ABC News has uncovered questionable police conduct in the investigation of the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white neighborhood watch captain in Florida, including the alleged "correction" of at least one eyewitness' account.
Sanford Police Chief Billy Lee said there is no evidence to dispute self-appointed neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman's assertion that he shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin out of self-defense.
"Until we can establish probable cause to dispute that, we don't have the grounds to arrest him," Lee said.
Martin had been staying at his father's girlfriend's house during the night of the NBA All-Star game Feb. 26.
The teenager went out to get some Skittles and a can of ice tea. On his way back into the gated suburban Orlando community, Martin, wearing a hood, was spotted by Zimmerman, 28.
According to law enforcement sources who heard Zimmerman's call to a non-emergency police number, he told a dispatcher "these a..holes always get away."
Zimmerman described Martin as suspicious because he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and walking slowly in the rain, police later told residents at a town hall.
A dispatcher told him to wait for a police cruiser, and not leave his vehicle.
But about a minute later, Zimmerman left his car wearing a red sweatshirt and pursued Martin on foot between two rows of townhouses, about 70 yards from where the teen was going.
Lee said Zimmerman's pursuit of Martin did not of itself constitute a crime.
Witnesses told ABC News a fist fight broke out and at one point Zimmerman, who outweighed Martin by more than 100 pounds, was on the ground and that Martin was on top.
Austin Brown, 13, was walking his dog during the time of the altercation and saw both men on the ground but separated.
Brown along with several other residents heard someone cry for help, just before hearing a gunshot. Police arrived 60 seconds later and the teen was quickly pronounced dead.
According to the police report, Zimmerman, who was armed with a handgun, was found bleeding from the nose and the back of the head, standing over Martin, who was unresponsive after being shot.
An officer at the scene overheard Zimmerman saying, "I was yelling for someone to help me but no one would help me," the report said.
Witnesses told ABC News they heard Zimmerman pronounce aloud to the breathless residents watching the violence unfold "it was self-defense," and place the gun on the ground.
But after the shooting, a source inside the police department told ABC News that a narcotics detective and not a homicide detective first approached Zimmerman. The detective pepppered Zimmerman with questions, the source said, rather than allow Zimmerman to tell his story. Questions can lead a witness, the source said.
Another officer corrected a witness after she told him that she heard the teen cry for help.
The officer told the witness, a long-time teacher, it was Zimmerman who cried for help, said the witness. ABC News has spoken to the teacher and she confirmed that the officer corrected her when she said she heard the teenager shout for help.
The Sanford Police Department refused to release 911 calls by witnesses and neighbors.
Several of the calls, ABC News has learned, contain the sound of the single gunshot.
Lee publically admitted that officers accepted Zimmerman's word at the scene that he had no police record.
Two days later during a meeting with Trayvon's father Tracy Martin, an officer told the father that Zimmerman's record was "squeaky clean."
Yet public records showed that Zimmerman was charged with battery against on officer and resisting arrest in 2005, a charge which was later expunged.
Zimmerman has not responded to requests for a comment.
"I asked [the police] well did you check out my son's record?" Tracy Martin told ABC News in an interview Sunday. "What about his?...Trayvon was innocent."
via abcnews.go.com
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George Zimmerman Neighbors Complained About Aggressive Tactics Before Trayvon Martin Killing
A volunteer community watch captain who shot an unarmed Florida teenager to death last month had been the subject of complaints by neighbors in his gated community for aggressive tactics, a homeowner said.
George Zimmerman has not been charged in the Feb. 26 shooting of Trayvon Martin, 17, who was walking home from a convenience store in Sanford, Fla., near Orlando. Zimmerman, who patrolled the Retreat at Twin Lakes development in his own car, had been called aggressive in earlier complaints to the local police and the homeowner's association, according to a homeowner who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
At an emergency homeowner’s association meeting on March 1, “one man was escorted out because he openly expressed his frustration because he had previously contacted the Sanford Police Department about Zimmerman approaching him and even coming to his home,” the resident wrote in an email to HuffPost. “It was also made known that there had been several complaints about George Zimmerman and his tactics" in his neighborhood watch captain role.
The meeting was attended by Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee, the detective assigned to the investigation and an unnamed member of the city council, according to the homeowner’s association newsletter. The chief couldn't immediately be reached for comment about the complaints. A member of the homeowner’s association board, who asked not to be quoted by name, said she “hadn’t heard about any complaints” about Zimmerman. Zimmerman's phone number is disconnected and efforts to reach him have been unsuccessful.
