Why isn't this murder?

[BlackCat]

That makes even less sense.

Exactly

[-Jrabbit]

FWIW, I agree with Guynemer's statement; reverse the races and the NW guy is under arrest 100% of the time.

Fun fact: The NW dude, as it turns out, has a bit of a history re violence.

public records show that Zimmerman was arrested in Orange County in 2005 on charges of resisting arrest with violence and battery on a law enforcement officer.

“They just lied to the family,” Crump said. “They just couldn’t see why [Zimmerman] would do anything wrong or be violent. But not only do you know the guy killed this kid, because he admitted to it, you knew that he has a propensity for violence because of his past record.”

The Orange County Clerk of Courts website shows a man named George Zimmerman, 28, was charged in July 2005 with resisting arrest with violence and battery on an officer. The charges appear to have been dropped.

[MrFun]

I'm trying to imagine a scenario where a black NW captain shoots a white teen, and isn't arrested immediately.

I can't come up with anything.

Didn't you get the memo? Racism no longer exists in America.

[Al B. Sure!]

Here's a pretty in depth article about this:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/17/v-fullstory/2700249/shooter-of-trayvon-martin-a-habitual.html

The people at the Retreat of Twin Lakes had been missing bikes, grills and a few times thought strangers were casing their town houses.

When the homeowners association wanted to start a neighborhood watch, only one man stepped up: George Zimmerman, the 28-year-old who admitted to shooting an unarmed Miami Gardens teenager and who is now the focal point of a race-related scandal of national proportions.

Interviews with neighbors reveal a pleasant young man passionate about neighborhood security who took it upon himself to do nightly patrols while he walked his dog.

Licensed to carry a firearm and a student of criminal justice, Zimmerman went door-to-door asking residents to be on the lookout, specifically referring to young black men who appeared to be outsiders, and warned that some were caught lurking, neighbors said. The self-appointed captain of the neighborhood watch program is credited with cracking some crimes, and thwarting others.

But the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin left the boy’s family and attorneys convinced that the volunteer developed a twisted sense of entitlement, one that gave him a false sense of authority to enforce the rule of law in his tiny gated community. Trayvon’s family’s attorneys believe that led to racial profiling and murder.

“He would circle the block and circle it; it was weird,” said Teontae Amie, 17. “If he had spotted me, he’d probably ask me if I lived here. He was known for being really strict.”

Zimmerman called police 46 times since Jan. 1, 2011 to report disturbances, break-ins, windows left open and other incidents. Nine of those times, he saw someone or something suspicious.

“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,” Zimmerman told a dispatcher on Feb. 26, the night of Trayvon’s death.

According to 911 recordings released late Friday by Sanford police, Zimmerman said the person was walking slowly, looked drugged and appeared to be looking at people’s houses. Police would later learn that Trayvon had gone to 7-Eleven during the NBA All Star game halftime to get Skittles and Arizona iced tea.

“These a--holes always get away,” Zimmerman complained.

What happened next is unclear, and has already reverberated nationwide. Calls to 911 alerted police to a scuffle and someone crying for help. In one, the chilling howl stopped after the clear, crisp blast of a bullet. Trayvon was lying face down on the ground near a pathway that runs through the townhouse community.

One 911 caller sobbed to the dispatcher over not having helped the young man who wailed.

Zimmerman told police that was him crying for help and that Trayvon started the fight. He claimed self-defense and was not charged, flaring deep-seated racial tensions between blacks and police, who have a long history of distrust. On at least two prior occasions, the Sanford Police Department was accused of giving favorable treatment to relatives of officers involved in violent encounters with blacks.

In 2010, police waited seven weeks to arrest a lieutenant’s son who was caught on video sucker-punching a homeless black man.

In 2005, two security guards — one the son of a longtime Sanford police officer and the other a department volunteer — killed a black man they said was trying to run them over. Black leaders complained of a lackluster investigation. The guards ultimately were acquitted.

“Zimmerman felt he was one of them; he felt he was a cop,” said Trayvon’s family attorney, Natalie Jackson, who accuses the police of protecting him.

