Trayvon Martin vs. George Zimmerman ....

I sure know if I lived out on ranch in Texas or in the vastness of Alaska, that I would appreciate one of my neighbors looking out for my land/property/well being, even if the "law" told them to back off. And by the way, 911 "dispatchers" do not necessarily know the law and are not always the smartest people in the world (as anyone in any job could be labelled). 911 dispatchers are not lawmen/lawyers, and do not always have the best interest of people in mind when they communicate. I would rather trust my instincts and commone sense when responding to a situation. My father always taught me that the police are there to clean up most matters after they occur, meaning a person has to take action to defend themselves and others and should not to count on the police to come to your rescue in the moment of truth.

 

So your instincts would have you get out of the truck?????

 

My instincts might involve me getting out my truck if I felt like a dangerous person was walking around the houses in my neighborhood, yes. I don't scare easy.

 

Would your instincts tell you he was dangerous? Also, keep in mind "instinct" is subjective ..

 

Apparently, "Guilty" has also become somewhat subjective here.

 

What's the difference??? You still took chase after them, correct??? And what if they'd taken to beating on you??? It's perfectly real, and a reasonable comparison... So if they were breaking into your neighbor's car, and you took chase, then you'd be wrong??? Again, it's a VERY SIMILAR scenario, that's why I use it...

If I caught someone breaking into my neighbor's car/house, I'd certainly do my part as a good neighbor, except when the culprits heard the AK-47 let loose, followed by a 9mm with a 30-rd clip, they'd probably leave puddles... Note: those would be their WARNING shots, not me riddling the houses/cars with lead.... And certainly, the boys at 911 would be en route as I headed that way...

Tony,
Like Brett, I'd be out of the truck...and unfortunately, I don't scare as easily as maybe I should, but I also tend to do very well in tense situations. Be that a person who's heart has stopped beating and needs CPR/drugs/shocked/etc. or a hostile person looking to harm someone or me.... The difference between me and maybe George Zimmerman, might have been that the kid may have ended up with a broken arm or dislocated elbow, rather than a bullet in his chest, but I'm also about 3" taller and 25# heavier than Zimmerman, and had a little training in joint locks, takedown maneuvers, etc.... If I were the victim of a vicious sucker punch, followed by a little "curb stomping," then I might have done the same thing Zimmerman did, as would MOST people I believe, and as the story is pieced together, that's sort of what it sounds like. Initially, people were assuming that Martin was shot in cold blood, then it becomes he was shot after/during an altercation, then it becomes that Martin had NO MARKS on him (according to his funeral directoer) other than the GSW, which makes it seem like Martin may have attacked Zimmerman, and Zimmerman shot him after being attacked... Initially, we heard a 911 tape that was altered by NBC, an alteration that created a major racial backlash, and when the truth came out, it was by that point TOO LATE to stop that backlash.

People need to STOP looking at Martin as anything but another person in this case (forget that he's legally a minor, forget that he's black). Of if they do want to consider the age, consider that he's a junior in high school 3 hours away from home at 7pm on a school night, and ask why he ain't closer to home, considering he's got classes to go to in the morning...

If we want to look at Martin's "mug shot" then we need to see the "gold grill" Martin had, and the "other" pictures of Martin, flashing his obscene gestures in his ghetto clothes as well... Consider Zimmerman's past, he had a run-in with an undercover officer in a bar, and the charges were dropped, and consider Martin's past, he's been suspended from school 3 times in the last year, once that we know of for having a bag with marijuana residue in it....

If person X sees person Z walking suspiciously in person X's neighborhood, and person X approaches person Z, to ask him "What's up," and person Z attacks person X, then does person X have a right to defend himself with appropriate measures up to an including lethal force??? The Constitution of the United States of America says YES, if person X is attacked, then he has the legal right to respond with appropriate measures, including LETHAL FORCE, if he believes he's at serious risk of death or severe injury.... Consider a little head bashing on the curb, and that's risk enough, that I'd agree he was at risk of serious injury and possibly death!!! It don't matter the color or age of X or Z, only the situation.

 

Not sure if my instincts would tell me he is dangerous, I was not there.

