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Lead Homicide Investigator Wanted George Zimmerman Arrested

Posted: March 27, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Crime, racism | Tags: , , , , , , |14 Comments

George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin

ABC News is reporting that on the night Trayvon Martin was shot and killed, Sanford detective Chris Serino wanted to charge George Zimmerman with manslaughter. Reportedly it was state District Attorney Norman Wolfinger who ordered Zimmerman released.

Police brought Zimmerman into the station for questioning for a few hours on the night of the shooting, said Zimmerman’s attorney, despite his request for medical attention first. Ultimately they had to accept Zimmerman’s claim of self defense. He was never charged with a crime.

Serino filed an affidavit on Feb. 26, the night that Martin was shot and killed by Zimmerman, that stated he was unconvinced Zimmerman’s version of events.

It sounds like Serino wanted a record of his opinion on file for his own future protection. I wonder why we are just learning about this a month later?

What was Sanford police chief Bill Lee’s role in this? Who ordered Zimmerman released without evidence being collected from him? Was that Wolfinger’s decision?

Wolfinger and Lee have both removed themselves from the ongoing investigation, but how much evidence has been lost because of their flawed decisions?

Finally who in the Sanford Police Department is responsible for the recent leaks of information favorable to Zimmerman?

14 Comments on “Lead Homicide Investigator Wanted George Zimmerman Arrested”

  1. Northwestrain's avatar Northwestrain says:
    March 27, 2012 at 5:54 pm

    ?? who leaked — DA? police chief? Both?

    Cover up — on top of cover up.

    One man played judge, jury & assassan.

    Now this one man is getting a lot of help to spin his crime.

  2. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    March 27, 2012 at 5:54 pm

    Charlie Pierce:

    It is Not About Race because It Is Never About Race. Race is the past. Black people can vote. One of them is president. Nothing Is About Race anymore. Just ask Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum …and they’ll tell you that the president “injected” race into the tragedy. It wasn’t there before the president — who is (shhh!) black, you know — put it there. Ask Joe Oliver, this “friend” of the gunman who insists that Zimmerman might have said “fucking goons” and not “fucking coons,” because the latter is an obsolete racial slur and the former is a “term of endearment,” according to Oliver’s daughter. This is enormously believable because, if you’re an armed 28-year old gunslinger in pursuit of what you believe is a dangerous burglar, the first descriptive that would leap to anyone’s mind is a term of endearment used by high-school girls. Yeah, sure. Whatever. As if. And it is enormously believable because This Is Not About Race.

    It Is Never About Race. All those people arguing down through the years that the Civil War was about dueling conceptions of nationhood, or a clash of incompatible economic systems, or the ramifications of the 10th Amendment were all arguing, after all, that It Was Not About Race. Massive Resistance in the South in the 1960’s was about resistance to overweening federal power because It Was Not About Race. The Wallace campaigns, and the politically profitable adoption by modern conservatism of the leftover tropes and trappings of American apartheid was about the embattled white middle-class in the North and not About Race because It Is Never About Race. Ronald Reagan kicked off his campaign talking about states rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, not far from where they dug three civil rights workers out of a dam, because he wanted to show that a new paradigm had been established in American constitutional history, and it was not About Race because It Is Never About Race. Amadou Diallo was Not About Race. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, which tracks such things, dozens of children are currently serving sentences of life without parole, of whom two-thirds of them are children of color, as a result of laws passed by legislators wanting to look tough on crime, and those statistics are not skewed because of race because It Is Never About Race. George Zimmerman saw a black kid with a hoodie and gave chase with his gun in his hand. But that was not about race, because Joe Oliver and the Sanford police and the oh-so-very fair-minded media are telling us, hell, don’t worry, It Is Never About Race.

    Right. It’s never about race. It’s just that those black kids keep on insisting on causing their own deaths.

  3. Woman Voter's avatar Woman Voter says:
    March 27, 2012 at 5:56 pm

    Maybe it was Zimmerman’s dad being a retired judge?

    • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
      March 27, 2012 at 6:00 pm

      He was a judge in Virginia, I think. I’m not sure how much influence that would have in Florida. No, it’s because Trayvon was a young black man. They didn’t even bother to find out who he was so they could contact his family.

  4. peggysue22's avatar peggysue22 says:
    March 27, 2012 at 6:01 pm

    That’s a scathing editorial from Pierce on the matter, BB. The plot thickens. There’s so much of this that makes no sense. But the PD has definitely tried to circle the wagons. As you said above, it does make you wonder who is leaking the material. Wonder what else is out there??

    • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
      March 27, 2012 at 6:05 pm

      Obviously, there was and is disagreement within the police force about how to handle this. Now we know why Wolfinger had to step down.

      • RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
        March 27, 2012 at 6:10 pm

        This last leak may be homicide detective Serino leveling the playing field again.

      • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
        March 27, 2012 at 6:43 pm

        I think that’s the likely explanation. He probably got sick of the smear campaign.

  5. RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
    March 27, 2012 at 6:18 pm

    Charles Pierce is on a roll. The sad misinformation that the hard right pushes wind up being believed by their rubes and too many others.

    ‘Obamacare’ and the Right’s Own Private Universe

    WASHINGTON — Earlier today, we looked at how the backlash narrative in the Trayvon Martin case has begun to coalesce. In no little time, this story will be treated as fact, and we will hear that poor George Zimmerman had to blast away before Trayvon could get back on his cellphone and call the rest of his fellow New Black Panthers to come and join in the general stomping.
    […]
    Take poor Sandra Fluke. It is now an article of faith on the Right that she asked all of us to pay for “her” birth control. “Real women pay for their own birth control,” the crowd on the steps chanted today, and there were more than a couple of signs warning her not to expect “our” money to pay for her obviously overindulgent sexytime.
    […]
    Also, today, folks told me that Obamacare “finances abortions.” (It doesn’t.) I heard that it will mandate “euthanasia.” (It won’t.) Even the death panels got a workout again. We have half the country living in its own universe of belief, with its own history, its own politics, and its own physical laws. It’s like running elections against the anti-gravity party. It is not healthy for any of us.

  6. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    March 27, 2012 at 6:47 pm

    The latest right wing meme is the news that George Zimmerman is a registered Democrat. So he couldn’t possibly have racially profiled Martin?? These people are really desperate.

  7. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    March 27, 2012 at 7:10 pm

    Mediatite quotes from the Al Sharpton show (where I first heard about the ABC story):

    MSNBC’s Al Sharpton reported that NBC News was working to confirm ABC’s report and questioned criminal justice professor Eugene O’Donnell what he made of this new development.

    “How would they know within hours of a shooting how much evidence there was and then let the man walk out with his clothes and evidence?” Sharpton asked incredulously. “Maybe we not only should be investigating Zimmerman and the police, but the prosecutor’s office. Maybe that’s why the first thing they did when we started marching is come with a new special prosecutor. Something doesn’t smell right here.”

    “Whatever happened that night, which is obviously very much in question, subsequent to that night, day-to-day as this has been going on, neither the police nor the prosecutor’s office have covered themselves in glory by these kind of selective leaks and this partial information and it really would be much preferable if they put this all at the table early on and said we had an internal debate and this is what happened,” O’Donnell replied. “It is a shame and it hurts public confidence when there is a slow and paralyzed process to getting this matter resolved.”

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