As outside observers, the problem we have is that **we do not, in fact, know what George Zimmerman’s story was. ** We have hearsay versions of it, which aren’t really worth much of anything. I think we can safely assume Zimmerman claims Martin attacked him, but the specifics we simply don’t know. Leaks from the police have come out, but not a whole picture. Zimmerman’s father has another version which sounds, well, pretty embellished. Neither is a clear version.
My most charitable guess is that Zimmy had a bloody nose and some of this blood was transferred to the back of his head. Or maybe it was Martin’s. Witnesses saw him standing over the body so he might have had contact with his blood.
My least charitable guess is that the cops inserted that statement in their report after it was decided that Zimmy was hands-off. Regardless of if this theory is true or not, the statement itself reads like an unimportant aside, which certainly supports the idea that the cops didn’t think Zimmerman was badly injured. There was no mention of any specific wounds. The sentence about him bleeding was treated as a complete afterthought rather than the the most significant piece of information needed to tell us whether this was self-defense.
Here’s my question to you. If Zimmerman was actually bleeding from his head, don’t you think it’s extremely odd that the paramedics would have not bandaged him? To withhold skepticism from Zimmerman’s story, you basically have to believe that the EMT were grossly negligent or following a protocol for 1st aid that is so insanely unorthodox I cant seem to find it published anywhere online.
Suppose you were to learn that the EMT report says that Zimmerman had abrasions and contusions on his head, and that they say they bandaged his head and advised a trip to the hospital, which he declined. And that the bloody bandage was found in Zimmerman’s pocket, and Zimmerman says he took the bandage before he got in the police car.
Would that change your mind at all?
He was handcuffed, so how would a bloody bandage get in his pocket? How would he even be able to take it off?
If he declined hospital care, why would the cops not note this in their records rather than just saying they treated and released him? Why would he decline it anyway, if * his head had just been banged into concrete* to the extent that he killed someone to stop it?
Why would Zimmerman go through the trouble of letting the paramedics clean his supposed wounds, but then refuse to keep his bandage in place to keep the bleeding at bay?
How many angels must dance on a head of a pin before skepticism is justified here?
Guy follows kid–not illegal
Kid gets mad–
Kid comes over and jumps guy and starts felonious assault – very illegal
Guy retaliates with legally carried gun because he is in fear of being beat to death – totally legal
Kid dies because he was stupid and assaulted another person rather than call the cops and report being ‘watched’ by someone.
Cops didn’t arrest shooter because he did nothing wrong and was assaulted justifying self defense.
Attorney general didn’t use a Grand Jury because the AG knew the Grand jusy wouldn’t indict and the AG wanted a criminal trial.
He wasn’t arrested because he was latino (not ‘white’) and the shooting victim black, but rather he WAS eventually arrested because he was perceived as white and the victim black and they were worried about race riots ala Los Angeles.
The Cowboy
So, in that case, the police report was correct - Zimmerman was bleeding.
So Zimmerman shot Martin from the front, and got blood on the back of his head from standing over him? Zimmerman could not have gotten Martin’s blood on the back of his head during the fight - there were no other injuries on Martin apart from the GSW (so far as we know). And the fight apparently ended the instant Martin was shot. So the blood came from the GSW, or from Zimmerman. So, again, Zimmerman must have been bleeding.
Why would they interrogate him for five hours if they had already decided to falsify their reports in his favor?
Again, this doesn’t make a lot of sense. If it is the most important element in showing self-defense, and the police had decided to falsify the evidence in Zimmerman’s favor, why would they treat it as unimportant?
Not that I agree with you that it is the most important piece of evidence in the case. And if you think about it, you may want to back from that idea a little. Because what happens if the EMT reports come back, and they report that Zimmerman had a bloody nose and a scalp wound? Are you going to assume the EMTs are in on the fix? For what reason would they do that?
FWIW, there are now reports (for whose veracity I could not vouch) that Zimmerman was not exactly Mr. Popularity with the Sanford Police Department.
