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<\/a>That young black man Trayvon Martin was killed last year by white neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman is not in dispute. But as Zimmerman\u2019s trial begins today it may be harder to establish what represents justice.<\/p>\nFrank Taaffe ponders how fast the gated community here in Sanford where he bought his house seven years ago went to pot once the economy went south. Other buyers went into foreclosure or rented their homes out to strangers. Burglaries went up. A heroin ring was cracked by the police a few doors down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could see the ambience here eroding,\u201d Mr Taaffe, 56, says. \u201cI don\u2019t want to say darker, but that too.\u201d Until a few months ago, the only gap in the perimeter fence around the community \u2013 \u201cthe Retreat at Twin Lakes\u201d \u2013 was here right behind his house. \u201cThe scum that used to come through here\u2026\u201d he says, gesturing to the sliver of grass separating him from next door. \u201cThis was the corridor of crime.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Taaffe doesn\u2019t mean to be racist discussing the trial that starts today of his friend, George Zimmerman, accused of murdering Trayvon Martin last year here at Twin Lakes. Zimmerman is white Hispanic while Trayvon, just 17, was black.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are cases of African-Americans being castigated because of the colour of their skin, I do believe that,\u201d he acknowledges. It\u2019s just that he thinks he knows better than most what happened here that February night.<\/p>\n
Others in Sanford might tell you something similar. No town wants to be called racist. \u201cWe have been portrayed as some kind of racially charged city but that\u2019s not the case,\u201d City Manager Norton Bonaparte notes over coffee at a recent Chamber of Commerce breakfast at Sanford Zoo. \u201cThis was a tragic interaction between two individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n
But that, of course, is a sparse version of the truth and even Mr Bonaparte knows it. The reason this trial will be besieged by media crews from around the world has everything to do with the perception, at least, of racial\u00a0 stereotyping. It\u2019s also why everything is being done to get ready for when the verdict comes in \u2013 to keep Sanford from blowing up all over again.<\/p>\n
The worst might actually be over. What ignited the African-Americans nearly 18 months ago and sparked Trayvon support rallies everywhere was the police decision to release Mr Zimmerman without charge soon after taking him in. He had belonged to the Twin Lakes Neighbourhood Watch, had seen Trayvon outside a house (Mr Taaffe\u2019s, in fact), figured he was \u201cup to no good\u201d and given chase. He didn\u2019t know the boy was staying in the house of his father\u2019s girlfriend at Twin Lakes and was merely returning from a corner shop.<\/p>\n
Most outrageous to some was the notion that he had been freed under Florida\u2019s \u201cStand Your Ground\u201d law that says if you are facing possible lethal danger you are not obliged to try to flee and can act right there to save yourself. That means shooting your assailant if you have a permit to carry a weapon, which Mr Zimmerman did, without fear of prosecution. The African-American community saw a pattern.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back,\u201d explains Francis Oliver, who runs the Goldsboro Historical Museum in a double-wide trailer in the worn down and mostly black Goldsboro section of Sanford. \u201cThey got the man who pulled the trigger, he admitted pulling the trigger and they had him in the police station. He tells them he stood his ground. You can\u2019t stand your ground against a boy with a bag of Skittles and a bottle of iced tea.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Mr Bonaparte, who is black, puts it at the Chamber breakfast, the killing of Trayvon Martin highlighted what \u201chas not been resolved in America even going back to the lynchings. A white man shot and killed a black person and nothing happened, again. That\u2019s what struck a chord.\u201d Locally, he adds, \u201cit was the like the removal of a scab that showed that the healing that should have happened had not\u201d.<\/p>\n
But that early boil of outrage has been partially lanced. Mr Zimmerman, 28, turned himself in and eventually was charged with second-degree murder. The then chief of police, Bill Lee, was sacked by Mr Bonaparte. (Mr Lee was white and his replacement is black.) In the spring of this year, lawyers for Mr Zimmerman said they would not use a Stand Your Ground defence. To some it is enough that the wheels of justice are finally turning as they should.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s in God\u2019s hands now,\u201d says Frederick Turner, a Goldsboro resident, \u201cbut I can\u2019t say the community is happy because a young black man died for no reason\u201d. He also echoed many in voicing dismay at the attempts by the defence to introduce evidence, including records from his mobile phone, that disparage Trayvon as wayward at least, even a wannabe gangster with an enthusiasm for marijuana and violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll that stuff doesn\u2019t have nothing to do with what happened to him in those seconds, minutes and hours.\u201d Even if the judge in the case refuses to admit it, the publicity around these claims is unlikely to have escaped potential jurors.<\/p>\n
Jury selection begins today. When it is over and the trial proper begins, the nub will be determining exactly what happened in those \u201cseconds and minutes\u201d between Mr Zimmernan spying the teenager outside Mr Taaffe\u2019s house and shooting him from close range.<\/p>\n
We know a bit \u2013 for example that he got out of his car and pursued the youngster on foot through the neighbourhood. It\u2019s on the tapes of his call with the police dispatcher, who asked: \u201cAre you following him?\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d he replied. \u201cOK, we don\u2019t need you to do that,\u201d said the dispatcher. \u201cOK,\u201d Zimmerman said. But he followed him anyway.<\/p>\n
The difficulty is that no one else actually witnessed that final, fatal confrontation at a bend on Twin Trees Road, about a minute from Mr Taaffe\u2019s house if you are running quickly. Some residents phoned the emergency services and screaming is heard on the tapes of those calls but experts do not agree which of the two men is doing the screaming. Do the lacerations that were on the back of Mr Zimmerman\u2019s head support his claim that it was Trayvon who turned on him and that he fired in self-defence? Or was Trayvon indeed the sole victim?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s called \u2018prevent-defence\u2019 \u2013 it\u2019s a football term,\u201d say Mr Taaffe, who expects to be called as a witness by both sides. \u201cThat\u2019s what [Zimmerman] did. He cared for his neighbours and for his community. He wasn\u2019t profiling anyone\u2026 He wasn\u2019t chasing anybody. How could it be Trayvon screaming? If it was me, I would have gone into \u2018prevent-defence\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, Mr Taaffe, who is in internet marketing, is about as exasperated now as the Travyon Martin supporters were when Mr Zimmerman was first allowed to walk free.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis case has become so polarised and the other side just don\u2019t want to take the cotton wool out of their ears. Where is the common sense? What happened to common sense?\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the verdict he is in no doubt. \u201cGeorge Zimmerman will walk out a free man,\u201d he predicts. \u201cBut he will have to spend the rest of his life either in hiding or trying to justify his actions.\u201d Such are the passions of this case. – The Independent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
That young black man Trayvon Martin was killed last year by white neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman is not in dispute. But as Zimmerman\u2019s trial begins today it may be harder to establish what represents justice. Frank Taaffe ponders how fast the gated community here in Sanford where he bought his house seven years ago … Continue reading “Trayvon Martin: America takes sides”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[1853,324],"class_list":["post-5012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","tag-racial-politics","tag-trayvon-martin"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/trayvonmartindoublefinger.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5012"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5015,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5012\/revisions\/5015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}