Trayvon Martin killing: The media -vs- reality

Florida State Attorney Norm Wolfinger announced today that he had ordered an "expeditious review" of the investigation conducted by the Sanford Police Department, and that he would be "utilizing the investigative resources of the Seminole County Grand Jury, which will be called to session" next month.

ABC News was there exclusively as the 16-year-old girl told Crump about the last moments of the teenager's life. Martin had been talking to his girlfriend all the way to the store where he bought Skittles and a tea. The phone was in his pocket and the earphone in his ear, Crump said.

"He said this man was watching him, so he put his hoodie on. He said he lost the man," Martin's friend said. "I asked Trayvon to run, and he said he was going to walk fast. I told him to run, but he said he was not going to run."

Eventually, he would run, said the girl, thinking that he'd managed to escape. But suddenly the strange man was back, cornering Martin.

"Trayvon said, 'What are you following me for,' and the man said, 'What are you doing here.' Next thing I hear is somebody pushing, and somebody pushed Trayvon because the head set just fell. I called him again, and he didn't answer the phone."

The line went dead. Besides screams heard on 911 calls that night as Martin and Zimmerman scuffled, those were the last words he said.

Trayvon's phone logs, also obtained exclusively by ABC News, show the conversation occurred five minutes before police first arrived on the scene. Crump said the girl's identity was being withheld because "her parents are gravely concerned about her health and her safety." Her parents asked that only an attorney be allowed to ask her questions.

Martin's father, Tracey Martin, and mother, Sybrina Fulton, listened to the call, along with ABC News, ashen-faced.

"He knew he was being followed and tried to get away from the guy, and the guy still caught up with him," Tracey Martin said. "And that's the most disturbing part. He thought he had got away from the guy, and the guy backtracked for him."

The girl was so distraught after the killing that she spent a night in the hospital, the lawyer said.
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Dispatcher: "Are you following him?"

Zimmerman: "Yeah."

Dispatcher: "We don't need you to do that."
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Stalker
 
Speelgoedmannetje said:
Well, you may have heard that, but then again you heard that from the media, who have a tremendous interest in making this case appear controversial. They know very well many black people feel the existance of racism every day (whether real or imagined).
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except I don't care about rumors and speculations. As an example that moronic action of Marcus D. Higgins of LA tweeted the address of what HE thought was where zimmerman lived. He sends this tweet to spike lee who resent out this wrong info. No one bothers to realize that even IF this was the correct address this is unethical.

anyone in the media using THAT 'story' to gain attention is just stirring the pot. This is not the kiind of proper journalism I am interested in.

I HEARD the 911 call zimmerman made. He was told to NOT follow martin. Period, the end. THAT is a fact. NOT fake media hype. zimmerman may have claimed to be part of some 'neighborhood watch', except, he wasn't.

through a statement released by the National Sheriffs' Association (NSA) -- the parent organization of USAonWatch-Neighborhood Watch -- it has been revealed that Zimmerman was not a member of any group recognized by the organization. Zimmerman violated the central tenets of Neighborhood Watch by following Martin, confronting him and carrying a concealed weapon.

"In no program that I have ever heard of does someone patrol with a gun in their pocket," Carmen Caldwell, the Executive Director of Citizens' Crime Watch of Miami-Dade, told theGrio. "Every city and municipality has their own policies. Here in Miami-Dade we train people only to be the eyes and ears of their communities. Not to follow and most definitely not to carry a weapon."
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The USAonWatch-Neighborhood Watch Program manual advises volunteers about how to notice basic things about persons deemed to be suspicious such as height, weight, style of dress, and hair color. Local law enforcement agents also work with official groups to tailor specifications concerning how to discern potential criminal activity depending on the particular communities they are in. In this way, Neighborhood Watch has assured theGrio that the potential for racial profiling is curtailed. In Zimmerman's case, he would have recognized that Trayvon Martin was a non-suspicious part of the citizenry had he received proper training. The complex where he was killed is middle class and mixed race.
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and it's the police apparently lax behavior that also concerns me.
The police investigation looks like the work of Keystone Kops at best. At worst, it smacks of something much more disturbing. Martin's body wasn't identified until the next day when police, responding to his father's missing person report, showed him a picture of the young man's body.

