J. Neil Schulman
@ Agorist.com
What George Zimmerman Really Said
Update April 5, 2012: CNN Audio Engineer Confirms My Analysis of “What George Zimmerman Really Said”!
There are millions of loud voices discussing the incident of Sanford, Florida Neighborhood Watch Captain George Zimmerman’s shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on a chill and raining evening on February 26, 2012.
The incident has become a genuine Bonfire of the Vanities as Rev. Louis Farrakhan, Rev. Al Sharpton, and Rev. Jesse Jackson (so many revs it sounds like an engine starting!) are campaigning for “Justice for Trayvon.”
Millions have signed a petition demanding that Zimmerman be arrested.
The New Black Panther Party has issued a “dead or alive” fatwa on George Zimmerman — a Latino with a surname more common among Jews.
President Obama has said that Trayvon Martin looks like the son he would have had.
In Florida a Special Prosecutor and Grand Jury are both in the process of re-investigating the Sanford Police Department’s conclusion that Zimmerman legally shot Martin in self-defense, while Congressional and Department of Justice investigations are already making this a federal case.
And the question supercharging this shooting of a 6’3″ African-American teenager by a 5’9″ Latino-American man in his 20’s is a 911 recording in which George Zimmerman is widely reported to have muttered under his breath, “Fucking coons.”
If George Zimmerman said that, the shooting could be classified as a hate crime under federal law.
There is controversy about what George Zimmerman can be heard saying on that 911 tape. The sound quality is marginal. Some hear “Fucking coons.” Some hear, “Fucking tools.” Some hear, “Fucking punks.”
They’re all wrong.
I downloaded the 911 recording off the web, isolated the phrase, and enhanced it with Roxio.
What George Zimmerman said in rainy 63 degree February weather in Sanford Florida was, “It’s fucking cold.”
The remark is not out of context. A minute or so earlier on the 911 tape George Zimmerman tells the 911 dispatcher, “It’s raining.”
Click on the mugshot of George Zimmerman to listen to my enhanced recording.
Now can we all just get along?
Author’s Note March 28, 2012:
Rich Lowry has blogged this article on National Review Online.
A lively discussion follows so I added my own comment:
I wrote the article that Rich Lowry linked to.
My enhancement of the recording was increasing the volume of the upper frequencies — nothing else.
As Rich Lowry notes, the word “It’s” is in both versions, and the phrase, “It’s f***ing coons” is therefore a nonsensical interpretation.” The racist interpretation suggesting a hate crime is therefore not present on the record.
According to Weather Underground, which keeps an hour by hour record of weather on file for numerous locations (I link to its page for Sanford, FL on February 26, 2012 — the evening in question) the temperature was 63 degrees Fahrenheit and we hear George Zimmerman in the beginning of the 911 call telling the dispatcher that it’s raining — confirmed by Weather Underground.
Is 63 degrees and raining “f***king cold”? When I lived in Southern California I used to refer to 60 degrees Fahrenheit as a “bone chilling twenty below eighty.” I’m told Floridians are just as much infants about weather as I was.
J. Neil Schulman
This article is Copyright © 2012 The J. Neil Schulman Living Trust. All rights reserved.
Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals from the 2011 Anthem Film Festival! My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available free on the web linked from the official movie website. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!
March 28, 2012 - 7:17 am
I listened, I agree. Good bit of investigative reporting from the master of quirky Sci-Fi.
March 28, 2012 - 1:30 pm
What minute/second into the recording is the sentence? I didn’t hear it at all…
March 28, 2012 - 1:46 pm
You are right and it is easy to hear why.
Regardless of the fact we cannot hear the end of the suspect word, what is important is the middle sound. No one can deny that it is a long vowel ‘o’ as in cold, old or fold. Any of the other suggested words, including coons, makes a shorter ‘oo’ sound (booth, few or dude).
There is simply no way he could have been saying “coons”. No racism here.
March 28, 2012 - 2:28 pm
When CNN doctored the audio, they removed the bass and low frequencies. This changes the hard “O” in “cold” to a softer “oooo.” If you doubt that, try it yourself. The Communist News Network strikes again, trying to incite a race war.
Watch Simon Singh prove that he can make you hear things in “Stairway to Heaven” that aren’t there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bG7EFhMw8w
March 28, 2012 - 2:51 pm
You can hear it on the original 911 recording at 2:23.
Neil
March 28, 2012 - 2:53 pm
I tried removing bass and lower frequencies and got no enhanced results. But increasing the upper frequencies did bring it out. I don’t know why this isn’t effectively the same thing but it wasn’t.
March 28, 2012 - 7:39 pm
You don’t need a computer for the audio experiment, you can do it vocally. Say the letter “O” and then raise the pitch/frequency of your voice, and “O” becomes “oooo.”
