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Yes, GZ did leave his vehicle before dispatcher asked if he was following..I don't believe he attempted to return to his vehicle.
He also told Det. Serino, I wasn't following, I was going in the same direction. Det. Serino responded, that's following..
It is a fact, GZ continued to follow even as he was told, we don't need you to do that..he was inconsistent with all his statements and recreation of events..
GZ needs to be incarcerated and I truly hope this charge will do it before he kills again, is my belief..
Being told "We don't need you to do that" isn't the same as "Don't do that." Words have meaning, and these words are pretty clear.
Even if told "Don't do that," it wouldn't have mattered, as that would have had no force of law.
For those who haven't read the part of this thread where I've posted before, many pages ago, I'll reiterate that I don't usually get very interested in these cases that become big news. Not interested in the big soap opera, and not likely to get worked up over the people involved as villains, heroes, etc. I'm a former LEO, and became interested in this case because of legal issues.
Regarding legal issues, the passages quoted above are just some examples of a debate going on for a number of recent posts, about the guidelines for neighborhood watch volunteers. No matter what your thoughts on that, try to keep in mind that guidelines are all we're talking about. They don't carry the force of law.
Some might find it interesting to discuss whether Zimmerman did something wrong, including whether he may have gone against neighborhood watch procedure, but this has nothing to do with whether he should have been convicted of any crime, or even charged with any crime for that matter. Going against guidelines, if indeed Zimmerman did so, does not mean that anyone has broken any law.
Nice to meet you Ogre. We were actually discussing a pattern that GZ exhibits of breaking rules and laws both.
That's what happens when you jump in on an 80-page thread. If you don't care to slog through all the back pages (and I didn't), you may miss the parts that tell you the main direction of a discussion
On the other hand, one post especially caught my eye, about the topic of neighborhood watch policy:
Seems he did violate the rules of procedure but those Jurors didn't care one bit..
This person clearly seems to be conflating the law and neighborhood watch policy. Otherwise, why imply that jurors should have based their verdict on accusations that Zimmerman violated the NW policies?
I also noticed at least one response to that post which discussed testimony about NW policy, enough so that I did get the impression that the discussion was at least drifting a bit into the territory of confusing that policy with the law.
Quote:
Originally Posted by B-52
Since you are former LE, can you tell me how you felt about the wannabes who seem to try and step in and "help" you do your job? I know my LE family and friends are not too fond of them. There are actually a couple over in Seminole County who wish he'd just move away.
Do your LE acquaintances in Sem. Cty. know Zimmerman well? I'm curious about what they think of him.
Personally, I think he seems like your basic lowlife, but I also caution myself, and others, to keep in mind that if you don't know the people involved in these sensational cases (and the vast majority of us don't), you can't always be so sure about the character of any of these people. You're basing everything on the way the news media portray the people involved. All too often, the news media mostly present information in a way that makes a juicy story. It would be interesting to know the opinion of those who actually know any of those involved in this case.
As for my opinion about wannabes and such, that's a tricky question for me. It's been years since I worked in law enforcement. Even though I've found that LE has stayed in my blood to a noticeable degree, and I still often take a cop's-eye view of the world, that view has definitely mellowed some over the years away from LE. That means there is a distinction between how I feel now and how I likely would have felt in my LE days.
I do think that cops tend to be very territorial. Where I worked, there were several LE agencies with overlapping jurisdictions, and there was even tension between cops in different departments, over whose turf was whose where they shared some common territory. That stay-outta-my-yard view is going to go double for non-cops trying to poke in.
On the other hand, years after leaving law enforcement, I hardly know what to feel about neighborhood watch programs. As far as I know, the idea had not really gotten going back when I was a cop. It was a number of years later that I myself first even heard of neighborhood watches, so I never was in the position to even have an opinion back when I was a LEO.
At present, with that mellowing of the cop outlook I mentioned above, I don't have a big problem with the general idea, as long as the NW people really do just act as eyes and ears. I'm not surprised to read that LEOs you know don't think much of people who really nose in, and I'm sure that back in the day, I would have been very annoyed by a guy like Zimmerman.
It can get tricky, though. I can see how I might have tolerated a Zimmerman better if his calls to the police were at least legitimate complaints.
Where I worked, there was a college in the area, with fraternities located off campus, a few blocks from the college, spread along a couple of blocks on a single street. For a while, we kept getting call after call about noise at the frat houses, from the same person, who lived one street over, right behind one of the frats. At some point we learned that this guy was actually a recent graduate of the local college. The annoyance at this guy's constant noise complaints rose some then. After all, he'd been a student there himself, so he had to have known about wild noisy parties at some of those frats, yet he bought a house right next door.
