PANAMA CITY — The acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin may have put salt in a locally unhealed wound.
Six years ago, a jury ruled seven officers and one nurse at a local boot camp were not guilty of wrongdoing in the death of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson, who like Trayvon Martin, was African-American. Several groups protested the ruling in the case, which had drawn national media attention, but at the state level the case was closed.
“There is obviously an emotional situation when you have a young person die — especially in circumstances that seem to be hard to believe,” said Benjamin Crump, attorney at the Tallahassee firm of Parks & Crump LLC, who represented both the Anderson and Martin families.
“Both of them were young people; they had their whole lives ahead of them,” Crump said. “It’s tragic in both situations. You say, ‘How could things have been done differently?’ ”
Crump said the families met at a church gathering before the Zimmerman verdict “and they just hugged one another.”
“They belong to a fraternity that no parent wants to belong to,” he added.
The grieving associated with those types of deaths is longstanding and the implications of not guilty verdicts in both cases will have a lasting impact on local young African-American males, said the Rev. Rufus Wood Jr., president of the Bay County branch of the NAACP.
“It sends a signal and a message to young black men (that) is not a good one — because no one is held accountable,” Wood said. “It devalues the life of young African-American males” and there rises “a cause for them to be fearful, a cause for them to be afraid.
“In fact, throughout the whole Zimmerman trial, I just felt like I was reliving what I went through with the (Anderson) family in 2006 and 2007,” Wood added. “I felt that I was retraumatized.”
Crump identified a similar trauma line.
“It certainly sets some precedence in both matters, that if this happens in the future, that the person won’t be held accountable. And that’s why so many people are so passionate about these two cases in particular; we worry about our children,” Crump said.
The cases
In January 2006, Anderson was in his second day as an enrollee at the Bay County Sheriff Office’s Boot Camp when he collapsed. A boot camp video appered to show drill officers roughhousing him prior to the collapse. He died the following day in a Pensacola hospital. The jury determined the cause of death had not been related to actions by the drill officers or nurse.
Martin, on the other hand, had been walking in a neighborhood in Sanford in February last year.
“We’ve often heard of scenarios where police and law enforcement officials have been charged with using excessive force against minorities. However, in Trayvon Martin’s case, this wasn’t a police officer,” Crump said. “So, many people were troubled by a private citizen trying to take the law into his own hand against our children.”
As a result of litigation in the Anderson incident, all state-run boot camps were closed and the family obtained a $7.5 million settlement outside of court.
And, although the United States Department of Justice did not pursue criminal civil rights violation charges in the Anderson case, Wood said the incident further broadened “the racial divide.”
“When that verdict was rendered, we advocated for peace,” Wood said. “The way I felt that day, I felt like I was losing faith. You want to believe in a system … [but] you have to renew your faith because the struggle continues. We’ll have to do what we can do in order to make sure we don’t have another Trayvon Martin [and] Martin Lee Anderson.”
The NAACP and thousands of citizens are pushing for a federal investigation of civil rights violations in the Zimmerman incident. The organization has set up a petition on moveon.org, and since Saturday’s ruling, more than 500,000 people have signed the petition. On Monday, the Department of Justice set up an email account to take tips on its civil rights investigation to determine whether it would bring criminal charges against Zimmerman.
“I think there needs to be [an investigation] because we have to answer that question: Is it allowed for you to profile and follow and confront individuals based only on the fact that they belong to a certain ethnicity,” Crump said, noting if it is allowed, “then we just need to know the law so we know what to tell our children.”
In the Anderson incident, the accused included three minority drill guards — two were African-American and one was Asian; the rest were white. In the Martin incident, the accused, Zimmerman, considers himself Hispanic.
When asked if he believed race played a part, Crump said: “I certainly think in Trayvon Martin’s case, you ask yourself why did his killer profile him in the beginning.
“As it relates to Martin Lee Anderson, you just think that had it been a white child who got killed in the videotape, that people would have been held responsible,” he said.
The local NAACP branch, in conjunction with several churches, has scheduled a youth empowerment rally for Sunday at 5:30 p.m. at Love Center Missionary Baptist Church, 3100 E. 11th St.
Following the rally, a prayer vigil for Trayvon Martin will be held at 8 p.m. at the Juvenile Justice Courthouse, 533 E. 11th St.
WANT TO GO?
- What: Prayer vigil for Trayvon Martin
- When: Sunday at 8 p.m.
- Where: Juvenile Justice Courthouse, 533 E. 11 St.
- Details: 763-5381