July 10, 2013

Newsweek: "Is Trayvon Martin a Victim Not Just of Racial Profiling But Youth Profiling Too?"

Is Newsweek still in business? Apparently so:
Too Young to Be Innocent? 
Is Trayvon Martin a Victim Not Just of Racial Profiling But Youth Profiling Too? 
By Caroline Linton
THE QUESTION burns for all teenagers: would George Zimmerman have singled out Trayvon Martin if he had been an adult?On George Zimmerman’s 911 call, he said Martin “looks black” before finally confirming the 17-year-old was black, but he also identified Trayvon as being in his “late teens.” 
“A 30-something person would confront a teenager—something tells me he felt emboldened by [Trayvon’s] youthfulness,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of law and police studies at John Jay College in New York. “The seeds of this have to do with the youth of the person.” 
It’s unclear what was going through Zimmerman’s mind when he confronted Martin, but one of the biggest debates raging around the case is whether Zimmerman racially profiled the teenager. 
For some people, there’s no question that Zimmerman would not have singled out Martin as being “up to no good” if Martin had been white. 
But what if he hadn’t been a teenager—what then?

Or what if Trayvon had been a Samoan grandmother? Have you thought about that? Huh?
There is little research on youth profiling, where an older person immediately assumes a teenager is “up to no good.” Some have speculated that a jury with greater minority representation would be more sympathetic to Martin. 
But there’s no way to determine if it would be also different if the jury was made up of young people who know how it feels to be stopped and interrogated by, say, a 28-year-old man, since teenagers aren’t eligible to sit on juries. 
Many teenagers have no doubt that Martin was stopped because of his age, and they’ve taken to social media to say so. “The fact is, a crime was committed against [Trayvon] by an adult and that adult needs to be held accountable,” reads one typical post on Tumblr by a high-school senior in Ontario.

This is exactly the kind of op-ed I would have commissioned to appeal to my readers back when I was a high school newspaper editor. Perhaps Newsweek's new business model is to compete with high school newspapers for the Resentful Teen demo? Under my guidance, the Notre Dame Knight brought in steady ad revenue from rock concert ticket scalpers and military recruiters, so maybe that's Newsweek's latest financial strategy.

Anyway, this is a good example of how the message has trickled down all the way to the dimmer corners of the hivemind that one crime that cannot be forgiven is Noticing Patterns.

78 comments:

PropagandistHacker said...

speaking of the zimmerman trial, the big unreported story is what happened in court late last night. Check this story here:

http://pjmedia.com/blog/disorder-judge-recesses-zimmerman-trial-excludes-damning-evidence/?utm_medium=twitter

Apparently the DA hid a huge amount of text messages found on trayvon's cell phone, many of them dealing with street fights. The DA only released them right before the trial, an illegal tactic meant to keep the defense from making use of them. Zimmerman's lawyer argued late last night before the judge that the messages should be allowed into evidence. The judge denied zimmerman use of the messages on the grounds that even though trayon's phone was protected by password, someone else COULD HAVE created the messages. Unbelievable.

There was a bit of drama in court over this last night that the media has ignored. Check out the video on page 2 of that article.

So this judge is also in with the media in trying to hang zimmerman. And guess who appointed this judge? Florida GOP governor Bush.

Once again we see the GOP is on the same side as the liberals when it comes to race hypocrisy, race spoils, affirmative action, immigration etc.


Hunsdon said...

Leaving aside the ideological slant of the article for the moment, that is one of the most sloppily written things I have read in quite some time.

I always thought that each paragraph should be narratively coherent, should contain thoughts or ideas that went well with each other.

We is being enstupidated.

Bottledwater said...

Newsweek went out of business for a reason. The reporting is painfully biased and unprofessional. It's little more than a section of the Daily Beast now.

countenance said...

Oh no, Trayvon couldn't have possibly done anything wrong. After all, he was only 17 years old.

Small print: 17 seems to be the most criminally dangerous age in the life of black men. I bet if you plotted the number of black boys/men arrested for category violent crimes against their whole number age, you'd probably find the mode is 17.

Smaller print: In black western Africa, 17 is full grown Bantu warrior.

countenance said...

A Working Class American wrote:

So this judge is also in with the media in trying to hang zimmerman. And guess who appointed this judge? Florida GOP governor Bush. Once again we see the GOP is on the same side as the liberals when it comes to race hypocrisy, race spoils, affirmative action, immigration etc.

