From abc news, this week with George Stephanopoulos begins now. Good morning. Im martha raddatz, and as we come on the air this morning, breaking news from ferguson, missouri, where abc news has confirmed officer Darren Wilson has resigned from the Ferguson Police force. The big question, will that resignation calm the protests in ferguson and around the country . Lets get right to it with alex perez, who joins us now from ferguson with the very latest. Good morning, alex. Reporter good morning, martha. A relatively quiet night of much smaller protests here in ferguson, just two arrested. Wilson says he hopes his resignation will bring peace. Darren wilson, a threeyear veteran of the Police Department in ferguson, said he had hoped to continue in police work, a job he told George Stephanopoulos that he loved. I greatly enjoyed working in ferguson, i did. Put that in the past tense, not going to happen again . Do you really think its possible . I mean, do you think they would accept me . Do you think it would be safe for me . Reporter in his resignation letter, wilson wrote, i have been told that my continued employment may put the residents and Police Officers of the city of ferguson at risk which is a circumstance that i cannot allow. After the grand jury decided not to indict wilson, violent protests erupted here and then spread across the country. All hands up, dont shoot. Reporter for nearly a week protests have continued. On black friday groups disrupting big box retailers and forcing one st. Louis mall to shut down. All no black friday. No black friday. Reporter pastor willis johnsons church is just down the street from the Ferguson Police station, the target of many protests. He condemns the violence but understands the anger. Why is this so emotional for so many people . Its so personal. Its so hurtful to know that theres no recourse. Theres no sense of respect. Theres no dignity. Reporter whats next for ferguson, you think . Very tough conversations, very real work. Reporter and pastor johnson says his sermon today will be about holding the entire Community Responsible and finding a place of hope and healing for ferguson. Martha. Thanks, alex. Id like to welcome st. Louis Alderman Antonio french back to our show. Mr. French had an office in the heart of ferguson on the street we have all come to know, west florissant avenue, and as you see right there, that office was torched during the first night of disturbances. Thanks for joining us, alderman. Lets go right to the risk for Police Officers and residents that officer wilson talked about, said thats why he is resigning from the police force. Your reaction . Well, i think that there are many reasons that officer wilson should have resigned and, quite frankly, officer wilson and others should resign. I think the safety of his officers and his fellow officers is one of many. But i do think it was impossible for him to return to the force but i think there are many more resignations that need to happen in order for this community to begin healing. And what kind of resignations . Who do you think should resign . Well, i think the Ferguson Police chief, i think its impossible for this community to move forward with him still in that role. I think at the st. Louis county Police Department level there still needs to be some people to answer for how the Police Responded to peaceful protests in august that escalated this situation. Frankly, the thing we havent seen is a lot of government accountability. Not many people have taken responsibility for whats happened and people are still waiting for answers and change. Did you believe officer wilsons testimony . No, i found officer wilson to be remorseless, cold, and, frankly, a lot of his answers sounded like they were prepared by a lawyer. And so what i worry is that as we said back in august, that the way this trial or this grand jury process was being carried out by the county executive, im sorry, by the county prosecutor, that it really doesnt give what the Community Needs in order to move forward. No closure, no resolve. And, in fact, just creates more anger. Lets talk about the aftermath. As we saw, your office was burned. Your own storefront office, which was called heal st. Louis. Do you think there could have been a better response . Lets listen to captain ron johnson from the murray Missouri State highway patrol. If any of us knew last night was going to be what it was, if we had a crystal ball, wed have probably done Something Different but we could have never imagined that. Is that right . Could they never have imagined that . No, i dont think thats right at all. You know, weve been talking for weeks about this and that, you know, we really had a powder keg here, and so for the county prosecutor to decide to release the grand Jury Announcement at nighttime, for the governor to preemptively call a state of emergency and call in the national guard, yet no one deployed them to west florissant or other areas that had been hit repeatedly by violence, it really showed a failure to grasp the situation and to handle it on the part of government. And so the fires that we saw, the violence that we saw was unfortunate. It is you know, it really hurts our hearts. Weve gone through a tough week here, but, you know, we knew 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 better prepared for this. And well hope we can all move forward. Alderman, thanks for joining us. And now, lets turn to what this means for how our Nations Police patrol the streets. The officer at the center of this story, Darren Wilson, told george in