Trayvon Martin: 'Shoot first' law under scrutiny

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seekerz said:
And on what basis would you draw such conclusions? The facts as we can discern them, indicate that Trayvon was where he was supposed to be, carrying products he had bought at a store and talking to his girlfriend on the phone…with those in mind, and with no allegations of wrong behavior in the 911 call, how can we assume he was using any of his 4 limbs to actually do, something wrong?
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Either way it’s an assumption which was my point. I’ve neither found Zimmerman guilty or innocent based on what I know. But I can’t help to wonder how many of you who believe him to be guilty would even care if there was a dead 28 year old right now versus a dead 17 year old. Most likely you wouldn’t even be discussing the case.
 
catharina said:
To me, anyone walking around looking about in a strange area
might simply be trying to find his way home. It was raining.
As I posted yeaterday, young folks don’t necessarily stick to the
sidewalks. It’s called “taking a shortcut” and it seems to me very ordinary.
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More assumptions? Before we know it poor little Martin will be just skipping along, taking a lunch basket to granda when he was ambushed and slain by the evil white brown guy.
 
catharina said:
So here it is again:.
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Thank you so he thought that Trayvon was acting suspicious. He probably knew he didn’t live in the gated community. So it was more than just Trayvon walking while black.
catharina said:
To me, anyone walking around looking about in a strange area
might simply be trying to find his way home. It was raining.
As I posted yeaterday, young folks don’t necessarily stick to the
sidewalks. It’s called “taking a shortcut” and it seems to me very ordinary.
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I’ll agree with that. He ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time (after a string of break ins) So he was followed. After he was followed, and what happened when he and Zimmerman confronted each other is, as they say, what matters.
 
gilliam said:
Thank you so he thought that Trayvon was acting suspicious. He probably knew he didn’t live in the gated community. So it was more than just Trayvon walking while black.
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Is it a crime to be a stranger? What does ‘acting suspicious’ mean? As far as we know, his four limbs were occupied in legitimate activities.
 
seekerz said:
Is it a crime to be a stranger? What does ‘acting suspicious’ mean? As far as we know, his four limbs were occupied in legitimate activities.
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All this really doesn’t matter. Even if Trayvon was trespassing in a gated community, what matters is what happened after Zimmerman and Trayvon confronted each other.
 
Bocephus said:
More assumptions? Before we know it poor little Martin will be just skipping along, taking a lunch basket to granda when he was ambushed and slain by the evil white brown guy.
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That is your characterization. As I was saying yesterday, when an incident like this is properly handled, there is no controversy.

OTOH, when very timely interventions by a prosecutor results in the son of a retired judge not being arrested, while the victim’s parents get delayed notification of death & incomplete information on circumstances of death after weeks of a wrapped-up police investigation, people will talk. And they should.
 
gilliam said:
All this really doesn’t matter. Even if Trayvon was trespassing in a gated community, what matters is what happened after Zimmerman and Trayvon confronted each other.
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It does matter, because if Zimmerman had called the police and they had agreed with him that Trayvon was suspicious and told him to watch for his life, then this would be a more sympathetic story. Instead, the confrontation occurred with someone that he had been specifically asked not to follow.

If Zimmerman did not have a reputation for violence, i.e. a protection order against his girlfriend, being fired from his job for aggression, being arrested for trying to fight with a cop while Trayvon Martin had some sort of history of violence, then his explanation that he was violent because he feared for his life would not be such a poor fit with previous history.

We must believe that Zimmerman started out following him and Trayvon was running away. But then all of a sudden he lost Trayvon, and Trayvon went from his front - to his back - and then Trayvon threatened to kill him, reached for Zimmerman’s gun while at the same time banginging Zimmerman’s head on the sidewalk, and so Zimmerman was forced to shoot him in self-defense.

So we must believe that Trayvon Martin, who seems to have zero history of violence thus far, was the one who violently attacked Zimmerman, despite Zimmerman being in the wrong for violently assaulting people three times. We must also believe that the phone logs from Trayvon Martin’s girlfriend, that have been verified by ABC news, are false and his girlfriend is lying. Perhaps she has special technology that would cause those phone logs to magically appear on her phone or that informed her of what happened at the time it happened even though she was never on the phone? 😦
 
gilliam said:
All this really doesn’t matter. Even if Trayvon was trespassing in a gated community, what matters is what happened after Zimmerman and Trayvon confronted each other.
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Oh, but it does. It speaks to orientation of the two people, to the circumstances, to the setting and to credibility of the people who are saying: ‘here’s all we’ll say on the matter AND you should believe and be satisfied with that’.
 
seekerz said:
Is it a crime to be a stranger? What does ‘acting suspicious’ mean? As far as we know, his four limbs were occupied in legitimate activities.
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Suspicious activity and criminal activity are not the same… Many Police precincts encourage citizens to report suspicious or unusual activity and there are several federal programs that do the same.

