17yr old black kid shot and killed for walking in white suburbia?

[broncofan]

"She broke a glass table because she threw something on it — I don’t even know if it was mine or hers, whatever it was,”

I know this is a little redundant, but absolute smoking gun. Glass tables are not made to shatter when you throw things on top of them. Only a heavy object like a hammer or a dumbbell would shatter most such tables. If that were the case there is no way he would not know what object it was that broke the glass table.

On the other hand, someone deliberately slamming the butt of a shotgun against a table could easily break it. I really hope they get a conviction on this one...his story is just not believable.

Edit: Interesting though that this case does show Zimmerman is a seasoned liar. He may not be able to handle all of the details but he sounds pretty composed with the police telling them a seemingly reasonable story that really doesn't hold up. He may have crafted this kind of tale in the Trayvon Martin case since there was nobody to contradict him. Remember the police did not press him very hard until a long time had passed in the Martin case, in which case he would have been able to make up the details he was lacking immediately after the fact.

[plankton]

Your more likely to be a victim of crime or violence if you're white.

[Stavros]

Your more likely to be a victim of crime or violence if you're white.

Not only is this graph 11 years out of date it is based on a survey which is known to have flaws:

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) program, established in 1972, is a national survey of a representative sample of households in the United States which covers the frequency of crime victimization and the characteristics and consequences of victimization. The primary purpose behind the NCVS program is to gather information on crimes that were not reported to police, though information is also collected on reported crimes. The survey collects data on rape, assault, robbery, burglary, personal and household larceny and motor vehicle theft. The NCVS also includes supplemental questions which allow information to be gathered on tangentially relevant issues such as school violence, attitudes towards law enforcement or perceptions regarding crime.
There are fundamental limitations to the NCVS program, including:

Reliability: NCVS statistics do not represent verified or evidenced instances of victimization. As it depends upon the recollection of the individuals surveyed, the NCVS cannot distinguish between true and fabricated claims of victimization, nor can it verify the truth of the severity of the reported incidents. Further, the NCVS cannot detect cases of victimization where the victim is too traumatized to report. These factors can contribute to deficits in the reliability of NCVS statistics.

Misrepresentation: The NCVS program is focused upon metropolitan and urban areas, and does not adequately cover suburban and rural regions. This can lead to misrepresentations regarding the nature and extent of victimization in the United States

You could have quoted this by comparison:

Racially motivated hate crime

The federal government publishes a list annually of Hate Crime Statistics, 2009 Also published by the federal government is the Known Offender's Race by Bias Motivation, 2009. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Report database, in 2010 58% of hate crime offenders were Latino or white, 18% of offenders were black, 8.9% were of individuals of multiple races and 1% of offenders were Native Americans. The report also reveals that 48% of all hate crime offenders were motivated by the victim's race, while 18% were based on the victim's religion, and another 18% were based on the victim's sexual orientation. The report states that among hate crime offenses motivated by race, 70% were composed of anti-black bias, while 17.7% were of anti-white bias, and 5% were of anti-Asian or Pacific Islander bias.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_an...vey_.28NCVS.29


Also of interest are stats from the US Bureau of Justice -
http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=nvat

If you look at the 'Quick Tables' figures on 'Violent Victimization by victim-offender relationship' (2008-2012) you will note in the majority of cases the people involved were either related or knew each other.

[broncofan]

Your more likely to be a victim of crime or violence if you're white.

You may be right, but it's funny that your statistic does not actually speak to what your sentence says here. How do you think one would go about showing who is most likely to be a victim of a crime? I'll leave that to you, but your pie chart only shows crimes by African-Americans committed against whites and vice versa.

And what you're trying to prove in the sentence I've quoted is not even really relevant to the thread. It says nothing about who is most likely to be a victim of a bias crime, or who is most likely to be taken advantage of in the legal system and denied due process.

[broncofan]

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus0601.pdf

Alright, to actually speak to the statement by Plankton, here is data from 2006 on rates of crime victimization sorted according to all sorts of demographic information.

Table 5
Rate of victimization based on race for violent crimes
white only 23.3
black only 32.1

Rate per 1,000 persons age 12 and over.


If I understand these charts, this says that African-Americans are victims of violent crimes at a higher rate than white Americans. If you want to know the likelihood of members of a particular race being a victim of a crime, the race of the perpetrator is irrelevant. You get numbers on rates of victimization!!

[notdrunk]

No No No. When dealing with interracial crime, a white person is more likely to be victimized by a black criminal than a black person being victimized by a white criminal. However, the majority of crime isn't interracial. People that tend to bring up interracial crime statistics online tend to have a "secret" motive (i.e, I am a bigot).

