Nineteen days before Trayvon Martin was gunneddown by self-appointed block “captain” George Zimmerman, Manuel Loggins wasmurdered by an Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy in the parking lot of SanClemente High School. Loggins, a deeply religious man, often visited the school to walk on thetrack and discuss the Bible with his daughters, who were with him on themorning he was murdered.
According to the most recent of several official versionsof the incident, theDeputy was concerned by Loggins’ “irrational” behavior, which involved crashingthrough a gate and attempting to leave the scene. Even this rendering of theepisode, however, doesn’t explain why a Deputy would shoot an unarmed manbehind the wheel of an SUV containing two young girls.
The Deputy initially insistedthat he “felt threatened” by Loggins. Within a day or so of thestory becoming public, the story had undergone a critical revision: The Sheriff’s Office claimed that Loggins had to be shot in the interestsof “the perceived safety of the children.”
So zealous were the officers forthe safety of two young girls who had just seen their father murdered in frontof them that the department took them into custody held them incommunicado forthirteen hours while the official narrative was being worked out. In the words of the family’s attorney, “They just incarcerated them.”
Sgt. Loggins was black; his killer, Deputy Darren Sandberg, iswhite – and he’s back on patrol duty,without facing criminal charges or administrative punishment of any kind. Hisunion, displaying its customary gift for arrogant self-preoccupation, insistsLoggins was entirely to blame.
“It is heartbreaking that ManuelLoggins created a situation that put his children in danger and ultimately costhim his life,” oozed police union spokesperson Tom Dominguez. "It isunfortunate that his actions put his own children into immediate danger andresulted in his death."
That smarmy, dismissivestatement irresistibly reminds me of the radio exchangebetween U.S. troops involved in the Baghdad massacre documented in the“Collateral Murder” video.
Eleven Iraqis were massacred inthe unprovoked attack, and several others – including two small children – wereseriously wounded.
“Well, it’s their fault forbringing kids into a battle,” one of the murderers snarkily insisted wheninformed that small children were among the victims.
Loggins’s widow gave birth toanother daughter at about the same time she buried her husband.
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| Manuel Loggins and his future widow. |
Neither Louis Farrakhan nor Al Sharpton reached out to theLoggins family. As a gesture of solidarity with Trayvon, the Miami Heat basketball team wasphotographed wearing hooded sweatshirts, the “suspicious” attire the teenagerwas wearing when he was chased down and shot by George Zimmerman. TheSacramento Kings abstained from a similar symbolic display of sympathy forManuel Loggins.
Asked by a reporter to commentabout the Trayvon Martin killing, Barack Obama pointed out that if he had a son,the young man might resemble Trayvon. The President has yet to be asked tocomment about the murder of Manuel Loggins – who is one of two black Marines tobe murdered by police within the space of three months.
Last November 19, 68-year-oldretired Marine Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr. was slaughtered by police at his apartment in WhitePlains, New York. Chamberlain, an elderly man who suffered from a heartcondition and several other ailments, was not a criminal suspect. He hadinadvertently triggered a medical alert, which resulted in a visit byparamedics. The police, unfortunately,responded as well, and they quickly displayed their infallible gift for makingmatters worse.
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| Kenneth Chamberlain, Jr. (center). |
Once inside, the police wereconfronted by a terrified old man who – as documented in video recovered from aTaser – was clad in boxer shorts, with his hands at his side. This dreadfulspecter was enough to trigger the “Officer Safety” reflex – practically anythingwill – and the heroes in blue shot him with a Taser and a beanbag gun beforegunning him down.
Theoriginal story was that Chamberlain “came at the officers” with a butcherknife and – I’m not kidding – a hatchet. His son points out that his father’sheart was so weak that he couldn’t walk more than forty feet without resting.The initial account is difficult to reconcile with the footage captured by theTaser and security cameras. Furthermore, even if the old man had lunged at thecops, they had the duty to retreat:They had no legal or moral right to be in the home, and Chamberlain had thelegal and moral right to evict them by force.
Long after the incident, thepolice rationalized that the invasion was necessary because they weren’t surewhether “anybody else inside was in danger.” This is a matter that could havebeen cleared up through use of an obscure piece of technology called atelephone, a remarkable instrument that could have been used to contact eitherMr. Chamberlain or his son, who didn’t live far away. But this would havedeprived the armored adolescents on the police force of an opportunity to bustdown a door and impose themselves on someone who couldn’t fight back.
Predictably, Martin’s familybelieves that Zimmerman acted on bigoted motives. In the case of KennethChamberlain, Sr., there is material evidence of racism at work: Recordings ofthe standoff captured racial epithets, including the “n-word,” hurled at theharmless old man by some of the officers involved in murdering him just a fewminutes later.
Nevertheless, the Tolerance Police – for some reason -- haven’tmade the slaughter of Kenneth Chamberlain a causecelebre.