When you say:
…it’s not “bringing it out,” it’s transmogrifying the word, or as some might say, “fundamentally transforming” it.
March 28, 2012 - 7:48 pm
Regardless of what he said the fact remains that he shot an innocent child for no reason whatsoever and still has not faced justice….but he will.
March 28, 2012 - 8:01 pm
The fact remains? What fact is that?
Treyvon Martin was 6’3″; George Zimmerman was 5’9″.
George Zimmerman is heard on the 911 recording he initiated making plans with the dispatcher to meet a police cruiser, not hunting Treyvon Martin down and hurling racial epithets at him.
And a black witness reports that it was Treyvon Martin beating up George Zimmerman, not the other way around.
So none of your “facts” are actually facts.
March 28, 2012 - 8:21 pm
Fact #1: This is a free country and Trayvon Martin had the same rights as George Zimmerman to walk the streets of Sanford, FL or anywhere else without committing a crime…he did nothing wrong.
Fact #2: George Zimmerman had no authority or license to carry a gun or to act as a law enforcement official. He was not acting as a private citizen but as a “neighborhood watch captain”. That means he gave up the right to carry a concealed weapon so it was an illegal weapon.
Fact #3: George Zimmerman was specifically told by the police dispatch not to follow Trayvon but he did so anyway.
Fact #4: Trayvon fought to defend himself after being attacked by Zimmerman.
Fact #5: Zimmerman did not have any life threatening injuries so was completely unjustified in shooting an unarmed child.
March 28, 2012 - 9:28 pm
Zimmerman was IN HIS CAR when he made the call to 911.
And you really think he said “It’s fucking cold”?
Give me a break. Quit lying.
March 28, 2012 - 9:36 pm
Trayvon Martin was on private property ( a gated community) after dark where George Zimmerman was a community authorized captain in its neighborhood watch, organized because there had been break-ins. This is a racially mixed community in which different races live together as neighbors and friends. George Zimmerman, a Latino, himself has black friends in his community and spent his weekends tutoring kids of all races in math and science.
I’ve listened to George Zimmerman’s 911 call. He says that Trayvon Martin was not walking from Point A to Point B but walking aimlessly in the area of the clubhouse, in the rain. This behavior of walking in circles in the rain would be considered suspicious by any security officer — and I’m speaking as a man who’s first job was as a uniformed Holmes Security Guard and who later in life passed the State of California’s requirements under PC 832 to become a sworn police officer. (I applied to my local police department but was not hired. I think my admitting to having smoked marijuana in college disqualified me.)
As a private security officer George Zimmerman had many powers of arrest that a sworn and uniformed police officer would have had. If he observed someone he considered suspicious on the private property he was patrolling he had the responsibility to investigate; the point at which he was required to notify the Sanford Police Department — before or after investigating, or even making a citizen’s arrest if he observed a crime — was a matter of his choice. He called 911 and notified the police dispatcher early on, and when advised by the dispatcher to break off his observation and wait for police Zimmerman can he heard for the next two minutes giving detailed directions to the dispatcher of where he was going to meet the police cruiser.
What happened next is not recorded on the 911 call nor on any camera that we know of. You assume that George Zimmerman initiated an attack on Treyvon Martin, but there are zero witnesses who report that, while there is at least one black neighbor of Zimmerman’s who report witnessing the 6’3″ Trayvon Martin on top of George Zimmerman on the ground, beating Zimmerman up while Zimmerman can be heard on another 911 call screaming for help.
These are the known facts. Based on Zimmerman’s account to the police that Trayvon Martin attacked him after he was returning to his SUV, and that Zimmerman only went for his gun when Martin reached for it — supported by the witness accounts and the 911 recordings — the Sanford Police Detectives re-created the shooting the next day and concluded that Martin did in fact attack Zimmerman and Zimmerman shot Martin once to prevent himself from being beaten to a pulp.
You’re wrong. George Zimmerman holds a Florida CCW license that made it legal for him to carry a handgun outside his home. There is nothing in Florida law that requires a man whose responsibilities require him to be out at night in a high-crime neighborhood from being disarmed — and, frankly, he would have to be a madman to patrol his neighborhood while unarmed.
Wrong, and wrong. Being a neighborhood watch captain in a private gated community is acting as a private citizen — and there is nothing in either Florida law or the regulations of his community which required him to be out at night for any reason unarmed.
There is no evidence to that on the 911 calls and no witnesses reporting that. To the contrary, at the moment when the 911 dispatcher tells George Zimmerman that they don’t need him to follow Trayvon Martin (and, by the way, the 911 dispatcher sitting in an office miles away did not have as good a tactical analysis as the on-scene neighborhood watch captain, and had no legal authority to issue him instructions anyway) George Zimmerman can be heard spending the next two minutes giving the dispatcher directions where the police cruiser can meet him. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to jump to the conclusion that Zimmerman continued following Martin — in fact, Zimmerman tells the 911 dispatcher that Martin “ran away” and swears that “These assholes always get away.”
