Did they ever take him to the station to be questioned? This is so crazy!

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

a link I hope works for you: http://www.sanfordfl.gov/investigation/docs/Twin%20Lakes%20Shooting%20Initial%20Report.pdf

If you scroll down past the witness reports there are two written reports of what Police Officers saw and did when they arrived at the scene. The second one describes putting Zimmerman into the police vehicle and the FD treating him while was there.

Can't copy & paste as it is in PDF format. Wish I could do a screen cap though in case it is removed. Let me know if it works for you.

And the potential charge was manslaughter "unnecessary killing to prevent unlawful act" - what unlawful act did they assume Trayvon was doing?!

It's clear that they treated Trayvon like a criminal from the very beginning. And as for Zimmerman - he had a nosebleed. So what. Probably did it to himself while he was shooting the child.

Thank you for linking this report. I am every angrier now that I have read it. I didn't think that was possible.

killing. It was such a short period of time. When you look at the record of calls and read the police reports on when he was declared dead, I come up with a total of 17 minutes that passed from Zimmerman's first call to the police to the time he was declared dead.

The declaration of death was not made immediately so in my estimation, from the first call by Zimmerman to the time of the shooting 13 minutes passed. Since the cops were already on their way, they got there pretty quickly. Seems like about three or four minutes after they arrived, they declared that Trayvon was dead.

If Zimmerman had waited just 15 minutes, in his car, we never would have heard of this case.

And yes, they did treat Trayvon like a criminal because that is how he was described to them by Zimmerman. They arrived on the scene, they knew from all the calls by then, that someone had been shot. They also knew that Zimmerman had called to report a suspicious person. They probably did not know that the dispatcher had advised him not to follow Trayvon.

They should have tested Zimmerman for drugs and/or alcohol. They should have photographed his 'injuries', which maybe they did but we have not seen that yet. I am not sure if they kept his gun, but they should have. Mostly they should have checked Trayvon's cell phone and then contacted his family.

I think they just accepted Zimmerman's story and ran the investigation from that POV.

I don't know if you listened to the any of the calls, but call #7 I believe, from a woman who lives alone, gives an idea of how horrific the whole thing was for anyone who was there. She was devastated that a human life had been taken. The dispatcher stayed on the line with her, (she was shaking she said, crying and had no one she could call) for nearly 30 minutes because he became worried about her as she was so very upset. It is a very disturbing call but it captures the horror and the genuine humanity of the woman who could not grasp that a life had been taken right outside her window, practically.

The list of calls are here: http://www.sanfordfl.gov/index.html

They really took off when the 911 operator took the 'shots fired' calls.

They held Zimmerman at gunpoint, handcuffed him, had SFP treat his injuries, and took him to the PD when Major Crimes took over.

What I'd like to see is the Major Crimes initial report. That's likely going to have Zimmerman's statement in it.

call from Zimmerman, until the shooting, for the police to get there. According to the Police Reports and other documents, police were dispatched at 7.17 PM, while Zimmerman was still on the phone with the Dispatcher.

Trayvon was pronounced dead at 7.30 PM according to the report. The shooting took place a few minutes before that, maybe 3 or 4 minutes. I am not sure of the exact time.

The police got there several minutes before pronouncing him dead. One Police Officer stated that he was already on his way there when he received the call that a shooting had occurred. According to witnesses police were at the scene right after the shooting took place.

What I am saying is that had Zimmerman just waited, the police would have been there within about, it looks like about 10 minutes or so. He should have gone back to his car. I bet he wishes now that he had done that.

I am doing this from memory of the documents posted at the link above. When I have time I will read them again as they do record the timing from the first call to the pronouncement of death. Such an unnecessary tragedy. All for the sake of a few minutes.

Don't they have eyewitnesses? Including Zimmerman himself admitting that he was chasing the victim, not the other way around? And even the sound of the gunshot on tape? And Zimmerman saying something on a previous 911 call about "fucking coons?"

Sounds like a pretty strong case to me.

a man not guilty after he shot another man in the side of the head. The man he shot was on a ladder trying to climb on to dry land.

I don't care what the case may seem to be, I wouldn't count on a guilty verdict. Juries are crap shoots.