I respond:

You mean that noted reproductive endocrinologist Jeb Bush? ("Hispanics are more fertile")

Seriously, don't conflate Jeb Bush with the 45th President of the United States, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.

Anonymous said...

"Newsweek: "Is Trayvon Martin a Victim Not Just of Racial Profiling But Youth Profiling Too?"

Same thing,isn't it?

Every time I read a newspaper article about a crime a black person committed it always identifies the person as a "youth" or a "teen" even if they're in their 40's.

If the assertion is that Zimmerman shot Martin because he was black, then he also shot him because he was a "youth".

Personally,I think he shot him because Martin was pounding his head into the concrete trying to kill him. But that's just me. I tend to believe ridiculous accounts of black aggressiveness from whites (hispanic,white, who cares,right?) when the person recounting the tale points to the gash on the back of his head and his bloody nose as proof.

Anonymous said...

And what if Martin had been in a wheelchair? What about that, huh? That bully Zimmerman only picked on him because Martin was "abled"!

Who's to say that those in wheelchairs cannot be criminals? This sort of unfair profiling must stop!

ScarletNumber said...

I would be willing to wager that everyone on the jury was a teenager at some point.

Silver said...

"Anyway, this is a good example of how the message has trickled down all the way to the dimmer corners of hivemind that one crime that cannot be forgiven is Noticing Patterns."

The thing is, all these good little "antiracists" KNOW that the only thing holding back blacks is people thinking negative thoughts about them. Do you want that hanging over your head? If you don't, you'll stop noticing patterns too.

Silver said...

Talking about noticing patterns, am I the only one to notice how white liberals all seem to assume that because Zim asked Trayon what he was doing that Trayvon had a green light to go ahead and smash Zim's head in? (Wouldn't you, after that terrible affront? Zim's just lucky Travyon wasn't packing.)

Let me revise that. Zim first profiled Trayvon, then he followed him, and then him put that horrible question to him. Even if Trayvon didn't die you just know his life would have been over after that. I mean, how do you recover from the trauma of being profiled, followed and questioned? I'm shaking just typing this.

Art Deco said...

The mazes these people enter and in which they lose themselves.

It does not seem to occur to her
When you stand on the front lawn of a man you know not and who knows not you, the neighbors find that...anomalous. They get especially interested in neighborhoods which have had lots of burglaries and with regard to houses burgled, as Mr. Taafe's was.

It might also occur to her to consult a statistical compendium. It would tell her that north of 75% of those traipsing through the criminal courts are under the age of 25. (Reporters did not do library research even when they had the budget for it. Oh well.)


blogger said...

Doesn't MSM use 'youth' as euphemism for 'black thug'?
So, the media caused the 'problem' of making 'youth' awareness but complain that when many people now think 'youth' = black criminal.

Anonymous said...

A question equal to the one of whether Zimmerman profiled Martin because he was black is whether or not Zimmerman would have been attacked had Martin been white.

Art Deco said...

Talking about noticing patterns, am I the only one to notice how white liberals all seem to assume that because Zim asked Trayon what he was doing that Trayvon had a green light to go ahead and smash Zim's head in? (Wouldn't you, after that terrible affront? Zim's just lucky Travyon wasn't packing.)

That's been the surprise in these discussions. Antecedent to it all is the unexamined postulate that adolescents who fancy they have been 'disrespected' have a franchise to beat up the neighborhood watch captain. I had one liberal fuzz-head tell me that these proceedings were proper because Zimmerman had 'no right to interact with [Martin] the way he did'.

Remember this cheesy thing:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072000/

Eyes down, Dink!

Anonymous said...

You suppose Martin wouldn't have bothered with Zimmerman if he'd seen Zimmy as a skittle than a cracker?

Anonymous said...

But if you notice someone in a blanket, remember it's the KKK and you must lynch him!!

Anonymous said...

I demand an end to the profiling of people who happen to have been near the scene of a crime. A truly fair process would seek suspects regardless of their distance from the crime. To do otherwise would be unconscionable geographic discrimination.

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwSolQx9Ysg

Maybe 'youths' think 'pregnant white woman' = 'evil person who deserves to die'.

Funny logic but at least it's not part of the 'racist pattern'.

Anonymous said...

I'm a trial junkie and go back to Manson and Patty Hearst. I can't count the number of murder cases I've followed or studied in which the perpetrator was a 17-18 year old black male.

Pat Boyle said...

