The official story

If you’re wondering why the country is so bent out of shape over the shooting death of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, the answer is simple. The media have covered up basic facts of the incident, most importantly that witnesses at the scene told police that Martin was fighting with Zimmerman, on top of him punching him, when Zimmerman shot him. They leave that out. They make it sound as though Zimmerman, looking for a helpless innocent black to shoot dead, saw Martin, followed him, and shot him dead. You know, the way that it happens to young innocent blacks every day in this country, the way Dutchess County prosecutor Steven Pagones along with several of his KKK pals kidnapped Tawana Brawley in 1987, raped her for days, then left her in a garbage bag covered in feces and with racist slogans scrawled on her body.

Here is a typical example of the media coverage, from the Philadelphia Inquirer. I’ve bolded all the passages relating to the incident. Note how Mayor Nutter’s description of the event as an assassination is allowed to stand unchallenged by any facts. The only contrary assertion is attributed to Zimmerman himself: “Zimmerman has contended that he shot the teenager in self-defense.” The fact that witnesses said Martin was attacking Zimmerman is not mentioned.

Mayor Nutter says Trayvon was assassinated

As Philadelphia prepares for another demonstration over the shooting death in Florida of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, Mayor Nutter on Sunday characterized the teenager’s death as “an assassination.”

Nutter also joined the increasing calls for the arrest of George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who fatally shot the unarmed Martin in February.

Nutter’s comments on MSNBC came one day before the one-month anniversary of the widely condemned shooting, which will be marked Monday night with a candlelight vigil in Love Park, the latest in a series of demonstrations that have been held in various U.S. cities. A march in Philadelphia Friday drew more than 2,500 participants.

“I’ve called this nothing short of an assassination,” Nutter said on MSNBC. “This individual Zimmerman followed Trayvon for some period of time. Trayvon was not a threat to him.

“Clearly Zimmerman was told not to continue any kind of pursuit. In my view at least … he tracked [Trayvon] down. He followed him and then shot and killed him. It’s incomprehensible to me why an individual would do something like this, unless he had something either in his heart or on his mind.”

Public condemnation of how police in Florida have handled the case - they have not arrested Zimmerman - has been unrelenting. Critics have maintained that Martin’s race - African American - played a factor in his shooting. Zimmerman’s racial background is mixed, with a white mother and an Hispanic father.

The uprising over the police handling of the case has forced the temporary resignation of the police chief in Sanford, the small town where the shooting occurred. The U.S. Justice department has launched an investigation, in part to determine if a hate crime was committed.

On Feb. 26, Martin had been at a 7-Eleven and was walking back to his father’s home in a gated community to watch a basketball game when Zimmerman started following him and ultimately shot him. Zimmerman has contended that he shot the teenager in self-defense, and was released by police after questioning.

Martin had been carrying a bag of Skittles candy and a can of ice tea.

The shooting has drawn international attention to Florida’s so-called Stand Your Ground law. It allows someone to “stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force,” if that person feels it is neccessary to prevent death or bodily harm.

Some of Zimmerman’s friends have come to his defense saying he is not a racist and was prompted to pull the trigger because he feared for his life.

On MSNBC, Nutter said Zimmerman “based on all information, clearly should be in police custody. That’s the first failing in the aftermath of his actions.”

“There was a young boy who was minding his business, a young African-American male … good kid based on everything that we know, and this guy on his own shoots him down with no logic, no reason, and no response from the law enforcement officials down in Florida.”

“People will not rest until there is some justice on behalf of that young man, Trayvon Martin, and many, many other young people across the United States of America, especially African American males,” Nutter said.

- end of initial entry -

Daniel S. writes:

Mayor Nutter? How fitting that this malevolent windbag would have such a name.

Paul K. writes:

Mayor Nutter says, “People will not rest until there is some justice on behalf of that young man, Trayvon Martin, and many, many other young people across the United States of America, especially African American males.”

I understand Nutter to mean that the many other young African American males who are killed every year deserve justice; that is, their killers should be punished. According to homicide data compiled by the FBI, 2,720 blacks were murdered in 2010. Of those, the killer was white in 218 cases, and the killer was black in 2,459 cases. As Hispanics are considered white for the purposes of these statistics, it appears that blacks are more than 11 times more likely to killed by a fellow black than by a white or Hispanic. If Mayor Nutter feels that there are not enough black men in prison, I would like him to come out and say it.,

LA replies:

Only 2,700 blacks were murdered in the U.S. in one year? I would think the number would be substantially higher.

In the same data base, how many whites were killed last year?

Paul K. replies:

Good point. It says this below the table:

“NOTE: This table is based on incidents where some information about the offender is known by law enforcement; therefore, when the offender age, sex, and race are all reported as unknown, these data are excluded from the table.”

I don’t know how much is omitted.

LA replies:

Here’s why the number seems too low. In 2010, there were 14,748 homicides in the U.S. (The rest of what I’m about to say is based on remembered approximations and educated guesses, not statistics that I’m currently looking up.) About half of homicides in the U.S. are committed by blacks. So, blacks committed about 7,000 homicides. Further, the overwhelming majority of the victims of homicides by blacks are other blacks, let’s make a guestimate of 80 percent. Therefore the number of blacks killed each year in recent years in the U.S. would be 80 percent of 7,000, or 5,600.

Paul K. replies:

For 2010, 3,327 whites are listed as having been murdered, with 2,777 of the killers being white and 447 black. [LA replies: We must remember that Hispanic perpetrators are all listed as white.] Those numbers sound way low. Elsewhere the document states, “An estimated 14,748 persons were murdered nationwide in 2010.” So those cases in which the race of offenders was not specified must constitute a majority.

A commenter at pjmedia drew statistics from the data from 2009. My math is not good enough to validate his conclusions, but they look about right. In a U.S. population of 305 million with 80 percent white (Hispanics lumped with whites) and 13 percent black:

For 100,000 whites, 1.21 are killed by a white.
For 100,000 whites, 0.19 are killed by a black.
For 100,000 blacks, 0.53 are killed by a white.
For 100,000 blacks, 6.57 are killed by a black

For 100,000 whites, 1.21 will be the killer of a white.
For 100,000 whites, 0.09 will be the killer of a black.
For 100,000 blacks, 1.15 will be the killer of a white.
For 100,000 blacks, 6.57 will be the killer of a black.

For 100,000 blacks, 0.53 are killed by a white, while m6.57 are killed by a black. That’s over 12 times as many.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 25, 2012 04:37 PM | Send