their exclusive interview that what happened on that night in august was the result of his training. Take a look. You described i guess the fear you were thinking. You thought he was coming after you. Yes. On the street. Was any part of you angry . No. No anger . No, there was no time for anger. Like i said, training took over, it was survival mode. Because some of the witnesses have said they thought you were out of control, that somehow you had snapped. Uhhuh. That would be incorrect. There was never the only emotion i ever felt was fear and then it was survival and training. And the training kicked in. The training took over. It didnt just kick in. It took over. And in your training, there was no option in those moments when you were faced with Michael Brown but to shoot . Correct. Im joined now by ray kelly, former commissioner of the new york city Police Department and a consultant for abc news. Commissioner, give me your reaction to officer wilson resigning. Was that the right thing to do . Well, i think it was the right thing to do for ferguson and the right thing to do for officer wilson. I mean realistically he couldnt patrol those streets again. And well see if it has any calming effect on the situation, but that remains to be seen. Commissioner kelly, were not expecting you to be the spokesman for Police Across the nation, but you have spent your life as a Police Officer. What are the Lessons Learned here . Well, i think its when you say the Lessons Learned, i would like to sort of separate the incident itself from what happened immediately after the incident, and there are lots of lessons for policing. What people say is this was a major league event happening in a small town. They simply didnt have the resources to cope. They didnt put information out quickly. And that is like rule one. When something happens, you give the public what you have and say, hey, we dont have this, we dont have that. There was a long delay in putting information out. Obviously Michael Browns body laying in the street for four hours was just, no, a mistake and one of the reasons given was the delay for the crime scene unit to respond and took them an hour and 15 minutes. So how do you regain the trust of that community . How do Police Officers regain that trust . Its going to be difficult, no question about it. I think you need communication, lots of talking and i think they have to diversify the department. I would hope that the Justice Department is going to contribute or Homeland Security will contribute some money to this effort, but you cant have a city that is twothirds africanamerican policed by a department of 53 Police Officers where only 3 of them are a minority. It makes no sense and i think it really will refocus Law Enforcement on the issue of diversity because a department that reflects the city or the municipality that it serves is much easier to police. Its smarter policing to have that type of relationship. I just want you very quickly if you can on training, i know we heard officer wilson and others say they use deadly force when theyre threatened or someone else is threatened. Is there any other way to do that . A 12yearold boy was shot this week with a very realistic looking fake gun but can you try to disable a suspect instead of killing this em . Were talking about deadly force being used at the officer. Looking at four corners of his statement, thats what hes saying and, again, i know we have the issue with the 12yearold boy. But the notion that somehow you can shoot to wound just simply, you know, doesnt work. You train Police Officers to shoot for mass. You train them to shoot to stop. And the only way you ccan, well, wound somebody or shoot the weapon out of the hands is in the movies. Police only hit their targets 20 of the time. Okay, thanks very much for joining us today, commissioner kelly. Thank you. Now to the nfl and the bombshell ruling friday that former Baltimore Ravens running back ray rice can play again. In that ruling a retired judge said rice did not lie to nfl commissioner Roger Goodell and that the league was wrong to suspend the former all pro indefinitely after he was caught on tape punching his then fiancee. So whats next for rice and the league . Heres abcs ryan smith. Reporter that shocking video released in september of ray rice punching his then fiancee, janay, triggered a firestorm. Nfl commissioner Roger Goodell upping rices initial suspension for Domestic Violence from two games to indefinite claiming rice downplayed the assault in a june meeting. It was clear there was an act of Domestic Violence. But it was inconsistent with the way he described what happened. Reporter but in her ruling, a retired federal judge calling the nfls additional suspension of rice arbitrary and an abuse of discretion noting, i am not persuaded that rice lied to or misled the nfl even flagging the handling of previous Domestic Violence cases saying rices mishandled suspension speaks to their admitted failure in the past to sanction this type of conduct more severely. Goodell knew exactly what happened, and his reaction with the indefinite suspension was based more on public outrage than it was on fact and circumstance. Reporter when the assault happened back in february, rice agreed to a courtordered Domestic Violence program. Later, publicly apologizing to his wife. I made the biggest mistake of my life, me. She can do no wrong. Shes an angel. Reporter rice saying in a statement after fridays decision, i will continue working hard to improve myself and be the best husband, father and friend while giving