They have no understanding of the law. They think that they've been charged for a reason and most people, especially brown, are guilty. This is the system we live in now. Juries have out lived their usefulness. The prosecution likes them the dumber the better. I've never received a jury duty summons. They don't want me. I know the law. And I'd be their worst nightmare.

didn't want to be there, and in some cases, wanted to find guilty so they could go home.

I found most of the jurors to be engaged and interested in what was going on. In one criminal case we had a "lone juror" who was actually lobbying for conviction on a degree issue for which the prosecution simply had not presented sufficient information to prove. It took about an hour to persuade her to vote for acquittal.

The defendant on that complex case, involving multiple commercial burglaries and degree issues, got a nine-year sentence.

And having been on a grand jury- boy that's an experience you don't forget.

The prosecutors and police get questioned up one side and down the other.

...and really don't give a shit. I HATE those people. I'll get paid to perform my public service to the best of my ability PROPERLY. It might be boring, but it isn't like they're sitting there and not getting anything in return. My company has a policy of paying the difference between salary and jury duty payment. It's awesome.

have led us to many slam dunk jury cases turning into not guilty's. They think, if a fingerprint isn't found, or there's no DNA, there's no crime.

Shows like that, especially ones that show technology that doesn't even exist (zooming in on photographs and getting *more* detail)- they predispose people to thinking that a lack of physical evidence, or inconclusive evidence is a sign of innocence.

Though he said it sometimes works the other way- that a partial fingerprint match can be given too much credence, too. (There's a bit of subjectiveness to matching partial prints, btw.)

..because THAT has "Constitutional Protections".

- No drug or alcohol test on Zimmerman even though that's standard procedure

- They let him keep the gun that night...no test for ballistics obviously

- The police "corrected" witnesses to fit Zimmerman's side of the story

- Police said Zimmerman was the one screaming even though 3 witnesses thought it was Trayvon and the 911 tapes clearly sound like a kid screaming for help.

- The police never got thorough statements from witnesses such as Mary Cutcher at the scene. She tried to contact police to give a more detailed statement, but the cops blew her off.

- They let Trayvon's body sit in the morgue for 3 days as "John Doe" even though they had his phone and could have contacted his parents or someone else using his phone.

- The never questioned the girl who was on the phone with him right before he was shot. No investigation into that.

- They told Trayvon's dad that Zimmerman had a "squeaky clean" record even though he was arrested for assault/battery.

My state of Pennsylvania put touch-screen voting in and we went from light blue to dark red seemingly overnight.

Why? Very, very simple: no accountability.

Zimmerman admitted it was his gun and that he shot Trayvon with it. Certainly there were all kinds of mistakes made by the police in the case (if "mistakes" they really are). But there isn't any issue as to what gun was used, who it belonged to and who shot Trayvon. So I don't get what they would have needed the gun for as far as ballistics in concerned. As far as the police are concerned he lawfully defended himself, and there was no reason to arrest him. So why would they confiscate his gun?

I think it's pretty clear that the police weren't making any mistakes. For whatever reason they chose to believe Zimmerman's story of lawful self defense even with all the evidence to the contrary and even went out of their way to "correct" witnesses statements to fit that scenerio. This was no series of unconnected mistakes... it was a calculated effort by the police to protect a murderer who committed an obvious homicide. Of course they wouldn't confiscate the gun. What for? They were calculatedly acting in Zimmerman's best interests despite the obvious. The question is why, and THAT also needs investigating.

first, was the ammunition legal...e.g. "cop killer" bullets. Second, you do it as a matter of course in case a month later you find out the two hated each other and now the gun is gone. Third, what were the angle of the shots? Was the kid on the ground for any of them? That would eliminate self defense. We're the wounds in the front? How close were they together when he fired the first shot. The second? The third? Why three shots? I have more questions than this, and the crappy, sloppy police investigation answers none of them. You can only get this sloppy by deliberation.

There's a lot more to ballistics than which gun the bullets came from.

PS: The gun is probably at the bottom of some lake by now.

That's a bit of contrived nonsense ginned up to create a fuss in the 80's.

Angle of the shots can be determined by the wound track in Trayvon. Having the gun doesn't help determine that.

As far as I've heard, there was only one shot.

Having the gun is only useful if you have lots of shots and need to know who shot whom, etc.