Then it started to get so that with most of the calls from this guy, the responding officer would find the whole section of street with the frats dead quiet. These frequent noise complaints when there was no noise, all from this same guy, really ratcheted up our irritation with him.
My guess was that this guy was calling about every little group of frat boys returning home from a night out and whooping it up a little as they stumbled back to their houses. Of course they would already be inside and no longer making noise by the time one of us would arrive in the area. But we'd get a call, so we'd have to waste our time responding.
Transposing the annoyance all the local cops felt about that situation to Zimmerman, I think about all the calls Zimmerman made to the local PD after he moved to Sanford. I can see how if I'd been an active LEO in Sanford at that time, I might have been less annoyed if most of Zimmerman's calls turned out to be about situations I thought really needed to be checked out. If it turned out all too often that officers got there and found the situation to be basically nothing, then my annoyance would have been ramped up for sure.
Shifting gears a bit, on the general subject of a former LEO's view of all this, I also have to say that I find discussion threads like this one frustrating, because of the number of people who clearly have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to the legal issues.
Quote:
Originally Posted by B-52
These guidelines he broke are simply part of a pattern with GZ that seems to be escalating over time. I thought this was the topic here. GZ is really a loose cannon and I think it's quite possible he will kill again.
As I said above, I try to keep in mind that I don't really know the people involved in these sensational incidents that get national coverage. The best I can tell from media portrayals of GZ, he seems to me more like just a basic lowlife than some violent psycho. Maybe I'd have a different opinion if I actually knew the guy. Based on the impression the media provides, he seems to me like any of a gazillion lowlifes I've known, and plenty of basic everyday losers I'm sure you have known, because there are people like that everywhere.
Losers like this go through life causing relatively minor trouble, and usually that's all it is, but once in a while one of them will find himself in much more serious circumstances. That's what seems to me to have happened here, in an incident that would have been nothing but a one-time story on the local news if not for the way it turned into a national sensation about race.
He claimed SD, a usual defense for SD is to put on an affirmative defense. thank you very much but I know lots about out legal system and their corruptness, blaming victims to get a seemingly guilty person to walk free. With some lawyers its not about justice but more about winning a case......
In the specific instance of Floridia, the Stand Your Ground law negates the need for GZ to have to prove an affirmative defense. Once he says it was self defense, then it is the state's job to prove that it wasn't self defense. Not the other way around as you seem to think.
IMO, this is the proper way for it to be handled and fortunately Fla. has such a law on the books now.
That's what happens when you jump in on an 80-page thread. If you don't care to slog through all the back pages (and I didn't), you may miss the parts that tell you the main direction of a discussion
On the other hand, one post especially caught my eye, about the topic of neighborhood watch policy:
This person clearly seems to be conflating the law and neighborhood watch policy. Otherwise, why imply that jurors should have based their verdict on accusations that Zimmerman violated the NW policies?
I also noticed at least one response to that post which discussed testimony about NW policy, enough so that I did get the impression that the discussion was at least drifting a bit into the territory of confusing that policy with the law.
Do your LE acquaintances in Sem. Cty. know Zimmerman well? I'm curious about what they think of him.
Personally, I think he seems like your basic lowlife, but I also caution myself, and others, to keep in mind that if you don't know the people involved in these sensational cases (and the vast majority of us don't), you can't always be so sure about the character of any of these people. You're basing everything on the way the news media portray the people involved. All too often, the news media mostly present information in a way that makes a juicy story. It would be interesting to know the opinion of those who actually know any of those involved in this case.
As for my opinion about wannabes and such, that's a tricky question for me. It's been years since I worked in law enforcement. Even though I've found that LE has stayed in my blood to a noticeable degree, and I still often take a cop's-eye view of the world, that view has definitely mellowed some over the years away from LE. That means there is a distinction between how I feel now and how I likely would have felt in my LE days.
I do think that cops tend to be very territorial. Where I worked, there were several LE agencies with overlapping jurisdictions, and there was even tension between cops in different departments, over whose turf was whose where they shared some common territory. That stay-outta-my-yard view is going to go double for non-cops trying to poke in.
On the other hand, years after leaving law enforcement, I hardly know what to feel about neighborhood watch programs. As far as I know, the idea had not really gotten going back when I was a cop. It was a number of years later that I myself first even heard of neighborhood watches, so I never was in the position to even have an opinion back when I was a LEO.