The recent shooting raised troubling questions about whether the homeowners association knew its volunteer was armed with a Kel Tek 9mm semiautomatic handgun. Many residents — black and white — question Zimmerman’s judgment and wonder why he would have engaged the teenager at all.

The answer may lie in police records, which show that 50 suspicious-person reports were called in to police in the past year at Twin Lakes. There were eight burglaries, nine thefts and one other shooting in the year prior to Trayvon’s death.

In all, police had been called to the 260-unit complex 402 times from Jan. 1, 2011 to Feb. 26, 2012.

“He once caught a thief and an arrest was made,” said Cynthia Wibker, secretary of the homeowners association. “He helped solve a lot of crimes.”

Zimmerman told neighbors about stolen laptops and unsavory characters. Ibrahim Rashada, a 25-year-old African American who works at U.S. Airways, once spotted young men cutting through the woods entering the complex on foot, and later learned items were stolen those days.

“It’s a gated community, but you can walk in and steal whatever you want,” Rashada’s wife, Quianna, said.

They discussed the topic with Zimmerman when the watch captain knocked on their door late last year. Zimmerman seemed friendly, helpful, and a “pretty cool dude,” Ibrahim Rashada said.

“He came by here and talked about carrying guns and getting my wife more involved with guns,” he said. “He said I should have a weapon and that his wife took classes to learn how to use one.

“I do have a weapon, but I don’t walk around the neighborhood with mine!”

Actually, he does not walk around the neighborhood at all.

“I fit the stereotype he emailed around,” he said. “Listen, you even hear me say it: ‘A black guy did this. A black guy did that.’ So I thought, ‘Let me sit in the house. I don’t want anyone chasing me.’ ”

For walks, he goes downtown. A pregnant Quianna listened to her husband’s rationale, dropped her head, and cried.

“That’s so sad,” she said. “I hope our child doesn’t have to go through that.”

Travis Williams, a black 16-year-old who wears dreadlocks, said last year a man came to his house and accused him of stealing a bicycle. The police even came and checked the serial numbers on the bike in his garage.

Problems in the 6-year-old community started during the recession, when foreclosures forced owners to rent out to “low-lifes and gangsters,” said Frank Taaffe, a former neighborhood block captain.

“Just two weeks before this shooting, George called me at my girlfriend’s house to say he saw some black guy doing surveillance at my house, because I had a left a window open,” Taaffe said. “He thwarted a potential burglary of my house.”

Taaffe sounded chagrined when he noted that the complex is now majority-minority. Census figures show Retreat at Twin Lakes is 49 percent white, non-Hispanic, 23 percent Hispanic, 20 percent African-American and 5 percent Asian.

He suspects Zimmerman got tired of thugs “and reached his breaking point,” Taaffe said. “But why was he carrying a gun? Why not carry pepper spray or a Taser? That’s bizarre-o.”

Taaffe said Zimmerman was so normal that he came across as though he were “an engineer from Lockheed Martin.” He did not show up to homeowner association meetings Rambo-style “wearing a bandana around his head with a bowie knife sticking out of his pocket,” Taaffe said.

It’s unclear what Zimmerman, who is married, does for a living, although he once owned a pressure washing company.

As for any past legal blemishes, he was once arrested for battery on a law enforcement officer when he interfered in a friend’s arrest. The charge was reduced to simple battery, and he entered a plea that allowed him to have a clean record and qualify for a concealed weapons permit.

In a statement delivered to the Orlando Sentinel, his father, Robert Zimmerman, defended his son, who he said was a “Spanish-speaking minority with many black family members and friends.”

“He would be the last to discriminate for any reason whatsoever,” Robert Zimmerman wrote. “One black neighbor recently interviewed said she knew everything in the media was untrue and that she would trust George with her life. Another black neighbor said that George was the only one, black or white, who came and welcomed her to the community, offering any assistance he could provide. Recently, I met two black children George invited to a social event. I asked where they met George. They responded that he was their mentor.”

He said the family prays for Trayvon and his parents every day.

At no time, the father wrote, did George Zimmerman follow or confront Trayvon, although the recording of the call to police shows the dispatcher asking him, “Are you following him?” and Zimmerman answered, “yeah.”