One much-remarked detail in thekilling of Trayvon Martin is the fact that the supposedly suspicious teenagerwas “armed” with Skittles and a can of iced tea. This summons memories of Jordan Miles,an 18-year-old from Pittsburgh who was nearly beaten to death on the streetnear his grandmother’s house two years ago.
His assailants claimed that Milesstruck them as “suspicious” because he fled at their approach, and that theyfeared for their lives when he appeared to be armed. It turns out that hisconcealed “weapon” was a bottle of Mountain Dew, an admittedly toxic substancebut one harmful only if taken internally.
Theattackers were police officers, who weren’t prosecuted or subjected toadministrative punishment. As iscustomary whenever a Mundane is left bloody by the ministrations of the State’shigh priests of coercion, Miles was charged with “aggravated assault,” whichpresumably took the form of flailing his arms while bleeding on his sanctifiedassailants.
When those charges weredismissed, the police union – in a typical fit of corrupt petulance – conducted amass “sick-out” as a protest. This had the unintended, if short-lived,effect of making Pittsburgh’s streets just a little safer. This crime wasquickly forgotten, and Miles’s family recently received a trivial,tax-subsidized settlement from the City of Pittsburgh. Once again: This episode,which offers several strong points of similarity to the Trayvon Martin killing,didn’t ignite a nation-wide firestorm of media outrage.
Every week – perhaps every day –innocent young black men are beaten and killed by armed strangers who act withimpunity, and often in circumstances quite similar to those in which TrayvonMartin was killed. The perpetrators of those assaults are police officers.George Zimmerman was a self-commissioned “captain” in a Neighborhood Watchprogram with which he had no formal affiliation.
For some reason the SanfordPolice Department saw fit to treat him like a cop by granting him the kind of “qualifiedimmunity” usually afforded only to fully accredited members of the exaltedbrotherhood of state-sanctioned violence.
Civilian disarmament advocateshave implicated Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law in Trayvon Martin killing. The Sanford Police have refused to charge Zimmerman, insisting that “under the law,it had no call to bring charges,” reported the New York Times.
Enacted in 2005, Florida’s“Justifiable Use of Force” statute (Title XLVI, Chapter 776) recognizes that anindividual has the natural right to use deadly force when confronting thethreat of “death or great bodily harm” from an intruder or an aggressor. Thisdoes not apply when “The person against whom the defensive force is used hasthe right to be in … [a] dwelling, residence, or vehicle,” or if the individualwho employed the defensive force “is engaged in an unlawful activity….”
Martin, an unarmed teenager withno criminal record, was headed to his father’s home in the Miami Gardens gated community. Althoughhe was described by Zimmerman to the police as a “suspicious individual,”Martin had an unqualified legal right to be where he was.
In his 911 call, Zimmerman tolda police dispatcher that “There’s a real suspicious guy. This guy looks likehe’s up to no good, on drugs or something…. These a**holes always get away.”Zimmerman actively pursued Martin, after being specifically instructed thatthis was unnecessary.
When Martin noticed Zimmerman, theteenager – who was speaking to a girlfriend viacellphone – madereference to being “hounded by a strange man on a cellphone who ran after him,cornered him and confronted him,” as summarized in an ABC News report.
“Why are you following me?”Martin asked Zimmerman. A few moments later, Zimmerman shot Martin with his 9millimeter handgun. Several witnesses reported hearing the teenager cry forhelp before the shot was fired.
“They’re wrestling right in theback of my porch,” one witness told a police dispatcher. “The guy’s yellinghelp and I’m not going out.”
For some reason, police investigatingthe matter “corrected” one key witness, a local schoolteacher, by insistingthat it was Zimmerman, not Martin, who had cried for help. This makes littlesense: Zimmerman was armed and outweighed the frightened teenager by more than100 pounds. (Again, one can’t help but be struck by the similarity between thisincident and countless others involving actual police assaults on helplessvictims.)
In addition to “correcting” oneeyewitness, the Sanford PD pointedly ignored the testimony ofMartin’s girlfriend, towhom the victim expressed his own fears about the unidentified man who wasstalking him.
Zimmerman’s original story, assummarized by the Miami Herald,was that “he had stepped out of his truck to check the name of the street hewas on when [Martin] attacked him from behind as he walked back to his truck.”Zimmerman claims that he shot Martin “because he feared for his life” – aconjuration uttered by every police officer who has ever gunned down a helplessperson.
Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee –who has been compelled to resign – pronounced that he was satisfiedwith Zimmerman’s version of the incident, moving quickly to wrap up the casebecause “there is no evidence to dispute the shooter’s claim of self-defense.” The police released him without testing him for drugs or alcohol.
Zimmerman, who was charged withresisting arrest and assaulting an officer in 2005 – has called the police toreport “suspicious” black males 46 times since January 2011. Neighbors havedescribed him as “fixated on crime” and have complained about his “aggressivetactics.”