If the story is true, here is Zimmerman, in a race-related case, calling for action against the police department. Then a year or so later, in another race-related case, the police decide to cut him some slack to the point of falsifying their reports?
I find that difficult to believe.
I don’t find it that odd at first blush - Zimmerman refused transport, IIRC. I don’t know much more than my son taught me about EMT protocol (he is a medic and a certified EMT), but I don’t think EMTs are supposed to bandage a scalp wound. If they do, sometimes removing it can start the wound bleeding again at the ER. Apply a pressure dressing, sure, but only if the bleeding seems to be dangerous. But my EMT son says often enough that EMTs don’t “treat” injuries - they just keep the patient alive until they can get to the ER where the doctors treat the injuries. But I don’t think the EMTs would be expected to suture or bandage a wound - that happens at the ER. And if the patient refuses to go to the ER, then just stop the bleeding nose, irrigate the scalp wound to clean it, and put pressure on it until it stops bleeding.
If you are saying that Zimmerman did not have life-threatening injuries, I agree with you. He did not. But that is not the same thing as saying he could not have been in fear of his life when he fired the shot.
If his account is true, and Martin was sitting on his chest slamming his head into the ground, then Zimmerman could not reasonably have retreated, and it is reasonable to fear death or serious injury in that situation. Having your head slammed on the ground can produce concussions, and concussions can be considered a serious injury, even a life-threatening one.
Regards,
Shodan
Let’s say he took it off before he was handcuffed. Since we assume he was not detained (which would have required probable cause) we assume he voluntarily accompanied police to the station, and was handcuffed during the trip for officer safety.
You participated in post #2518 and those that followed it, in which this exact question was answered. Did you forget?
In the discussion that followed, both BottledBlondJeanie (another attorney familiar with EMT and police reports of injuries, hers in the civil context and mine in the criminal) both advised you that your speculations were wrong. To remind you, you speculated that even though the law says the EMTs, not the police, must document it, competent police work would have required that the police also document it.
So far as I can recall, you offered nothing to rebut that claim except your own imagination of how police work should be done. Did you forget the exchange, or do you now have something more in the way of authority to support your claim that the police would have documented it?
I don’t know. Maybe he thought he didn’t need a bandage. I asked you: if you were to learn that the EMT report says that Zimmerman had abrasions and contusions on his head, and that they say they bandaged his head and advised a trip to the hospital, and that the cops found a bloody bandage in Zimmerman’s pocket, would that change your mind? You answerd by listing all the reasons that couldn’t be.
So I am asking again: IF YOU WERE TO LEARN that the EMT report says that Zimmerman had abrasions and contusions on his head, and that they say they bandaged his head and advised a trip to the hospital, and that the cops found a bloody bandage in Zimmerman’s pocket, would that change your mind?
About the same - I don’t see any reason to doubt that a scuffle took place which left Mr. Zimmerman bleeding from the nose and the back of his head.
The “enhanced” frame of the CCTV video gives the impression that he had a gory head wound, and that he was really banged up. I don’t think that what is “enhanced” there is an injury at all, it looks more like the compression algorithm created a bit of glitchy ghosting of the contour of his head, for that single frame.
I think whatever injury he was bleeding from was by its nature so slight that it was not picked up at all by the CCTV at all - eg; an abrasion which had stopped bleeding without scabbing, and which was too small and contrasted too little with his undamaged skin to be distinguished in such a compressed format.
As long as he is conscious and not experiencing anything beyond his head and nose hurting, further treatment isn’t called for. In high school, we had a pitcher get hit in the head with a line drive. The EMTs came, assessed him, and told him basically that he didn’t need emergency care or transport. They said to put him in the car and drive him to the acute care facility, and that’s what someone did. So Zimmerman may have declined to go to the hospital, but that isn’t meaningful at all. There wasn’t any medical reason for him to go to the hospital.