About a year ago we started having a lot of thefts in my neighbor during the night. People would walk through the woods and up onto the properties and steal things. To me, that is seriously dangerous because many nights I am working during the hours many of those thefts occurred . So just maybe if I was coming home from work at 11pm-2am and saw a weird looking person walking around the houses in my neighborhood, then I might investigate to protect my family and the other families in the neighborhood.

 

No it's not at all, what crime was the kid commting walking down the street? Was the kid breaking into Zimmerman's house or car? Was the kid breaking any laws?

If the kid was commiting a crime and Zimmerman tried to stop him, I agree. It's not what happen.

You keep at it though:D

 

I think the instincts would tell you he was dangerous at the point he popped you in the nose and broke your nose, if the story we've heard is correct.... :D

No Gary, you're missing the point... What would have happened if a physical altercation had resulted??? What if 3 kids took to beating the stuffing out of you, would you in a moment trying to defend yourself, shoot one of them??? What if they had a billy club and beat you about the head??? It's not about committing a crime or not, it's about the altercation, and at what point would you have been defending yourself vs. being the aggressor??? Not unlike Zimmerman, you took chase, if that had resulted in violence, including you being severely beaten, and you were armed, at what point would you "defend yourself???"

That is why I bring it up.... Fortunately for you those YOUNGER kids are faster than you, but what if you'd caught one of them, and the others attacked you??? It's very applicable, because you willfully admitted you took chase after these kids.... You don't know if Zimmerman took chase, or just walked up to him and asked him "What are you doing walking around this neighborhood???"

 

I already answered your point

Seel below
If the kid was commiting a crime and Zimmerman tried to stop him, I agree.

Is it that hard to understand? The difference between walking down the street and doing nothing wrong or bothering anyone, and breaking into a car on someone's private property.

 

You are a real cop correct? Not the captain of neighborhood watch correct?

 

What Trayvon was doing and the guys in you example are COMPLETELY different, Brett....

Doug ... nevermind ... I just love internet balls ... lol

 

How do you know??? And what was Trayvon doing??? What is wrong with Zimmerman getting a quick ID on someone he deemed suspicious??? Would you think it was suspicious if someone was walking around in your neighborhood in the dark, early evening in the rain???

It's not just internet balls Tony, their REAL!!! :D


Gary,
The situation is similar but different because we don't know if Zimmerman was chasing Trayvon, we DO know that YOU were chasing the kids that were trying to break into your car.... My point was, "What would have happened if you're situation had turned violent???" What would happen if you caught one of them, and then the three of them all started beating on you??? They'd have as much right to defend themselves against the "Tighty Whitey Vigilante" wouldn't they??? We have no idea what altercation occurred other than something that left Zimmerman bloodied, and Martin DEAD, but from the stories that come out, it would sound like Martin POPPED Zimmerman and Zimmerman "popped" Martin... If Martin is the aggressor, and causes bodily harm, to the extent that Zimmerman believes his life is in danger, or he's in danger or serious injury as a result o the the "popping" Martin is doing, then he's JUSTIFIED in "popping" Martin to defend himself!!! Likewise, had you caught one of those kids, and then the other two started clubbing you with a couple of ball bats, you'd have been JUSTIFIED in shooting them in efforts to SAVE your own life.... But in your situation, we know that you made chase to begin the potential altercation, we don't know what happened in this case...

 

Read my post again where I agree with you

I really don't care who walks down my street at night in the rain, as long as they do not bother me, I am not going to bother them.

 

If the Voice don't fit you must acquit. George Zimmerman will be found innocent.

 

:rofl:

 

Do you really think Zimmerman said...."What's up?"

 

I don't think we have any idea what was said.... The point is, at some point the encounter turned violent, and GZ seemed to be the only one on the receiving end of he violence until he shot and killed Martin.... If that's the case, which it may very well be, then he is "justified" in shooting Martin. U.S. Law, not even having anything to do with the FL "Stand Your Ground" Law.

