I’m going to give you a scenario. You are a police officer. You receive a call in your squad car stating
that gunshots were fired, you are needed on the scene. When you arrive, you see with your two eyes
that a young man is lying immobile on the ground and an older man is standing
by, waiting for you to take action.
What do you think
the police should do in this situation?
Should you, the police officer, stand with the shooter by
the side of the road, get his account, and then let him walk away? Or should you ask the man to please come back
with you to the station so that you can fully hear his version of events?
By now I’m sure you know that I’m talking about the shooting
death of Trayvon Martin. The man who
shot him, George Zimmerman, as far as I can tell, has not been inside his local
police precinct to discuss the night that he shot Trayvon Martin.
Why wasn’t he at least been brought in for questioning?
It is not okay with me, as a citizen of the United States,
to know that someone could walk up to me, shoot me, claim self-defense and then
be allowed to walk away. It is not okay
with me for George Zimmerman to fatally shoot Trayvon Martin and have not undergone a
rigorous police questioning.
Maybe I watch too much Law
and Order. And I have different
rights and laws surrounding me as a citizen of Illinois than does George
Zimmerman as a citizen of Florida. He
was licensed to carry a handgun and he is afforded the right to “stand his
ground” under Florida law. I may
disagree with every single part of that last sentence but that is completely
beside the point because the law is the law.
But I beg you, please, set these particulars aside. Allow yourself one minute to fully picture
the scene on that street in that Florida neighborhood that night. George Zimmerman stands his ground and as a
result a young man bleeds to death, killed by George’s actions. George Zimmerman answers a few questions from
police and walks away into the night while Trayvon Martin's body is taken away to
the morgue.
Maybe George Zimmerman did the right thing to intervene that
night. But did he do the right thing to shoot Trayvon? If he had somehow detained Trayvon, would we
have found out that Trayvon got the Skittles and iced tea but then was going to
break into someone’s house? Would we
have never heard the name Trayvon Martin, if George Zimmerman had listened to
the 911 dispatcher who told him not to follow Trayvon?
Whether Trayvon was a future statistic in the well-worn
tales of good boys gone bad, we’ll never know.
I do know that Trayvon’s mother will never have a “normal” life
again. Her baby, her son who was
precious to her no matter how he could have turned out, is gone forever. Everything about Trayvon, her past marriage,
her current life – all of it now belongs to us.
She is in the spotlight and we may never forget her. I pray that we never forget Trayvon.
But more than anything, I pray that we let the race debate
fall to the side here. Maybe the
shooting was racially motivated. Maybe
George Zimmerman profiled Trayvon as up to no good because he had his hood up –
as he walked home in the rain. But maybe
George was just calling it how he saw it, because maybe George also watched too
much Law and Order. Maybe George was hyper-concerned about his
community and couldn’t allow anyone to look suspicious on the streets where he
kept his home – the one place in the world where he felt entitled to safety and
security.
All I want everyone to do is put themselves on that street
in Florida, that sad night. Tell me what
you think is right. What should have
happened between George and Trayvon, George and the police, the community and
George and Trayvon and the police?
Looking back on it, it sure seems like it was ALL WRONG to
me. My heart aches over all of this.
