Pretty much everything George Zimmerman’s father says in this interview is demonstrable bullshit. All you need to do to prove this to yourself is to read the 911 call, look at Google Maps, and look at the video of Zimmerman arriving at the police station on the night of the incident. Here is Dad’s account:
Because there has been a lot of break-ins in the area, Robert said George thought it suspicious that someone would not be walking on the street or the sidewalk on a rainy night — that Martin would be walking between the town homes. He said after making those observations, his son decided to call the police.
“He called the non-emergency number first, and they asked him where he was, because he was at the rear of the town houses and there was no street sign,” said Robert.Even though a dispatcher told George Zimmerman not to follow Martin, his father said his son continued his pursuit to locate an address to give to police.
“He lost sight of the individual, he continued to walk down the same sidewalk to the next street, so he could get an address for the police,” he said.
“He went to the next street, realized where he was and was walking to his vehicle. It’s my understanding, at that point, Trayvon Martin walked up to him and asked him, ‘Do you have a [expletive] problem?’ George said, ‘No, I don’t have a problem,’ and started to reach for his cell phone… at that point, he (Martin) was punching him in the nose, his nose was broken and he was knocked to the concrete.”
Robert said Trayvon, “continued to beat George, and at some point, George pulled his pistol and did what he did.”
The only time that Trayvon Martin was walking between the homes was when he took the sidewalk off of Twin Trees Road. And Zimmerman called 911 well before he ever got to that sidewalk. Prior to that, Martin was seeking shelter from the rain at the Clubhouse (which we know from his girlfriend who was talking to him on the phone). Zimmerman initially gave the Clubhouse as an address, but he made clear that Trayvon Martin was no longer at the Clubhouse:
911 dispatcher: OK, you said that’s 1111 Retreat View or 111?
Zimmerman: That’s the clubhouse.
911 dispatcher: He’s near the clubhouse now?
Zimmerman: Yeah, now he’s coming toward me. He’s got his hands in his waist band. And he’s a black male…
…
Zimmerman: OK. These assholes. They always get away.
When you come to the clubhouse, you come straight in and you go left. Actually, you would go past the clubhouse.
911 dispatcher: OK, so it’s on the left hand side of the clubhouse?
Zimmerman: Yeah. You go in straight through the entrance and then you would go left. You go straight in, don’t turn and make a left.
He’s running.
911 dispatcher: He’s running? Which way is he running?
Zimmerman: Down toward the other entrance of the neighborhood.
911 dispatcher: OK, which entrance is that he’s headed towards?
Zimmerman: The back entrance. Fucking coons. [or maybe “goons”].
It’s easy to pinpoint Zimmerman and Martin’s location from this conversation. They are on Twin Trees Road which basically connects the front entrance to the rear entrance of the gated community. There is no place to be walking in between homes on Twin Trees Road because all the homes are connected. When you come to the bend in the road, however, there is a sidewalk that leads around to the backyards of the homes, and that is where Trayvon Martin ran. And that is where he died. So, Zimmerman’s father is wrong. His son did not observe Trayvon Martin walking between homes before he called 911. He also was not near the rear of the townhouses. He was either in or near to his SUV which was located on Twin Trees Road. He didn’t pursue Trayvon Martin in order to obtain an address to give to the police. He had already provided an address and specific details about the location. He had also arranged for the police to call him when they arrived. He didn’t go to the next street because there is no next street. There is a bend in the road, and he didn’t go down the bend in the road but onto the sidewalk. He wasn’t coming back to his vehicle either. He went down the sidewalk, around the back of the houses, and confronted Trayvon Martin who asked him why he was following him.
The next part of Zimmerman’s dad’s account is now in severe doubt because, despite the initial police report (pdf), the video of Zimmerman’s arrival at the police station shows that he has no visible wounds, no bandages, no cut on the back of his head, no swelling around the nose, no visible discomfort, and no grass or wetness apparent on his back. He doesn’t look like he was attacked at all.
