Btw, what IS quite obvious from the accounts of all ear-witnesses is, the yells for help were noticeably moving behind the houses before they became fixed in location then stopped completely, which totally contradicts Z’s testimony that he started yelling when he hit the floor, after Trayvon had jumped on him and continued his alleged assault.
The events that witnesses are describing are a clear indication of a struggle moving from one location to another, with yells for help occurring simultaneously, NOT a fight where the shouting didn’t start until the fight went to the ground.
Especially so when the first officer on scene knows the shooter and he’s one of the “good guys.” Hey, it’s Cautious George, he wouldn’t kill anyone unnecessarily.
I don’t know, death by reckless endangerment, firing a gun in a residential area? It doesn’t usually take the cops much effort to think of something to fuck up an arrestee’s day.
Not me, I just wanted a professional investigation of the circumstances.
If they had no precursor or dispatch knowledge than it would be more plausible for them to consider reckless firing of a gun in a residential area. Between the NEN and the body on the ground, it indicates that the firing was not reckless - it was intentional (if not accidental).
You’re right, it usually doesn’t take cops much effort to pin something on people so they can meet their monthly quotas. Fortunately in this case, the cops weren’t chasing statistics.
For the upteenth time, Martin supposedly only took off running near the dog path. Until that moment, Zimmerman claims the kid was walking and then stalking him in his truck.
To make his story fit, you have to make Martin do something Zimmerman never claimed he did. And not only that, do it like an Olympian on crack.
You can only accept it as not suspicious if you treat the guy who is standing as innocent and view the dead young man on the ground as a criminal. Z seems to have got really lucky in having such immediately trusting cops arrive on the scene, when he was stood near a dead body holding a gun.
No, but this is exactly where they should have been chasing their monthly quotas, not for shitty shoplifting incidents and easy roadside pulls.
How do you figure? Chasing quotas is done on trivial or menial incidents, where you can get away with bending the situation to fit your quota needs, like .. shoplifting incidents and easy roadside pulls.
A dead person is not the time to start trying to impress your boss.
Cops don’t generally presume anybody innocent - it kinda comes with the territory. The only reason for their suspicious instincts not kicking in here appears to be because they knew who Z was. If Z had just been a random Joe who had made the call and then shot someone dead, he’d have had his car searched, been drug tested, and the identity of the dead person established before he left the station with a “We’ll be making further investigations and we’ll be back in touch. Don’t leave town” if he was lucky.
All I’m saying is, finding out why a dead teen has been shot and trying to determine whether the shooter is being honest seems a far more useful public service than pulling people for minor traffic offences, yet I’ve seen cops waste hours of precious policing on such trivial crimes, yet here was a possible murder if it’s discovered that the shooter and the dead person knew each other, but they can’t even do a detailed interview with important witnesses.
Why would it have been a good idea for the police to restrict the scope of their investigation by arresting Zimmerman immediately? If they arrest him, they either have to charge him or release him in a relatively short space of time. As he was neither a flight risk nor a danger to anyone, there was no need to arrest him.
This appears to be another part of the legal system you simply don’t understand.
What I DO understand is that cops will normally have no hesitation about leaving a suspect to stew in the cells while they carry out their enquiries and they are quite happy to go to court for an extension on the time they can hold them, if they deem it necessary. But not in this case. No, here we have a man being treated like he is the victim and then being given a reassurance that it would all be sorted out, after a 5 hour stay and the most cursory of interviews.
If he’d been a housewife or an elderly person, say, who’d had to shoot someone trying to snatch their handbag and who had turned violent when they hadn’t immediately released it, or Zimmerman had been obviously overpowered by a much stronger and far more aggressive person, I’d be far more sympathetic about him not being released to enjoy the pleasures of his own bed, but as it stands, I’d rather see someone slightly inconvenienced and a case investigated as fully as necessary, than worry about the sensitivities of a possible murderer.
I’d expect any decent cop to prefer to have to apologise for arresting someone falsely, than to do the same to a parent for failing to nail the killer of their child.
You’ve stated your personal preference. But the law in Florida requires a somewhat different approach. The law in Florida forbids a police department from even detaining a person unless they already have probable cause to believe the force used was unlawful. The law also allows a person detained in violation of this requirement to sue the police.
So the law in Florida creates a penalty worse than simply apologizing for a false arrest.
Did that fact influence your commentary or analysis?
Only in that it made me feel like Florida’s law makers need to take a good look in the mirror at themselves and ask “Wtf are we trying to achieve here?”
I can’t say I’ve looked into it, but I’d have thought if they knew you’d been driving a vehicle, they could make up any excuse to search it and test you for narcotic substance use. Especially if you’d just shot someone dead.
You ever hear people go on about how things like drugs are a personal choice and shouldn’t be dictated to by a government? Same principle. Going around assuming the worst of people and detaining or arresting them will result in a police state.
But until that happy day arrives, how do you ignore – or urge the police to ignore – the extant law?
No. They really cannot legally do that. And if they did it extra-legally, and found evidence clearly implicating Zimmerman, that evidence would be in real danger of being excluded – which I imagine would then prompt you to inveigh against the police for failing to follow the law and thus letting a killer walk free.
If the police assumed innocent motivation for every person they encountered who they didn’t have rock solid evidence of any involvement in a crime, the police force would be unfit for purpose.
But notice you have committed the fallacy of the excluded middle. There are in fact options that rest between “rock solid evidence” and detaining or arresting on a whim.
In the United States, there are three levels of encounters between citizens and police:
[ul]
[li]Consensual encounter. This requires no level of suspicion at all – just as I can walk up to you and begin a conversation, asking you the time of day or what you do for a living, so too can a police officer. As long as you are free to disregard his inquiry and go about your business, the Fourth Amendment is not implicated, because you have not been “seized;” your liberty has not been restricted in any way.[/li][li]Detention (a “Terry” stop). This is a brief, investigative detention of a person, where their liberty is briefly implicated by a police seizure. This must be premised on the police officer having reasonable, articulable suspicion that a crime is in play. Reasonable, articulable suspicion is a standard below that of probable cause, but above a mere unparticularized hunch or guess. The officer must be able to point to particular facts that, together with his training and experience, give rise to a reasonable suspicion of criminal acitivity. The investigative detention gives the officer a brief, reasonable time to either confirm or dispel his suspicions.[/li][li]Arrest. This is the most serious of intrusions on liberty, and requires that the officer have probable cause to believe that you have committed a crime. Probable cause is a set of facts and reasonable inferences that would warrant a man of reasonable caution and prudence to believe that you have more likely than not committed a crime.[/li][/ul]
Florida law abrogates the standard for detention when a subject claims self-defense, and forces an officer to have probable cause before permitting even a detention. And not just probable cause – specific probable cause about the magnitude of force used.
I don’t ignore it, I try to get my head around it, but if lawyering was easy, they wouldn’t be able to charge such high rates for their services when they were good enough.
I can accept that there may not be sufficient evidence to find Z guilty of 2nd degree or manslaughter, but the sloppiness of the investigation and the rush for senior figures to get involved right at the outset means this is going to drag on for a long while.
If a cop smells a distinct whiff of hash as someone passes by him, he isn’t going to presume him innocent and dismiss it as him just having come into contact with somebody else who was smoking hash.
If cops thought like that, there’d be no prisoners and crime would be absolutely rampant. Cops are looking for reasons to nick you, not to let you go… usually. Unless your name is George Zimmerman and the cops work for SPD.