The problem is that you think the standard is having a severe injury, when it is not. Zimmerman is under no obligation to wait until he has a serious injury before defending himself.
I have no reason to suppose any of this. He was treated in the police car, according to the report, and then taken to the station. I have no reason to believe that he wasnt cuffed once he was placed in the car, especially since if the cops were concerned about their safety during the trip to the station, certainly the EMTs deserved such abundance of caution while they dabbed his shit with astringents. I have no reason to believe he’d let himself be treated by the paramedics, but then promptly undo their handiwork by taking off his wound dressings.
I also have no reason to believe he’d smoked crack immediately before he killing Martin, and i have no reason to believe he is a closested pedophile either. We can play make-believe all the live long day. You aren’t being clever with this, you’re just being desperate.
Again, this time with feeling, just because something is not legally required to be recorded doesn’t mean a competent cop would not have documented it. Failing to understand this reflects poorly on one’s ability to separate law from common sense, and I haven’t the energy to harp on this with you any more.
That’s funny. He shoots a kid dead because he feared serious injury, and yet minutes after this brutal beating, he’s a Tough Guy who thinks he can do without a bandage for the injuries that caused his life to flash before his eyes? Wow, that’s something else right there. If this is the case, I really hope they lock him up now.
You might as well be asking if the EMT report says that Zimmerman is really the secret bastard child of Elvis Presley, what then. Stop with all this, please. Unless, of course it’s your intent to show how close your side is to embracing fantasy over reality. Then by all means carry on with the day dreaming.
I remind you that years ago, all it took for you to be skeptical of a rape accuser was finding out that she was black. The spectacular reasoning for that all hinged on how supposedly unlikely it was that a white man would rape a black woman. Now suddenly you’re an advocate for entertaining the most outlandish hypotheticals imaginable just so you can admonish people for condemning a potential murderer. To paraphrase Nell Carter, gimme a motherfucking break.
Okay doctor, whatever you say.
Monstro, nobody is jumping down your throat. “good grief” is about as polite as you get around here. Be as skeptical as you’d like. That’s what the thread is for.
I confess to not understanding the number of people who don’t understand how fast a beat-down spirals out of control. If, IF, IFFFFFFF Martin was indeed pounding on Zimmerman’s head then we’re not talking minutes but rather seconds before Zimmerman fears for his life. Maybe people have to experience it firsthand to understand the dynamics of it. Don’t know. But getting hit in the head once is enough to daze someone and rapid repeated blows are life threatening scary.
(deleted)
I didn’t ask you to assess the likelihood, and I didn’t ask you to believe it. I asked IF YOU WERE TO LEARN THAT THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED, would it change your mind?
Look, I am very confident that there are no such things as werewolves. But I am capable of answering the question, “If you were to learn of a documented case of a person transforming under moonlight into a hairy, fanged creature, would it change your mind?”
Why are you not capable of answering a hypothetical which may be unlikely… but is in fact far more likely than the existence of werewolves?
What evidence would convince you that your perception is in error?
It’s hard to imagine what more, besides the freaking Florida law that mandates EMTs document the refusal and the experience of two people who have read hundreds of police reports in real life and have reported it is rare for police to document refusal of medical treatment, but you obviously elevated your own sense of common sense above this evidence, despite the fact that you have no experience whatsoever in law enforcement. So is there anything at all that would convince you your idea is wrong?
Hilarious. You admonish him for advancing a medical opinion, and yet you have no compunction about asserting your untrained, no-experience-in-real-life ideas of how police should document the refusal of medical treatment when the law, the EMT standards, and people with actual experience are all telling you differently?
Why are you the only one allowed to simply assert your untrained and uninformed opinion as fact?
That is an absolutely untrue statement. While its true that I did express the opinion that statistical likelihood of an event hada bearing on how credible someone reporting the event was, that is by no means “all it took.” My skepticism arose from far more basic disconnects in her story. And of course, as you recall, it did turn out she was falsely accusing those men of rape.