back to my community and helping others to learn from my mistakes. And his wife janay telling Espns Jemele Hill, we have no guarantees about rays future in football, but i know this experience has made us far more aware of whats important and how fortunate we are. For the nfl, the controversy isnt over. Theres another investigation into the leagues handling of the evidence in this case. And rice claims hes owed millions lost since being suspended. But for now as rice hopes to get back on the field, the question is, will any nfl team have him . And ryan smith joins us now along with usa today columnist and abc news contributor Christine Brennan and Espns Jemele Hill whose new interview with janay rice was released on friday. Welcome to you all, and lets quickly get to the question you left us with, ryan, will he play again . Word this morning i think from espn that four teams are looking at him. Right, and i think thats common in cases like this. A couple of teams are looking at him, considering him. Its near playoff time so some teams need the help of a star like ray rice. But i think at this point nobody is speaking out and saying specifically we are looking to sign him, so i think hes got a little ways to go before he gets back into the league. Christine, will he be back . I dont think this year. I think its too much of a Public Relations nightmare, really. Its a real roll of the dice, martha. The Indianapolis Colts were one of the teams being mentioned. Immediately they sent out word, we are not interested. I think well see that from other teams. Yes mell and welcome, jemele. Thank you for having me. It feels a little bit toxic still. I do expect fully he will play in the nfl again. Ryan, lets go to how the nfl handled this. We have word this morning from the general counsel, no part of judge jones decision questions the commissioners honesty or integrity nor his good faith consideration of the issue when he imposed the indefinite suspension. Is that how you see it . It depends. I think what theyre doing is a little bit of a pr campaign for Roger Goodell because think about this, its the owners who have the hiring and firing ability with respect to his job. So what they did was they put out something saying, well, this is what we did and this is what the explanation was, but, hey, he wasnt dishonest. He didnt do anything wrong. I think the proof in the pudding here is they made the distinction between her being hit or being slapped in an elevator but it seems clear to the arbitrator that ray rice had told them everything so to me from notes, from notes in that hearing. Exactly, so to me it seems that goodell wasnt telling the full story. Christine, you say and have been saying all along theres a larger issue here about Domestic Violence. September 8th will go down as one of the watershed moments in sports and in our culture. The day we saw the video. Everything changed. Look at the Atlantic City prosecutor slap on the wrist. The grand jury saw those videotapes and did almost nothing. So when the nfl was buffeted by this incredible news and seeing the video, all of a sudden a twogame suspension, they, of course it was double jeopardy went right to the indefinite suspension but the nation was screaming out for that. Internal politics, understandable and important between the union and the commissioner but then you also have the court of public opinion, which was really driving this story. Jemele, are we asking too much of the nfl to deal with this huge, huge problem . In some ways, yes, i mean, we have to remember the nfl is a talentdriven, productionbased business. Its a billion dollar business. Its first and foremost duty is to put on really good Football Games and entertain us and while certainly they can set their standard as a league and certainly for any corporation there should be a certain moral standard that you want to abide by, but were asking Roger Goodell and the nfl to fix domestic vice as christine noted. Lets start with where this started, the Atlantic City prosecutor with our laws. They looked at this video and this is what they ultimately decided so if you want to put any pressure, if theres any outrage, it should be on how this originally started because they felt like what the punishment that he received was suitable. So does goodell stay . I think he does for right now. But i think that comes down to more of a money point. I think my thinking is if you lose a major sponsor because of this controversy, his job could be in jeopardy. But right now, hes got an investigation going into things like did he know about this video . And right now it looks like he didnt, but if hes found to have known about that video, he could have real problems in terms of his honesty, but he does well by the owners, and the owners want to keep him in that spot so as long as they want to keep him he stays. How about getting a neutral arbitrator . Is that possible . Well, thats what the union wants, obviously. They hailed this decision. They did but the collective bargain agreement, they gave away that opportunity, they gave that power to Roger Goodell so jerry jones said yesterday or the day before, he said, we dont want to go back and look at the collective Bargaining Agreement on this. The owners are happy with the way it is. Of course, they are. Theyre billionaires and theyre also happy with Roger Goodell and the way hes handled it and i dont think hes going anywhere. Jemele, very quickly, what is your takeaway from your interview with ray rices wife, janay . Shes a thoughtful, impressive woman and circle the word young