Quote:
Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin
People in neighborhood watch programs follow people every day. That is a good thing, not a bad thing. It saves property and lives.
On your other point, if a police officer gives you an order, you have to follow it or there is a good chance you will get arrested. When a 911 operator advises you, "We don't need you to do that", that is advice. That is not an order. A person is not compelled by law to follow that advice.
In this case, in hindsight we know that Zimmerman should have followed the advice of the 911 operator. As you said, the incident would not have happened had Zimmerman taken the advice. Hindsight is 20/20. But I'm sure there are hundreds of similar situations that happen across the country every year, where there is a different ending. The neighborhood watch person follows the suspect until the police arrive, and the suspect ends up being arrested (because they turned out to be a criminal), or released because the police determine that there was no criminal intent on the part of the suspect.
It's easy to second-guess Zimmerman in hindsight, after you know that this was the one case in a thousand, where there was a bad ending. But what about the other thousand of cases a year (where a neighborhood watch person follows a person until the police arrive), and there is a happy ending?
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the past means nothing. the neighborhood watch means nothing. The dead kid is what this is all about. And taking the law into your own hands with a firearm.
It would be a WHOLE DIFFERENT STORY if Martin was shot while breaking into someone's home. That wasnt the case. He was innocently walking home to his dads house, thats all. If he threw some punches because he was sticking up for himself for being followed by some cop wanna be looney toon, that still does NOT give Zimmerman the right to kill the teenager.