Is the Sanford PD just incompetent, guilty of obstruction of justice, or accessories to murder?

[Faryn Balyncd]

When police tamper with witnesses, attempting to get them to change their account of who was crying for help,


When police claim the 911 tape containing the words "fucking coons" muttered by the killer while disobeying their instructions to not follow the victim is "unitelligible",


when police break protocol and somehow don't test the killer for alcohol or drugs,


when police mysteriously don't use the victim's cell phone to reach relatives, and instead identify him as "John Doe" for 3 days,


when police NEVER even interview the person to whom the victim was having a cell phone conversation moments before his murder,


when police lie to the family that a killer who had been previously arrested for assault of an officer had a "squeaky clean" record,




In these instances, are these Sanford "police"

- - - simply incompetent,

- - - guilty of obstruction of justice,

- - - guilty of witness tampering,

- - - guilty of being accessories after the fact to murder,

- - - or all of the above?

[arely staircase]

1. i'm leaning toward all of the above

their actions from the beginning have ranged from incompetent to arguably criminal- not to mention the way they have treated this family from the time they hauled trayvon's body off to the "john doe" room (meaning they assumed he wasn't from the neighborhood) to the moment they showed his dad the picture with the blood running from the boy's mouth.

i think they misunderstood the rapid communication, 4g world in which we live, and the sh*t storm they were bringing down on themselves with their good ol' boy way of handling things

i hope they all rot.

[MrSlayer]

22. I concur.

[MrScorpio]

27. That's my vote. nt

[hifiguy]

28. +1

and a lot of them deserve a nice long vacation in the slammer.

[socialindependocrat]

2. I wonder why the shooter got support from the SPD?

Did he know somebody in the dept?

Why didn't they consider him a nusance?

They sure went to a lot of trouble to cover things up.
And they must have been given instructions before
they reached the scene because their interviews
were faulty and they didn't take the shooter in to,
at least, be questioned.

[Mojorabbit]

4. I agree. There is a back story to this that has not come out yet. nt

[renate]

15. I've wondered about the nuisance factor, too

He seems like the kind of guy they'd just roll their eyes about when he'd call in, and welcome the chance to get him out of their hair by treating him like a killer instead of their best friend when he finally took his fantasy of being a cop too far.

[TheWraith]

18. Most likely he knows someone, or his family knows someone.

I can't speak to how it works in Florida, but anyone around my area which made 46 911 calls over a few months would get a talking to from the police including an admonition to stop doing that except in case of real emergency.

[sabrina 1]

23. Two things, they did take him in for questioning according to the report posted on their community

Last edited Wed Mar 21, 2012, 04:55 AM - Edit history (1)

bulletin board. And they have also posted a list of his call-ins which seem to cover a period of eight years, from 2004 to the present. Here's a link to the City of Sanford's bulletin board:

http://www.sanfordfl.gov/index.html

According to the police reports from the night of the killing, Zimmerman was hand-cuffed, treated for some minor wounds by the FD and then taken in for questioning and then released. They say they could not detain him based on the evidence they had at that time.

As for the call-ins, it looks like the reports of him calling over forty times in a few months were not accurate.

Otherwise, there is no explanation as to why they did not identify him until the next day considering they had the cell phone. Their excuse for not arresting Zimmerman was that he had acted in self-defense, according to himself. They posted updates on the investigation periodically over the next couple of weeks and stated that when they were done it would be passed on to the DA.

Edited to add link to his call record: http://www.sanfordfl.gov/investigation/docs/911CallHistory.pdf

Looks like he made approx one call a month, nothing in Nov. But interesting note, he seems to have called the PD on March 8th, 11 days after the shooting.

[socialindependocrat]

24. Great info sabrina1

See, I've never heard this before. It always sounds like they just let him go.

Also, I never knew you could access the police log on-line.

Good to know when you're trying to get the facts straight.

Thanks for the additional info!

[sabrina 1]

36. You're welcome, but credit goes to DUer, csziggy who provided me with the link in another

thread.

