According to chief Lee, Zimmerman stated that he got out of his car to check the street sign, not to follow Martin. He also stated that Martin jumped him from behind as he returned to his car.
That is supposed to refer to this:
Florida’s self-defense law could hamper efforts to prosecute Trayvon Martin shooter
BY DAVID OVALLE AND FRANCES ROBLES, Miami Herald, Posted on Monday, 03.19.12
Article originally posted by Blank Slate, post 679 of this thread
So he tells the 911 operator he is following Trayvon Martin. But then we hear that he got out of the truck to check the name of the street he was on, and he was heading back to the truck when Martin jumped him from behind.
ETA: or see the previous post :smack:
[QUOTE=Stoid;14886064
Police records show Zimmerman had [called 911 a total of 46 times]
(http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/17/2700249/shooter-of-trayvon-martin-a-habitual.html) between Jan. 1 and the day he shot Martin. Sounds to me like a man spoiling for an opportunity to use his gun.
[/QUOTE]
Calling the police 46 times without resorting to violence is a clear pattern of behaviour. That the 47th time played out completely differently strongly suggests that something completely different happened. Such as, and this is purely a theoretical possibility, him being attacked in such a way that left him fearing serious injury, and using legally allowed force to defend himself.
Or, as another theoretical possibility, he’d been drinking, or was in some way emotionally unstable, and acted in a different way to that he’d done before, and shot Martin for no good reason - which in this case would probably be manslaughter.
There’s no evidence I’ve seen that suggests any pattern of violent behaviour in Zimmerman’s past.
Or perhaps Zimmerman saying “these assholes always get away” suggests he was fed up and he wasn’t going to let it happen again.
Shouldn’t the 46 other calls be made public under Florida’s transparency laws? I’ve heard that some of them led to police making arrests but without any details.
When I started this thread, the evidence was weak, making a case against Zimmerman was futile, the cops were saying they weren’t going any further because Zimmerman’s story was plausible enough, and we were being assured by the beloved lawyers here that the cops are doing a swell job because–hey!–why should we expect them to run a slipshod operation? Who are we to question their expertise, with all their insider knowledge?
Now everything is different (though some refuse to see this). The contradictions in Zimmerman’s statements–which were never going to pop up because the cops were already dusting off their hands–were served to us at our breakfast table this morning. A case against Zimmerman can be made. And even if no conviction comes out of this, at least the horrible job that the police department did with this case (the ignored phone log boggles the mind) and this hideous SYG law have been brought to light.
I have no problem being called an “angry black.” Angry blacks have made this country the success story that it is. I owe my life and freedom to a long line of angry blacks. Many of my personal heros are “angry blacks.” So I’ll be an “angry black” all day long.
Anyway, it’s not just a bunch of “angry blacks” that care about this, and this is an offensively stupid remark to make. Plenty of people, regardless of background, are interested in this story. The witnesses who have come forward have been white. This is not a case of black people “whining” or being “hypersensitive”. Only a racist jackass would think this and then have the audacity to call the victim a “nobody” in the same breath. If Trayvon were a famous person, we’d be accused of fawning over a celebrity and ignoring the “regular people crimes”.
Someone in this thread smells of sour grapes. They need to take a shower and go sit down somewhere.
Every black person–and more than a few white, Asian, Hispanic folk–are imagining themselves and their children in Trayvon’s shoes. While walking home today, I saw some black boys playing basketball on the court, and I thought to myself, “I hope they stick together when they walk home.” And I think about my nephew, who wears a hoodie (with his expensive private school’s name emblazened on it). I am not a very emotional person and I’m not even close to him, but I’d be enraged if someone thought he was a drugged-up punk. I don’t know how I’d feel if someone killed him based on their fear. “Angry black” doesn’t even come close.
And yet you revel in every self-proclaimed victory. Wallow in it, a person might say. But at the end of the day you spew as much or more as anybody and you don’t seem sad at all.
His record is not squeaky clean. In addition to the “expunged” arrest for assault, he had complaints made against him. He had also gone around the neighborhood warning residents to be on the look-out for black males.
The sad thing is we will never know if Zimmerman was intoxicated, because the cops did not think to test his blood alcohol level. How this can be, when it seems like it would be SOP in such a case, I have absolutely no idea. But even if Zimmerman had not been drunk, there’s no reason to believe he still couldn’t have shown poor judgment on his own accord.