Look at -
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10shrtbl03.xls

This is the Expanded Homicide Data Table 3 of the FBI Uniform Crime Reports for 2010.

It shows that blacks of age 17 produced 331 murders. Whereas blacks of age 30 had only 104. Blacks in their late teens are much more dangerous than adults. From another table it appears that blacks murder at the highest rate at age 19. After that they murder less often.

Black teens are much more deadly than white teens but by age 30 the difference is still there but it has substantially lessened. When the media argues that Martin was just a teenager they overlook that black teens are not like white teens. Blacks have a violent crime peak at about Martin's age.

NOTE: I used a simple division of the reported number by the size of the frequency interval rather than the FBI suggested procedure that uses differentiation and matrix operations. I don't believe it makes much difference in the
estimates. I don't think the FBI is acting in good faith in procedures suggested in their technical appendix. If you wanted exact figures I could simply use the original data.

Albertosaurus

helene edwards said...

I haven't read the comments but - Right, and the pattern not noticed is that teenagers are constantly getting a pass on suspicious behavior. What made Zimmerman's pursuit/inquiry so remarkable is precisely that nobody ever does it anymore. Here's an example: just about every Friday night in San Francisco's Sigmund Stern Grove, teenagers congregate by the dozens to drink. The cops know it, but just let it go. Maybe they figure if they weren't drinking they'd be doing something worse?

countenance said...

Albertosaurus

This table demonstrates that black murderers tend to the implusive while white murderers tend to the deliberate. Notice that as you go older in age, whites open up a huge numerical lead over blacks.

Anonymous said...

Pah. We all know that "they" grow up far quicker than "we" do.

Anonymous said...

"DOJ sends secret “peacekeepers” where Trayvon Martin was killed"

http://www.judicialwatch.org/bulletins/doj-sends-secret-peacekeepers-where-trayvon-martin-was-killed/

"Judicial Watch, Inc. on April 24, 2012 launched an investigation into the Trayvon Martin case based on reports that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) had sent a secret team of “peacekeepers” to Sanflord, Florida, where Martin was shot on February 26, 2012 after wandering in a gated community after dark. George Zimmerman, a resident of the community and its neighborhood watch captain, is currently on trial for Martin’s death though he maintains he acted in self-defense.

Records obtained by Judicial Watch in response to local, state and federal public records requests show that the so-called peacekeepers are part of a large and growing division within DOJ called the Community Relations Service (CRS). Though CRS purports to spot and quell racial tensions nationwide before they arise, the documents obtained by Judicial Watch show the group actively worked to foment unrest, spending thousands of taxpayer dollars on travel and hotel rooms to train protestors throughout Florida. The peacekeepers also met with officials of the Republican National Convention, scheduled for several months later in Tampa, to warn them to expect protests in connection with Martin’s death."

Modern Abraham said...

Maybe I'm being really dense here, but isn't it still true that "profiling" is not a crime when committed by private citizens in a non-business capacity? Technically not cleaning your dog droppings off someone else's lawn would be a far more legally actionable offense than this. Or has "profiling" assumed some sort of extra-legal culpability where the crime is so self-evidently heinous we don't need to bother going through the formality of passing a law against it? Kind of like gay marriage, which now has such high extra-legal authority it is unconstitutional even to amend the constitution to ban it.

Ichabod Crane said...

"What if Trayvon had been a Samoan grandmother? Have you thought about that? Huh?"

For agists, nothing says 'potential threat' like tall, able-bodied, and physically powerful enough to commit voilence. While racists profile based on the white race's 400 years of persecution of black people, the deliberate singling out of the young and physically fit goes back to the very beginnings of the human race, and in fact much earlier.

Ichabod Crane said...

Modern Abraham, please comment more often!!!

Truth said...

"So this judge is also in with the media in trying to hang zimmerman. And guess who appointed this judge? Florida GOP governor Bush.

Once again we see the GOP is on the same side as the liberals when it comes to race hypocrisy, race spoils, affirmative action, immigration etc."

Oh, now that's brilliant.

blogger said...

Don't affluent urban liberals use geographic profiling to choose areas that have fewer people who belong in the 'youth' category?

Truth said...

"Talking about noticing patterns, am I the only one to notice how white liberals all seem to assume that because Zim asked Trayon what he was doing..."

Who gave that version again? Oh, it was Zimmerman, carry on, nothing to see here.

countenance said...