At present, with that mellowing of the cop outlook I mentioned above, I don't have a big problem with the general idea, as long as the NW people really do just act as eyes and ears. I'm not surprised to read that LEOs you know don't think much of people who really nose in, and I'm sure that back in the day, I would have been very annoyed by a guy like Zimmerman.
It can get tricky, though. I can see how I might have tolerated a Zimmerman better if his calls to the police were at least legitimate complaints.
Where I worked, there was a college in the area, with fraternities located off campus, a few blocks from the college, spread along a couple of blocks on a single street. For a while, we kept getting call after call about noise at the frat houses, from the same person, who lived one street over, right behind one of the frats. At some point we learned that this guy was actually a recent graduate of the local college. The annoyance at this guy's constant noise complaints rose some then. After all, he'd been a student there himself, so he had to have known about wild noisy parties at some of those frats, yet he bought a house right next door.
Then it started to get so that with most of the calls from this guy, the responding officer would find the whole section of street with the frats dead quiet. These frequent noise complaints when there was no noise, all from this same guy, really ratcheted up our irritation with him.
My guess was that this guy was calling about every little group of frat boys returning home from a night out and whooping it up a little as they stumbled back to their houses. Of course they would already be inside and no longer making noise by the time one of us would arrive in the area. But we'd get a call, so we'd have to waste our time responding.
Transposing the annoyance all the local cops felt about that situation to Zimmerman, I think about all the calls Zimmerman made to the local PD after he moved to Sanford. I can see how if I'd been an active LEO in Sanford at that time, I might have been less annoyed if most of Zimmerman's calls turned out to be about situations I thought really needed to be checked out. If it turned out all too often that officers got there and found the situation to be basically nothing, then my annoyance would have been ramped up for sure.
Shifting gears a bit, on the general subject of a former LEO's view of all this, I also have to say that I find discussion threads like this one frustrating, because of the number of people who clearly have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to the legal issues.
As I said above, I try to keep in mind that I don't really know the people involved in these sensational incidents that get national coverage. The best I can tell from media portrayals of GZ, he seems to me more like just a basic lowlife than some violent psycho. Maybe I'd have a different opinion if I actually knew the guy. Based on the impression the media provides, he seems to me like any of a gazillion lowlifes I've known, and plenty of basic everyday losers I'm sure you have known, because there are people like that everywhere.
Losers like this go through life causing relatively minor trouble, and usually that's all it is, but once in a while one of them will find himself in much more serious circumstances. That's what seems to me to have happened here, in an incident that would have been nothing but a one-time story on the local news if not for the way it turned into a national sensation about race.
Great post, thank you for that..
BBM
The opinion I formed of GZ was due to the documents released via the Sunshine law and his behavior that was caught on tape (Texas stop, the DV of his ex wife/ex FIL) along with the forensic evidence, the media played no role for me.
While I am no expert, my interpretation of those documents along with the forensics did not match what GZ claimed to have happened in the murder trial. If those jurors took the time to go over the evidence, the ballistics, the trajectory, the DNA evidence, all pointed to GZ as the aggressor..
I also think as an adult in this situation, he should have backed off after he made his phone call to alert LE of this person he thought was suspicious, he called it in and should have been on his way. Then to find out his ex wife, Shellie left him the night before so he lied about Shellie home cooking and his reason for going to target with only 50 cents in his pockets with no CC logged into evidence, so what could he purchase.
I too believe he's always been a lowlife, enabled by his parents, is a mooch who seems to believe he is owed something.
As noted by David Horowitz in a July 2013 article, “Is the Zimmerman Case Really Open and
Shut?”, there were a number of facts in this case that were
indisputable. Zimmerman lied during the proceedings. He schemed with his wife to
conceal the fact that he had received well over a hundred thousand dollars in
donations. He disingenuously stated that he had no knowledge of Florida’s “Stand
Your Ground” law when it was established that he in fact did know of the law.
And he stated that Martin jumped out at him from the bushes, when there were no
bushes in that area. Moreover, Zimmerman sustained very superficial injuries –
some minor scrapes and bumps – and these injuries are not entirely consistent
with the life and death struggle that Zimmerman described.
Last edited by Amythyst; 01-23-2015 at 07:55 AM..
