Learning from Zimmerman's Mistakes.

[dennishoddy]

so the one being followed to begin with is the rapist? that seems dumber to me.

Your analogy of "rapist" is ignorant, and uncalled for. Your a freeking troll.

 

[otis147]

Your analogy of "rapist" is ignorant, and uncalled for. Your a freeking troll.

not my analogy. the analogy belongs to the o.p...

 

[nofearfactor]

This is ******** stupid.

Ya well, makes more sense to me than being carried by 6 or judged by 12 and then starting riots after being found not guilty...

 

[dennishoddy]

There have been no riots. Only isolated incidents of unruly conduct, quickly put down by the authorities.

 

[Glocktogo]

so walking down the street is reason enough to be followed. if you're walking sown the street, and somebody's trailing you, do you ignore him, or confront? what should trayvon have done? run? hide? confront his aggressor?
its a ****** situation, started by zimmerman, and ended by zimmerman.

again, the lesson is leave people alone. don't tread on anyone. both could have handled the situation better, sure. but there wouldn't have been a situation if george had stayed in his car.

No, that's not the lesson. In public, anyone can follow anyone with no reason whatsoever. What if the two people happen to be going to the same place? What if Zimmerman's unit had been next door to the one Martin was visiting?

The real lesson here is to never let pride, arrogance or a sense of self-righteousness (or any combination of the three) lead you into a situation you'll regret later. That lesson would've served Zimmerman AND Martin well. Martin paid the ultimate price and Zimmerman's life is essentially in ruins. There were a dozen different ways either one of them could've made more intelligent choices, yet neither one did. This is a flawless example of the cascade effect.

Had Martin not gone to the store late at night to get two of the three ingredients for a common street drug...
Had Zimmerman not gotten out of his vehicle...
Had Martin not been acting suspicious...
Had Zimmerman not followed Martin on foot...
Had Martin simply lost Zimmerman and returned to the unit...
Has Zimmerman realized the foolishness of following a suspicious person in the dark and went back to his vehicle...
Had Martin not confronted Zimmerman...
Had Zimmerman used effective communication to diffuse Martin's anger...
Had Martin just asked Zimmerman why he was following him, instead of talking with his fists...

And on and on...

It usually takes a continued pattern of poor decision making to result in a tragedy. In this case, both were at fault. You can't blame one side 100% just because the other paid a higher price. That's just emotion talking.

The law is supposed to judge everyone equally. I don't think that happened in this case until the jury rectified the situation by finding Zimmerman not guilty of murder or manslaughter. Had the politically and racially motivated criminal prosecution not been brought, it's possible that the Martin family could've sued Zimmerman in civil court and won. It's only a preponderance of evidence in civil court and blame can be assigned proportionally. It's all or nothing in a criminal proceeding.

Now that the criminal case is done and Zimmerman has been acquitted, the Martin family is barred by law from bringing a civil suit. Sometimes you have to be careful what you ask for...you just might get it.

 

[nofearfactor]

There have been no riots. Only isolated incidents of unruly conduct, quickly put down by the authorities.

No riots. Yet. Just a few incidents, such as a mob beatdown on a journalist asking questions, etc.

 

[yukonjack]

so walking down the street is reason enough to be followed. if you're walking sown the street, and somebody's trailing you, do you ignore him, or confront? what should trayvon have done? run? hide? confront his aggressor?
its a ****** situation, started by zimmerman, and ended by zimmerman.

again, the lesson is leave people alone. don't tread on anyone. both could have handled the situation better, sure. but there wouldn't have been a situation if george had stayed in his car.

You musta missed skewl the day they were given lessons out. 911, 911, 911 that's the emergency number for the police.

This is how this shoulda played.

"Hello, is this the police? My name is Trayvon Martin and I got some creepy cracker that's followin' me and gettin' up real close. If yall don't get here real quick I'm gonin' full gangsta on his azzzz!"

Yep, that's where this whole thing fell apart. Call the police cause that's what the police are for.

 

[dennishoddy]

No riots. Yet. Just a few incidents, such as a mob beatdown on a journalist asking questions, etc.

I hear ya. In my day riots were burning of city's like LA and Detroit. Reginal Denny getting dragged from his semi, getting his skull crushed with concrete, and so on.

Thousands of buildings burnt.

All within the confines of the black panthers.

I pray this never happens to us.

 

[R. Johnson]

See, what I wanted to talk about was the responsibility that we have for our own safety, and how we can learn from others to mitigate the risk of being forced into a self defense situation...

 

[n2sooners]

See, what I wanted to talk about was the responsibility that we have for our own safety, and how we can learn from others to mitigate the risk of being forced into a self defense situation...

The best thing we could do to protect our own safety is become like those people who see something wrong and file it under 'somebody else's problem.'