Gloria

Re prison rape, I think that's just a matter of fulfilling a need into any convenient available orifice. Re your other theory: That's also the reason why statutory rape doesn't seem to be much of a problem among blacks. If 40-year old white man is found on top of 13-year old white girl in white suburbs, cops are called, stat rape is recorded in NCIC. If 40-year old black man is found on top of 13-year old black girl in the ghetto, "dey just doin dey thang, gotz ta keep it real," no cops are called, no stat rape gets recorded. So much black crime flies under the radar and never shows up in stats because all the murders and other very serious violent crimes block out official attention from them, and blacks aren't much in a mood to self-report.

Albertosaurus

The more I think about it, the more there's something not quite right about using homicide numbers as indicative of the propensity for certain age/race combination demographics to be violent. Remember a lot of homicides aren't homicides because the victims are lucky enough to live close to a L1 trauma center. I think the better barometer is the aggravated assault/battery rate.

TontoBubbaGoldstein said...

Is Newsweek still in business?

Yes. Apparently the same business they were in when I stopped subscribing around 20 years ago.

Jett Davis said...

For what it's worth, I just thought I'd pass along this article from another conservative site that critiques the knee-jerk response of many on the Right regarding Trayvon himself: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/framing-trayvon/. I've been saying this for years. By taking the race bait of the Left, the Right gets sucked into exactly the type of emotional either/or sound bite debates that the Left--along with their allies in the MSM--are experts at winning (or at least muddying the waters with). While it may be emotionally satisfying (and I'd argue that it's not) to stereotype Trayvon as a thug, the facts of the case do not necessitate that line. All you do is add fuel to the racial fire already burning. And when that fire spreads out of control conservatism loses. I guess the nascent white right is going to have to decide if it wants to reach reasonable people of color (Blacks, Latinos, Asians) and Jews, or if it wants to lump them all together in the enemy (cultural Marxist) camp. Right now the GOP is getting roughly 30% of the vote of Latinos, Jews, and Asians, plus 10% of the Black vote. By continuing down this current path of an extremist tit-for-tat response to everything coming from the academic/media/NGO wing of the Democrats (of which, I realize, for the first time, the President is a part), the Tea Party/blogger Right is increasingly painting itself into a corner that is not only tactically inescapable, but concedes to the falsity of the debate (whatever it may be at that moment), as well.

ben tillman said...

Profoundly stupid.

THE QUESTION burns for all teenagers: would George Zimmerman have singled out Trayvon Martin if he had been an adult?

He wasn't singled out. He was the only person wandering aimlessly in the rain.

“A 30-something person would confront a teenager—something tells me he felt emboldened by [Trayvon’s] youthfulness,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of law and police studies at John Jay College in New York. “The seeds of this have to do with the youth of the person.”

What planet is this guy from? I literally cannot imagine any person believing this.

John said...

I do not think of Trayvon Martin as black, or as young, or even as having a name mysteriously underprovided with apostrophes (for THAT would be TOTAL profiling). I think of him as a high school student, which, actually, he sorta was, right? Anyway, generous soul that I am, I think of him as not just being a high school student but being physically and mentally IN high school. It pleases me to imagine him having the same high-school education I did. I enjoy thinking about an "educator" telling Trayvon about German case-endings, and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, and metazoa, and De Moivre's Theorem, and Salic Law, and James Joyce. "Joyce lived in Trieste during World War I, Trayvon." Just close your eyes and let your brain's voice speak those words. Pretty good, huh?

Svigor said...

Some patterns are more equal than others.

Auntie Analogue said...


Nothing like expanding ad absurdum the number and kind of Victim Grievance Industry categories for our Liberty-loving friends down at the SPLC, is there?

Anonymous said...

"It shows that blacks of age 17 produced 331 murders. Whereas blacks of age 30 had only 104. Blacks in their late teens are much more dangerous than adults. From another table it appears that blacks murder at the highest rate at age 19. After that they murder less often."

I expect impulsive type killings will peak roughly around the same age as peak testosterone levels.

By design. As at some point in the evolutionary past males being peak violent at peak reproductive health was adaptive.

Anonymous said...

"I think the better barometer is the aggravated assault/battery rate."

It would be if it wasn't so easy to fiddle. Knocking aggravated assaults down to assaults must be one of the most common changes.

Given the pressure on the police to fix crime stats in certain areas i.e. the areas where accurate crime stats and political correctness can't coexist, the only stats in those areas likely to be an accurate barometer imo would be hospital records for the number of people treated for gunshot and knife wounds.

agnostic said...