Care to remind us what other evidence you had that made you join the lying whore chorus? As I recall, she had evidence of injuries and a story that was consistent with these injuries. What else did you have to go on?
Whatever it was, it certainly can’t compare in weight to a video that shows a spry, unbloody, unbandanged Zimmerman, a vague police report that mentions no specific wounds on his body, and a significant delay in the man getting himself to a hospital. None of this is consistent with a story of a man being brutally beaten. That you’re willing to bend over backwards to find ways to make his story square with these facts, even if it requires you to posit the most unlikely fanwanks to make it all fit, just confirms what is obvious to most people in this thread already. You are biased towards Zimmerman. Just own up to that.
The fact that you would even entertain that assinine opinion AT ALL shows that you were biased. Garbage like that doesn’t belong in any kind of analysis, no matter how many disclaimers you want to throw out.
People, including Zimmerman, can’t have it both ways. Supposedly he claims that he wanted to go to the hospital but the police wouldn’t let him. He couldn’t have wanted to go to the hospital too badly if he took off his dressings. The bandages would haven’t have been on for longer than a few minutes before they reached the station, so he wouldn’t have even had a good reason to do this. And according to a witness account I read, Zimmerman was hand-cuffed before being placed in the vehicle, where EMT treated him. Unless the bandage that the EMT gave him was of dollar-store quality and fell off all by itself, I am skeptical that he was given one. People with bleeding head wounds are usually given bandages by EMTs. Asking “Where was the bandage?” is not an unreasonable question!
If someone issues a"good grief", a rolly-eyes, or any other disparaging response to this, I’m giving up hope that folks are arguing in good faith.
The lawyer has obviously found something that warrants bringing harsh charges against Zimmerman. With a such a highly visible case like this, I doubt she’d risk her reputation farting around with junk. This is what I was told at the beginning of the debacle. If it was true then, it should be true now.
I was mugged once in NY 10-12 years ago - big crazy guy knocked me down with a roundhouse punch as I was on my way to work in the morning. Caught me completely off-guard, and I was on the ground trying to figure out what the hell just happened. There’s no way I would have been able to defend myself if the guy had followed it up by jumping on me (I suppose the situation would be different if I had been on ‘high alert’, expecting a confrontation…). Anyway, thanks to that one punch strong enough to knock me down, I had a massive bruise just under my eye that was all sorts of pretty colors for about a week.
GZ’s face, nose (and clothes) look to be in pretty good condition for someone that was supposedly hit hard enough with one punch to the nose to knock him down. GZ outweighed Martin by a pretty good margin; it would take a *seriously *strong punch to put him to the ground with one blow - and remember; GZ was already in a state of high alert. GZ had worked as a security guard and as a bouncer at *illegal house parties’ - *you know, parties where if there’s a problem, you can’t just call the cops, so the bouncers need to be able to ‘take care of’ business.
You really think the ex-security guard / ex-bouncer is going to let himself get sucker punched strong enough to knock him down, by someone he already assumes is armed and dangerous? (‘he’s up to no good’ / ‘he’s on drugs or something’ / he’s got his hands in his waist band’ etc). And he’s going to get hit hard enough to get knocked down and yet not show any signs of injury to his face?
I’ll think about reconsidering my position if I see pictures and/or an EMT report that show significant injuries to GZ’s face…with the obvious problem that said injuries could have resulted from a fight with Martin, who was defending himself from a gun-carrying stalker trying to restrain him.
you with the face - you sure aren’t remembering the Duke case like I remember it. I remember the vast majority of the initial response to the case was very much pro-prosecution, with the lacrosse players being vilifying as ‘entitled jocks’.
But the guys were horny and possibly drunk. How could horny and possibly drunk guys ever try to rape someone? That’s completely unheard of. You’d have to be delusional to think something like that could ever happen. A person would have to want to be slave-master raped themselves to even consider the possibility–
Oops. I went too far.