Despite this, the corpse remained in the morgue three days, classified only as "John Doe."

It took that long for the cops to send the medical examiner the required paperwork that officially identified the remains and authorized the family to retrieve it for burial, Benjamin Crump, the Martin family's attorney, told me.
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Martin's body was tested for drugs and alcohol. Neither was found. Zimmerman, the guy who killed him, was not tested. Zimmerman's blood-stained clothes weren't taken for analysis; the contents of his SUV weren't checked, Crump said. Zimmerman was set free after a brief police interrogation. Even after police chief Bill Lee "temporarily" resigned amid growing protests over his department's handling of this case, cops cling to the position that evidence — what little they bothered to collect — supports Zimmerman's self-defense claim.
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and so on. It's these details which bother me. Can you say justice is being served? I can't. I say something stinks. And I want the police and zimmerman to be held to the high standard I have.

I don't care about the cries of racism. While it's certainly on people's minds, what appears to be the facts is that zimmerman overstepped his authority and followed a human being on flimsy reasons DESPITE being told by the police dispatcher to NOT follow.

And I've been in situations where I observed 'suspicious' behavior. I called the cops, stayed in my apt safely behind my deadbolt locked door and LET THE POLICE DO THEIR JOB.
 
Ya, I tend to agree with Cecilia. To me the biggest concern here is that Zimmerman shot someone and it looks like his claim of self defense warrants more then just an investigation, he needs to defend his actions in front of a judge. I think the police departments actions are also troubling. If he was driving a car and ran over someone they'd breathalyze him, but because he pulled out a gun and shot someone they just let him go? It should be standard practice to breathalyze and perhaps drug test anyone who fires a weapon for any reason. The police work on the scene looks shoddy, but the leaked documents casts a shadow over the entire department. It's just a disgrace and I would suggest the best would be for the FBI to take over, if they haven't already.

So it's quite possible this was never about race, however the way it's been treated I really can't blame groups for thinking that it was. You shoot a black person and the police does nothing, people are gonna wonder why. They're gonna come up with some theories and to some they may seem very plausible. This could have been black on black violence, if the white police don't give a damn, it's still a racial issue.
 
cecilia said:
I HEARD the 911 call zimmerman made. He was told to NOT follow martin. Period, the end. THAT is a fact. NOT fake media hype. zimmerman may have claimed to be part of some 'neighborhood watch', except, he wasn't.
and it's the police apparently lax behavior that also concerns me.

and so on. It's these details which bother me. Can you say justice is being served? I can't. I say something stinks. And I want the police and zimmerman to be held to the high standard I have.

I don't care about the cries of racism. While it's certainly on people's minds, what appears to be the facts is that zimmerman overstepped his authority and followed a human being on flimsy reasons DESPITE being told by the police dispatcher to NOT follow.

And I've been in situations where I observed 'suspicious' behavior. I called the cops, stayed in my apt safely behind my deadbolt locked door and LET THE POLICE DO THEIR JOB.
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Glaucus said:
So it's quite possible this was never about race
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except for the whole coon ass or goon (hahahahahha!) ass thangy? or the "they always get away..." shit... i dunno.... dont seem that hard... both he and his father sat around and figured out as many conundrums as they could to create reasonable doubt then he inflicted his wrath, with a bit of daddys mixed in....
 
see, the problem is that in America Some think that if you have a gun you are Automatically Right. It doesn't matter that you are supposedly living in a lawful country. oh, no! the mindset of such people is that since they have the gun they can go shooting anytime, anywhere.


text



another audio version....clearer
 
cecilia said:
see, the problem is that in America Some think that if you have a gun you are Automatically Right. It doesn't matter that you are supposedly living in a lawful country. oh, no! the mindset of such people is that since they have the gun they can go shooting anytime, anywhere.
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Joe Horn!
Good Neighbor!

a Harris County Grand Jury did not to indict Horn for any criminal offense related to the shootings.