The reason why the number of police calls keeps getting cited is because it indicates this guy was primed for hunting out “bad” guys. You know the old saying? When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail? Well, Zimmerman’s hammer might have been tired of going after tacks and splitters. Martin may have looked like the perfect nail. This may have been Zimmerman’s golden opportunity to show that he had what it takes to be a good cop–that he was much better than this Deputy Dog hall monitor crap. He was going to nail him a real bad guy and get himself on the front page of the newspaper.
I don’t think he intended to kill that night. It just unfolded that way, given the mix of adrenaline and poor judgment in his system.
So I guess you’ve officially abandoned your position that the races of the participants has nothing to do with your feelings about this case?
Nope. The fact that Zimmerman called 911 46 other times doesn’t “indicate” a blessed thing. The implication that Steophan points out from that fact is just as plausible as the implication you point it. In both cases it takes someone to imply something–the bare fact just sits there.
What if the average number of 911 calls from neighborhood watch people in neighborhoods similar to Zimmermans across the country over the same time period as Zimmerman’s 46 calls was 118 calls? What if it was 12 calls? Do you think that knowing that average would affect your feeling about what 46 calls means?
Perhaps you can stop guessing and start reading for comprehension. I never said anything like this.
Actually, you did, right here:
Why not find the average and share with the class? Forty-six calls in two months sounds like an awfully high number for a single gated neighborhood to me, but I’m open to being educated. Surely you have time to educate us?
And while you’re at it, go do some research about neighborhood watch programs and find out if Zimmerman makes a good poster child or a bad one. Because based what I learned today from experts in the field, Zimmerman should have never been allowed to be captain. But again, maybe I heard wrong. Or maybe the experts are wrong. Maybe we’re all angry blacks just looking to throw someone in jail for all eternity, and we need rational white men like you to put us in our place.
I admitted that the race angle is important to me. Which is exactly the opposite of what you claimed my “position” was.
Do you really want to go back and forth like this all night? Because you will lose this insane fight just like you did the last one.
:rolleyes:
You can stuff that attitude. My rationality has nothing to do with me being white. You are essentially trying to put words into my mouth–trying to (once again) paint yourself as a victim. You are pretending that I’m treating you like a lunatic because you are black and I’m white.
That is all the furthest possible from the truth. I’m treating you like a lunatic because you are acting like a lunatic.
Wow, Rand. With such devastating blows you’re landing in this thread, it’s a wonder your username isn’t Matlock.
And it’s a wonder your name isn’t Johnnie Cochran with all the BS yarns you can spend in an effort simply to confuse people into agreeing with you.
He wasn’t a neighborhood watch person.
Given that, how many times do you make 911 calls in a year? How many times do you ignore things that you think you probably should have called in? Do you think the sum of those two numbers, compared to Zimmerman’s, represents a failing on your part? Or that he lived in someplace more approaching Somalia than Florida? How vigilant are you supposed to be, and if you exceed that level of vigilance by a factor of, say, 10, being generous, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Normal poeple don’t behave like this guy did. To my own shock and horror it seems like what he did may have been legal, at least by what the police had at the time, but it’s certainly not normal or reasonable anywhere.
How am I being a lunatic? What have I said in this thread that would make any reasonable person think I am a lunatic?
You know who has posted in a lunatic fashion? Martin Hyde. He posts reams and reams of legalistic expertise, supposedly completely dispassionate and all-suffering of us hysterical fools. And then suddenly–as soon as it can longer be denied that Zimmerman is a dirty liar–he starts calling out the “angry blacks” and the “nobodies”. And we are not supposed to react in any way to this, lest the Rand Rovers and Brickers of the thread say we are being crazy and hysterical. And oh yeah, members of a lynch mob. Over the course of a day, all the “let’s be objective and view this thing rationally!” stuff has been tossed out of the freakin’ window.
That is what is hilariously insane. But of course you will not agree with this, and I’m just wasting my time talking to you.
The only rational response to a story such as this is “of course we (the general public) don’t know the whole story yet, so let’s wait until the facts come in.” But instead you come out swinging (in classic lunatic “just asking questions” style).
You are clearly trying to have it both ways. We all know that this story wouldn’t be much of a story, and you personally wouldn’t care so much about it, if both the shooter and victim were white. But you want it both ways–“race is important to me,” but of course you wouldn’t care about the situation if they were both white. Excuse me while I :rolleyes:.
If I had wanted to rant about Zimmerman and/or the police department, I would have opened the thread in the Pit.
I knew the thread was going to have more than facts in it, so I didn’t bother going to GQ. But I know perfectly well how to throw a good ranting fit for the Pit. It is clear that the OP did not have that intention at all. Anyone with skills in reading comprehension can see this.
I have no idea why I’m defending myself to you. So I’m going to stop right now.