Posted on 07/12/2013 5:24:33 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
After all of the evidence, six women in a Florida courtroom will decide if a Community Watch volunteer went too far in taking the life of a teenager walking through a neighborhood on a rainy evening.
It happened there.
It could happen here.
"I really encourage neighborhoods to get involved and report suspicious activities," says Harold Medlock, the Fayetteville police chief. "But that is where it needs to stop."
Be vigilant, he says, but do not become a vigilante, else you may become another George Zimmerman, 29, whose confrontation with Trayvon Martin left the 17-year-old with a bullet through the heart.
"We absolutely have to have people engaged in assuring our community is safe," Medlock says. "But we don't want folks intervening.
"When something strikes them as not being right, they need to call 911.
"We have the training and the expertise," the 58-year-old chief says. "We know how to approach folks. That's what the good people of Fayetteville, North Carolina, pay police to do."
Medlock says Community Watch groups are there to partner with police, and the chief says he takes pride in the 130 or so neighborhood watch groups throughout the city.
"That's one of the most encouraging things for me as a police chief," Medlock says. "Because of that interaction, we can positively impact crime."
And there is little question that this is a city with its share of vehicular and home invasions and property crimes.
It's frustrating.
Apparently, it was frustrating for Zimmerman on Feb. 26, 2012, when he witnessed what he described as a suspicious figure in the gated-neighborhood that had been plagued with criminal activity.
He called 911.
"This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something," Zimmerman, who was armed with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, is quoted as telling a police dispatcher. "It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about" and "looking at all the houses."
The dispatcher, according to court testimony and police recordings, instructed Zimmerman not to follow Martin.
But Zimmerman says the teenager confronted him, beat him, and in the fray, the watch captain shot Martin to death.
Self defense, Zimmerman's lawyers say.
Murder, prosecutors contend, adding that the Hispanic vigilante profiled and targeted a young black man innocently returning to the neighborhood home where Martin was visiting with his father and his father's fiancee.
A racist and unjust murder, Martin advocates cry, and now Sanford, Fla., fears that an acquittal could lead to civil discord.
"As Sanford goes, other cities will go," Medlock says. "I think people in Sanford will act responsibly. That's why we have lawyers, juries and people have their day in court."
That's nice, chief. And when seconds count and the son of a Crip is banging a civilian's head against the ground with the intent to kill, you professionals are just minutes (or longer) away.
Yeah. I think if there is any money left over in his fund, that he invest in a Glock. (my understanding is he had a Keltec)
I think the difficulty I have is my view toward the police. If it is my duty to protect myself and those entrusted to my care, my family, how immoral is it to relinquish that duty to some one else, uniformed or not. It is against every good thing for me to expect another to do for me what I should have done myself.
If Z-man is found guilty, then all justice in this nation has been thwarted, “truth has fallen in the street and equity cannot enter. Yea truth fails, and he that departs from evil makes himself a prey.”
(Quote from Isaiah 59)
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