Thumbelyna Quick Hands wrote:
I stand corrected on the numbers. But every call that Zimmerman made to police that day were to report "suspicious persons" were African-American.
The six calls released by the Sheriffs department were not all from "that day", but were calls made to the non emergency number over a period of a month or so prior to the incident (or even up to 6 months, the information isn't completely clear in the articles I've read).
Quote:
Further, Zimmerman actually didn't even call 9-1-1. He called the nonemergency line to report. That leads me to believe that it wasn't a true emergency. If it was a true emergency, where he thought his life was threatened, he would have called 9-1-1.
Yup. Which would also indicate that he wasn't intending to escalate this up to the point of shooting the guy either.
Quote:
By law, he didn't have to follow the dispatcher when the dispatcher told him not to follow Martin. But he did anyways. If he truly thought it was an emergency where his life or his neighborhood was threatened and could justify use of deadly force, why didn't he call 9-1-1?
Because at the time he called, he was just reporting a suspicious person, so he correctly called the non emergency line. It was only when Martin ran and he followed that an altercation occurred and things escalated to the point of him shooting. Surely we can all envision the possibility that he intended to just confront Martin about what he was doing, but once they got into a scuffle (regardless of how exactly that started) he might have felt threatened enough to justify the shooting.
Quote:
Have you listened to the 9-1-1 call? Zimmerman is completely calm during the call. He doesn't sound scared, never stated that he was scared, never said that he thought he was in danger. He said that Martin was checking him out, had something in his hand, and then Martin started running. That's when he started chasing after Martin. Dispatch told he didn't have to run after Zimmerman but Zimmerman did. He wasn't obliged to do what dispatch told him to do, but he did anyways. Listen to 2:22, which is where the supposed slur is said.
Again, I can't listen to audio right at the moment, but I've read the transcripts and two different news agencies who've had audio experts examine the tape. If you hear the word "****" it's because you've already been told that's the word being said. Suggestion is an amazing thing.
A selection of witnesses, presumably those with the stories most likely to elicit responses of outrage. Witnesses who've gone to the media after the event became national news, but how many went to the police and filed reports? How then can we blame the police for their actions? It just seems like there's a lot of "start with an assumption about what happened and the only report stuff that supports that assumption" going on.
I prefer to base my opinions on objective facts. But a lot of this seems biased and selectively reported by people with a vested interest in making Zimmerman's actions out to be horrific, and Martin's to be completely innocent. In reality, it's more likely that something in-between happened though.
Quote:
ETA: I already pointed out why there is such a fury over this situation. The police investigation was shoddy and witnesses are claiming that their statements were twisted or leading questions were used.
According to several news articles, Martin's girlfriend never went to the police. She chose instead to file her testimony to the court of public opinion. And while that's a sure way to whip up a nice mob, it's *not* the best way to investigate something. You can't place all the blame on the police here.
Quote:
Remember, Trayvon Martin died on February 26. It's now March 21, almost a month later. During that entire time, the one witness that the police NEVER contacted was Trayvon Martin's girlfriend.
And she never contacted them either, and is still remaining anonymous (last time I checked at least). Goes both ways. The police found no evidence at the scene to dispute Zimmerman's account. In fact, if you'd read the second page of your own link, they found plenty of evidence that supported his account (and disputed some of the witnesses now being repeated in the media):
Quote:
Mr. Zimmerman’s claim is that the confrontation was initiated by Trayvon,†Police Chief Bill Lee said in an interview. “I am not going into specifics of what led to the violent physical encounter witnessed by residents. All the physical evidence and testimony we have independent of what Mr. Zimmerman provides corroborates this claim to self-defense.â€
To claim self-defense, someone has to show there was danger of great bodily harm or death, Lee said. “Zimmerman had injuries consistent with his story,†Lee said.
Zimmerman had a damp shirt, grass stains, a bloody nose and was bleeding from a wound in back of his head, according to police reports
That's a heck of a lot of injury and mess for someone who supposedly never got into a physical altercation. Yet, the main pair of witnesses reported hearing a boy screaming or crying, but insisted that there was no physical fight or struggle. Clearly, they were wrong, unless Zimmerman did all that damage to himself somehow. So if the cops dismissed their insistence that there wasn't a physical struggle, it might be because the physical evidence right in front of them told them a better story than two people hearing sounds through a window.
Quote:
The one he was on the phone with just seconds before Zimmerman caught up with him. What excuse is there for the police not to cover that glaring hole in their investigation? If the police did their job correctly, Zimmerman's self-defense theory would have have been weakened weeks ago.
You're assuming that they failed to try to contact her.
Quote:
I will say that I am going to wait to see what the autopsy results say about Trayvon Martin's body. If the autopsy comes out that he had no marks (and I should
with that phrase in this forum) to indicate a fight with Zimmerman, I want to see how Zimmerman can say that he was in fear for his life to justify deadly force under the Stand Your Ground law, particularly when he was already chasing Trayvon.
Again, we can question how the encounter escalated into a physical fight, but it's absolutely clear that there was one. There's also clearly more information than is being broadly repeated out there. What I see is a large number of people who've chosen to pre-judge this and who are repeating only the parts of the story that support their own position. Anyone reacting to just their claims is only hearing half the story.
Edited, Mar 21st 2012 5:31pm by gbaji 
with that phrase in this forum) to indicate a fight with Zimmerman, I want to see how Zimmerman can say that he was in fear for his life to justify deadly force under the Stand Your Ground law, particularly when he was already chasing Trayvon.