BoatBanter.com - A bit of reality for the...

"iBoaterer" wrote in message
...

On Mon, 15 Jul 2013 18:44:14 -0400, "F.O.A.D."
wrote:

The charge was dropped because of an intervention. Of COURSE you would
condone Zimmerman ASSAULTING a cop, not "arguing", as oh, just a dumb
little thing, but that Martin, he smoked POT, therefore should be
dead.....

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Zimmerman's "assault" of a cop consisted of shoving an undercover
officer dressed in plainclothes who was restraining a friend. I don't
know , but it is very possible that he didn't even know he was a cop
when he shoved him.

Here. I was going to just provide a link but I think I'll do a
copy/paste of some general background of Zimmerman and the community
he lives in.
It's from a reliable source ... Reuters. Given all the assumptions
and misinformation being reported by many media sources and people, I
think it's worth a read:

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(Reuters) - A pit bull named Big Boi began menacing George and Shellie
Zimmerman in the fall of 2009.

The first time the dog ran free and cornered Shellie in their gated
community in Sanford, Florida, George called the owner to complain.
The second time, Big Boi frightened his mother-in-law's dog. Zimmerman
called Seminole County Animal Services and bought pepper spray. The
third time he saw the dog on the loose, he called again. An officer
came to the house, county records show.

"Don't use pepper spray," he told the Zimmermans, according to a
friend. "It'll take two or three seconds to take effect, but a quarter
second for the dog to jump you," he said.

"Get a gun."

That November, the Zimmermans completed firearms training at a local
lodge and received concealed-weapons gun permits. In early December,
another source close to them told Reuters, the couple bought a pair of
guns. George picked a Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm handgun, a popular, lightweight
weapon.

By June 2011, Zimmerman's attention had shifted from a loose pit bull
to a wave of robberies that rattled the community, called the Retreat
at Twin Lakes. The homeowners association asked him to launch a
neighborhood watch, and Zimmerman would begin to carry the Kel-Tec on
his regular, dog-walking patrol - a violation of neighborhood watch
guidelines but not a crime.

Few of his closest neighbors knew he carried a gun - until two months
ago.

On February 26, George Zimmerman shot and killed unarmed black
teenager Trayvon Martin in what Zimmerman says was self-defense. The
furor that ensued has consumed the country and prompted a
re-examination of guns, race and self-defense laws enacted in nearly
half the United States.

During the time Zimmerman was in hiding, his detractors defined him as
a vigilante who had decided Martin was suspicious merely because he
was black. After Zimmerman was finally arrested on a charge of
second-degree murder more than six weeks after the shooting,
prosecutors portrayed him as a violent and angry man who disregarded
authority by pursuing the 17-year-old.

But a more nuanced portrait of Zimmerman has emerged from a Reuters
investigation into Zimmerman's past and a series of incidents in the
community in the months preceding the Martin shooting.

Based on extensive interviews with relatives, friends, neighbors,
schoolmates and co-workers of Zimmerman in two states, law enforcement
officials, and reviews of court documents and police reports, the
story sheds new light on the man at the center of one of the most
controversial homicide cases in America.

The 28-year-old insurance-fraud investigator comes from a deeply
Catholic background and was taught in his early years to do right by
those less fortunate. He was raised in a racially integrated household
and himself has black roots through an Afro-Peruvian
great-grandfather - the father of the maternal grandmother who helped
raise him.

A criminal justice student who aspired to become a judge, Zimmerman
also concerned himself with the safety of his neighbors after a series
of break-ins committed by young African-American men.

Though civil rights demonstrators have argued Zimmerman should not
have prejudged Martin, one black neighbor of the Zimmermans said
recent history should be taken into account.

"Let's talk about the elephant in the room. I'm black, OK?" the woman
said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due
to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes.
"There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood," she said.
"That's why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin."

"MIXED" HOUSEHOLD

George Michael Zimmerman was born in 1983 to Robert and Gladys
Zimmerman, the third of four children. Robert Zimmerman Sr. was a U.S.
Army veteran who served in Vietnam in 1970, and was stationed at Fort
Myer in Arlington, Virginia, in 1975 with Gladys Mesa's brother
George. Zimmerman Sr. also served two tours in Korea, and spent the
final 10 years of his 22-year military career in the Pentagon, working
for the Department of Defense, a family member said.

In his final years in Virginia before retiring to Florida, Robert
Zimmerman served as a magistrate in Fairfax County's 19th Judicial
District.

Robert and Gladys met in January 1975, when George Mesa brought along
his army buddy to his sister's birthday party. She was visiting from
Peru, on vacation from her job there as a physical education teacher.
Robert was a Baptist, Gladys was Catholic. They soon married, in a
Catholic ceremony in Alexandria, and moved to nearby Manassas.

Gladys came to lead a small but growing Catholic Hispanic enclave
within the All Saints Catholic Church parish in the late 1970s, where
she was involved in the church's outreach programs. Gladys would bring
young George along with her on "home visits" to poor families, said a
family friend, Teresa Post.