[Fawke Em]

35. It just occurred to be that Zimmerman was a criminal

justice major, correct?

If so, I'm betting he went to school with a lot of people who are now police officers.

Just a thought.

[DevonRex]

3. All of the above, right down to the

911 operator. He asked if the guy was black or Hispanic. Why? And why didn't he say Do Not Follow Him instead of we don't need you to do that.

Sure, ask which race the guy is but don't automatically assume a person who is up to no good has to be black or Hispanic. That just further fuels a racist's beliefs.

Then the police chief said his department isn't racist. Yet the person who has direct contact with the public on the phone asks about blacks and Hispanics.

The department investigated the dead black teen and not the killer named George Zimmerman. And they tried to hide the 911 tapes in which the killer of a black child is heard saying "fucking coons" shortly before he pulls the trigger twice.

Yeah, all of the above.

[JI7]

14. the operator mentioned white also

[ProfessionalLeftist]

5. All of the above, definitely.

In addition to investigating this murder, the FBI and Justice Dept need to investigate the Sanford PD. Seriously.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. When everything comes out (trial?) it will be interesting to see what happened

Right now there is not enough reliable data out there to really answer your question. It does seem incredible, no matter how you view things.

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

7. all of the above is my thinking too...

[grasswire]

8. are there any other missing persons in the area in recent years?

The way this has gone makes me think Zimmerman has some prior history here; something to hide, something the SPD knows about or participated in. Any investigation should consider that.

If there hadn't been other people who heard and saw the fracas, would Tray's body have simply disappeared?

[Historic NY]

9. Their website touts them as being an accredited agency......

I surely doubt that since they neither followed common procedures or policies that's agencies use. I saw a comment from the chief that a narcotic detective was there to investigate....he seemd to imply that a homicide detective should have been sent...a detective is a detective.

[MADem]

10. Something stinks like 3 day old fish.

I wonder if there is a relationship of some kind between Zimmerman and the Chief of Police. Maybe blackmail, or some other situation?

The PD is clearly "covering" for this guy. The only question is WHY???

[Mariana]

11. I wonder if it isn't just plain old fashioned laziness.

Investigating a murder is hard work. You've got to collect a bunch of evidence, you've got to interview a whole lot of people, you have to write loads of reports, you have to testify, etc, etc. Maybe they just didn't want to be bothered with all that. Better to just accept Zimmerman's account as gospel, fudge a few witness statements, and call it done.

Of course, even if it went like that, racism is a big part of it. They wouldn't do this if someone important (read: white) had been killed.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

12. What I find baffling is

This George Zimmerman character sounds like the type of fucking loser wannabe that most cops hate, falling in line behind him seems really strange.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

16. I have wondered that too

Lots of very odd unexplained things here, which hopefully will be aired openly during trial.

[DocMac]

13. This guy is going down! nt

And he should not have worn an orange shirt!!

[The Traveler]

17. My take on it

I regard the police as accomplices after the fact. They tried to help the killer avoid prosecution. It goes beyond obstruction. They were not trying to improperly help secure a conviction. They were aiding the commission of a crime.

Trav

[caseymoz]

19. Probably none.

It's Florida's Stand Your Ground law that's at fault here. Prosecutors and police chiefs warned the legislator of exactly this when that abomination was passed in 2005.

And I'm sorry to say, due to that very same law, and another Florida statute that works with it, I doubt Zimmerman will ever be charged with manslaughter or murder. They could probably get him for some other minor charge like trespassing (if the fight took place on private property) but they will never get him for anything like murder.

I doubt the feds can do anything about it either.

[gordianot]

20. There is much more to this story and none of it has anything to do with the innocent victim Trayvon.

My disgust at the slaughter of this young man is absolute. This was a crying child murdered in cold blood. I expect my utter disgust to run deeper as more facts become known.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

21. This is a very well written article summarizing the facts currently known.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/316817/20120320/george-zimmerman-trayvon-martin-florida-shooting.htm

"In 2011, former Sanford Police Chief Brian Tooley resigned after a YouTube video showed his 21-year-old son attacking a homeless black man. In 2005, two white security guards, one of them also the son of a Sanford police officer, shot and killed 16-year-old Travares McGill."