This does not square at all with Officer Timothy Smith’s report that: “While I was in such close contact with Zimmerman, I could observe that his back appeared to be wet and was covered with grass, as if he had been laying on his back on the ground. He also was bleeding from his nose and back of his head…Zimmerman was placed in the rear of my police vehicle and given first aid by the SFD. “
While Zimmerman’s back could have dried off on the ride to the police station and someone could have brushed the grass off his jacket, the lack of any wounds or bandages calls Officer Smith’s entire report into question.
The fact that his father’s explanation doesn’t square with any of the known facts in the least is another damning blow. It now appears that the police covered up this incident and filed false police reports. A lot more people than Zimmerman could be going to jail.
Where is the fire department or EMT report about what they saw or did for Zimmerman? Someone had to come … a person was shot. Wet jacket? Didn’t someone say it was raining??
yeah, I don’t know if was raining at the moment of the confrontation but it had been raining hard enough that Trayvon sought shelter at the Clubhouse.
And if you were under shelter (at the clubhouse) a quarter mile from your house and it was raining, might you not run or hurry to get home?
Sure, but that’s not what happened.
It’s not too hard to combine her account with Zimmerman’s 911 call.
The call took place as Martin was walking from the Clubhouse down Tree Trees Road to the sidewalk at the bend in the road. He saw Zimmerman eyeballing him and decided to run around the back of the houses, which was on his way home anyway. Zimmerman took off after him. For a moment, Martin was out of sight put Zimmerman caught up with him in the backyards and that is where it ended. His girlfriend’s call ended one minute before police arrived and Martin was already dead.
Got it all figured out, eh?
All except yourselves.
George Zimmerman a racist? Look in the mirror first.
AG
Don’t bother reading Arthur’s diary. I can sum it up for you:
“The REAL racists are the people who think that George Zimmerman had a problem with black people. The poor guy was just trying to protect his neighborhood from criminals. How dare you notice that the people he kept calling the police about were black?”
it’s actually far worse than that. He’s actually trying to craft a defense that he didn’t know he was black.
Personally, I think what probably happened is that he looked like he was acting weird because he was talking on his phone but he was using an ear piece or headset. You know how you can kind of walk around aimlessly looking vacantly at stuff while you’re on the phone?
It was raining and he wasn’t walking purposively. That’s probably a major contributing factor to why Zimmerman called 911.
But it’s also true that Zimmerman assumed he was an asshole based on no information other than his appearance. It’s also true that he called him a coon or a goon.
The police also seem to have concocted a cover story for him and then leaked out inaccurate witness accounts and nasty irrelevant information about the victim.
But AG is concerned that we might see race as a factor in all this.
He also seems to think that Hispanics by definition can’t harbor derogatory stereotypes about blacks, because, you know, THEY’RE COLORED TOO. Spoken like a true white person, for whom white and not-white are the only two meaningful categories.
See how easy it is to play that game, Arthur?
Right. Also, consider this. In the police report (pdf) of Officer Ricardo Ayala, he says, “Upon arrival Ofc. T. Smith had a white male, later identified as George Zimmerman, in custody.” Officer Tim Smith’s reports say, “As I walked between the building I observed a white male, wearing a red jacket and blue jeans.” Despite this, AG writes the following:
I don’t know. You think a guy named Ricardo Ayala might be able to pick out a fellow Latino from the distance of a few feet? No? Then what is Arthur talking about? And why is this relevant in any way?
Supposedly because a guy who looked at a black teenager and said “these assholes always get away” and whispered “fucking coons (or goons)” under his breath is being unfairly represented as having some racial animus. Because the police department treated the black victim little better than roadkill and appear to have aided the perpetrator in concocting a cover story.
And don’t forget that AG trashed the kid for smoking weed and putting graffiti on lockers as if that is unusually deviant behavior deserving of death.
I’m through with this, Booman. Your half-truths and prevarications are insufferable. This blog has turned into DKos Jr. No one wants to think about anything here anymore, it’s just clomp clomp clomp clomp clomp on down through whatever talking points are provided by the latest leftiness news shows.
Fox News has nothing whatsoever on you people. You just spell a little beter.
Best of luck in the future. You’re gonna need it.
AG
Now you get a thin skin?
The fact that I have continued to try to talk some sense on this site for as long as I have done so is proof of my thick skin. Too thick for my own good, most likely. You have now become merely the other side of the devolved political discussion going on here during the fall of the American Empire.