“We don’t need you to do that,” the police dispatcher said.

Police volunteer program coordinator Wendy Dorival said she met Zimmerman in September at a community neighborhood watch presentation.

“I said, ‘If it’s someone you don’t recognize, call us. We’ll figure it out,’ ” Dorival said. “‘Observe from a safe location.’ There’s even a slide about not being vigilante police. I don’t know how many more times I can repeat it.”

Police Chief Bill Lee said that although police do not encourage watch program volunteers to carry weapons, he recognizes a citizen’s constitutional right to do so. No arrest was made, Lee said, because there was no evidence to disprove Zimmerman’s account.

He has cooperated with the investigation and never retained an attorney, Lee said. His phone numbers are disconnected and no one answered the door at his home or his parents’ home. His in-laws shooed a reporter away. After death threats and an avalanche of hate mail, Lee said Zimmerman went into hiding. Local station WFTV Channel 9 reported that he showed up with a truck last week and moved out.

“We are taking a beating over this,” said Lee, who defends the investigation. “This is all very unsettling. I’m sure if George Zimmerman had the opportunity to relive Sunday, Feb. 26, he’d probably do things differently. I’m sure Trayvon would, too.”

This is the suspect, George Zimmerman, by the way:



Not that it matters much but he's Hispanic.

[Al B. Sure!]

The tapes were released:

Police have released audio 911 tapes in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teenager allegedly killed by a neighborhood watch captain while walking home from a store.

In eight chilling recordings, made the night of February 26, listeners can hear the frightened voices of neighbors calling to report screams for help, gunfire and then that someone was dead.

In perhaps the most disturbing of the recordings, a frightened voice in the background cries out for help and pleads "No! No!" and then continues to wail.

And for the first time, we hear the voice of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who admitted to police that he shot Martin, who was walking home from a convenience store to his father's home in the gated community. Zimmerman has not been arrested or charged in the shooting.

Editor's Note: The following recordings and their transcriptions below contain strong language that some readers may find objectionable.

"This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something," Zimmerman tells the 911 operator. "He's just staring, looking at all the houses. Now he's coming toward me. He's got his hand in his waistband. Something's wrong with him."

Zimmerman described Martin as wearing a hoodie and sweatpants or jeans. He continues: "He's coming to check me out. He's got something in his hands. I don't know what his deal is. Can we get an officer over here?"

"These *******s always get away," he says to the operator. Zimmerman is then heard giving directions to the dispatcher. "****, he's running," Zimmerman says.

"Are you following him?" the dispatcher asks.

"Yes," Zimmerman responds.

"We don't need you to do that," the dispatcher says.

In other recordings, callers tell the 911 dispatcher that someone has been shot. One person tells the dispatcher that two guys were wrestling behind his back porch and that one of them was yelling for help. Then the male caller stammers in shock. "I'm pretty sure the guy is dead ... Oh, my God! ... The black guy looks like he's been shot and he's dead."

"The guy on top has a white T-shirt," another caller said.

"Is he on top of someone?" the operator asks.

"Mmmhmmm," a female caller responds.

Yet another caller says, "Someone was screaming 'Help! help! help!' Then I heard a gunshot."

One caller, a teenage boy, said that as he was walking his dog, "I saw a man laying on the ground that needed help. He was screaming."

Then, he told the operator, he heard a gunshot and said the screaming stopped.

Martin's family and their attorneys were allowed to hear the audio before it was made public.

"You hear a shot, a clear shot, that we can only assume is a warning shot," said Natalie Jackson, a family attorney. "Then a 17-year-old boy is begging for his life. Everything tells me that that was Trayvon Martin."

Tracy Martin, the teenager's father, broke down crying as he listened to the audio on Friday, the family lawyers said. "My son was crying for help, and he still shot him," Tracy Martin, the teenager's father said, according to Benjamin Crump, another family attorney.

The local state attorney is reviewing the investigation and will decide whether to prosecute the volunteer watchman.

Police in Sanford initially told Martin's family that Zimmerman had not been arrested because he had a "squeaky clean" record, according to Tracy Martin. Zimmerman had been arrested in 2005 on charges of resisting arrest with violence and battery on a law enforcement officer, according to court records. Those charges were later dropped.

