You know, since day one of this little drama that continues to be played out down in Florida, all manner of accusations have been swirling around an event that resulted in a dead black teen and the man accused of shooting him in cold blood. Accusations that have coming from everyone ranging from our president right on down to those swimming around in the racist gutter. And all while very few of the actual facts in the case are still to be known by anyone including our stellar president. When the Trayvon Martin case first started garnering national attention, there were many who thought they knew who George Zimmerman as being some overzealous racist with a vendetta against young black men who was on a mission to assert power with his gun.
But then after all manner of insidious and toxic rhetoric had been thrown around, some of the actual details from this incident slowly began to emerge, such as picture of Zimmerman's bloody head, that could, in fact, actually bolster his self-defense claim. Even the Communist News Network (CNN) backtracked, going so far as to say that the tape it once suggested showed Zimmerman uttering a racist slur was actually him most likely saying it was “cold.” And now, Reuters has put together a pretty detailed profile of Mr. Zimmerman which would seem to suggest that he was nothing more than a concerned citizen trying to help fix his community and those in it reeling from recent crime. He was, apparently, a compassionate neighbor not the lunatic with a gun out looking for a black teen to shoot as old "Bull Horn" Sharpton would have us believe.
“During the time Zimmerman was in hiding, his detractors defined him as a vigilante who had decided Martin was suspicious merely because he was black,” Reuters reports. “After Zimmerman was finally arrested on a charge of second-degree murder more than six weeks after the shooting, prosecutors portrayed him as a violent and angry man who disregarded authority by pursuing the 17-year-old." Quite possibly a charge, if you listen to Alan Dershowitz, that could be based more on politics than on any of the evidence in the case. Reuters went on to say, “But a more nuanced portrait of Zimmerman has emerged from a Reuters investigation into Zimmerman’s past and a series of incidents in the community in the months preceding the Martin shooting."
So what does this profile that Reuters assembled really show us? Well, for starters, it was an animal control officer who first told Zimmerman he should get a gun after a pit bull was menacing him and his wife. His friends, however, never even knew he had a firearm until about two months ago. And, Reuters says, “He was raised in a racially integrated household and himself has black roots through an Afro-Peruvian great-grandfather – the father of the maternal grandmother who helped raise him.” So, after hearing Mr. Zimmerman being described with some of the most vile words being used, Business Insider has put together some chronological bullet points highlighting some of the article’s most important points:
1. Zimmerman grew up in a mixed-race household
2. He was an altar boy at his Catholic church from age 7-17
3. He is bilingual
4. After he finished high school, he studied for and got an insurance license
5. In 2004, Zimmerman and a black friend opened an Allstate insurance office (which soon failed)
6. Zimmerman’s 2005 arrest for “resisting arrest, violence, and battery of an officer” occurred after he shoved an under-cover alcohol control agent at a bar when the agent was trying to arrest an underage friend of his
7. Zimmerman married his wife, Shellie, in 2007. They rented a house in Twin Lakes. Twin Lakes is about 50% white, 20% Hispanic, and 20% black.
8. In 2009, Zimmerman enrolled in Seminole State College
9. In the fall of 2009, a pit bull broke free twice and once cornered Shellie in the Zimmermans’ yard. George Zimmerman asked a police officer whether he should buy pepper spray. The cop told him pepper spray wasn’t fast enough and recommended that he get a gun.
10. By the summer of 2011, Twin Lakes “was experiencing a rash of burglaries and break-ins.” In several of the cases, witnesses said the robbers were young black men
11. In July 2011, a black teenager stole a bicycle off the Zimmermans’ porch
12. In August of 2011, a neighbor of the Zimmermans, Olivia Bertalan, was home during the day when two young black men entered her house. She hid in a room upstairs and called the police. When the police arrived, the two men, who had been trying to take a TV, fled. One of them ran through the Zimmermans’ yard.
13. After the break-in, George Zimmerman stopped by the Bertalans and gave Olivia a card with his name and number on it. He told her to visit his wife Shellie if she felt unsafe.
14. The police recommended that Bertalan get a dog. She moved away instead. Zimmerman got a second dog–a Rottweiler.
15. In September, several concerned residents of the neighborhood, including Zimmerman, asked the neighborhood association to create a neighborhood watch. Zimmerman was asked to run it.
16. In the next month, two more houses in the neighborhood were robbed.
17. A community newsletter reminded residents to report any crimes to the police and then call “George Zimmerman, our captain.”
18. On February 2, 2012, Zimmerman spotted a young black man looking into the windows of a neighbor’s empty house. He called the police and said “I don‘t know what he’s doing. I don’t want to approach him, personally.” The police sent a car, but by the time they arrived, the man was gone.
19. On February 6th, another house was burglarized. Witnesses said two of the robbers were black teenagers. One, who had prior burglary convictions, was soon caught with a laptop stolen from the house.
20. Two weeks later, Zimmerman spotted Travyon Martin and called the police. The last time he had done this, the suspect got away. This time, he disregarded police instructions and followed. A few minutes later, Martin was dead.
So, is it possible that George Zimmerman is the angry out of control racist that Al "Bull Horn" Sharpton has painted him as being? Ok, I suppose it is, possible, but I think knowing as we do the tendency that old Al has of jumping to conclusions, especially if he thinks there's something to be gained personally, I just don't see it. And Business Insider wonders, “doesn’t it make you feel a bit differently about Zimmerman?” I'd have to say the answer to that is a resounding and every enthusiastic, YES. He is not the evil stalker that a certain group of racist individuals would like us all to believe that he is. There has been a lynch mob mentality in play here, assisted along by our racist president, since this story first broke. Sadly, America seems to be "changing", and not necessarily for the better.
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