The grand jury heard two weeks of testimony from witnesses, including Horn. They likely also heard his breathless 911 call, during which the increasingly frustrated retiree ignored a dispatcher's pleas to stay inside and out of harm's way. The Nov. 14 call ended with the sound of Horn racking a shell into his 12-gauge shotgun's chamber followed by three gunshots that killed Colombian illegal aliens, Diego Ortiz, 30, and Hernando Riascos Torres, 38.

Pasadena police have said a detective in plainclothes had parked in front of Horn's house in response to the 911 call, and saw the two men before they crossed into Horn's front yard. Police believe that neither Horn nor the burglars knew an officer was present. When Horn confronted the men in his yard, he raised his shotgun to his shoulder, police have said. However, the men ignored his order to freeze.
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Torres and Ortiz were carrying a sack with cash and jewelry taken from the home next door to Joe Horn. Both were criminals from Colombia who had been convicted on drug trafficking charges.Police found a Puerto Rican identification card on Ortiz. Torres had three identification cards from Colombia, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, and had been previously sent to prison for dealing cocaine. Torres had been deported in 1999.

Texas Penal Code

Sec. 9.42. DEADLY FORCE TO PROTECT PROPERTY. A person is justified in using deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property:
(1) if he would be justified in using force against the other under Section 9.41; and
(2) when and to the degree he reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary:
(A) to prevent the other's imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime; or
(B) to prevent the other who is fleeing immediately after committing burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime from escaping with the property; and
(3) he reasonably believes that:
(A) the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means; or
(B) the use of force other than deadly force to protect or recover the land or property would expose the actor or another to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury.
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robert l. bentham said:
therein lies the crux of the dilemma... expecting reason to prevail among the unreasonable
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I am So glad this Joe Horn is NOT my neighbor!

but he perfectly illustrates the problem. The guy was Annoyed and pissed off (you can clearly hear it in his voice) that there were two guys robbing a house. Ok, that's not a good thing but MY reaction would have been to call the cops and leave it them. Horn gets MAD. Not fearing for his safety - just MAD. Tells the 911 operator he's going to commit murder and you can hear him step out of his door to shoot.

cold blooded murder.

zimmerman did basically the same thing without all the arguing with the cop - he just went after Martin. It may not have been murder but it was callous and certainly manslaughter.

if everyone goes around shooting anyone they get pissed off with there are going to be tons of bodies in the street. This is not what I consider a Civilization. And when you have a whole bunch of these idiots thinking like Horn you get chaos. I don't want them living near me.
 
cecilia said:
except I don't care about rumors and speculations. As an example that moronic action of Marcus D. Higgins of LA tweeted the address of what HE thought was where zimmerman lived. He sends this tweet to spike lee who resent out this wrong info. No one bothers to realize that even IF this was the correct address this is unethical.

anyone in the media using THAT 'story' to gain attention is just stirring the pot. This is not the kiind of proper journalism I am interested in.

I HEARD the 911 call zimmerman made. He was told to NOT follow martin. Period, the end. THAT is a fact. NOT fake media hype. zimmerman may have claimed to be part of some 'neighborhood watch', except, he wasn't.





and it's the police apparently lax behavior that also concerns me.

and so on. It's these details which bother me. Can you say justice is being served? I can't. I say something stinks. And I want the police and zimmerman to be held to the high standard I have.

I don't care about the cries of racism. While it's certainly on people's minds, what appears to be the facts is that zimmerman overstepped his authority and followed a human being on flimsy reasons DESPITE being told by the police dispatcher to NOT follow.

And I've been in situations where I observed 'suspicious' behavior. I called the cops, stayed in my apt safely behind my deadbolt locked door and LET THE POLICE DO THEIR JOB.
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Eh, eh, well, as I have stated earlier I don't know a lot about the case but putting the legal system in doubt can be extremely dangerous.
 
 
 
metalman said:
this is cold blooded murder
SARASOTA, Florida:
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I'm sure he felt perfectly justified - crackers wasting his time - yeesh!

You see, when you are going around shooting people it's important that you have a mental justification to do it. That makes it all right.

Used to be we could tell the good guys from the bad guys because the bad guys would be the ones killing people. Now that doesn't matter so much any more.
 
it's really pathetic when some people are SO desperate to find reasons/excuses to shoot other people

losers
 
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