[Stavros]

No No No. When dealing with interracial crime, a white person is more likely to be victimized by a black criminal than a black person being victimized by a white criminal. However, the majority of crime isn't interracial. People that tend to bring up interracial crime statistics online tend to have a "secret" motive (i.e, I am a bigot).

Motives are well served by statistics which can sometimes be selected to support a variety of arguments -the core issue is what it is that you want to know. Most violent crime seems to involve people who are either related to each other or know each other, but that doesn't make an attack by a stranger less important. Most 'conventional' crime is committed by people from low-income no-income brackets, or are people with a 'complicated' backstory -drug and alcohol abuse, psychological problems etc.

The cute 'white collar' crime category might involve someone in the financial sector robbing people of $20 million, in some cases a person's life savings; yet some 'dude' robbing a person of $20 while at the same time knocking them to the ground is deemed to have committed the worse crime. Hate crime statistics show overwhelmingly that Black people are attacked more than white; then there is the issue of violence against women, regardless of the colour of their skin.

At some point the question is this: is there an equality of trauma between these different categories of crime? Some people get over it, some never do. And we haven't even debated the causes of crime.

[rainachapelle]

gz wife says zimmerman is a ticking timebomb growing much more angrier



George Zimmerman's Estranged Wife: He's 'Like A Ticking Time Bomb'

George Zimmerman's estranged wife says the infamous neighborhood watch guard is now acting "like a monster."

In an interview with Katie Couric, Shellie Zimmerman described how she hopes there are "no more casualties" caused by her husband's erratic behavior. She also remembers how the couple was very much in love when they first married.

"We were great friends and I thought he was a wonderful person -- that's why I married him," she said Thursday on "Katie."


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...tml?ref=topbar

Samantha Scheibe, George Zimmerman's Girlfriend, Describes Decaying Relationship, Attack
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...n_4317249.html

[robertlouis]

Hmmmmm. Given the general direction of the comments on this thread - and I was as critical of Zimmerman and the Florida police as anyone when the Trayvon Martin tragedy occurred - I can't help feeling just a little sorry for George at the moment.

Let me explain. Whatever happened on that fateful night, Zimmerman has been under constant scrutiny and pressure from the media ever since. In those circumstances, even if he's also displaying latent behaviour, it's hardly surprising that he's acting irrationally. Anybody would.

That said, it's clearly in both his wife's and his own interest that she is safe from him and that he himself should be out of harm's way. Releasing him on bail may prove to be an unfortunate action with dreadful consequences. But the media circus won't help.

[yodajazz]

Hmmmmm. Given the general direction of the comments on this thread - and I was as critical of Zimmerman and the Florida police as anyone when the Trayvon Martin tragedy occurred - I can't help feeling just a little sorry for George at the moment.

Let me explain. Whatever happened on that fateful night, Zimmerman has been under constant scrutiny and pressure from the media ever since. In those circumstances, even if he's also displaying latent behaviour, it's hardly surprising that he's acting irrationally. Anybody would.

That said, it's clearly in both his wife's and his own interest that she is safe from him and that he himself should be out of harm's way. Releasing him on bail may prove to be an unfortunate action with dreadful consequences. But the media circus won't help.

As I see it, GZ had a history of questionable behaviors. His attorneys were able to downplay much of it for the trial. His history, as reported in the media, included domestic violence, or related abusive behaviors. He also filed a counter protective order. Seems to me, that he knows how to cover his actions, with counter stories. This is becoming more evident, but I felt that way, long before the recent events. By the way, the other side to media circus, is that he was able to collect over $100k in donations. His former attorneys stated that they were not paid, ( I assume that really means 'paid adequately). His 'fame' has helped to support him. Making a factory tour to purchase a new weapon, after you have killed someone with one of their other products, seems to me to be seeking attention, not avoiding it. But I do feel a little sorry for him myself. However, this was all caused by his actions. It was all avoidable. The general assumption that he would have been killed, if he had not had a gun, is a remote possibility in my judgment, based upon the number of fights teens generally get into. When you hear of people dying at the hands of teens, it is almost always because they had a weapon. How often are people killed with bare hands? If Zimmerman had thrown the first punch, that night, it would have voided his whole story. That is why his history was relevant to the trial. It was reported that he took prescription drugs related to mental health. Why? Yet we know so much about Trayvonn. I always knew that a greater truth would be known, regardless of the trial outcome.