"Trayvon Martin"

Trayvon Martin

Unless you have just now emerged from a coma (if which I case I refer you to the previous blog) you have heard the name of Trayvon Martin. This is the 17 year old African-American youth shot to death by a neighborhood watch person (Gary Zimmerman) in Sanford, Florida two weeks ago. At first it seemed like Zimmerman was a racist more than willing to use his gun on a kid armed with only tea and skittles. Many were outraged when Zimmerman wasn’t arrested. He still has not been arrested. There is an on-going investigation and the Chief of Police has excused himself from his duties (temporarily) to give the sense of impartiality. Now in charge (temporarily) is an African-American watch commander.


It took almost a week, but now new details have come oozing to the surface like BP crude in the Gulf of Mexico. First of all the picture of the innocent Trayvon shown in most media outlets is the 13 year old Trayvon, not the bigger stronger older looking 17 year old Trayvon. Also, it’s possible Trayvon had more to do with his death than first reported. Zimmerman (through his attorney) has stated that he eventually broke off following Trayvon and had returned to his car when Martin snuck up behind him and hit him in the back of the head. According to Zimmerman, when he went to the ground, it was Trayvon that jumped on him and was striking his head on the curb. Under the circumstances, Zimmerman says he had no other choice but to get his gun out and stand his ground.

Seems there are two eyewitnesses and they are saying exactly opposite things. One says it was Zimmerman that had Trayvon down, and was on top of him just before the gun went off. Another witness said it was Trayvon that had Zimmerman on the ground and was smashing his head on the curb. This much is indisputable, Trayvon ended up with a bullet in his chest, and Zimmerman had a broken nose and the back of his head was slightly injured.

Here is what is known according to reporting agencies:
1. Trayvon had recently been suspended from HS for carrying an ounce of MJ (only relevant to point out that Trayvon wasn’t a perfect angel)
2. Trayvon did go to the convenience store to get skittles and a tea
3. Zimmerman did make a call to the police reporting a suspicious looking person in the neighborhood and said it was an African-American youth
4. Zimmerman had previously made 43 such calls to police over a period of time and in each case it was an Africa-American youth he was reporting.
5. The police told Zimmerman to break off following him and that Zimmerman did not break off, the police repeatedly told him not to pursue him but it seems he continued
6. Zimmerman is heard using the words “fucking coon” over the intercom
7. Yelling for help is repeatedly heard over police intercoms but so far it’s not sure who was doing the yelling, Trayvon or Zimmerman.
8. At issue besides a death is the Florida law that says a person can “stand their ground if threatened”, and whether or not Zimmerman was acting from a racist motivation or self-defense?


This is going to be a mess!! It’s going to take some time to unravel the facts of what happened that night, who the credible storytellers are or which ones are not. I only hope this is not an occasion to bring out the human photo-ops Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. I hope they don’t show up to get camera time (capitalizing on a dead teenager and his grieving parents). Also, I would have thought an independent autopsy on Trayvon would have been essential. It could tell us angle of the bullet(s), how close the gun was to the body etc. Why wasn’t an autopsy done?

For me some bigger issues stand out: What in the hell was a neighborhood watch person doing carrying a loaded gun?
The idea is if you see something suspicious you REPORT it and then stay out of it. It’s called a “watch” not being the “sheriff”. I’m theorizing Zimmerman thought of himself as a bit of a Clint Eastwood out there cleaning up the neighborhood. Did the Neighborhood Watch authorize carrying a weapon or was Zimmerman out there playing “Dirty Harry”? “Go ahead punk, make my day”!

This is yet another example (how many do we need) that carrying guns is a bad idea, that screening people (for basic rationality) is essential when they are going to deal with the public and that this country continues to have an ongoing serious gun/death by gun problem.

As far as it being a racially motivated shooting, we’ll have to see how it all shakes out. Certainly Zimmerman hasn’t helped his cause with his past pattern of behavior; although to be fair in each of the other 43 instances where he called in a suspicious looking African-American youth in the neighborhood he didn’t shoot them. Look, in 2010, according to FBI statistics there were just about 13,000 murders in the U.S. 6,500 of those victims were blacks. Almost all of them were killed by other blacks. That’s nearly 50% of all murders being black on black assaults. Given that African-Americans make up 12.9% of the total population you can see what the scope of violence is in the inner-city. So a black male shooting to death another young black male is far, far more likely to happen than a white person shooting a black male.

Of course, there is a need to get to the bottom of what happened that night in Sanford, Florida but don’t lose sight of the overarching issues: guns, wacky people with guns, overzealous watch programs, potential profiling, and the much bigger issue of African-Americans killing other African-Americans at an average rate of 18 a day.

My worst fear is that this is just a case of two scared, stubborn males in the dark each determined to “stand his ground, because they felt threatened” and one of them had a loaded gun.