NEW WITNESS CONFIRMS TRAYVON MARTIN WAS THE VICTIM

[sixtiessman]

58. What we need to know

The case against Zimmerman will go as it will. We can't influence it much; sure, we can protest if he is not indited and all but that process and a trial will take months if not years. What we need to know now is the degree to which a network of laws (established to protect property at the expense of innocent people's lives) -- like the "stand-your-ground laws -- is being set up (over 20-states already have this law because of ALEC) without any changes or affirmations regarding Police SOP required to enforce these laws so as to maintain the great Democracy that we think we live in. For example:
1. What is the official government body that monitors Police SOP in different types of cases? Do we have one or do States have their own? There once was national legislation for the creation and monitoring of standards within our Police and Corrections Departments -- what happened to it?
2. Is there a unified SOP for all police departments for different types of cases? For example, is a case falling under this "stand-your-ground" law treated the same as any other murder where the killer claims self-defense?
3. Why didn't the Sanford police confiscate the supposed weapon and submit it for ballistic testing? Isn't this SOP even if the shooter claims self-defense? Why did they not compound Zimmerman's clothes (to see whether or not any of Trayvon's blood was present)? Why did they not take samples from Zimmerman's hands and fingernails for more DNA testing? Why did they not (or did they) take a signed statement (confession) from Zimmerman with a lawyer present (can you believe that his father, a retired Va Supreme Court Justice, would not have told his son something like "don't say anything until we get a lawyer down there to be with you." I am sure the Police had to know who Zimmerman's father is, so I am sure they had to think about Miranderizing him; if they did not do so, they must have been told not to worry about that.
WHY IS THIS ALL SO IMPORTANT? For one thing, Zimmerman could always change his plea and claim he did not do it; that his father said it was safer to claim self-defense under the "stand-your-ground bill. Then, where would they be. If all this does not matter to them, what do the Police in the other 20 states (with this law) think? Have changes been made to the SOP's with all their PDs? THAT'S THE POINT, folks. It all been treated with nonchalance -- no biggie, our Police can take care of it. That is the attitude that allows Fascist governments to develop.
The Nazis began experimenting with poison gas for the purpose of mass murder in late 1939 with the killing of mental patients ("euthanasia&quot . But, there had already been several incidents in Poland where Jews had been locked into 'school' buses while the exhaust had been redirected into the bus to kill the prisoners. They did it more and more as they found they could get away with it. The picture of Police professionalism that we get from most of the 50-odd criminal justice series we watch on TV is totally wrong for most local jurisdictions and we need to demand that that situation changes. In the late 70's and early 80's, we had LEAAA -- the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration -- with a huge grant program to professionalize the Criminal Justice System but that disappeared when Reagan came in and very little has been done since then. We need to change that soon or we are going to be real sorry.
Lets honor Trayvon by turning lobbying for the return of professionalism and accountability to standards by the thousands of police forces that exist in this country.