If he was "youth profiling," he'd have nothing to be afraid of --

Dangerous Millennials

cookie lavagetto said...

@Modern Abraham:

I was engaged in private, non-business-related profiling of a sort when I got thrown out of a Berkeley hot dog restaurant. Judge Joe Brown was on the T.V., haranguing a white litigant. I mentioned that no white T.V. judge could ever talk to a black litigant like that, and the millennial sausage slicer tossed me. You should have seen the rage in his eyes. The current crop of 20-something whites is stone crazy.

Anonymous said...

I just can't believe the incredible media bias against Zimmerman. CNN, HLN, that shouting loudmouth Nancy Grace. They are all out to get him.

Anonymous said...

Truth,

Who gave that version again? Oh, it was Zimmerman, carry on, nothing to see here.

Yeah, the one who was BEING BEATEN UP by the dead thug.

Thought it was INNOCENT till PROVEN guilty. Or are you profiling Zim based on whatever makes sense to what's in only your own mind

PoS! (as in Piece of...)

I agree with others: Come on, Abraham, keep on posting!



Anonymous said...

Countenance said:

The more I think about it, the more there's something not quite right about using homicide numbers as indicative of the propensity for certain age/race combination demographics to be violent. Remember a lot of homicides aren't homicides because the victims are lucky enough to live close to a L1 trauma center. I think the better barometer is the aggravated assault/battery rate.



Yeah, can see why you don't want those stats noticed cause they don't present the youths in a good light. But the aggravated assault/battery rate doesn't fare well for them either, does it?

That was a good question Gloria raised. Surprised no one addressed it.

David Davenport said...

Right now the GOP is getting roughly 30% of the vote of Latinos, Jews, and Asians, plus 10% of the Black vote.

So what?

White Christians need a political party that defends white Christians.

Jefferson said...

[QUOTE]Don't affluent urban liberals use geographic profiling to choose areas that have fewer people who belong in the 'youth' category?[/QUOTE]

The vast majority of affluent liberals live in neighborhoods who's racial demographics resemble more Australia than it does The United States.

In other words they live in neighborhoods where the percentage of Whites is higher than the national average.

Australia is 90 percent White. Your average filthy rich American millionaire/billionaire liberal lives in a neighborhood that is either over 90 percent White or very close to it.

Anonymous said...

While it may be emotionally satisfying (and I'd argue that it's not) to stereotype Trayvon as a thug, the facts of the case do not necessitate that line.

What horseshit. Have a look at the pictures of 17 year old Trayvon that crop up in a google image search. You are not conservative. It's not stereotyping, it's calling a spade a spade. The guy was on top of Zim, doing a GnP.

Silver said...

Truth "Who gave that version again? Oh, it was Zimmerman, carry on, nothing to see here."

With respect to the point I was making it doesn't matter whether that's what actually occurred or not. White liberals assume that if that is how it went down Trayvon had every right to smash Zim's head into the pavement.

Silver said...

Jett Davis, what you're counseling is yet more insipid (read weak-ass) outreach. Implied here is that no latino, no asian, no 'tweener' and no black (you may be onto something with this last one) would ever, in any way shape or form, support a party line that took white racial interests seriously. White republicans should just assume (ie hope, pray) that non-white republicans will take the white side on issues that count. To put it bluntly, I think you're wrong on both counts.

'Pro-white' white doesn't necessarily mean anti-everyone-else - except in the twisted imaginations of Nazis and white liberals. In reality, there could be plenty to go around for everybody on a pro-white platform. Such a platform could stand for order over chaos, reason over sensation, raising standards of behavior rather than collapsing them, respect achievement rather than weirdness,and, of course, make provision for white racial interests rather than pretend white racial interests represent ultimate evil, and so on.

The beauty of this stance is that whites won't have to rely on mere assurances that non-whites are not anti-white; they will have to actually see some performance. You're not anti-white? Great news, friend. Now support the pro-white candidate.

Silver said...

"Right now the GOP is getting roughly 30% of the vote of Latinos, Jews, and Asians, plus 10% of the Black vote."

While I certainly believe it's possible for pro-whites to attract significant non-white support, pro-white racial politics has to be based on racial reality. Which groups are most likely to support pro-white politics and which groups least? Which groups' support would matter most and which groups' least?

