TRAYVON MARTIN SHOOTING JUST MIGHT BE THE LAST STRAW

This time we are not talking about a black teen being killed by an overzealous police officer. This time we are talking about a black teen being killed by someone who wishes he was a policeman – and is being protected by the local police force. This time, it’s not going to work.

One People’s Project

In recent years, there has been a number of incidents in the South that has put the criminal justice system into question regarding African Americans, and those questions are not being answered. In just the last six years, we have seen the cases of Genarlow Wilson, the Jena 6, and most recently the execution of Troy Davis explode into national headlines because of the heavy handed and lopsided way law enforcement officials approached each situation. Law enforcement has always been the greatest tool in the effort to suppress the rights of people of color, with conservative advocates railing against black youth allegedly terrorizing the nation with terrorists acts. What makes the examples of those efforts is the fact that the men in their respective cases either never been in trouble with the law before or had relatively minor infractions, hardly the kind of thugs that conservatives would call attention to. Adding to that is the legacy of police officers across the country routinely killing Black and Hispanic youth without ever seeing prosecution, and tensions are brought to a high point. Several weeks ago, this climate has created another situation, and it cost the life of another black child, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. This time people know something is going on, and it is going to be dealt with.

Sanford, FL, is a town just 20 miles away from Orlando, and like many communities across the country, it has seen a lot of racial strife between the black community and the police, especially where it has concerned black victims and white perps. Last year, Sanford police chief Brian Tooley was ousted in the wake of the scandal where Justin Collison, the 21-year-old son of a police lieutenant, attacked a homeless man named Sherman Ware outside a local bar in Dec. 2010, but was not even arrested for the incident until a month later, after a video of the attack was uploaded to YouTube and the local news media began reporting on it. Upon assuming the office in May, new police chief Bill Lee said he wanted to restore the trust that had been lost in the wake of the scandal and other situations in town, but despite the lessons that should have been learned in the Collison case, he seemed to suggest that should such a situation arise again, he will do the same exact thing. “My preference, unless there’s some imminent danger or a safety issue, is that we file a capias [forgo an immediate arrest and file paperwork, requesting that the State Attorney’s Office pursue charges],” he said.

A 28-year-old self-appointed neighborhood watch captain named George Zimmerman might make him rethink that approach. Zimmerman is not a police officer, but he “patrols” a gated community in Sanford. Despite news reports to the contrary saying he was White, his family has released a statement noting that he is Hispanic and from a multiracial family. That, however, has not prevented the complaints about Zimmerman and his heavy-handed tactics from coming about. Among those complaints was how he would go door to door in the neighborhood to be on the lookout, particularly for young black men that appeared to be outsiders. “He would circle the block and circle it; it was weird,” one local 17-year-old said. “If he had spotted me, he’d probably ask me if I lived here. He was known for being really strict.”

Ironically, he was arrested in 2005 for assaulting a police officer, a charge that was eventually dismissed.

On Feb. 26, Trayvon and his father were visiting a friend’s home in the neighborhood when sometime that evening, he went to the local 7-Eleven to pick up a pack of Skittles. Zimmerman was riding around the neighborhood in an SUV when he saw Trayvon as he was returning to the home from the store, and for some reason feared the worst. He called 911 – which he reportedly has done 46 time since January 2011 – and told the dispatcher, “Hey, we’ve had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there’s a real suspicious guy at Retreat View Circle. This guy looks like he’s up to no good,” The 911 dispatcher instructed Zimmerman not to pursue Trayvon, but he did so anyway, saying “These assholes always get away.”

What happened next was unclear, which is why there are questions such as New York Times columnist Charles Blow posed: “Why did Zimmerman find Trayvon suspicious? Why did he pursue the boy when the 911 operator instructed him not to? Why did he get out of the car, and why did he take his gun when he did? How is it self-defense when you are the one in pursuit? Who initiated the altercation? Who cried for help? Did Trayvon’s body show evidence of a struggle? What moved Zimmerman to use lethal force?”

It wasn’t long before 911 was flooded with calls from the neighborhood alerting of a shooting after a scuffle with someone crying for help. One caller cried that about not helping the young man who was walking. When police arrived, they found Trayvon lying face down in the pavement. According to police, Zimmerman told them that was him crying for help and that Trayvon started the fight. The police checked his record, saw he had what they called a “squeaky clean image” said they had no evidence to dispute his story, and chose not to arrest him. The commanding officer at the scene was the same one who commanded the scene and chose not to arrest Justin Collison when he attacked the black homeless man.

Meanwhile, Trayvon’s father was looking for his son. He even filed a missing persons report. By this time the police had him in the local morgue as a “John Doe”. It was a full day before Trayvon’s father was shown a photo of his son lying on the ground at the scene. It was as if the police didn’t even attempt to find out who he was.

) on examiner.com, but it came from Kyle Rogers, of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist who made himself a national laughing stock when he called for a boycott against the movie adaptation of the comic book Thor because a black man, actor Idris Elba, was playing the role of one of the Norse gods. The movie eventually became the 10

Meanwhile the US Department of Justice is conducting an investigation of this case, and a grand jury is being convened to determine if criminal charges should be filed against Zimmerman. The Sanford Police Department, especially its new police chief, is taking hits as well. On Wednesday, Sanford City Commissioners passed a non-binding vote of no confidence in Bill Lee, one of them calling for his ouster not even a year after he took the job.

As the case unfolds, more questions will begin to be asked, and they will have an impact on the society that will develop in the futur
e. One of those questions have already come up: What if Trayvon shot Zimmerman in self defense?