Talk of prior complaints against Zimmerman comes as pressure mounts on law enforcement. Protesters have gathered outside Sanford police headquarters. The Martin's family and attorneys have held press conferences calling the killing an outrage and pleading for Zimmerman’s arrest. High school classmates and citizens are granting interviews to reporters asking why no one has been charged. And as the story continues to gain national media attention, civil rights leaders, including members of the NAACP and the Rev. Al Sharpton, said they are preparing to join the family of Martin, who was black. Zimmerman is white.
“This case is disturbing to say the least,” Sharpton told Huffpost. “This is appalling, to think that this guy admitted to initiating the conversation and that there was no crime other than the killing of this young man. Yet, [Zimmerman] is walking around with no threat of an arrest.”
Sharpton said he will travel to Florida this week.
Zimmerman called police the evening of the shooting to report Martin as a suspicious person, police have said. A dispatcher told Zimmerman to stand down and an officer was on the way. Zimmerman confronted the youth anyway and Martin was shot in the chest with Zimmerman's 9 mm pistol, police said. Police questioned Zimmerman, then released him.
According to Martin’s family, police initially told them that Zimmerman said he acted in self-defense and that his record was “squeaky-clean.” Public records show he was arrested in Orange County in 2005 on charges of resisting arrest with violence and battery on a law enforcement officer. Those charges were later dropped.
Benjamin Crump, the Martin family’s attorney, filed a public records lawsuit last week seeking the 911 recordings for the night of the shooting. Crump said people with access to the tapes told him Zimmerman made a comment about Martin’s race during the call and said he had no intention of letting the youth get away because, “they always get away.”
“I don’t think they have any intention on arresting this white man for killing this black boy,” Crump said on Sharpton’s radio show Monday.Chief Lee said during a Monday afternoon news conference that his department’s investigation should be concluded by Tuesday and delivered to the Seminole County State Attorney’s Office. Lynne Bumpus-Hooper, a spokeswoman for the State Attorney’s Office, said once the case is handed over “it will be thoroughly digested and we will make decisions.”
Protestors jeered Lee during the news conference when he said he does not believe his investigators have enough evidence to charge Zimmerman in the killing, according to local news accounts. Lee said that he believes that “we can get through all the ugly thoughts and all the disagreements and all the ill will and hard feelings and truly come together as a community.”“It is with that thought that we want to make sure that we due a fair and complete and thorough investigation so that we can reach some form of justice with this event,” Lee said. He added “that there is the right for someone that has a concealed weapons permit to carry that weapon” and that police support the neighborhood watch program.
“In this case Mr. Zimmerman has made the statement of self defense," Lee said. "Until we can establish probable cause to dispute that, we don’t have the grounds to arrest him.”
One person shouted, "The black community sees your department protecting the shooter," and "a little black boy is dead."
Martin, a high school junior, who had hoped to go to college and become an aviation mechanic, his family said. He lived with is mother in Miami and was visiting his father and his father’s fiancée in Sanford the weekend he was killed. During the NBA All-Star Game, he walked to a nearby store to get candy for his little brother.
Arriving police found Martin’s 140-pound body face-down in a patch of grass less than 100 feet from his family’s home. The young man was unarmed, with a few dollars and a pack of Skittles in one pocket and a canned iced tea in the other.
“He was a typical teenager, he loved life,” Tracy Martin, the teen’s father, said. “But now, all the family wants is justice.”
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Trayvon Martin's Family
Calls For Arrest Of
Man Who Police Say
Confessed To Shooting
(UPDATE)
by Trymaine Leetrymaine.lee@huffingtonpost.com
Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American teenager, was shot and killed in a gated community in Florida late last month by a white neighborhood watch captain, according to police. But the watch captain, George Zimmerman — a 28-year-old college student who has admitted to police that he shot the young man — still walks free. And Martin's family is pleading for answers and demanding justice.
At this point there are more questions than answers in the young man's death, but this much is known: Martin was packing little more than a bag of candy and a canned iced tea on the night he was killed.
"He had a gun, and Trayvon had Skittles," Benjamin Crump, a family attorney, told The Huffington Post this afternoon.
Martin, 17, a high school junior who lived with his mother in Miami, was visiting his father and stepmother at their home in Sanford, a suburb of Orlando, on the weekend of Feb. 26. During halftime of the NBA All-Star Game, Martin's family said he walked to a nearby convenience store to get some candy for his younger brother. On his way back home, according to reports, he caught the attention of George Zimmerman, a 26-year-old college student and self-appointed captain of The Retreat at Twin Lakes neighborhood watch.
Zimmerman, armed with a 9mm handgun, trailed the boy in his car. At some point, Zimmerman called 911, telling the operator there was a "suspicious person in the area," according to a police report acquired by HuffPost.