"It was part of their upbringing to know that there are people in
need, people more in need than themselves," said Post, a Peruvian
immigrant who lived with the Zimmermans for a time.

Post recalls evening prayers before dinner in the ethnically diverse
Zimmerman household, which included siblings Robert Jr., Grace, and
Dawn. "It wasn't only white or only Hispanic or only black - it was
mixed," she said.

Zimmerman's maternal grandmother, Cristina, who had lived with the
Zimmermans since 1978, worked as a babysitter for years during
Zimmerman's childhood. For several years she cared for two
African-American girls who ate their meals at the Zimmerman house and
went back and forth to school each day with the Zimmerman children.

"They were part of the household for years, until they were old enough
to be on their own," Post said.

Zimmerman served as an altar boy at All Saints from age 7 to 17,
church members said.

"He wasn't the type where, you know, 'I'm being forced to do this,'
and a dragging-his-feet Catholic," said Sandra Vega, who went to high
school with George and his siblings. "He was an altar boy for years,
and then worked in the rectory too. He has a really good heart."

George grew up bilingual, and by age 10 he was often called to the
Haydon Elementary School principal's office to act as a translator
between administrators and immigrant parents. At 14 he became obsessed
with becoming a Marine, a relative said, joining the after-school ROTC
program at Grace E. Metz Middle School and polishing his boots by
night. At 15, he worked three part-time jobs - in a Mexican
restaurant, for the rectory, and washing cars - on nights and
weekends, to save up for a car.

After graduating from Osbourn High School in 2001, Zimmerman moved to
Lake Mary, Florida, a town neighboring Sanford. His parents purchased
a retirement home there in 2002, in part to bring Cristina, who
suffers from arthritis, to a warmer climate.

YOUNG INSURANCE AGENT

On his own at 18, George got a job at an insurance agency and began to
take classes at night to earn a license to sell insurance. He grew
friendly with a real estate agent named Lee Ann Benjamin, who shared
office space in the building, and later her husband, John Donnelly, a
Sanford attorney.

"George impressed me right off the bat as just a real go-getter,"
Donnelly said. "He was working days and taking all these classes at
night, passing all the insurance classes, not just for home insurance,
but auto insurance and everything. He wanted to open his own office -
and he did."

In 2004, Zimmerman partnered with an African-American friend and
opened up an Allstate insurance satellite office, Donnelly said.

Then came 2005, and a series of troubles. Zimmerman's business failed,
he was arrested, and he broke off an engagement with a woman who filed
a restraining order against him.

That July, Zimmerman was charged with resisting arrest, violence, and
battery of an officer after shoving an undercover alcohol-control
agent who was arresting an under-age friend of Zimmerman's at a bar.
He avoided conviction by agreeing to participate in a pre-trial
diversion program that included anger-management classes.

In August, Zimmerman's fiancee at the time, Veronica Zuazo, filed a
civil motion for a restraining order alleging domestic violence.
Zimmerman reciprocated with his own order on the same grounds, and
both orders were granted. The relationship ended.

In 2007 he married Shellie Dean, a licensed cosmetologist, and in 2009
the couple rented a townhouse in the Retreat at Twin Lakes. Zimmerman
had bounced from job to job for a couple of years, working at a car
dealership and a mortgage company. At times, according to testimony
from Shellie at a bond hearing for Zimmerman last week, the couple
filed for unemployment benefits.

Zimmerman enrolled in Seminole State College in 2009, and in December
2011 he was permitted to participate in a school graduation ceremony,
despite being a course credit shy of his associate's degree in
criminal justice. Zimmerman was completing that course credit when the
shooting occurred.

On March 22, nearly a month after the shooting and with the
controversy by then swirling nationwide, the school issued a press
release saying it was taking the "unusual, but necessary" step of
withdrawing Zimmerman's enrollment, citing "the safety of our students
on campus as well as for Mr. Zimmerman."

A NEIGHBORHOOD IN FEAR

By the summer of 2011, Twin Lakes was experiencing a rash of
burglaries and break-ins. Previously a family-friendly, first-time
homeowner community, it was devastated by the recession that hit the
Florida housing market, and transient renters began to occupy some of
the 263 town houses in the complex. Vandalism and occasional drug
activity were reported, and home values plunged. One resident who
bought his home in 2006 for $250,000 said it was worth $80,000 today.

At least eight burglaries were reported within Twin Lakes in the 14
months prior to the Trayvon Martin shooting, according to the Sanford
Police Department. Yet in a series of interviews, Twin Lakes residents
said dozens of reports of attempted break-ins and would-be burglars
casing homes had created an atmosphere of growing fear in the
neighborhood.

In several of the incidents, witnesses identified the suspects to
police as young black men. Twin Lakes is about 50 percent white, with
an African-American and Hispanic population of about 20 percent each,
roughly similar to the surrounding city of Sanford, according to U.S.
Census data.