Reason: added quote from article
1. I believed TM to be a fully grown man and not a CHILD 2. I was not stalking..running after in a foot chase and...following TM 3. TM jumped out from some brushes and attacked me 4. I wasn't trying to cut off TM only going to my private vehicle like the 911dispatcher told me .... 5. TM was beating my head on the Sidewalk And I Feared For My Life.....(Zimmerboy and TM weren't on The Sidewalk) When G Zimmerboy shot TM they were in the GRASS 6. TM threw the first punch which was of all things a sucker punch
7. The 158 pound ( Code Word Thug TM) was really hurting & bullying me in the Physical Confrontation ..
8. I'm so sorry that this had to happen to TM it wasn't my intentions for it to happen...Then why didn't you tell TM that you were The NW PRESIDENT when he asked YOU WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME (?)
9. I did the right thing by protecting myself with a loaded gun against a person that I was over match with ( Me Weighting 204 Pounds and 28 Years of Age He 158 Pounds 17 Years of Age and UNARMED)
10. This is the way that any ADULT mature professional responsible Floridian Man Would Act.
11. I'm Innocence And Not Guilty Of These Charges Applied Against Me So Help Me GOD.....
12. George Zimmerboy is just as INNOCENCE AS O.J. SIMPSON IS......LOL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._J._Simpson
But only half as Handsome.....LOL
Last edited by Howest2008; 01-23-2015 at 12:27 PM..
That's what happens when you jump in on an 80-page thread. If you don't care to slog through all the back pages (and I didn't), you may miss the parts that tell you the main direction of a discussion
On the other hand, one post especially caught my eye, about the topic of neighborhood watch policy:
This person clearly seems to be conflating the law and neighborhood watch policy. Otherwise, why imply that jurors should have based their verdict on accusations that Zimmerman violated the NW policies?
I also noticed at least one response to that post which discussed testimony about NW policy, enough so that I did get the impression that the discussion was at least drifting a bit into the territory of confusing that policy with the law.
Do your LE acquaintances in Sem. Cty. know Zimmerman well? I'm curious about what they think of him.
Personally, I think he seems like your basic lowlife, but I also caution myself, and others, to keep in mind that if you don't know the people involved in these sensational cases (and the vast majority of us don't), you can't always be so sure about the character of any of these people. You're basing everything on the way the news media portray the people involved. All too often, the news media mostly present information in a way that makes a juicy story. It would be interesting to know the opinion of those who actually know any of those involved in this case.
As for my opinion about wannabes and such, that's a tricky question for me. It's been years since I worked in law enforcement. Even though I've found that LE has stayed in my blood to a noticeable degree, and I still often take a cop's-eye view of the world, that view has definitely mellowed some over the years away from LE. That means there is a distinction between how I feel now and how I likely would have felt in my LE days.
I do think that cops tend to be very territorial. Where I worked, there were several LE agencies with overlapping jurisdictions, and there was even tension between cops in different departments, over whose turf was whose where they shared some common territory. That stay-outta-my-yard view is going to go double for non-cops trying to poke in.
On the other hand, years after leaving law enforcement, I hardly know what to feel about neighborhood watch programs. As far as I know, the idea had not really gotten going back when I was a cop. It was a number of years later that I myself first even heard of neighborhood watches, so I never was in the position to even have an opinion back when I was a LEO.
At present, with that mellowing of the cop outlook I mentioned above, I don't have a big problem with the general idea, as long as the NW people really do just act as eyes and ears. I'm not surprised to read that LEOs you know don't think much of people who really nose in, and I'm sure that back in the day, I would have been very annoyed by a guy like Zimmerman.
It can get tricky, though. I can see how I might have tolerated a Zimmerman better if his calls to the police were at least legitimate complaints.
Where I worked, there was a college in the area, with fraternities located off campus, a few blocks from the college, spread along a couple of blocks on a single street. For a while, we kept getting call after call about noise at the frat houses, from the same person, who lived one street over, right behind one of the frats. At some point we learned that this guy was actually a recent graduate of the local college. The annoyance at this guy's constant noise complaints rose some then. After all, he'd been a student there himself, so he had to have known about wild noisy parties at some of those frats, yet he bought a house right next door.
Then it started to get so that with most of the calls from this guy, the responding officer would find the whole section of street with the frats dead quiet. These frequent noise complaints when there was no noise, all from this same guy, really ratcheted up our irritation with him.
My guess was that this guy was calling about every little group of frat boys returning home from a night out and whooping it up a little as they stumbled back to their houses. Of course they would already be inside and no longer making noise by the time one of us would arrive in the area. But we'd get a call, so we'd have to waste our time responding.
Transposing the annoyance all the local cops felt about that situation to Zimmerman, I think about all the calls Zimmerman made to the local PD after he moved to Sanford. I can see how if I'd been an active LEO in Sanford at that time, I might have been less annoyed if most of Zimmerman's calls turned out to be about situations I thought really needed to be checked out. If it turned out all too often that officers got there and found the situation to be basically nothing, then my annoyance would have been ramped up for sure.