The fact that the POTUS and USAG have both gotten involved only makes the case a more racially charged situation, and BOTH of them should have kept their mouths shut, and let the courts/police/state manage the situation, rather than insert their $.02. I believe in part due to their voicing their opinions on it, GZ was charged, and I think in the end, it's going to be GZ walking free, and someone (namely NBC, but there may be others as well) paying him a LOT of $$$ for defamation of character.

Look at Martin's family.... First his mom believes it was a shooting that was an accident and happened in a the heat of the moment, then she thinks GZ MURDERED her son.... He turned himself in, but after the court hearing, the Martin family Lawyers claim he's a flight risk.... The BLACK CIVIL RIGHTS "LEADERS" get involved making this a RACE thing, when indeed, they were TRICKED into this by a little "creative editting" of the 911 tape by NBC. Once the TRUTH is revealed, rather than eat a little crow, and blast NBC for creating the fiasco, they keep pressing on.... Again, as I've said elsewhere, if Jesse and Al really want to help "their people" then they'd be going down into the Ghetto's and telling prostitutes to find the Lord, and stop selling sex, drug dealers to go find jobs, and everytime there is BLACK on BLACK crime, they'd make just as big a deal of that, because it's the true epidemic in this country....

If you didn't read Shelby Steele's article, you SHOULD HAVE, as it is a refreshing look at things from an educated and intelligent black man, rather than one looking to create a controversy... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303302504577323691134926300.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

 

It's amazing how you are constantly correcting us with, "how do.you know?" "You don't know that." And you throw out statements like this ..... it kills me .... you seem to be the one who really knows what happened

So what you are saying is the end justifies the means .... first you assume some 30 year old vigilante that thought a guy looked suspicious and followed him .... called the cops ... told not to get out of the car ... gets out of the car .... with his gun ... Trayvon just beats him up. .... Zimmerman doesn't fight back ... while his head is getting mashed on the ground, GZ pulls out a gun and shoots Trayvon in his heart .... yeah, that scenario makes TOTAL sense...

What Gary and I have been saying all along is that Zimmerman's actions led to the kid's death .... he shouldn't have just waited for the cops.to come ....

 

Oh, I don't know about that. He propagates some of the same old, tired myths that feed these types of controversies.

I read this recently:

Don't White People Kill Each Other, Too?

By: Edward Wyckoff Williams
Posted: April 10, 2012 at 12:40 AM

And yet we keep hearing about black-on-black crime because it fits the false media narrative.

When it comes to America's racial past and present, lies and snake oil are sold in many colors.

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin tragedy, conservatives in media have sought to deflect from the racism and racial profiling that precipitated his untimely death by referencing the broader social malaise of supposed "black-on-black violence."

On last week's episode of This Week on ABC, Washington Post columnist George Will said that despite the Trayvon tragedy, "150 black men are killed every week in this country," and "about 94 percent of them by other black men."

Will parroted arguments made by many conservatives, his intended point being that black-on-black crime remains the real problem our nation should address. The half-truth he spoke went curiously unchallenged by the panel -- including former White House adviser Van Jones -- largely because the meta-narrative of black-on-black violence is widely accepted in journalistic and political circles.

Bill O'Reilly, the Fox News host and one-man propaganda machine, recently interviewed Columbia University professor Marc Lamont Hill to discuss similar claims from Wall Street Journal contributor Shelby Steele, who wrote in "The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin" that "black teenagers are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites." O'Reilly vehemently defended Steele's premise that the Trayvon Martin case is an anomaly.

"Blacks today are nine times more likely to be killed by other blacks than by whites," Steele wrote. He went on to attack the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for "exploiting" Trayvon's death in an effort to promote a "liberal" agenda -- a point that O'Reilly was all too happy to expound.

Steele's perspective, though myopic and misguided, remains pervasive and embedded in the broader social consciousness. This red-herring approach is not new, but in the face of Trayvon's death -- for which there remains no arrest, no charges and no arraignment -- these obstructive tactics require an equal and opposite response.

What Will, Steele and O'Reilly failed to mention is the exacting truth that white Americans are just as likely to be killed by other whites. According to Justice Department statistics (pdf), 84 percent of white people killed every year are killed by other whites.