An aggressor, of course, isn’t “standinghis ground.” During the February 26 incident, Zimmerman pursued Martin, who hada legal right to be where he was. By creating the confrontation, Zimmerman wasthe aggressor. He had both the moral and legal duty to retreat, rather than toescalate the confrontation by employing force of any kind.
Florida’s self-defense law, likesimilar statutes elsewhere, makes an exception for law enforcement officers.Although he was not employed by a police department and not an official memberof the volunteer neighborhood watch, Zimmerman clearly considered himself to beacting in a law enforcement capacity. For reasons yet to be made clear, theSanford PD uncritically accepted Zimmerman’s self-characterization, grantinghim the kind of “professional courtesy” commonly extended to members of the privilegedfraternity of official coercion. In doing so they went so far as to tamper witheyewitness testimony on his behalf.
According to ABC News, “TheSanford Police Department says it stands by its investigation, and that it wasnot race or incompetence that prevented it from arresting Zimmerman but thelaw.” Under the terms of the Florida state statutes, however, Zimmermancommitted an act of criminal homicide, not justified self-defense. Yet thecivilian disarmament lobby – most likely working in collaboration with policeunions – moved quickly to implicate the “Stand Your Ground” law in the killing.
The opposition of police unions hasbecome particularly acute in recent months as they have lobbied against “castledoctrine” laws in Minnesota and Indiana that explicitly recognize the naturalright of citizens to use lethal force against police officers who unlawfullyinvade their property or threaten their lives.
Yes, the familiar cast ofprejudice profiteers and racial ambulance chasers – who failed to be moved bythe racially charged police murders of Manuel Loggins and Kenneth Chamberlain-- has helped turn the killing of Trayvon Martin into a public works project. Butthe ideology that has propelled this issue to the top of the media agenda isn’ta variant of racial collectivism: It is the even more murderous doctrine ofgovernment supremacism, under which Zimmerman’s lethal actions would beconsidered entirely appropriate if he had been swaddled in a State-issuedcostume.
Within six months we should see a plethora of bills -- supported by a coalition that includes the Brady Campaign and police unions -- bearing Trayvon Martin's name, all of which will seek the repeal of "Castle Doctrine" and "Stand Your Ground" self-defense laws.
Update: It begins....
"Where is the outrage over every single one of the thousands of children and teens killed by guns?" fulminated totalitarian nanny statist Marian Wright Edleman of the so-called Children's Defense Fund on March 24. Edleman condemns what she calls "gun slinging Americans unrestrained by common sense gun control laws" -- that is, laws that fail to provide a monopoly of violence to the most lethal segment of society, the State's enforcement caste.
"As a nation, we must aspire and act to become the world leader in protecting children against guns rather than leading the world in child victims of guns," Edleman continues, reveling in the pureile fallacy that evil inheres in the inanimate object called a "gun," rather than the malevolent will of an individual who employs it to harm another.
"We need a relentless, powerful citizens' voice to break the gun lobby's veto on common sense gun policy," Edleman declares, using the expression "common sense" as a functional synonym for "civilian disarmament."
Second Update: Where are Zimmerman's Injuries?
"You fail to mention that Zimmerman had a bloodied nose and blood on the back of his head," complained an anonymous commenter below, reciting -- as if it were incontestable fact -- a second-hand assertion made on the shooter's behalf.
Surveillance video taken shortly after the shooting makes it clear that Zimmerman -- who was arrested, but not held, by the Sanford Police -- appeared to be uninjured. He sustained no physical trauma whatsoever -- unless the purported life-and-death struggle with Trayvon Martin is somehow to blame for the 28-year-old's male pattern baldness.
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| No wounds, no blood -- no evidence of a beating. |
Eyewitness accounts establish that some kind of a physical struggle took place -- but the notion that Zimmerman was nearly beaten to death by Trayvon impossible to sustain.
A special -- and urgent -- appeal
Regular readers of Pro Libertate are aware that this blog has been my primary means of supporting my family since October 2006, when I lost my last "regular" job. In recent months I've been working full-time (and then some) for Republic magazine. While that engagement offers many compensations, a living wage is not found on that list. I am hopeful that this will eventually change for the better, but pending that happy day I still have a family of eight people for whom to provide.
Our circumstances recently took a "sudden but inevitable" turn for the worse": For the second time in three years, our landlord has decided to allow the home in which we're living to go into foreclosure. He quite thoughtfully informed us about this four months after he stopped paying on the mortgage.
We could really use any help we can get -- and I'm willing to provide something in exchange for it.
I've recently received a case and a half of my most recent book, Liberty in Eclipse: The War on Terror and the Rise of the Homeland Security State, and I will send a personalized copy to every person who donates twenty dollars (or more). Please contact me (WNGrigg [at] msn [dot] [com]) with a mailing address.
Thank you so much, and God bless!
Dum spiro, pugno!
Dum spiro, pugno!
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