In the Trayvon Martin incident legal experts are wrangling over whether Zimmerman surrendered immunity protections in the "Stand Your Ground" law because he was the aggressor refusing to follow police orders to not confront Martin.
What riles many is the Sanford police refusing to arrest Zimmerman and letting courts sort out his self-defense claim during a trial. Some raising self-defense claims under "Stand Your Ground" faced trials while police and prosecutors accepted some claims eliminating a trial.
The Sanford police quickly accepting Zimmerman's self-defense claim does raise the race-tainted stereotype of the dangerous black brute that reflexively causes whites to fear for their lives.
Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee embraced Zimmerman's claim that he was forced to fire on Martin because Martin was beating him badly and no one was responding to his cries for help.
Lee contends Zimmerman's injuries are "consistent with" his story apparently finding no fault in Zimmerman disregarding police orders and confronting the smaller Martin who was doing nothing wrong.
Lee's police are drawing verbal fire for reportedly badgering witnesses to alter their accounts in favor of Zimmerman's version.
Martin's father and the local NAACP head are among many voicing the sentiment that Sanford police would have reacted differently if Martin had shot Zimmerman under the same circumstances.
Florida, like many places in America particularly the South, has a sordid history of race-based inequities.
Incidents in Florida are mentioned frequently in the 1951 petition an interracial group of Americans sent to the United Nations charges the federal government with committing "Genocide" on African-Americans.
The "New Acts of Genocide" addendum to that 1951 petitions lists racist incidents from Florida more than any other single state.
Those incidents include a Florida sheriff fatally shooting one black prisoner and wounding another and "racist terrorists" killing a NAACP leader and his wife by bombing their house. That petition decried federal and Florida state officials for failing to act in those murders.
That "New Acts" section also cited whites legally excluding blacks from one Seminole County, Fl town, about 15-miles from Sanford, "to prevent Negroes there from voting and from receiving fire, sanitary and public health services."
Sanford absorbed the all black town of Goldsboro in 1911, quickly renaming streets bearing the names of black pioneers according to historic accounts.
The mass disenfranchisement of thousands of blacks by Florida election officials during the 2000 presidential election won barely by George W. Bush remains a stinging point among blacks.
Florida's then Governor Jeb Bush, George's brother, later acknowledged his roles in that voter suppression. Jeb Bush backed passage of the "Stand Your Ground" law calling it a "good, common sense anti-crime" measure.
The murder of Trayvon Martin shares similarities with the 1799 North Carolina shooting. Both incidents involved the killing of blacks on questionable provocation and white authorities loosely applying laws to clear the murderers.
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