Zimmerman’s report to the police was that he returned to his SUV to drive to where he was to meet the police cruiser and that’s when, according to George Zimmerman’s account to the police, Trayvon Martin returned and attacked him.
You want to know my wildass guess why Martin attacked Zimmerman? I think it’s that when Zimmerman said “It’s fucking cold” Martin misheard it as “Fucking coon” and was so incensed he decided to beat the shit out of a white man he mistakenly thought had hurled fighting racist words at him.
There is no evidence currently available to the public to that chain of events.
Zimmerman did not sustain life-threatening injuries because he used his firearm to defend himself before Martin could blind or maim him. And cut the crap with this bullshit about Trayvon Martin being a child; that photo of Trayvon Martin when he was 12 to 14 years old that the media keep running isn’t fooling anyone anymore. Trayvon Martin was a 6’3″ high-school football player at the age when he was closest to being at his physical prime — 17. You put someone like that, of any ethicity, on top of me beating the shit out of me and I’ll shoot the motherfucking asshole so fast you can hear the wind whistling through the bullet hole I put into him. And I’m 6’2″. Zimmerman was only 5’9″
“Child” my weary ass!
March 28, 2012 - 9:55 pm
First of all, I’m the editor of this page and be polite or I won’t publish you again. Calling me a liar is impolite.
Second, how do you know that George Zimmerman phoned 911 from his car and remained in his car for the duration of the over-four-minute call? There is zero testimony to that from anyone.
So, once again, another pundit who wasn’t there and who can cite no witness testimony of people who were there declaring “facts” out of his own imagination.
March 29, 2012 - 1:26 am
Where did you get the heights of Zimmerman & Martin? A search I just did turned up no sources I would trust, just chatter on forums and in comment sections of blogs.
As for your “enhancement” of the audio, you didn’t just increase the high frequency, you also truncated the ending, removing what was clearly a trailing “s” sound, not at all consistent with it being the word “cold”.
After listening to the original and your version a number of times, it sounds to me more like “these fucking coats” than either “these fucking coons” or “it’s fucking cold”, but to be perfectly honest, the only part that I’d be willing to swear to is the word “fucking”. The words that precede and follow are so indistinct that I would attribute any interpretation of them to pareidolia. Since cell phones use a very lossy form of digital compression that can produce some weird results from less than optimal input, such as a whisper, and the mp3 recordings we are listening to on the web add another layer of distortion, it would take an audio professional with access to the original recording to attempt to determine what was actually said.
March 29, 2012 - 2:19 am
Major newspapers — I can’t remember which ones at the moment.
I’m aware of truncating a trailing sibilance; that was part of the isolation I was talking about. I have a high degree of confidence that the sibilance is not a trailing “s” sound as part of a word but the sibilance is an artifact of a short exhale into a cell phone mike.
The first word is “It’s.” The second word is “fuckin’.” The third word starts with a “K” sound followed by a long “O” — and what we hear as sibilance at the end is likely an artifact of an short exhale into a cell phone mike. I’m 100% positive that Zimmerman did not say “Fucking coons” because the word “It’s” would make the phrase “It’s fucking coons” nonsensical even if we did hear an “ooo” vowel sound — which we don’t; we hear the long “O” vowel sound. I’ve gone through a bunch of permutations of sentences starting with “It’s fucking” and “cold is still my best approximation of what he did say. But far more important to me is what George Zimmerman did not say: coons.
March 29, 2012 - 8:22 am
Zimmerman was outside when he said “it’s fucking cold”. We know this for a fact because immediately after he says it, the dispatcher asks him if he is following Martin, and Zimmerman says “yeah.”
He gets out of his car at 2:10. He closes the door at 2:13-2:14. You can hear his footsteps on the wet street. Then he says it’s fucking cold.
March 29, 2012 - 9:34 am
I frankly do not agree that Zimmerman is saying “cold”. I heard “coons” on both recordings, the original as well as your enhanced version. I also have strong doubts that Martin attacked Zimmerman, due to the police station surveillance video released this morning. There is no sign of injury anywhere on his head or face, and no blood on his jacket (it IS red and video somewhat grainy, so lab tests will need to be run if they haven’t been already) or on his t-shirt. Zimmerman appears trim and clean and quite muscular and fit – quite able to handle himself, to my eye, against a 17 year old, even a tall one.
Zimmerman may not generally be a racist and may very well have black friends and relatives. But to my ear, it sounds as though he is uttering a racial slur on the tape and I have serious doubts about the validity of his self-defense story.