One morning in July 2011, a black teenager walked up to Zimmerman's
front porch and stole a bicycle, neighbors told Reuters. A police
report was taken, though the bicycle was not recovered.

But it was the August incursion into the home of Olivia Bertalan that
really troubled the neighborhood, particularly Zimmerman. Shellie was
home most days, taking online courses towards certification as a
registered nurse.

On August 3, Bertalan was at home with her infant son while her
husband, Michael, was at work. She watched from a downstairs window,
she said, as two black men repeatedly rang her doorbell and then
entered through a sliding door at the back of the house. She ran
upstairs, locked herself inside the boy's bedroom, and called a police
dispatcher, whispering frantically.

"I said, 'What am I supposed to do? I hear them coming up the
stairs!'" she told Reuters. Bertalan tried to coo her crying child
into silence and armed herself with a pair of rusty scissors.

Police arrived just as the burglars - who had been trying to
disconnect the couple's television - fled out a back door. Shellie
Zimmerman saw a black male teen running through her backyard and
reported it to police.

After police left Bertalan, George Zimmerman arrived at the front door
in a shirt and tie, she said. He gave her his contact numbers on an
index card and invited her to visit his wife if she ever felt unsafe.
He returned later and gave her a stronger lock to bolster the sliding
door that had been forced open.

"He was so mellow and calm, very helpful and very, very sweet," she
said last week. "We didn't really know George at first, but after the
break-in we talked to him on a daily basis. People were freaked out.
It wasn't just George calling police ... we were calling police at
least once a week."

In September, a group of neighbors including Zimmerman approached the
homeowners association with their concerns, she said. Zimmerman was
asked to head up a new neighborhood watch. He agreed.

"PLEASE CONTACT OUR CAPTAIN"

Police had advised Bertalan to get a dog. She and her husband decided
to move out instead, and left two days before the shooting. Zimmerman
took the advice.

"He'd already had a mutt that he walked around the neighborhood every
night - man, he loved that dog - but after that home invasion he also
got a Rottweiler," said Jorge Rodriguez, a friend and neighbor of the
Zimmermans.

Around the same time, Zimmerman also gave Rodriguez and his wife,
Audria, his contact information, so they could reach him day or night.
Rodriguez showed the index card to Reuters. In neat cursive was a list
of George and Shellie's home number and cell phones, as well as their
emails.

Less than two weeks later, another Twin Lakes home was burglarized,
police reports show. Two weeks after that, a home under construction
was vandalized.

The Retreat at Twin Lakes e-newsletter for February 2012 noted: "The
Sanford PD has announced an increased patrol within our neighborhood
.... during peak crime hours.

"If you've been a victim of a crime in the community, after calling
police, please contact our captain, George Zimmerman."

EMMANUEL BURGESS - SETTING THE STAGE

On February 2, 2012, Zimmerman placed a call to Sanford police after
spotting a young black man he recognized peering into the windows of a
neighbor's empty home, according to several friends and neighbors.

"I don't know what he's doing. I don't want to approach him,
personally," Zimmerman said in the call, which was recorded. The
dispatcher advised him that a patrol car was on the way. By the time
police arrived, according to the dispatch report, the suspect had
fled.

On February 6, the home of another Twin Lakes resident, Tatiana
Demeacis, was burglarized. Two roofers working directly across the
street said they saw two African-American men lingering in the yard at
the time of the break-in. A new laptop and some gold jewelry were
stolen. One of the roofers called police the next day after spotting
one of the suspects among a group of male teenagers, three black and
one white, on bicycles.

Police found Demeacis's laptop in the backpack of 18-year-old Emmanuel
Burgess, police reports show, and charged him with dealing in stolen
property. Burgess was the same man Zimmerman had spotted on February
2.

Burgess had committed a series of burglaries on the other side of town
in 2008 and 2009, pleaded guilty to several, and spent all of 2010
incarcerated in a juvenile facility, his attorney said. He is now in
jail on parole violations.

Three days after Burgess was arrested, Zimmerman's grandmother was
hospitalized for an infection, and the following week his father was
also admitted for a heart condition. Zimmerman spent a number of those
nights on a hospital room couch.

Ten days after his father was hospitalized, Zimmerman noticed another
young man in the neighborhood, acting in a way he found familiar, so
he made another call to police.

"We've had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there's a real
suspicious guy," Zimmerman said, as Trayvon Martin returned home from
the store.

The last time Zimmerman had called police, to report Burgess, he
followed protocol and waited for police to arrive. They were too late,
and Burgess got away.

This time, Zimmerman was not so patient, and he disregarded police
advice against pursuing Martin.

"These assholes," he muttered in an aside, "they always get away."

After the phone call ended, several minutes passed when the movements
of Zimmerman and Martin remain a mystery.

Moments later, Martin lay dead with a bullet in his chest.