As I see it, blacks are the least likely to support pro-white politics by a wide margin. I've heard tell of blacks who aren't anti-white but the dearth of evidence on this front suggests it may be something of an urban legend. Take 'Truth' here, a 'goody guy' in the eyes of many. It would be interesting to learn whether he's more anti-white now that he understands white people aren't exclusively to blame for blacks' problems or whether he was more anti-white back when he still believed they were. (Of course, he could claim he's not anti-white at all, but that would require an explanation for why his posts are so consistently anti-white.) Pro-whites need to hunt where the ducks are, and blacks ain't it.

Anonymous said...

Countenance, the numbers in Boston bear your theory out.

I look at Boston Medical Center, one of the country's best trauma hospitals, hard by the most "vibrant" areas in town, and how many gunshot victims they save. Chelsea, a majority black/Hispanic shytehole just north of the city, has more shootings and stabbings per capita than Boston, but its murder rate is lower than that of Lawrence, a demographically-similar city 35 miles north, as the transport time to BMC makes all the difference.

As the ER staff says, they come in dead and leave alive. Usually in handcuffs.

Anonymous said...

[QUOTE]Don't affluent urban liberals use geographic profiling to choose areas that have fewer people who belong in the 'youth' category?[/QUOTE]

No one admits this, of course, but:

There is a wealth of information available to the discerning home buyer via the real estate websites, the school rating websites, and Wikipedia.

This information can be used to populate variables in mathematical expressions such as:

if (H + AA) >= A then:
cross_off_list;
else:
do_further_research;

Anonymous said...

To respond to the one poster, as far as I know the 'profiling' is some bullshit dreamed up by the race baiting Left and their media sockpuppets to try and make some sort of connection with indignant Americans getting pissed off (supposedly) because Habeeb was getting profiled by the TSA after 9/11 and freedom isn't free. Or something.

Its retarded and stupid but I'm amazed at the fetishization of the police suddenly by the Left in this instance. Not surprised, since the Left are whores who have no problem engaging in cognitive dissonance to push their insane ideological agenda no matter what, just amazed that they think the PohLeece are your best friend now and you should passively be a victim in these circumstances.

I reckon it goes back to their belief of the State as the ultimate panacea, which just goes to show how fucked they are. This entire persecution of Zimmerman should wake up the undecideds to the fact that the State only cares about their national religion of cultural marxism, but what's likely to happen is they'll just change the channel and read more about the Kardashians.

Svigor said...

That was a good question Gloria raised. Surprised no one addressed it.

I've said the same thing a couple times here over the years, except for the prison rape part - I usually just tie it up with a mention of blacks' general lack of sexual restraint and impulse control. I threw in something about faster maturation rates, too. But it's totally speculative, so I rarely mention it. There's not much to address because, as Gloria mentioned, there are no stats. Lib sociologists (but, I repeat myself) probably aren't delving into it any time soon (geologically speaking).

Camlost said...

Zimmerman obviously reads the local news a lot and noticed that descriptionless "youths" seem to appear in the police blotter quite a bit. It's always "youths".

Weren't Matt Iglesias and Emily Gruendelsberger also attacked by "youths"?

Svigor said...

Here's how mau-maus and flak-catchers shit all over investigations, once they get het up:

Ex-Sanford police chief: Zimmerman probe 'taken away from us'

One example involved the 911 tapes, in which neighbors implored dispatchers to send police as a voice in the background screamed for help.

The Sanford police intended to release the tapes once the probe was over, Lee said, because you can't publicize evidence amid an investigation.

Instead, the mayor told him on March 16 the tapes had been released to Martin's family and the public. The family was asked to help identify voices, Lee said, but if police were in charge of the investigation, they wouldn't have presented evidence to a group.

"It should be done individually so there's no influence on the other people in the room," he said. "Then, there's no questions that can be brought up about how (an identification) was obtained or whether it was influenced."


That's investigation 101.

Releasing the evidence to the public was problematic, as well, because it created the potential for someone to concoct a "story about what they observed when they really didn't observe it," he said.

Martin family attorney Jasmine Rand said that she doesn't believe that playing the tapes to a room full of people "makes any difference to the outcome of the case."


Oh, hey, let's just let defense attorneys investigate crimes, then.

"We have to remember that that was played for the family in a private room because they were hearing the last moments of their son's life as he cried for help," Rand told CNN's Erin Burnett on Wednesday night. "And I think Sybrina Fulton (Martin's mother) got up and walked out of that room. She didn't sit in there and talk to everybody, because she had a visceral reaction when she heard her son yell for help and she couldn't help him because she knew he was dead."

