This Trayvon Martin shooting and all the publicity & race baiting it has spawned has got me wondering. While a lot of people say that being black means being suspect, including COA Ter boy Slitherman - the guy was a stranger in a gated community. He wasn't some schmoe walking down a public street.
Cincinnati has a "Citizens on Patrol" program that links up observer citizens with the police directly. They are not allowed to carry firearms, they are not supposed to patrol alone & I don't think they are supposed to even approach somebody committing a crime. This George Zimmerman guy was out alone with a gun & maybe affiliated with a neighborhood group that may or may not have had affiliations with police. How paranoid the guy is that he needs a gated community AND armed patrols is a serious question that needs to be asked. I'd be getting the Hell out of Dodge if I thought an area was that bad.
Still, why wasn't Martin informed that there was a neighborhood watch group & how to communicate with them when addressed? Instead, his mom just tells him it's "a cruel world" and "that being a black man in America could be dangerous". Smitherman claims his 16yr old has only recently been allowed to walk around on public streets alone. WTF? I guess I was roaming the mean streets at half that age, riding the bus - all the time alone because I didn't have to worry because I was white? I do remember some black kid trying to kick my ass for no reason out on the (public) street when I was about 16 - but my dad hadn't drawn me a map.
Still, what's weirdest, is that a guy kills another person & the extent of the initial investigation seems less exhaustive than a suspected DUI. Even police are usually taken off street duty for the length of an investigation after they shoot somebody and we DO know why the cops are out on the street. Zimmerman? Probably should have been hiding under a bed.

An ABC timeline