Shifting gears a bit, on the general subject of a former LEO's view of all this, I also have to say that I find discussion threads like this one frustrating, because of the number of people who clearly have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to the legal issues.
As I said above, I try to keep in mind that I don't really know the people involved in these sensational incidents that get national coverage. The best I can tell from media portrayals of GZ, he seems to me more like just a basic lowlife than some violent psycho. Maybe I'd have a different opinion if I actually knew the guy. Based on the impression the media provides, he seems to me like any of a gazillion lowlifes I've known, and plenty of basic everyday losers I'm sure you have known, because there are people like that everywhere.
Losers like this go through life causing relatively minor trouble, and usually that's all it is, but once in a while one of them will find himself in much more serious circumstances. That's what seems to me to have happened here, in an incident that would have been nothing but a one-time story on the local news if not for the way it turned into a national sensation about race.
Thank you so much for this well thought out and polite reply. Yes, I have noted the territorial tendencies with LE. There are several overlapping agencies in most areas of Florida. It's good when they need backup but not good when they argue over which agency should take the lead.
My friends in Seminole County were aware of GZ before this incident. Not sure about the Sanford PD but after his many calls to them he should have been known to them too. They mainly thought he was a nuisance calling them for children playing in the street, open garage doors and pot holes he thought could cause a wreck. When he started following people up and down I-4 in his car for speeding there was a lot of concern. A wannabe cop is a danger to himself, others and to actual LE. It takes a lot of training and time to become a good officer and to make sure you come home safe each night. Untrained people don't really stand a chance and GZ is a prime example of that. I truly feel that if TM had been a real criminal and not just a scared kid, GZ would have been the one killed. He never should have been out there running around in the dark after a suspect of any kind.
Neighborhood Watch is helpful when done correctly. The policies in place aren't laws but are there for a civilian's own protection. Eyes and ears only and never patrol. For instance if you see a strange car in front of your neighbor's home and someone you've never seen before carting off their TV, you should call and inform LE...and you should stay indoors or hidden and never follow or try to apprehend. In this part of Florida and also in Seminole County there is also a program for civilian's called Citizens on Patrol. GZ was offered this but turned it down when he learned there is a mandatory training course. He would have been strictly prohibited from carrying his gun and would have had to pass yearly tests. Those civilians are given a patrol car with a radio to dispatch. Only then are they allowed to actually patrol. Neighborhood watch's only role is to observe and call. I firmly believe GZ was patrolling in his vehicle after skipping the training. This way he could legally carry. This is very dangerous and way more than being a nuisance. I don't think anyone I know over there was aware he was actually patrolling but they sure think so now. For that reason, they keep an eye on him.
Being told "We don't need you to do that" isn't the same as "Don't do that." Words have meaning, and these words are pretty clear.
Even if told "Don't do that," it wouldn't have mattered, as that would have had no force of law.
Interesting. I often give directives to people. I often use just that phrasing "we don't need you to do that" to mean "don't do it." Up to now, people have understood it as a directive. Now I learn that for some people the words "we don't need you to do that" from a person in authority has no meaning as an instruction. It is really a pretty common phrasing.
Interesting. I often give directives to people. I often use just that phrasing "we don't need you to do that" to mean "don't do it." Up to now, people have understood it as a directive. Now I learn that for some people the words "we don't need you to do that" from a person in authority has no meaning as an instruction. It is really a pretty common phrasing.
It may well be a common phrasing, as slightly more polite, and less direct than, "Don't do that." However, a 911 dispatcher has exactly zero authority to compel someone to do (or not do) anything. In short, GM was given no lawful order (that he was legally compelled to comply with) to not follow TM.
Who gives a crap if the dispatcher's words were a command, a request or a big fat pretty please don't do that with a cherry on top? He was charged with 2nd degree murder, not failure to follow a dispatcher's instructions. Of much greater significance (because it highlights his pathological addiction to lying and if you lie about 10 things in a row odds are great you're lying about the 11th and 12th as well) why does a man claiming to fear for his life get out of his Ridgeline and follow...er...go in the same direction as the source of the fear? Answer: unless he is a sexy blonde virgin in a horror movie, he doesn't. And if you really believe Officer George left the security of his vehicle because he didn't know the name of one of the three streets he and his unfortunate Rottweiler routinely patrolled, completely unaware he's carrying a gun to boot, well God bless you.
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), you may miss the parts that tell you the main direction of a discussion