"That is counter-factual - Florida requires a training class which Zimmerman took before he could get a concealed carry permit."
So? That wasn't specific to being a neighborhood watchman.
"Which is exactly what he was doing until he was violently assaulted and feared for his life."
Not true. He got out of the vehicle with the intent to confront Trayvon. Against the recommendation of the police. Which is why they determined the shooting to be avoidable.
At the moment he got out of the vehicle, he was violating what a neighborhood watchman should do.
"That is not true - concealed guns do not cause assaults by criminals - but they can end them with a positive outcome for the victim."
And they can end in tragedy, too. Carrying a gun meant Zimmermann put himself in a situation that could get ugly. And it did. He shouldn't have been in the situation in the first place.
"This community was not a chartered neighborhood watch group - so those rules (if real) don't apply."
Which makes the community as a whole liable. That isn't something that should be done freelance.
Here is an article out of the Dallas Morning News
At a crime prevention meeting at a Far North Dallas police station Tuesday night, longtime crime watch volunteer Paul Landfair encouraged newcomers to join him on patrol. They’d get training, he said, about “how to avoid a situation like what happened in Florida.”
He didn’t have to explain he was talking about the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an incident that has become Topic A for many of the hundreds of volunteer crime watch members in North Texas and the dozens of police officers who work with them.
Their reaction to the Sanford, Fla., case of a 17-year-old killed last month by a neighborhood watch volunteer has been near universal:
“Worst-case scenario,” said Richardson police Sgt. Jamie Gerhart, who works with his city’s neighborhood watch groups.
The killing has set off national arguments about race — Martin was black while the crime watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, is Hispanic — and about law enforcement. Zimmerman has not been charged.
But whether racism was a factor or any crime was committed, nobody is disputing several facts: Zimmerman got out of his car, was carrying a gun and confronted Martin. All of which breaks the rules of most organized crime watch programs — in Florida and in North Texas.
“When I heard about it, it just kind of proved our point about what we try to tell our volunteers and why we tell them what we tell them,” said Richardson police Officer Tommy Davis, one of four officers in the city’s crime prevention unit who work with neighborhood watch programs.
On March 6, long before the story went national, Richardson volunteer Tim Arnett spotted a news report and sent it to the crime prevention unit, which forwarded it to every volunteer in the city.
In the weeks since the shooting, in meetings formal and informal, local volunteers and police officers who work with them have used the incident as a prompt to go back over training and procedures.
But such reviews happen regularly at watch meetings anyway, Arnett said.
“We even joke about it,” he said. “‘Let’s say the magic words: Stay in the car!’”
That no-pursuit policy is the same in Dallas, where watch volunteers are also discussing the Martin shooting.
“This can’t happen here,” said Landfair, a Dallas watch volunteer for nine years. “We aren’t armed, and we can’t pursue anybody.”
And then he paused. Volunteers do their work without direct daily supervision, he acknowledged.
“This should never happen here,” he said. “Some guy may carry a baseball bat or a Mace or an Uzi machine gun. But that is absolutely against the rules.”
Organized crime and neighborhood watch programs have been around since at least the 1960s. The National Sheriffs’ Association created the National Neighborhood Watch Program in 1972. And it offers a manual for people who want to join or create neighborhood watch groups. The manual sets up these guidelines:
“It should be emphasized to members that they do not possess police powers and they shall not carry weapons or pursue vehicles. They should also be cautioned to alert police or deputies when encountering strange activity. Members should never confront suspicious persons who could be armed and dangerous.”
If they see something suspicious, they are to call police and stay out of danger. On no account are they supposed to approach someone they think might be dangerous.
“We’re supposed to run as fast as we can while calling 911,” Landfair said.
Under Texas law, there’s nothing to say that anybody can’t climb into a car and patrol a neighborhood looking for evidence of crime. But members of formalized crime watch groups who volunteer to patrol their neighborhoods must undergo a criminal background check, take a training class and agree to stick with the rules. Like no guns allowed, even if they have a license.
“Some of them, it rubs them the wrong way when you tell them they can’t carry their gun,” Davis said. “We tell them, ‘No hard feelings if this program is not for you.’”
Overzealous patrollers are not to be tolerated, Gerhart said.
There was a case, he said, of a volunteer who spotted a young woman driving through a stop sign. He followed her home and chewed her out. The woman’s dad was not amused and called in a complaint.
“Folks like that, we don’t keep around,” Gerhart said.
While there’s no question Zimmerman broke several rules, there’s less official agreement about whether he should have been suspicious of Martin in the first place. Volunteers are told not to profile people by race or ethnicity and not to harass anybody. But what constitutes suspicious behavior?
The same national manual that sets out the unambiguous no-weapons policy is much vaguer about how to decide if something is worth calling in police support. What is suspicious activity? “Anything that feels uncomfortable or looks out of place.”
The manual explains how police operate, as a model for the volunteers.
“Officers may not be able to articulate specifically what is unusual, but they are keenly aware that something is awry. Officers sometimes refer to this phenomenon as a ‘sixth sense’ or ‘street smarts.’”
That’s not easy to train, agree the police and volunteers. But training and procedures, they say, are the best way to avoid an incident where either a volunteer or a citizen gets injured — or worse.
“When you don’t have that, you get this scenario,” Gerhart said.
IN THE KNOW: Crime watch procedures
Guide to proper observations
Stay calm.
Remain alert to your surroundings.
Begin with the basics.
Move to the specifics.
Broaden your perspective.
Add detail.
Post-observation activities:
1. Write down your observation as soon as possible.
2. Note the date and time.
3. If activities appear to be unusual, suspicious or illegal, call for assistance and take the appropriate action according to your agency’s policies and procedures.
SOURCE: Neighborhood Watch Manual, National Sheriffs’ Association |