Many crimes have been prevented or stopped by citizens doing just that.
 
Bocephus said:
More assumptions? Before we know it poor little Martin will be just skipping along, taking a lunch basket to granda when he was ambushed and slain by the evil white brown guy.
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IMO, a very ugly characterization.
A stranger with good cause to be in any neighborhood
should never need a justification for his very existence.

BTW, no assumption on my part.
Simply a possible “likelihood” at
least as likely as “looking suspicious.”
 
seekerz said:
Is it a crime to be a stranger? What does ‘acting suspicious’ mean? As far as we know, his four limbs were occupied in legitimate activities.
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Again? Come on seekerz, we’ve had this discussion before…

Zimmerman was explicit about the behavior that he found strange. You may not agree that it’s strange behavior, but it’s still his words, and that is more to go on than pure conjecture.
 
seekerz said:
Oh, but it does. It speaks to orientation of the two people, to the circumstances, to the setting and to credibility of the people who are saying: ‘here’s all we’ll say on the matter AND you should believe and be satisfied with that’.
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No, Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch person. His job was to report suspecious activity, which is exactly what he did. If his motivation was to attack Trayvon like a vigilante he would not have called the police.
 
catharina said:
IMO, a very ugly characterization.
A stranger with good cause to be in any neighborhood
should never need a justification for his very existence.

BTW, no assumption on my part.
Simply a possible “likelihood” at
least as likely as “looking suspicious.”
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What’s the difference in wild assumptions and possible “likelihoods”?

Another likelihood is that Zimmerman simply approached Martin after watching him and reasonably concluding that Martin was looking for trouble tried talk to him and got jumped when he turned his back to him. At that point Martin sealed his fate by making th confrontation physical, and he would then be guilty and the reason for his own death.

But let’s just believe one possible likelihood over another based on personal preference.
 
Bocephus said:
So this is all about race to you too?
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Let me be very specific because I know my posts of yesterday are pages away in another thread:
  1. I don’t have any evidence that Zimmerman is or is not racist.
  2. My definition of racist is simply, valuing races differently (intrinsically better or worse than the other) or having different standards for different races. No hatred need be involved. One can be polite, generous and respectful AND still be racist in my book.
  3. One does not have to be racist to engage in racial profiling. There is also a class component to such profiling. In my experience, all races (including those affected) use racial profiling.
  4. This case, on the basis of the 911 call, fits all the characteristics of racial profiling which I define as: expecting criminal behavior of someone based solely on their apparent race.
For those who disagree, I will submit for your consideration, this excerpt from the 911 transcript:
Dispatcher: OK.
Zimmerman: He’s got his hand in his waistband. And he’s a black male.
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source

Why is that sentence significant? Zimmerman had already reported Martin’s race to the dispatcher. In my analysis, by reminding her of the race of his ‘suspect’, he was telegraphing what he felt was the significance of the ‘hand in his waistband’.
 
Havard said:
Again? Come on seekerz, we’ve had this discussion before…

Zimmerman was explicit about the behavior that he found strange. You may not agree that it’s strange behavior, but it’s still his words, and that is more to go on than pure conjecture.
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I think we left off the discussion at: why is walking and looking around = suspicious, as opposed to = lost? No?
 
Bocephus said:
What’s the difference in wild assumptions and possible “likelihoods”?

Another likelihood is that Zimmerman simply approached Martin after watching him and reasonably concluding that Martin was looking for trouble tried talk to him and got jumped when he turned his back to him. At that point Martin sealed his fate by making th confrontation physical, and he would then be guilty and the reason for his own death.

But let’s just believe one possible likelihood over another based on personal preference.
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We shouldn’t believe this, because it is your explanation, and it directly contradicts with Zimmerman’s.

And even if this did happen, it would not be reasonable, because Zimmerman was asked by the police NOT to follow as they were on the way themselves. So if the police tells you to do something, it is reasonable to do the opposite.
 
seekerz said:
Let me be very specific because I know my posts of yesterday are pages away in another thread:
  1. I don’t have any evidence that Zimmerman is or is not racist.
  2. My definition of racist is simply, valuing races differently (intrinsically better or worse than the other) or having different standards for different races. No hatred need be involved. One can be polite, generous and respectful AND still be racist in my book.
  3. One does not have to be racist to engage in racial profiling. There is also a class component to such profiling. In my experience, all races (including those affected) use racial profiling.
  4. This case, on the basis of the 911 call, fits all the characteristics of racial profiling which I define as: expecting criminal behavior of someone based solely on their apparent race.
For those who disagree, I will submit for your consideration, this excerpt from the 911 transcript:

source

Why is that sentence significant? Zimmerman had already reported Martin’s race to the dispatcher. In my analysis, by reminding her of the race of his ‘suspect’, he was telegraphing what he felt was the significance of the ‘hand in his waistband’.
Click to expand...
If I’m not mistaken, Zimmerman wasn’t positive that he was black in his first description.
 
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