Sunday, March 25, 2012

Stand Your Ground, Not Chase Someone Down

A Weapon Or A Confectionery?
How else would you react to a 17 year old boy wearing a hoodie with an iced tea in his hand and a bag of Skittles? First you ask him what he is doing, after stalking him in an SUV. (Something Ted Bundy used to do)
 George Zimmerman, a 28 year old cop wannabe, killed Trayvon Martin and that is a fact. Here are some more facts;
  • George Zimmerman was arrested for assaulting a police officer when he was 21 years old. If only he was prosecuted. A felony conviction would have prevented him from buying a gun.
  • 28 pages of dialog from Mr. Zimmerman's 46 calls to 911 over 6 years. For everything from " a male driving without headlights" to a "yellow speed bike doing wheelies" http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0324/Who-is-George-Zimmerman-and-why-did-he-shoot-Trayvon-Martin
  • Was told specifically, not to carry a weapon, not to approach anyone, and not to patrol on neighborhood watch.
  • In 2008 he expressed interest in becoming a police officer and spent 4 months taking some classes at a local Sheriffs Department. He also took law enforcement classes at Seminole State College.
  • Was requested by a 911 dispatcher to stop following Trayvon Martin.
The probable reasons for Mr. Zimmerman not being arrested was that he was well known by the police department, the SYG law, which can also be used as a chase someone down law, and plain old generic racism. Now he is in hiding, he told a friend he thought this would all "blow over". If he did say that, it's pretty astonishing that taking a human life is sort of an inconvenience to Mr. Zimmerman. Something that would just conveniently go away. He also had to know what was legal in a situation like this, since he had classes with a sheriff's department and at Seminole State. Stalking someone, asking them what they are doing, were both out of his jurisdiction, since he is not a police officer. Walking down the street is everyone's right in this country. You would think that someone who called 911 46 times would be looked at as some sort of nuisance. But I guess not, when your father is a judicial magistrate. Where did he get such a state of entitlement and paranoia? This is just a guess, but he sounds like he's mentally ill. Ted Bundy used to masquerade as a police officer. Did Trayvon Martin think Zimmerman was some kind of pervert and try to run away? Sad to say, this self appointed cop still hasn't been arrested. The only good thing to come out of this is that the murder of Trayvon Martin has gained national traction. Hopefully something will be done and there will be justice for his family. Just the thought, that a child wearing a hoodie and coming back home after buying some snacks, could be shot for no reason other than someone was having some kind of racist paranoid delusion. That this man wasn't thought of as some kind of loose cannon by the local police force is amazing. There is so much failure from the people in law enforcement, the people who are supposed to serve and protect. There seems to be no protection for hoodie wearing, black young men in this country.

4 comments:

  1. Precisely, Patricia. The only one who followed the law in this incident was Trayvon Martin. He stood his ground as a person with no authority confronted him, chased him down and murdered him.

    But, the Right-Wingers are exploding over this trying to find something, anything they can pin onto Martin to make him look like one of *those* types.

    The first problem is everything they've found out shows Martin wasn't, second they've been running with pictures that are not Martin and claiming it is him, and lastly even if they did Deadly Force can only be applied by what you knew at the moment not what you learned retroactively to justify it.

    It's a sad shameful incident which shows us that to conservative it is always and forever about Race.

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  2. A good post, Patricia. That this has turned into what is has just shows how deeply the lynch mob mentality that still runs the South, which has one of the largest "private" prison populations in the world where the "private" prisons rent out inmates to corporations as labor for "private" profit. Slavery is dead? I don't think so. In the meantime, if you can't incarcerate them, let the wing nuts murder them.

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  3. Thanks Jim. I have to tell you, I lived near Sanford for 6 months. So I do know the mentality some of the people. It is no coincidence that African-Americans make up the majority of the prison population. I believe one of the reasons marijuana will never be legalized is because of the "harvest" of prisoners the lucrative prison industry receives. What a disgrace.

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