"Do we really believe that if Trayvon Martin would have pulled the trigger, he would not be arrested?" said Crump. "This is obviously a cover-up, and we need a sweeping overhaul of the Sanford Police Department."

Sanford Mayor Jeff Triplett said he spent Thursday meeting with the state attorney's office discussing the release of the tapes. "It was as simple as us saying, 'We're going to do this, what do you think?'" Triplett told HuffPost.

Earlier Friday, Triplett met with Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.), Police Chief Bill Lee and city manager Norton Bonaparte to discuss the 911 recording.

The police chief serves at the pleasure of the city manager. Bonaparte was asked by HuffPost whether the furor jeopardizes Lee's job. "We're reviewing all of our options at this point," he said, adding that he currently sees "no reason" to remove Lee.

Zimmerman had been the subject of earlier complaints by residents of the gated community in which he and Martin's family lived. At an emergency homeowner's association meeting earlier this month, "one man was escorted out because he openly expressed his frustration because he had previously contacted the Sanford Police Department about Zimmerman approaching him and even coming to his home," a resident wrote in an email to HuffPost. "It was also made known that there had been several complaints about George Zimmerman and his tactics" in his neighborhood watch captain role.

The case has drawn national attention and has outraged many residents of Sanford, a town about 20 miles north of Orlando, particularly in the African-American community. Many have suggested a history of strained relations between the police department and blacks.

You can play the actual tapes here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/16/trayvon-martin-911-audio-_n_1354909.html

[Dinner]

It doesn't sound like self defense at all. I sounds like a violent **** bag attacked a kid, the kid repeatedly cried out for help, and then the **** bag murdered him in cold blood.

[Al B. Sure!]

It doesn't sound like self defense at all. I sounds like a violent **** bag attacked a kid, the kid repeatedly cried out for help, and then the **** bag murdered him in cold blood.

I still stand by it not being a hate crime and he should be charged with second degree murder or, at a minimum, voluntary manslaughter.

[Dinner]

This ****er needs to fry. The video is explicit. The kid is crying out for help and then the ****er murders him. The death penalty was made for cases like this.

[Al B. Sure!]

This ****er needs to fry. The video is explicit. The kid is crying out for help and then the ****er murders him. The death penalty was made for cases like this.

I just don't see it. A lot of people are having your attitude but I don't see it. This is NOT first degree murder. It was not premeditated. It was not committed while committing or attempting to commit another crime.

And video? There's video footage?

[Dinner]

No, it is explicit. He starts shouting to the 911 officer that ******s always walk away free, the officer tells him to stay away from the suspect, and then he runs out to kill the poor kid. This is murder 1 and he needs to fry. The electric chair was made for him.

The poor kid is screaming for help as the piece of **** beats him and then murders him. Hanging is too good for him.

[Al B. Sure!]

No, it is explicit. He starts shouting to the 911 officer that ******s always walk away free, the officer tells him to stay away from the suspect, and then he runs out to kill the poor kid. This is murder 1 and he needs to fry. The electric chair was made for him.

The poor kid is screaming for help as the piece of **** beats him and then murders him. Hanging is too good for him.

He never says ******s. What the **** are you talking about?

[Dinner]

First video. They bleep it.

[Al B. Sure!]

First video. They bleep it.

He says 'ass holes'.

Good thing you don't read actual articles or listen to the actual police call which I linked to. Fortunately, you can make out '******' out of a bleep.

Oerdin: Always Wrong since 1976

[Wezil]

...the officer tells him to stay away from the suspect...

No.

The operator. Not a legal command.

[Donegeal]

Ah, crap. I find myself agreeing with AL here. I must have made a mistake somewhere...

I don't see a hate crime here either. I see an over zealous watchman who has had success doing this type of thing in the past. However, the audio is pretty damning with one exception: the person screaming 'Help!' has not been confirmed yet as that of Travon. Sure there was one quote from one person (the boy's father) saying it was the boy, but without further evidence, I'm sticking with 'someone' was yelling for help. It very easily could have been Zimmerman.