Zimmerman had a record of acting like 'a cop' in the past. In other words, in his mind, he may have thought he was being the 'cop'.
Then he's delusional and perhaps should be in a mental institution. Cops go through rigorous background checking, psychological profiling and training, to make sure they know how to act so as to minimize the possibility of lethal violence.
They also wear uniforms and drive cars that can be identified as cop cars from half a mile away. If Trayvon had seen a police car trailing him and then a man in a police uniform had yelled at him to stop, he would probably have stopped because he would have felt that he could trust him to treat him fairly. (Or maybe not since this is the Deep South and we can't ignore the region's history, but that's an issue for another discussion.) But what if
your teenager saw a plain ordinary car tailing him and then a guy with no uniform jumped out of the car and told him to stop? (Someone else brought this up earlier but I can't find the post so excuse me for the plagiarism.) Would you prepare him for incidents like this by telling him to stop and let the fellow approach him??? With pedophilia and child abuse in the news every single day? Or would you tell him to run like hell and knock on the first door that appeared to have people home and yell for them to call for the police?
Or in this case, since the kid was big and strong he figured he could just take the bastard down, which he did. Unfortunately he didn't realize Zimmerman was a big enough bastard to be carrying a gun.
Try thinking like a parent here. If I can do it, without ever having actually been a parent, I'm sure you folks can do it too. (I know you're a parent, Bells. I didn't mean that remark to be directed at you specifically. But so many of these people don't seem to have stopped and thought about the things they tell their children to be afraid of.
Zimmerman is one of those things!)
It was
completely unreasonable for Zimmerman to expect cooperation since he had neither the car nor the uniform nor the training to convince anyone that he was anything but a weirdo chasing a kid late at night. Which in fact is exactly what he was, although instead of a weirdo child molester he was a weirdo police impersonator.
Another thought, how many of us posting call the cops?
Only to report a traffic hazard. I don't want people sending the pigs after me so I extend the same courtesy to them.
The article does paint an image of a Neurotic man. But it can, as easily, paint an image of a man pro-active about protection and safety.
You make a nice apologist. He's not "proactive." He's
obsessed!
And how often, after a crime, are people left complaining, "No one called the cops- no one did anything!"
It's a long, long way from saying that one of those dozens of people in Queens 48 years ago, who heard and watched Kitty Genovese being abducted and murdered right under their window, should have called the cops... to saying that Zimmerman should have gone out into the night
with a fucking goddamned GUN looking for people to hassle just because he didn't like the way they looked.
Maybe if one of those people in one of those houses had been another Zimmerman, we'd know how the fight started.
You mean another lunatic running loose in the streets with a gun? How would that help? Or do you mean a
real Neighborhood Watch volunteer sitting inside his house with binoculars and a telephone? That is not "another Zimmerman." That's a decent, sane citizen.
Oh- one last thing. For those of you posting with such extreme prejudice and anger- remember that Zimmerman got out of his car that night in the same frame of mind.
Yes. The difference is that we're intelligent enough and civilized enough to not go out looking for people to hassle when we're in that frame of mind. Nobody has ever been killed by prejudiced and angry words posted on a pseudonymous internet board. But people are killed by assholes with guns every day.
How many times have you called the police because people in your neighbourhood left their garage doors open?
What??? Who gives a damn? A lot of my neighbors leave their garage doors open when they're home, and it's not always easy to tell if they're really at home since every family in America seems to have three cars, two trucks and a motorcycle.
Can you spell "busybody"?
I have called the police on several instances where I knew a crime was being committed. I have also stepped in on some occasions where there was domestic abuse happening.
I would be very careful about accusing someone of domestic abuse. Some people yell at each other, some people trade blows. You get in their face about it and next week they'll come to your house together and beat the crap out of
you for not minding your own business.
Did I already ask if you can spell "busybody"? Australia sounds like a terrible place to live, with everybody spying on each other. I'd rather take my chances with the gun-totin' wackos in America.
If OJ simpson came out and said he killed her would you say everyone should treat him as innocent even though he admitted it?
The American rule about being treated as innocent until proven guilty only applies to
the government. OJ cannot be denied the right to vote, a permit to own a firearm, a business license, matriculation into a public university, etc., because he is
legally not guilty, whether or not he made a confession out of court. Private citizens can treat him any way we want. I rather enjoyed Eddy Murphy's assessment of the case back when it happened: "He was watching another man drive around with his wife in his Ferrari, spending his money on lavish vacations. Now I'm not saying he should have killed them, but I understand!"
Are you certain of that? I had the impression that the relevant homeowners association or somesuch had actually designated him as some kind of watch organizer or contact point, distributed newsletters identifying him as such, etc. Maybe not "formal," and certainly not "Neighborhood Watch" with capital letters (since he intentionally violated several of their most important, well-considered guidelines on how to run a watch), but still something above and beyond just a guy acting on his own.
You don't seem to have much respect for these organizations. They have to do a better job than that or they'll be sued every other Tuesday.
As the only person to volunteer when the homeowners association wanted to organize a community watch, Zimmerman was appointed coordinator by his neighbors, according to Wendy Dorival, Neighborhood Watch organizer for the Sanford Police Department. The homeowner's association told residents who saw suspicious activity to call Zimmerman if they could not contact the police.
I'm sure they didn't realize they were creating a monster when they did that. My homeowners' association wouldn't do anything that stupid. Of course I live in the civilized part of the United States, not the Deep South.
