frack.
Reno Mayor Lyndamyrth Stokes said spooked residents started calling last November: “I heard a boom, then crack! The whole house shook. What was that?” one caller asked. The U.S. Geological Survey confirmed that Reno, a community about 50 miles west of Dallas, had its first earthquake.
Seismologists have looked into whether the tremors are being caused by disposal wells on the outskirts of Reno, where millions of gallons of water produced by hydraulic fracturing are injected every day. Reno took the first step toward what Stokes believes will be an outright ban by passing a law in April limiting disposal well activity to operators who can prove the injections won’t cause earthquakes.
Reno and other cities are taking their lead from Denton, a university town north of Dallas where the state’s first ban on fracking within city limits takes effect Tuesday. The Denton ban has become a “proxy for this big war between people who want to stop fracking and people who want to see it happen,” said Michael Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.
It also has become a referendum on Texas cities’ rights to halt drilling.
Property rights are a part of Texas’ cultural fabric, but the desire to develop hydrocarbons is strong in a state that leads the nation in oil and gas development. Furthermore, under state law, property rights are separate from mineral rights, making it possible to own one but not the other.
Nordstrom worker shot on Black Friday dies
CHICAGO (AP) — Authorities say a 22-year-old woman died a day after she was shot inside a Nordstrom department store in Chicago during Black Friday shopping.
The Cook County medical examiner’s office says 22-year-old Nadia Ezaldein was pronounced dead at 3:43 p.m. on Saturday. Authorities say 31-year-old Marcus Dee shot Ezaldein before killing himself.
Police say Ezaldein was a seasonal employee at the store. Officers found her dead when they arrived Friday night at the store along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile shopping district. The store was closed Saturday and was to reopen on Sunday. Nordstrom spokeswoman Tara Darrow called the shootings a “really sad and scary situation.” She says the company is doing its best to support employees.
Authorities say there was no threat to other customers or employees. An investigation is ongoing.