When you get run over by a freight train, the cause of death
is usually delivered by the locomotive…Not the caboose.
The rainy night of February 26, in Sanford
Florida, Trayvon Martin was shot by George
Zimmerman, neighborhood watch captain for the Twin Lakes
community. Zimmerman is the figurative
caboose in the tragic tale in the shooting of Trayvon Martin.
The Twin
Lakes neighborhood that
George Zimmerman became neighborhood watch captain had suffered eight
burglaries plus other crimes, in the 15 months prior to Trayvon Martin's
shooting.
One of the burglaries was a brazen, horrific day time break in to the
home of Olivia Bertalan who was alone with her infant as two men broke in and
ransacked her home, while she and her baby huddled in terror in a bedroom. The two criminals left with her valuables
before police arrived.
This was the final straw for citizens in the community and
it was decided to organize a Neighborhood Watch because police were not
preventing the crime being inflicted on them.
So the community resorted to tactics to try to defend themselves.
Perhaps if the Sanford Police Department had more resources,
it could have sent extra patrols to the Twin lakes community and focused on
crime abatement…Rather than citizens taking it upon themselves to enhance their
protection.
The saying when danger is seconds away, the police are just
minutes away, could not have been any more evident as the Twin lakes community
was assailed by crime. Time after time
police came after the crime was committed; to take reports and statements….But
this did nothing to prevent the crime in the first place.
The Zimmerman trial spotlighted detective work, forensic
experts, medical examiners and skilled attorneys trying to persuade a jury of
George Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence in the death of Trayvon Martin.
Perhaps what should be on trial is how law enforcement
failed to protect the Twin
Lakes community from
crime in the first place and why certain steps weren’t followed by law
enforcement to help the community to protect itself…The legal system turned on
this community and George Zimmerman for only trying to defend themselves from
crime: Zimmerman is on trial for his freedom and the Twin Lakes community had to pay a one million dollar judgement
The freight train that killed Trayvon Martin that night was the
legal systems failure to protect citizens from crime. George Zimmerman and the Twin Lakes community were only the caboose in that
long train of events.