Not long after the call, some sort of altercation ensued between Zimmerman and Martin. Then neighbors said they heard gunfire.
The Sanford Police arrived and found Martin lying face down on a patch of grass about 70 feet from his family's home, a pack of candy in one pocket and an iced tea in the other.
"What happened between him being confronted, up to the point where he got shot, nobody knows but him and that guy," Tracy Martin, the boy's father, told HuffPost. "I'm looking for justice for my family. I want answers but I don't have any to give — not for his mother, his brothers or sisters. We don't have nothing, but we want answers."
According to reports, Zimmerman's gun was legal and he has claimed to authorities that he shot Martin in self-defense. Crump, the family's attorney, described Zimmerman as a "loose cannon" and questioned why any neighborhood watchman would be carrying a loaded gun. He has asked law enforcement authorities to turn over recordings of the call to 911 that Zimmerman made the night of the shooting, in the hopes that it might shed some light on the incident. Crump said if the recordings are not given to the family, he will file a public records lawsuit on their behalf.
Crump said the family is demanding that the Sanford Police arrest Zimmerman, and that the Seminole County State Attorney's Office review the case and press charges.
"They say they are still investigating," Crump said. "I'm not sure what there is to investigate. What's suspicious about this kid? That's what the family is crying out, that our kid is like any other kid."
A call and an email to Chief Bill Lee of the Sanford Police Department were not immediately returned on Thursday. A phone number listed for Zimmerman has been disconnected, and his current whereabouts are not known.
Lynn Bumpus-Hooper, a spokeswoman for the Seminole County State Attorney's Office, said that the office has not received the case from the police, and until an arrest is made, it will not be involved.
"We have not received a case [from the Sanford PD] yet, but we will give it our full consideration when we do," Bumpus-Hooper said. She said it is not rare for several weeks to pass before the State Attorney's Office receives a homicide or murder case from the police.
Meanwhile, a heartbroken father struggles to deal with the weight of his son's death. He tells the story of his son's heroics at age 9, when he pulled his father from a burning kitchen, and of his love of sports and horseback riding and his dreams of attending college and becoming an aviation mechanic.
"Right now we're all on pins and needles," Tracy Martin said. "When I asked the police why there's been no arrest, they told me they respected [Zimmerman's] background, that he studied criminal justice for four years and that he was squeaky clean."
He continued: "My question to them was, did they run my child's background check? They said yes. I asked them what they came up with, and they said nothing. So I asked if Zimmerman having a clean record, did that give him the right to shoot and kill an unarmed kid?"
In the "Committee News" section of last month's issue of the gated community's newsletter, "Retreat Reflections," the neighborhood watch committee asked for additional volunteers and warned: "Please keep your eyes open" and "If you see something suspicious or out of place, report it!"
For more information, it said, call George Zimmerman.
UPDATE:
Chief Bill Lee of the Sanford Police Department on Thursday evening said the account given by Martin’s family and attorney is correct, that Zimmerman saw the young man walking home from the store. He said that Zimmerman did indeed call 911 and report a suspicious person, and that he was told not to follow him.
“For some reason he felt that Trayvon, the way that he was walking or appeared seemed suspicious to him,” Lee said. “He called this in and at one part of this initial call [the dispatcher] recommends him not to follow Trayvon. A police officer is on the way at that point.”
Lee said that Zimmerman instead followed Martin.
“I believe that Mr. Zimmerman was trying to, by his account, find an address to give the officers and also trying to keep Trayvon in eyesight.”
Zimmerman told the police that Martin noticed that he was being followed and asked, “what’s your problem?”
That's when a physical confrontation ensued, Lee said. And moments later, Martin was shot.
Lee said that Zimmerman has a legal permit to carry the weapon used in the shooting, and that he told police that he shot Martin in self-defense.
“He felt the need to defend himself,” Lee said. “ I don’t think it was his intent to go and shoot somebody” that night.
The chief said the police have met with Zimmerman on two to three separate occasions, and that their investigation should be wrapped up this week. He said all of the evidence in the case will be delivered to the Seminole County State Attorney’s Office soon after.
“We’re going to present all the information and if they feel that based on all of the evidence that we’re able to produce that Mr. Zimmerman has satisfied the requirement that he shot in self defense, they may, but if not, he would be charged with some type of homicide or manslaughter,” Lee said.
“It is certainly and absolutely a tragedy, especially for the Martin Family,” Lee said. "No one expects their teenage son to go the store and never come back.”
>via: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/family-of-trayvon-martin-_n_1332756....