Fox News backwards.
Swen Xof tribune.
Catchy. Maybe you ought to try it.
Congratulations.
Keep it up. Maybe you’ll be as successful as has been the Little King over at Dkos.
Or…wake the fuck up to what has happened to you.
Your choice.
Maybe.
AG
Buck up, Arthur.
People aren’t picking on you. They’re picking at your arguments.
No, Booman. People…including you…are not even dealing with my arguments. They are just hell-bent on being on the winning side of this…and every other…media-run competition. The winning side being whichever one that gets the most media pressure and coverage, for whatever reasons.
It’s the same with almost everything that is going on here. I don’t feel picked upon; I’m just not willing to continue to throw arguments before swineherds. It takes too much time and they’ll never learn how to fly anyway.
Have fun…
Wait’ll you see what you have earned when Obama doesn’t have to kowtow to the left anymore after he’s re-
selected. The N.D.A.A. is just the tip of a security state iceberg that is about to make the Titanic thing look like a rubber ducky in a bubblebath.Watch.
AG
From your diary:
Even the dead teenager appears to have assumed the truth of this racist meme. Zimmerman was stopping him…or at least paying some sort of undue attention to him…because he was a young black male.
FOAD, Arthur.
Or we’re the real racists because we see people in groups, or notice race at all. The only non-racists are people like Ron Paul.
You know who the real racist was, according to a comment Arthur wrote in his diary?
“Even the dead teenager appears to have assumed the truth of this racist meme. Zimmerman was stopping him…or at least paying some sort of undue attention to him…because he was a young black male.”
Oops.
First the Ron Paul newsletters, now poor, crime-fighting George Zimmerman.
What are we to conclude about somebody who strains this hard to find excuses and give absurdly generous benefit of the doubt to someone against whom there are very, very plausible accusations of racism? And who does it repeatedly, without there being any examples going in the other direction?
It doesn’t matter whether, as AG argues, Z followed him because of the burgleries or whether he followed him because he was black. when T asked Z why he was following him, Z should have mentioned his suspicions, T replies my Dad lives here, Z says ok, let’s go to your Dad’s house not shoot the child. btw Trayvon probably went out to the convenience store so he could talk with his girlfriend without listening parents around. So heartbreaking.
You are, of course, correct. However, I want to answer this: Z followed him because of the burgleries or whether he followed him because he was black.
These are not two mutually-exclusive options. Zimmerman followed him because of the burglaries because he was black. Or, Zimmerman followed him because he was black because of the burglaries.
Could. Should.
Won’t.
“given first aid by the SFD.”
Very responsible of them not to bandage any of Zimmerman’s bleeding wounds. Then again, E.T. had clearly beamed down in the interim and touched the wounds with his magic finger so they had already stopped bleeding.
Until recently I lived in Sanford. There is a lot of “screw them before they screw you” mentality in this part of central Florida, in my opinion. Many laws are set up on the premise that people are up to no good; they start from the premise of mistrust. So no, not racist … but a product of that culture.
It was a very uncomfortable attitude to live in.
I have a question for any parents reading this blog:
I assume Zimmerman got his view of the world from his parents.
If you thought your son was in the right and was going to get railroaded or unfairly punished for something that was entirely reasonable, according to your world view, would you lie to save your son from prison?
Lest there be any misunderstanding of my motive in asking this question, let me state that I think what happened is terrible and entirely wrong from start to finish. I am not a parent, and I am seriously interested in knowing whether normal, good, upstanding people might lie to protect their son.
Yes. It happened a lot in Northern Ireland, where people fron both sides of the fence would be lining up to give alibis to evil idiots. In one famous case when someone was murdered in a pub the whole pub claimed to be in the toilets at the time. Which isn’t what you are asking but it does show people will claim rediculous things at the drop of a hat.
Maybe, but I’d try to do a better job.
You’re asking me if I’d give into temptation, instead of doing the right thing, in a hard case.
Of course I wouldn’t! Heh.
Great question. I don’t have an answer for it.
As terrible as it is, I think I’d probably rather been in Trayvon Martin’s parents position right now than the position George Zimmerman’s parents are in.
