Aripyanfar wrote:
Gbaji, listen to the plain evidence we have from the call to the cops. It's in post 36 of this thread. It's only about 4 minutes long, and it tells us so much.
I've listened to the whole audio several times now, and provided a fairly complete response to it pretty early in this thread.
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Zimmerman calls up to report a "real suspicious guy" in a neighbourhood that has had a string of break-ins in it. He says the man " looks up to no good or he's on drugs or something, it's raining and he's just walking around, looking about"..."he's staring, looking at all the houses". (Martin is new to the area, he's on his cellphone which Zimmerman can't make out or doesn't describe, and he's on the way to or from a store to get snackfood.) Zimmerman says the guy "Looks black...he's wearing a dark hoodie, like a grey hoodie, jeans or sweatpants, and white tennis shoes". He can't describe ANYTHING else about the man at this point, because when Martin turns and comes towards him, ZImmerman confirms he is a black male, is "wearing a button on his shirt", "he's got his hand in his waistband", " he's in his late teens", "He's got something in his hands," (he can't tell what it is it's so dark. Presumably, this is Martin's cell phone.) He can give no other identifiers, which by the whole tone of the call, Zimmerman is eager to do.
I'm unsure why any of this is problematic. This is *exactly* what he's supposed to do. He's giving the police the best physical description of the subject possible. Let's not forget that it's dark and lightly raining at the time he calls.
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(In fact it's so dark that night, Zimmerman can't make out whether the pants Martin is wearing are jeans or not... one of the most basic wardrobe items and identifiers) Zimmerman makes clear that he's pegged the man as a burglar, by saying "These ********** always get away".
He's made it clear that he thinks the guy might be a burglar. Again, what's your point here? So now it's a crime to call the police if you see someone suspicious walking through your neighborhood?
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At this point, Zimmerman CANNOT see any tattoos or gold teeth.
So? First off, I made it clear that those are things I have not yet confirmed, so I'm not basing my arguments on them. I've certainly never argued that Zimmerman saw these things and thus decided Martin was up to no good.
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Nothing about Martin's appearance factors into Zimmerman's suspicions about him except that he's a strange man in a hoodie, walking alone at night in the rain, looking around instead of walking fast head-down through the rain.
Which is why Zimmerman never says that the guy's suspicious because of his appearance, or what clothes he's wearing. You're assuming that because he describes Martin's skin color and clothes that those things must be what makes him "look suspicious". But it was his
actions and behavior that made Zimmerman think he was suspicious. Let's not forget that Zimmerman wasn't sure if Martin was black when he first called the cops. Strange for someone who is supposedly targeting Martin because of his race.
The relevance of those other things (gold teeth, tattoos, twitter name, online comments, suspensions at school) is to counter the perception that Martin was a squeeky clean kid who could not possibly have been doing anything wrong, and thus Zimmerman could not possibly have had a legitimate reason to think he was suspicious. If he's someone who's been suspended for having drug materials on him, and another time for having graffiti materials on him, and yet another time for having stolen goods on him, and seems to habitually be getting into places and things he's not supposed to be into, then this supports the idea that he might have been doing something while walking home from that store that Zimmerman could have legitimately viewed as suspicious.
Let's not forget that the entire case against Zimmerman basically rests on the assumption that Martin could not have been doing anything suspicious because he's such a good kid. But if our perception of him as a good kid isn't quite as correct as we were initially lead to believe, then perhaps we should re-assess our perception of the actions of Zimmerman. If Martin had originally been described as a troubled teen, currently on suspension from school, with a history of theft, drugs, and vandalism, and a healthy disregard for authority figures, wouldn't most people view this whole thing completely differently?
Public perception is fueling this. But that perception has been manipulated from day one to make them more supportive of Martin and more angry at Zimmerman. I'm just trying to cut through the allegations and claims and speculation and look just at what we know to be true and then assess the likelihood of the actual events that transpired.
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The girlfriend's reported version says, and their phone call to each other might bear this out, that Martin asked "Why are you following me?" to the guy in the car, and getting no satisfactory response, he and the girlfriend decide he should get away from the car and lose it. Martin decides to walk quickly, his girlfriend urges him to run fast, which he does later when Zimmerman keeps following him, against repeated police suggestions not to follow, to park and wait for the police to get there.
Sigh. I've mentioned this several times now. There is
zero evidence from any statement that Zimmerman followed Martin while driving his car. Why do people keep assuming that he followed him in his car? You've even gone so far with this fantasy as to invent a statement by police telling Zimmerman to park his car and wait for police.
Listen to the police tape. Zimmerman was clearly already parked when he made the call. Read the released statements from the girlfriend. She never says that Martin is being followed by Zimmerman while Zimmerman is in the car. And both Zimmerman's statement and the girlfriends seem to support that the first time either of them spoke, they were both on foot.
Where are you getting this? Why do people keep repeating this? It's crazy. Even after I point out that this is just made up and there's no evidence of this at all, it keeps getting repeated over and over. Like somehow in your minds, if Zimmerman is following in his car, it makes him a more sinister threat, so you pretend that's what he must have done. Stop putting the cart before the horse. Stop repeating things purely because they make the position you've taken seem stronger. Look at the facts. Look at the statements from various people involved in the events. Judge *only* on those things.
I'm just asking people to use their brains here.