In fact, all races share similar ratios. Yet there's no outrage or racialized debate about "white on white" violence. Instead, the myth and associated fear of "black on black" crime is sold as a legitimate, mainstream descriptive and becomes American status quo.

The truth? As the largest racial group, whites commit the majority of crimes in America. In particular, whites are responsible for the vast majority of violent crimes. With respect to aggravated assault, whites led blacks 2-1 in arrests; in forcible-rape cases, whites led all racial and ethnic groups by more than 2-1. And in larceny theft, whites led blacks, again, more than 2-1.

Given this mathematical truth, would anyone encourage African Americans to begin shooting suspicious white males in their neighborhoods for fear that they'll be raped, assaulted or murdered? Perhaps George Zimmerman's defenders should answer that question. If African Americans were to act as irrationally as Zimmerman did, would any rationale suffice to avoid arrest?

And why is no consideration given to the fact that Trayvon Martin, and millions of black boys and girls like him, harbor a reasonably founded fear of whites but are hardly ever provided the deference and dignity that victimhood affords?

The term "black on black" crime is a destructive, racialized colloquialism that perpetuates an idea that blacks are somehow more prone to violence. This is untrue and fully verifiable by FBI, DOJ and census (pdf) data. Yet the fallacy is so fixed that even African Americans have come to believe it.

In Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, she explains that the term was coined in the 1980s as American cities underwent transformation as a result of riots, white flight and the onslaught of the drug trade. David Wilson, a professor at the University of Illinois, documents the phenomena in Inventing Black-on-Black Violence. Wilson says that instead of attributing increased crime activity to poverty, inequality and disenfranchisement, the media chose to blame "a supposedly defective, aberrant black culture."

In a 2010 piece published by The Root, "The Myth of Black-on-Black Violence," Natalie Hopkinson opines that journalists should follow the direction of the United Kingdom, where the Guardian newspaper banned the use of the phrase. A Guardian stylebook asked authors to ''imagine the police saying they were investigating an incident of white-on-white violence ... " Hopkinson concludes, "The term 'black-on-black violence' is a slander against the majority of law-abiding black Americans, rich and poor, who get painted by this broad and crude brush."

Trayvon Martin's tragic death reveals the worst ills at play within America's criminal-justice system. Not only was he murdered in large part because of dangerous, persistent stereotypes, but the failure of police to judiciously respond to the crime underscores the inequities that characterize institutionalized racism.

Those who respond to the tragedy by retreating to narratives of black-on-black crime seek to promote it as a defense against an innocent child's violent homicide. This reveals how entrenched the lies have become and how eager too many people are to absolve both Zimmerman's guilt and their own tacit consent.

African-American media and policymakers have been equally complicit in promoting a "black-on-black crime" anecdote, thinking that it could help address some of the community's problems; but what it has actually done is provide support for racial profiling and promote the disproportionate policing of black criminality as "legitimate" and "acceptable." This over-policing has led to disproportionately higher rates of arrests in black communities, reinforcing the idea that blacks commit more crimes.

If we were to talk about "white-on-white crime," then at least we'd be addressing issues like gun violence in a racially neutral way. That doesn't happen because too many Americans remain convinced that black or brown people are the problem. Respected journalists like George Will further perpetuate lies as fact when they make blanket statements that support an ill-conceived narrative.

It seems that the media in general and white American society in particular prefer to focus on crime perpetrated by African Americans because it serves as a way to absolve them from the violence, prejudice and institutionalized discrimination engendered for generations against blacks. It offers a buffer against responsibility, a way to shift blame and deflect cause and effect. But the truth, and numbers, tell a different story.

The myth of black-on-black violence has become a stain on the sociopolitical consciousness and indelibly imbues mindsets as well as public policy. At the heart of an increasingly violent society is not a subculture among blacks but the violence and criminality of many Americans, and whites in particular. No one seems to speak about this. Why? Because the snake oil was duly purchased and consumed. It is time for race-based pseudo-facts to be challenged and dismantled.

Edward Wyckoff Williams is an author, columnist and political analyst for MSNBC and a former investment banker.