As you and I know, while The Wire may be a piece of fiction, it’s the realest show to ever come on television. Filing false police reports happens all of the time, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it happened here.
And yes, police do need to go to prison, but they won’t. They always get off. Even when they shoot and kill innocent people.
Isn’t this the point when the right usually brings up the idea of Second Amendment Remedies?
it’s everyman for himself now. the tapes ‘just happen’ to be coming out now.
I don’t know what’s up with the leaks. I’m almost convinced that there are pro- and anti-Zimmerman factions in the police department, each engaging in leaks.
Or maybe everyone is just selling whatever they can get their hands on.
Either way, the SPD sure is a well-oiled machine, huh?
.
Cross-posted from an earlier AG diary.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
“While Zimmerman’s back could have dried off on the ride to the police station and someone could have brushed the grass off his jacket, the lack of any wounds or bandages calls Officer Smith’s entire report into question.”
According to ABC news, the surveillance video was taken four hours after the incident, so plenty of time for the shirt to dry. The police report only said Zimmerman was bleeding; it doesn’t say his nose was broken or his face was swollen or he had multiple cuts or anything like that. Given the grainy quality of the video and the time that passed before it was taken, that he was bleeding earlier and his back was wet seems believable to me. Paramedics were at the scene and would have filed a report; it seems farfetched the police would lie on a report when it could eventually be so easily falsified.
Watching the video, it’s hard to believe Zimmerman had a broken nose, or that he was assaulted with the degree of force Martin is supposed to have used. But those accusations were made by associates of Zimmerman and by his lawyer and aren’t a part of the police report. In any event, if Zimmerman’s going to use a broken nose as a defense, he’ll have to present medical records as evidence.
I think there needs to be an investigation, not only of Zimmerman, but of the police’s initial investigation; there are a lot of questions I want to see answered. But declaring at this stage police need to go to jail seems to me to be both premature and incendiary.
The video was time stamped at 7:52 pm, 35 minutes after the shooting NOT 4 hours.
Msnbc news said the footage was taken four hours after the incident. I’m not sure what to think now.
34 minutes after the police arrived at the scene, they arrived at the police station with Zimmerman. That’s all the time they had to secure the scene, supposedly have Zimmerman’s wounds treated, and drive to the police station.
By Google Maps, the police station was either about 14 minutes away or about 5 minutes away if they took him to the substation.
I could believe it was 35 minutes. I could believe it was 4 hours. It would depend on if someone took him straight back from the crime scene, or if they questioned him there while they secured the crime scene. But then why does the news report I linked to above say, “It was taken about four hours after the deadly incident.” Did they get it wrong? If there are conflicting accounts, Id hesitate to draw a conclusion one way or the other until they were explained.
I saw that four-hour claim, too, but it doesn’t appear to be the case.
Are you basing that on the time stamp? I went and stared at the video for a while. The first clip you see is nearly two minutes long (before they break to another). At the beginning of the clip, what I presume is the time stamp reads, 19h52min00:000. At the end of the clip, nearly two minutes later, the time stamp reads 19h52min00:000.
Until someone who seems like they’d be in a position to know explains that, I’m not going to trust the time stamp, and I’m not going to assume I know when that video was taken.
Are you basing that on the time stamp? I went and stared at the video for a while. The first clip you see is nearly two minutes long (before they break to another). At the beginning of the clip, what I presume is the time stamp reads, 19h52min00:000. At the end of the clip, nearly two minutes later, the time stamp reads 19h52min00:000.
I don’t know what’s going on, but until someone who seems to know what they’re talking about explains that, I’m not going to trust the time stamp.
Is this Zimmerman’s father, the Virginia judge trying to poison the jury pool–just in case?
Richard Zimmerman isn’t doing his son any favors. If there’s a trial, everything he’s said will be a matter of public record, and the prosecution will be able to discredit George Zimmerman by comparing the version of events he told his father with others.
More likely Richard Zimmerman is a typical father. He wants to believe the best of his son, and so is accepting what he’s told him uncritically. And when he sees his son being portrayed negatively in the media, he can’t resist defending him, even if it won’t help him in the long run.