That's really interesting, but, Martin's father heard someone else on that tape, and not his son, and testified to that effect in court.

Investigators knew letting Zimmerman walk free for 46 days was an unpopular decision -- and they took abuse for it -- "but they performed professionally. That's the mark of a strong police department."

Well, let's hope that little bug's been ironed out, now.

One of his greatest regrets, he said, is that the Zimmerman investigation ultimately shattered his childhood dream to be police chief of the community where he was raised.

I don't know his age, but if he's not too old and he wants another job like his old one, I bet some municipal official somewhere is thinking Lee would make a pretty good police chief. Hell, he could run for sheriff somewhere nearby based on his performance in this case.

Pat Boyle said...

I wake up this morning and find that the prosecution has decided to argue for the lesser included charge of child abuse against George Zimmerman.

The defense is outraged.

It does seem pretty loony. Trayvon Martin is a 6'3" man with a history of assault. Clearly the law is at odds with the biological reality.

The defense is accusing the prosecution of being devious in springing this argument at the last moment. According to the defense the prosecution has spent months preparing this argument complete with a dozen obscure precedents.

This is all rather bizarre. Heretofore the prosecution had presented a case so weak as to suggest that they were 'throwing' the case so as to not appear as biased as Mike Nifong was in the prosecutor in the Duke University Lacrosse Team rape case. But now at the very end they produce a very aggressive and unexpected argument.

We'll see.

Albertosaurus

countenance said...

Jett Davis's foremost concern is YAY RED TEAM. My foremost concern is YAY WHITE AMERICAN TEAM.

I wouldn't want to be part of a political party that got a significant percentage of non-white votes consistently. That would only mean they're screwing us over somehow.

Pat Boyle said...

Reading FBI Crime Reports is not as easy as one might imagine. The FBI accumulates statistics and presents them in a way so as to support its institutional agenda.

As far as I can tell there is no single table that bears directly on all crime by age, sex and race where the ages are broken out by single years. Because of this there is no simple unambiguous way to find statistics that bear on the question as to what is the criminality of 17 year old black males versus 30 year old black males across a number of crime types.

The table I cited was homicides only, but I don't think that that means the patterns seen there are only seen in murder. Blacks in general commit many more other crimes like auto theft, robbery and fraud than do whiles. If we had tables for those crimes I think we would see the same pattern that can be seen in homicides.

Rushton's (Wilson's) r/K theory predicts that blacks mature earlier than East Asians or whites. The data, such as they are, seems to support that. Black males seem to have a bump in the time series graph of their commission of crimes that begins before their seventeenth birthday. If all this is so then calling Trayvon Martin a child and to suppose that defending yourself against him is somehow child abuse is very wrong.

Black male teens are a dangerous population cohort. They should not be characterized as merely 'teens' which implies a transitory and innocuous maturational phase. Certainly they should not be called 'children' which implies that their acts are unintentioned and innocent.

Albertosaurus


Cail Corishev said...

This entire persecution of Zimmerman should wake up the undecideds to the fact that the State only cares about their national religion of cultural marxism, but what's likely to happen is they'll just change the channel and read more about the Kardashians.

They won't have to change the channel; any channel will make sure they take away the correct lesson from it.

As PC-whipped as cops are these days, it's amazing that the prosecution in this case is making the cops look restrained and fair.

Camlost said...

Ah, Truth.

The tireless arbiter of all things Trayvon on this blog.

If you people would put half this much effort into actually parenting your future felons we wouldn't have episodes like this.

countenance said...

Anonymous 7/11/13, 5:30 AM:

Back in the days when I listened to the St. Louis Police/Fire scanner regularly, before the monotony and the annoying voices of the affirmative action Ebonics-speaking dispatchers bored/annoyed me, I noticed that there were very frequent shootings and stabbings. Why weren't they translating to the homicide rate? Then I figured it out: Because of the emergency room.

Another variable is that gunshot wound care in ERs is getting better over time, which papers over the homicide rate.

I also understand, and this is not well known, that Federal law requires someone in the ER to call the cops when a gunshot victim comes into the ER.

Truth said...

"It does seem pretty loony. Trayvon Martin is a 6'3" man with a history of assault."

Yup, all except that he's not a man, he wasn't 6'3 and he has no history of assault that I've been able to find. Other than that you're spot on.

Now, Zimmerman on the other hand was a man, with a history of assault (his wife).

Anonymous said...

"Who gave that version again? Oh, it was Zimmerman, carry on, nothing to see here."

