We’re learning today that just last year, at a public forum, George Zimmerman publicly testified against the Sanford police department in defense of a homeless black man. In other words, what we have here is more proof that the media narrative surrounding the shooting of Trayvon Martin might just end up being the most disgraced and failed media narrative since Duke-LaCrosse and the Tuscon murders.
George Zimmerman accused the Sanford police department of corruption more than a year before he shot Trayvon Martin, saying at a public forum the agency covered up the beating of a black homeless man by the son of a white officer.
“I would just like to state that the law is written in black and white,” Zimmerman said during a 90-second statement to city commissioners at a community forum. “It should not and cannot be enforced in the gray for those who are in the thin blue line.”
The forum took place on Jan. 8, 2011, days after a video of the beating went viral on the Internet and then-Sanford Police Chief Brian Tooley was forced to retire. Tooley’s department faced criticism for dragging its feet in arresting Justin Collison, the son of a police lieutenant.
The media narrative fail here is a triple shot. If Zimmerman is supposedly some kind of yee-haw law and order type eager to play racist cop, why in the world would he publicly accuse the Sanford police of corruption with a special emphasis on the Chief — all in defense of a homeless black man beaten by the white son of a white Sanford police officer. It’s not like someone threw a microphone in Zimmerman’s face either. He proactively went to, attended, and spoke out at this meeting.
“I’d like to know what action the commission is taking in order to repeal Mr. Tooley’s pension,” Zimmerman said to the commission. “I’m not asking you to repeal his pension; I believe he’s already forfeited his pension by his illegal cover-up in corruption in what happened in his department.”
The third corner in this triangle of media narrative fail is that, after Trayvon was shot and killed, many in the media questioned Zimmerman’s supposed “cozy relationship” with the Sanford police — that this had something to do with Zimmerman not being charged with a crime.
While we have no way of knowing what Zimmerman’s overall relationship to the department was, it is pretty safe to say that publicly demanding that the Police Chief lose his pension and accusing the department of covering up a crime is not the action of a man looking to endear himself with the department.
A wonderful bit of Karmic irony is that today’s story comes to us courtesy of the Associated Press, the very same news outlet that led the charge to turn this tragedy onto a full-blown racial controversy with the publishing of false information about Zimmerman:
The incident happened on Feb. 26, 2012, and was primarily reported in local outlets. The first major national news report was on CBS This Morning on March 8, and did not mention race.
The story did not take on a racial dimension until later that day, when the AP mistakenly identified the shooter as white (George Zimmerman is of mixed Hispanic descent).
The racial claims were then repeated and amplified by other media outlets, including Gawker, which claimed the neighborhood in which Martin was shot was “predominantly white” (it fact is is “almost 50 percent white,” according to the Daily Beast).
Only in liberal America is Zimmerman, a Hispanic Democrat, a racist vigilante and Elizabeth Warren a member of an oppressed minority.
Taking their marching orders directly from the White House, the whole of the media launched a campaign of smears to demonize a man, all in an effort to aid and abet Obama’s reelection by enflaming racial tensions in the crucial swing state of Florida.
And it’s only May.
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