Well the Treyvon Martin affair sure exploded onto the
national scene in a matter of hours with seemingly the whole country reacting
to the tragedy.
I am well aware of the NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH program since many
neighborhoods in Detroit have them and I remember
my father-in-law being a member in their Trenton
/ McGraw neighborhood in Detroit
The rules were simple; no firearms and no confrontation ONLY
reporting which they did on CB (citizen band) radios in those days. He took his
duties seriously and I am sure that crooks took notice of signs in
neighborhoods with neighborhood watch programs, and stayed clear of them…it is
a good program.
Of course in Florida
The huge controversy is that Zimmerman is a free man as we
speak because he claimed self-defense based on a Florida
People all over have jumped on the law as allowing these
types of crimes to occur and to me that needs a little more discussion with
real statistics to see if that view can be supported.
The law clearly states that a person has the right to defend
himself when attacked as in a home invasion. Nowhere does it state that a
person out stalking another person with a gun can shoot that person when he
feels threatened!
When a police officer shoots a criminal, even in a justified
shooting, that police officer has to go through an intensive procedure proving
the shooting was justified; hell police officers have to be investigated each
and every time they discharge their weapon, even if accidentally, so why in the
hell was Zimmermann just allowed to go home?
This has nothing to do with the law that protects innocent
people from wrongful prosecution when they use deadly force to protect
themselves from an attack; it has everything to do with the Florida police
force not applying the law properly and correctly, which makes them look very
stupid when any simpleton can see the difference between protecting oneself from
an obvious attack and roaming around with a gun looking to shoot somebody.
The wearing of “hoodies” has also become an issue. I never
really understood the fashion but I know many young people, white and black,
wear hoodies even inside buildings? Many criminals also wear hoodies to protect
themselves from being identified by security cameras; kind of like a bandit’s
mask or ski mask so wearing a hoodies does carry with it a possible criminal
connotation to some people.
So here we are back to “stereotyping”. The Florida
neighborhood where all this took place has been victimized by numerous
robberies committed, we are told, by young black men who may or may not have
been wearing hoodies but does that mean that all young black males wearing
hoodies are crooks or potential crooks…obviously not.
The basic point here is that a person like Zimmermann should
not have been allowed to operate the way he did under a Neighborhood Watch
program; police or other members of the Watch should have thrown him out when
they learned he was breaking the rules of the program. Also the Florida
This is an unfortunate tragedy that did not have to happen.
I think the “Stand Your Ground” law will be attacked as contributing to the
crime but I think, from what I have heard so far, that would be a mistake since
it is the application of the law that is in question here and not the main purpose
of the law.
Many of you will blame our handgun permissive society and
will call for the ban on all handguns but how realistic is that notion; we had
Prohibition on the law books and people drank even more.
As far as racism is concerned, besides the obvious
stereotyping as to criminals, all anecdotal evidence points to racism not being
an issue.
Let’s see what happens because I think this may be an issue
that may cause a sea change in our society or at least our social consciences.
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