This is as succinct and clear a synopsis of the pertinent facts of this case as I've seen. It highlights the fundamental failure of the Sanford Police to handle the situation. A week before important witnesses were interviewed. Not accessing the victim's cell phone records for weeks. I know we all have heard a lot of things about this case, but I invite everyone to read this short summary.
"...Among other things, George Zimmerman, 28, was not subject to a criminal background check until after he was released from custody. A possible racial slur muttered by Zimmerman on a 911 call was overlooked. Nearly a week passed before important witnesses were interviewed by the police. Perhaps most crucially, investigators failed to access Martin’s cell phone records for weeks.
Those records revealed that just before he was shot, the teen was on the phone with his girlfriend, who said she overheard crucial moments of the encounter between Zimmerman and Martin.
“Those mistakes should not have been made,” said Andrew Scott, former chief of the Boca Raton police department and a national policing consultant. “They were such rudimentary aspects of an investigation.”
Martin family members and their attorneys relentlessly cited these errors, which echoed through the national media and the blogosphere.
“It has fueled the fires,” Scott said. “The credibility of the agency is now in question.”
'THEY SHOULD HAVE HAD THIS'
Around 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 26, Trayvon Martin left his father's girlfriend's house at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, a gated community where he'd been staying for about a week, and headed to a 7-Eleven store to pick up some snacks before the NBA All-Star game. The store was a walk of about a three-quarters of mile.
Martin spent much of his trip to and from the store on the phone with his 16-year-old girlfriend back in Miami. The entire day had been much the same, with the two talking in in calls of a few minutes at a time. According to cell phone records obtained by The Huffington Post, Martin was on the phone with the girl from 6:30 p.m. to 6:49 p.m.
Martin made it back to the gated complex just after 7 p.m.
At that point, Zimmerman, patrolling the neighborhood in his vehicle, noticed Martin walking slowly. Zimmerman called 911 to report Martin as a "suspicious person." The call began at about 7:09 p.m.
"This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something," Zimmerman tells the 911 dispatcher. "He's just staring, looking at all the houses ... Something's wrong with him."
The 911 call lasts just over four minutes. Toward the end, Zimmerman says Martin is running and the sounds of Zimmerman breathing hard can be heard as he describes the location to the dispatcher. Some hear what sounds like Zimmerman muttering a racial slur. "These assholes always get away," he then says.
The dispatcher asks Zimmerman if he's chasing the individual. Zimmerman says yes. "We don't need you to do that," the dispatcher responds.
At roughly 7:14 p.m., Zimmerman ends the call. Less than three minutes later, Trayvon Martin was dead from a single gunshot wound to the chest from Zimmerman's Kal-Tec 9 mm pistol, which he carried in a holster on his belt. Police arrived almost immediately and found Martin face-down and motionless in a patch of grass about 70 feet from the back porch of his father's girlfriend's house.
Zimmerman told police that he was the victim of an unprovoked attack by Martin and said he shot the teen in self-defense, according to Bill Lee, the Sanford police chief who has since taken a leave from his job...."
There has been a lot of dithering on this and another thread... Characterizing those who are outraged about law enforcement's treatment of this case as hysterical; making false equivalencies between Zimmerman and Martin on that night that blur the perception of who was pursued and who was the pursuer - about who was to blame for Martin's death.
Some people on A2K seem to be saying "I don't really know what happened and won't know until after the grand jury hearing on April 10th." But I want to say for this record that I think it is pretty clear what happened, and what "remains to be seen" is if Zimmerman will be made to pay for his crime.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/09/trayvon-martin-cops-botched-investigation_n_1409277.html
