Really? That describes gang members protecting their turf pretty well, and I don’t see many cases of non-gang residents or police stopping it.
The line between a Citizens Vigilance Committee, made up of untrained and unsupervised people with weapons, and a gang of thugs and bandits beholden to no one, is blurry and has been crossed many times in history; after all, “vigilante” is never used as a compliment. This is not a failed state. We have police, and we have citizens with telephones to alert them. We don’t need armed gangsters patrolling our streets, too.
Hell, no! I would not trust the people who thought my neighborhood needed such to be smart enough to have guns. We still leave our house unlocked most of the time.
Perhaps we could poll the SDMB and ask folks if they live in neighborhoods patrolled by street gang interrogators. Don’t think too many folks will be raising their hands to say “yes, this is my life”, but I could be wrong.
What is the point of you pointing to street gangs, as if you have doubts that neighbors interrogating strangers on the street is not a commonplace practice? That was a non sequitur.
You said “street gang interrogators,” not “nosy grannies on the stoop.” The common perception of street gang members is one of menacing thugs armed and willing to take the law into their own hands. OTOH, I am a nosy grandpa who has found that the magic word to help suss out whether this young person is a person of interest or somebody’s nephew out for some Skittles and pop is, “Hi.”
See, this is part of the problem, the whole idea that white people can’t be thugs. So people automatically assume Martin must have attacked Zimmerman, because white people never do that.
I’m 41 and I grew up in a white neighborhood. So white that there was only one other black guy in my grade school other than my brother. I’m telling you that any black person seen in the neighborhood would have been accosted the way Martin was. There were times when I was harassed for being in the neighborhood, and I actually lived there. Any random person following me around would make me plenty scared.
Ask the white people in Bensonhurst or Southie what happens if a black person wanders into their neighborhood. Those guys in Bensonhurst broke down on the highway, and were looking for help. I don’t even need to get into Southie.
In the suburbs, they just have the real cops be the thugs, but either way, it is totally rational for a black person to fear white people.
Of course, at times it is. I’m not claiming all black people are saints. But since white people are the majority in the US, most of them can avoid dealing with black people. I don’t have the option of not dealing with white people.
I’d say that most white peoples fear is not rational because they fear black people no matter what. Everybody is focusing on the hoodie that Martin was wearing, but it really didn’t matter what he had on. A black man could be wearing a suit and driving a nice car, and white people would still fear him, like we are animals. Ask me how I know.
The bottom line is Zimmerman saw a black kid that he thought didn’t belong in the neighborhood, and confronted him. It’s been nothing but excuses to let him off killing the kid since.
My answer to the OP’s question is of course not. Actual police are bad enough, I don’t want some want a be deciding who should or shouldn’t be in a neighborhood.
Martin is dead, but its been turned around to make people think he attacked Zimmerman, and people believe it. They think of course, that since Martin is black, he must have been the aggressor and must have some animal type strength.
You want to bring up racism as a joke, but we know for sure that for at least one juror race was a major factor in her decision by her own statements.
I do not support civilians that answer to nobody except biased juries like this, after I’m already dead, patrolling neighborhoods.
No, I think he was the aggressor because he came back from the house he was staying at to attack Martin. The jury was not biased (or, more precisely, an unbiased jury would have acquitted just as they did), and Zimmerman was not racist.
He was out of sight of Zimmerman, and went back to confront him. For whatever reason, he made that choice, and the choice to punch and beat Zimmerman. Whilst the punch was conceivably legitimate, if Zimmerman grabbed Martin, the continued attack was not.
All this, by the way, is based on testimony that, if biased, would be biased towards Martin. Jeantal has, since the trial, confirmed that she believes Martin threw the first punch.
Whatever threat he may have perceived from Zimmerman, and however reckless his actions were in following Martin in the first place, that ended when Zimmerman stopped following and Martin went to his house. It was his choice to initiate a second encounter.