[leveymg]

40. Ding, ding, ding . . . we have a WINNER, folks. Circle round and read the above post ^

[Romulox]

25. This case stinks to high heaven. All of the above. nt

[Blue_Tires]

26. You forgot to add "racist and simply indifferent to another black kid dead in the street"

[slackmaster]

29. I suspect it's a toxic mixture of all of the above, plus laziness

[malaise]

30. I'll take all of the above for $2,000

Alex

[CanonRay]

31. This much incompetence has to be deliberate

Even a lousy police department would have done a drug/alcohol test, done ballistic test, kept the weapon used, etc.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

32. I think racism in the PD is a possible motive, but let's not discount the tendancy of some LEOs....

...to simply want to close a case without regard to whether their findings match the truth or not.

They may focus in on one suspect and do all they can to try to get a confession from that suspect, notwithstanding the fact there may actually be a more logical suspect out there.

Do a favor and look into the story of Kevin Fox out of Illinois. The whole story of what the PD and the DA did in that case out of expedience to that man is one of the most horrific things I have ever read, ever. And because they were so intent on trying to get an innocent young father to try to confess that he sexually abused and killed his own daughter, they let the actual guilty perpetrator walk free for years.

http://www.chicagojustice.org/blog/inside-kevin-fox2019s-appellate-court-decision

Or look at the exceptional Oscar winning documentary "Murder on a Sunday Morning", another story out of Florida involving a young black teen, Brenton Butler, who like Treyvon Martin was guilty of little more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A tourist had been killed at a local hotel and the police wanted nothing more than to get a quick resolution to the case. The lead detective--who just so happened to be the sheriff's son--literally beat a confession out of Butler. Butler was later fully exonerated in the murder. But it was the tunnel vision of the police and prosecutors that actually lead to an innocent young man being put on trial for murder on a confession that should have been viewed as suspect from the get go.

Or in the Martin case, it might be simply be a matter of the Sanford PD's laziness--Zimmerman claimed self-defense, and rather than fully investigate the glaring holes in Zimmerman's account, they figured they'd just close the case instead of being bothered with the investigation and prosecution. I'm sure they had no idea the sense of national outrage that this case would end up invoking. Just stupidity mixed with laziness, and perhaps a bit of racism (or at least indifference to the racial undertones of the situation) mixed in.

[msanthrope]

37. "Murder On a Sunday Morning" is the reason I became a criminal defense attorney.

It is an excellent film.

[Faryn Balyncd]

33. Did the narcotics officer PD sent out check Trayvon but not the murderer for drugs?

[libodem]

34. Yes

Yes and yes.

[msanthrope]

38. All of the above. Without a doubt, they aided and abetted a murderer. nt

[leveymg]

39. Let a jury decide.

[Historic NY]

41. Sanford Police commission vote no confidence in chief....about time

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/21/2706876_p2/sanford-commission-votes-no-confidence.html

In a 3-2 vote Wednesday night, the Sanford City Commission gave the chief a vote of no confidence, adding to the mounting national pressure to oust him.
What began as misunderstandings, technicalities and poor word choice mushroomed into what critics are calling a deeply flawed investigation, which is now being looked at by state and federal agencies.

“I’ve never thought the chief was a racist or anything. It’s more of a lack of experience and a lack of leadership,” said Commissioner Velma Williams, who advocated that the chief resign to quell tensions before a rally next week, timed for Monday’s city commission meeting.
Mayor Jeff Triplett told reporters afterward that he voted against the chief over his management and “communication.” City manager Norton Bonaparte Jr. told reporters that he would not make a decision about the chief’s fate until he learns from an independent law enforcement agency what mistakes police might have made. This week the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement launched their own investigations.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/21/2706876/sanford-commission-votes-no-confidence.html#storylink=cpy

[Marrah_G]

42. all of the above