You dont need the gun to figure out angle of shot into the victim, and real forensic examiners can easily tell entrance from exit wounds and how close (star, stippling, etc.) or far away the shots were fired. As to "Cop Killer" bullets? what are they? if you mean the teflon coated bullets from the 80's they were long ago banned. If you mean soft point/hollowpoint/expanding tip bullets they are legal.

It's just something they should look for. Lots of things are "banned". Chances are he just used regular bullets, but it doesn't sound like the cops did shit.

And if it is it would only serve to cast a HUGE red flag of suspicion on Zimmerman as to why he no longer had the gun... an innocent man who killed someone in self defense isn't going to be so stupid as to get rid of the gun particularly when its absence wouldn't help him one iota anyway. They don't need the gun to know what kind of bullets were used or the location of the wounds or how closely the victim and the perp were in proximity when it was fired or the tragectory, etc. because they have the body with at least one bullet in it for that. The gun itself isn't going to tell them how many shots were fired because the police can't know solely based on the gun itself how many bullets were in it before the murder as compared to how many were in it afterward. The gun itself can't tell them anything they don't already know, and they already know that it was Zimmerman's gun and Zimmerman who shot the kid.

But, as I said, of COURSE they weren't going to confiscate the gun for balistics testing because they had already made up their minds from the outset that it was self defense and everything about their "investigation" was a series of calculated gross "mistakes" to back up that pre-conceived scenerio. The "investigation" was criminal in itself.

Here's an informative article that may help:

http://www.guns.com/the-myth-of-the-cop-killer-bullet.html

Murder cases require tons of evidence, and ballistics is pretty basic stuff.

PB

We don't deprive people of civil rights in this country until they've at least been CHARGED with a crime.

When the police shoot someone, they have to turn their gun in and stand down until a review is completed.

Yes, guns are often taken as evidence when investigations when there is some doubt as to who was shot by whom. In this case there is no doubt. Zimmerman admitted shooting Trayvon Martin.

I know that sounds strange to some people here. I expect The One Who Posts Subject Lines In All Caps or the idiot who called me a "sociopath" the other day or someone from the Great White North to call me out for "supporting" George Zimmerman, but I'm not.

I don't want police given the power to arbitrarily jail people or take away other civil rights without due process. Sometimes the police are inept, sometimes they are corrupt, sometimes they just screw up, but we can't have them throwing people in jail without solid, documented reasons that are subject to challenge.

there don't have to be charges to check out his gun. If they returned it to him after thoroughly documenting and examining it, then so be it.

Do you want to try a case using somebody's word if they recant what they said? This was not cut and dried although the police wanted it to be. You better dot your I's and cross every T if there is a possibility of a problem.

Somebody was killed. There were questions even then about what happened. I would think that in a situation like that, everything should be thoroughly checked. That's the east we can do for the deceased.

Thanks for the clarification. I had the impression that you wanted Zimmerman to be prohibited from having ANY gun rather than just the one used in the shooting. (Police who are involved in shootings don't have to turn in all of their personal weapons, unless they have been charged with a felony.)

As far as other guns, he does have the right to carry them at this point. Glad that is cleared up because I am not asking for his rights to be curtailed without some due process. I don't think keeping his gun for tests would harm him.

Screwing up due process to nail Zimmerman defeats the overall purpose of demanding that it be followed for everybody. The police seemed to have done the same sorry type of analysis that Zimmerman did. If both of them had slowed down and tried to ask more questions, this may not have happened.

But you are right, it is potentially a piece of evidence.

REALLY stands out here. The thought of a 28-year-old black man shooting and killing an unarmed 17-year-old white kid just walking through the neighborhood. All other circumstances identical. What differences would there be in the investigation? It's just so clear and so simple it doesn't require any deep thought to figure out.

1. The cops are incompetent/indifferent

2. The cops too readily believed whatever fantasy Hollywood scenario Zimmerman told them (and I still want to read the statement he gave that night)

The police would take the gun for forensics at the event. It would be return later if he was not charged and the investigation closed.

There is a lot of contradictory information flying around about the shooting...not surprising really.

It's a condition of the job, their right to have a gun outside work wouldn't be changed.

Nothing would legally stop a cop on administrative leave from carrying a gun outside work.

The cops are as culpable as Zimmerman at this point. Criminal obstruction of justice and accessories to murder after the fact.

"Every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints." - Michael Phillip Jagger, 1968