What's the difference in Florida between Trayvon Martin and a rabbit? You need a hunting license to shoot a rabbit.
That's not intended as poor humor. There is no humor here. .
George Zimmerman made sure that Trayvon Martin -- the "fucking coon" as Zimmerman called him -- would not join the others who "always get away with it" -- the "it" apparently being walking home with a box of skittles and an ice tea while wearing a hoodie. He tracked down Trayvon -- stalked him like he was hunting an animal -- and shot him down.
And the Sandford, Florida Police Department saw nothing wrong with it. They didn't even take his gun away.
Florida's "stand your ground" law is more correctly called the "shoot first and make sure your victim dies" law. It is the ultimate extension of the pro-NRA gun lobby's effort to make every street the OK Corral -- and to arm every person with a grudge and an urge with the right to simply shoot someone.
The outrage needs to sweep this nation. Outrage about the person who killed a young man -- a boy really -- in cold blood. Outrage over the laws that permit this behavior and empower such action. And outrage over an unprofessional police department that just shrugs its shoulders, protects its buddies, and fails to even to the most basic of investigations.
It is outrage over the action of Florida authorities in allowing a 17-year-old black teenager walking home and armed only with Skittles, a can of iced tea and a hoodie, to be shot down by a racist "crime watch" volunteer who had been told to stop following the boy, and leave matters to the police.
George Zimmerman shot Trayvon simply because he wanted to. There was no reasonable basis for fear. It was Zimmerman who was stalking and following Trayvon, not the other way around. It was Zimmerman who carried a .45 in his belt, not Trayvon. It was Trayvon who was simply walking home, talking to his girlfriend on the phone.
Yet the police did not conduct even the most rudimentary investigation -- a failing which the local Sanford Police Department is still defending. They did not check Zimmerman's blood alcohol content or check him for use of drugs. They did not confiscate the weapon -- just handed it back to him. They did not find reason for further investigation despite Zimmerman's comments to the police operator about "Fucking coons," and "They always get away." In fact, the Sanford Police purposefully withheld disclosing that part of the tape until just yesterday. They did not find further reason to investigate despite the fact that Zimmerman was the instigator -- that he continued to follow the young man despite the police telling Zimmerman "we don't need you to do that."
This isn't the first time the Sanford Police Department has stood by and let assaults and killings go uninvestigated. In 2010, a police lieutenant's son beat a homeless man nearly to death on a Sanford street. Despite many eyewitnesses, Collison was never arrested by the Sanford Police Department, Officers on scene never handcuffed him or even patted him down. They said accounts of the fight were conflicting. It wasn't until video of the beating surfaced in early 2011 that Collison was finally arrested. The news media has reported other instances of Sanford Police seeming to turn a blind eye to crimes on minority victims.
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