To Follow

This comes up a LOT about George Zimmerman. “He should have never gotten out of his car!” or “He was Stalking Martin!” etc etc.

First go have a read of Bob’s post here, and he makes some great points that I feel no need of addressing.

I will say that Zimmerman is well documented in being concerned about the safety of his neighborhood, his property, and the property of his neighborhood. He states concerns about break-ins on the non-emergency call to Police.

Then he notes that Martin runs off.

Now let’s not use 20/20 hindsight. The discovery pages note that Zimmerman has called the police several times about suspicious persons, and the police arrived too late to find the suspect every time.

Here’s my question. At this point why would you stay in your car? Why would you call the police in the first place?

Now most of us don’t take up the mantle of neighborhood watch that Zimmerman does, and I’m sure many of us COULD have called the cops for something they saw, but chose not to bother.

But Zimmerman DID. Not knowing that an attack that would turn deadly was about to transpire (and honestly, I still don’t understand WHY the events as they appear to happen DID happen and result in Zimmerman with a battered face, and Martin dead), wouldn’t you try not to lose track of Martin so MAYBE the Police could find him when they arrived.

Otherwise, I’d just assume the cops would have made a lap of the neighborhood and then head home finding nothing.

Just a thought. What do you think?

Also full disclosure, I’ve worked private security, and I have followed people I suspected were engaging in illegal or dangerous behavior at a safe distance, while waiting for backup before we took action.

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0 Responses to To Follow

  1. Pyrotek85 says:

    That’s my thinking, he didn’t want to lose track of what could have very well been yet another burglar.

  2. GuardDuck says:

    I’ve done the security ‘follow at a distance and keep an eye on the suspicious person’ thing myself.

    I also don’t get where people automatically assume ‘follow’ equals ‘stalking’, ‘chase down’ or ‘initiate confrontation’.

    Using the same logic of ‘if he’d stayed in his car this wouldn’t have happened’ one could also say ‘if he’d stayed in his home this wouldn’t have happened’. That’s just butterfly effect, what if, logic applied in hindsight.

    • Weerd Beard says:

      It comes from the same angle where multi-cultural, overall good guy, Zimmerman, because a White Supremacist Neo-Nazi. And punk kid who was on such a bad track that Daddy had him shipped North away from his, likely troubled, friend base for his latest in a long-line of school suspensions, is an Angelic “Model Student”. Same with the Martin Family claiming “Character Assassination” for people saying what pans out to be the solid truth.

      It becomes “Stalking” and “Picking a Fight” because they already have decided how the story is, sight unseen, and they MUST make everything fit that facade.

  3. Druid says:

    A rhetorical question, I guess…

    Is it possible to ‘stalk’ somebody on land you own – meaning that this all went down on private property, property that Martin did not have an interest in, but Zimmerman did.

    Can I ‘stalk’ somebody in my own backyard, or front yard, or somebody meandering down the privately owned street I share with 10 or 100 of my neighbors?

    • Pyrotek85 says:

      Logically I’d say no, but I think the legal definition varies from each state, I don’t know offhand. The fact is that merely following and even making verbal contact isn’t illegal.

      Even if Martin felt ‘threatened’, he couldn’t have ‘stood his ground too’ as I’ve seen many commentators suggest absent some other evidence that Zimmerman was about to hurt him, like if already had his gun drawn. There isn’t any evidence to suggest that however, so there doesn’t appear to be any legal reason for Martin to attack unless Zimmerman put his hands on him first, which again might be possible but there isn’t any evidence one way or another.

  4. RedeemedBoyd says:

    Your concept of what he did absolutely holds true. If he has had that many (failed) calls to police in the past, he’s going to want to do what he can to ensure a successful call this time around.
    Speaking to the concept of his role in ‘securing’ the neighborhood, one thing he may not have considered is that when you do follow someone, the moment your mark makes you, their behavior changes. It could be as simple as attempting to flee, or as complex as luring you into an ambush. When I did the security thing in Virginia, I had thought I was securing people who were returning to their cars from animals which were known to view humans as prey. Turns out, one night on my shift, I saw a two-legged predator. I followed him down the one roadway, while calling in the encounter on the radio. Within 2 minutes, I had friendlies behind me, and at the other end of this gravel road, waiting for him. He caught on to what was happening, and bolted into the woods. As our policy, we did not pursue. His body was found the next day by local police, partially devoured. People who know they have been ‘made’ by any sort of security or authority become unpredictable.
    The question ultimately with which I would wrestle, were I Zimmerman, would be ‘If I had been more careful, and he hadn’t seen me following him, would the police have arrived in time?’ Given the history there, I’m inclined to think the answer is a fairly clear ‘no.’ But once we do something like that, we have the rest of our lives to second-guess and question our own actions and decisions we had only moments to make.

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