See, it’s shit like this that you drop throughout this thread that make it clear that you aren’t even in the ballpark of objectivity. What the living fuck is the “fast ‘gangster walk’” you speak of? And how the hell do you speak with such certainty that “I know what he was saying?”
I think GZ apologists are having a hard time reconciling the reality of GZ as an everyman, Michael Douglas in Falling Down standing up to the big, bad, dark criminal bogeymen that torment our lives. He’s not. He’s a fuck up at best and quite possibly a lying, cowardly moron who couldn’t take an ass whooping like a man and used a gun to cover it all up.
The reason I call him a fuck up is that nothing of his surveillance makes any sense - once he identified a potential “threat” his job was done. Get the description, let LEOs take over. He lives in a community where he is supposed to be a neighborhood watch patrol person and doesn’t know the names of streets? Seems like he isn’t qualified to have that position. My four year old son knows the names of the four streets in my subdivision. Where does GZ live, in a labyrinth? And this idea that he’s looking for a house number? Shit, how about “halfway in the block,” or “towards the end of the block that intersects with X street?”
There was no need to tail Martin. No need to get out of the vehicle. You cannot seriously defend this “neighborhood watch” tactic, because it means a lot of fake-ass cops are going to get hurt.
Then there’s the perspective from Martin. I know it is probably difficult for some of you to imagine yourself as a 17 year old Black male, but if you could, you would know that groups like the Klan exist. White supremacists have injured, maimed, and killed Black men for fun. Two shitheads were shooting innocent Black people in Tulsa in April, remember? How about that asshole teenager that ran over an innocent Black man in Mississippi a few years ago? James Byrd, anyone?
So when you are walking down - excuse me, “fast gangster walking” - down the street and you are being followed, without provocation, you are probably not expecting Mister Rogers coming out to say hi. It is not irrational to believe that this person means you harm - you might have tried to hide, but they are coming after you. And of course this isn’t the movies. Someone trying to hurt you might pretend to be friendly, like the Mississippi teenager or the Byrd lynchers. So you might decide to stand your ground and incapacitate someone who might have that intent for you. Because nobody avoiding a confrontation is going to escalate it by leaving the safety of their vehicle.
Go ahead, consider it for a moment. And let’s not wave away the three incidents of racially targeted violence that have occurred recently (yes, I know that the Tulsa situation was after the shooting, but trust me, there have been many more incidents of Black men being targeted and victimized). I want to hear your mindset.
