Hire Darren Wilson?

If you were a sheriff or a police chief and Darren Wilson applied for a job, would you hire him?

Based on what I've read of the Grand Jury testimony and this case, I would absolutely consider his application in a favorable light.

Wilson's clean record for six years in that hellhole called Ferguson speaks well of him.

There was a nutty reporter on NPR last week who tried to make a big deal out of Wilson's never having used his firearm. Many police officers have never used their firearms. Some have never even drawn them on duty and have fired them only on the training range.

As a former part-time police officer and former reserve deputy sheriff, I drew mine only four times.

Late one Sunday night as the night police officer Mt. Vernon, Iowa, I found the back door at the lumber yard open. I could have waited an hour for a deputy to arrive as back-up, but I didn't. Instead, I went in. OK, so it was a town of 1,500 in the middle of Iowa.

Then in Colorado on my first night as a reserve deputy, I was riding with a full-time deputy and our first call was an alarm at a restaurant that was closed. As we pulled into the parking lot, I saw a car leaving the far end of the parking lot. The back door was standing open, and the other deputy and I drew our firearms and entered. We checked every closet and corner but found nothing but dirty dishes. I mean, really dirty.

Then one night on a domestic call, I chased the offender from one room into another room. He dove for the sofa and stuck both hands under a cushion. He was smart enough to follow my orders not to move and to leave his hands where they were until two other deputies could get into the same room.

The last time was when I was patrolling late on a Saturday night and responded to a neighbor's call that the front door of the house next door was standing open in the middle of winter. Another deputy and I entered with weapons drawn. Every time I opened a closet door, I expected to find someone hiding. Then we went upstairs. The bedroom door at the top of the stairs was closed, and  I went up those stairs on my stomach, loudly calling out "Sheriff's Dept.! Coming upstairs."

I did not want to be greeted by a sleepy homeowner with a shotgun. Fortunately the house was empty.

Darren Wilson was confronted by a large, angry, young man who had already been shot once while tussling for Wilson's firearm, before Wilson ever got out of his police vehicle. Wilson's story is supported by the physical evidence, and the Grand Jury's decision was the right one.

Wilson's career as a police officer should not have to end.