It's not what Zimmerman said. It's that he had a busted nose and head. Martin only had bruises on his fists.

Maybe the prosecution can get Zimmerman for assaulting Martin's fist with his face.

Truth said...

"Black male teens are a dangerous population cohort. They should not be characterized as merely 'teens' which implies a transitory and innocuous maturational phase. Certainly they should not be called 'children' which implies that their acts are unintentioned and innocent."

Well, it kind of works like that, Sport. one who announces his age with a "teen" at the end is considered a teen, I know, weird. And those younger than that are considered "children. You could learn so much from me.

"If you people would put half this much effort into actually parenting your future felons we wouldn't have episodes like this."

"My" people did, "your" people apparently did not, that's why I spend so much time correcting "you" people.

Anonymous said...

" also understand, and this is not well known, that Federal law requires someone in the ER to call the cops when a gunshot victim comes into the ER."

Yes, i guess there are stats on this buried somewhere.

Svigor said...

"It does seem pretty loony. Trayvon Martin is a 6'3" man with a history of assault."

Yup, all except that he's not a man, he wasn't 6'3 and he has no history of assault that I've been able to find. Other than that you're spot on.

Now, Zimmerman on the other hand was a man, with a history of assault (his wife).


You're embarrassing yourself with the "chile" shit. Okay, wait, so you didn't actually call him a "child," so there's that. So what was he? 17/18ths man?

Mr. Anon said...

Newsweek still exists? Who knew.

I have come to think of it as being like Soupy Sales or Charles Nelson Reilly - one of those celebrities of whom one is never sure if they are still alive, or died ten years ago.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

And what if Martin had been in a wheelchair? What about that, huh?"

Then the cops would have shot him.

Dr. Stephen J. Krune III said...

Now, Zimmerman on the other hand was a man, with a history of assault (his wife).

Wrong, as usual.

Truth said...

"I don't know his age, but if he's not too old and he wants another job like his old one, I bet some municipal official somewhere is thinking Lee would make a pretty good police chief. Hell, he could run for sheriff somewhere nearby based on his performance in this case."

Police Chief with resisting arrest and obstruction of justice convictions...as an adult? Yeah, you're a genius.

Anonymous said...

I think the media are more to blame for this than either Martin or Zimmerman.

.

"Do those young, impulsive black murderers grow out of it or are they more likely to be imprisoned as time goes on and not out and about competing in the murder stats?"

The same pattern repeats in other crimes e.g. stealing cars, burglary or many others. One component is doing it for kicks and a second component is doing it for money. The first component has a young male 14-24 (ish) age profile.

It's criminal inclination + testosterone. If someone has a high enough criminal inclination then they'll be a criminal for life but most are only criminal while their testosterone is peaking.

Mr. Anon said...

"Svigor said...

You're embarrassing yourself with the "chile" shit."

No, embarrassment requires the capacity for shame. "Truth" has no such capacity. He is a shameless liar.

Svigor said...

Police Chief with resisting arrest and obstruction of justice convictions...as an adult? Yeah, you're a genius.

When was Bill Lee charged with resisting arrest or obstruction of justice? You got a source for that?

In any event, yes, I'd rather have a police chief who resisted arrest and took a charge of obstruction of justice, and refused to knuckle under to political pressure to railroad an innocent man, than the other way around. On the face of it, Lee has shown a lot of character.

But I didn't know you were such a law and order kind of guy. But now, after your repeated trumpeting of the kind of charges that Zim and (according to you) Lee have taken (clearly not the kind of charges that are easily, and all-too-often, trumped up by cops over technicalities like fingers poking into chests, angry wives losing verbal disputes, and disagreements over jurisdiction), I can see you're clearly the Dan-Akroyd-as-Joe-Friday of the iSteveosphere. Who knew?

But yes, my making a ceteris paribus judgement, and not doing due diligence and pulling all the skeletons from Lee's closet first, has toppled me from the pinnacle of genius. Mea culpa.

P.S., it would've been more normal if he'd taken an obstruction of justice charge...as a minor?

Truth said...

"P.S., it would've been more normal if he'd taken an obstruction of justice charge...as a minor?"

Here's a hint; there's a reason they give adults longer sentences.

Svigor said...

T, Do you think he should be found guilty as charged?

Truth said...

"T, Do you think he should be found guilty as charged?"

He has his day in court, got lucky, and people get killed every day. No skin off my back.

Anonymous said...

Trayvon Martin was not a "victim", period.