Thank you for your attempt to isolate the words on the tape but I have not changed my mind about their meaning.
March 29, 2012 - 9:35 am
At about 1:43 into the call you can hear the bell on a car like the door is open then you can hear a car door shut. IE he called from the car got out to get a better look and said it’s fn cold. I lived in florida for a while and at 65 degrees you see people wearing coats.
March 29, 2012 - 9:41 am
I also hear what appears to be a trailing “S” sound but it does not appear to have anything to do with the word. Listen to the rest of the words that have the same sound. The trailing “S” sounds like he is exhaling and the mic is picking it up. If you listen to all the words he sounds like he is breathing hard.
March 29, 2012 - 12:33 pm
I’ve already answered the questions regarding the 911 recording in other messages; no need to go over that again here.
On the question of George Zimmerman’s injuries:
From The Daily Caller: Police surveillance video of Zimmerman may show head injury
March 29, 2012 - 12:45 pm
I heard coons when I saw the CNN video….
But as with most of the stuff in this tragedy I heard exactly what the media wanted me to bereft of any context or common sense.
After hearing this and then deciding I needed to listen to the raw version and make my own conclusions listening to what came before and after and now it is blindingly obvious that he says
“It’s fucking cold”
why?
1. immediately before the remark we hear some shuffling in the background that is clearly GZ unbuckling his seat belt and opening his car door.
then we hear the disputed comment….
2.
then immediately after the comment the dispatcher asks “Are you following him?”
So what is more likely?
a. the dispatcher hears GZ getting out of his car and curse the weather and realizes he is likely going to start a foot pursuit
OR
b. the dispatcher hears GZ spout of racial epithets at about someone already established to be black, then weakly says… “you don’t have to do that” when he realizes this guy is chasing the black guy.
Also worth noting is that the wind blowing accompanying the disputed comment is not present before the clicks (when he presumably exits the vehicle), and goes away again when we hear those click again later on after reporting that TM ran away. ( presumably when he returns to the vehicle).
Go find the raw tape for yourself…. don’t listen to any of these “enhancements” people with agenda are trying to put out there. Listen to it in context and the truth will be clear enough….
unless ofc you are like copyboy and have decided that facts are irrelevant to justice
March 29, 2012 - 12:51 pm
“On the question of George Zimmerman’s injuries:”
I watched the video several times and did not see anything that resembled an injury. Mr. Zimmerman’s scalp appeared smooth and uninjured. I keep my head shaved in exactly this manner and depending on the angle it can catch the light in just such a way in photos.
Of course, time and, hopefully, solid evidence will tell. Thank you for your thoughts.
March 29, 2012 - 1:01 pm
If I were a lawyer doing jury voir dire I’d dismiss you for cause. You hear what you want to hear and don’t see what you don’t want to see. Neither a prosecutor nor a defense lawyer wants a juror who makes up his own evidence as he goes along.
March 29, 2012 - 1:39 pm
“If I were a lawyer doing jury voir dire I’d dismiss you for cause. You hear what you want to hear and don’t see what you don’t want to see. Neither a prosecutor nor a defense lawyer wants a juror who makes up his own evidence as he goes along.”
Possibly. But I must use my own eyes and ears. You are free to dismiss me, Counselor. I hope I am still welcome in this forum. It is always interesting.
March 29, 2012 - 1:45 pm
You’re in good company. ABC News and Fox News’s Shep Smith are doing the exact same thing.
March 29, 2012 - 1:56 pm
“You’re in good company. ABC News and Fox News’s Shep Smith are doing the exact same thing.”
Whatever happened that sad night, or may happen a courtroom, will depend on what evidence is uncovered, and even I am not ready to pass judgment at this point on anyone, however contrarian I may appear here.
Thanks again, this seems to have been a very successful post, judging by the lively interactions.
March 29, 2012 - 1:56 pm
I’ve lived in IL and KY in quite a few winters. I’ve been as far north in winter as Drummondville Quebec. And I’ll stand by this next statement. One of the coldest winters I’ve ever seen was a winter in Jacksonville, FL.
It’s soaking wet even when it’s not raining, windy, foggy AND miserable a lot of the time.
So ‘effing’ cold was what he said from listening to it, and people from elsewhere just don’t ‘get’ 63 AS being cold! Move to FL for a couple winters and get back to us!
March 29, 2012 - 3:33 pm
This morning I Tweeted this:
Today a Shepard Smith Fox News report showed a police report documenting George Zimmerman’s injuries that were treated by the Sanford Fire Department’s paramedics before he was taken to the Sanford Police Department.
March 29, 2012 - 7:42 pm
I called Trayvon a child because he was 17 years old and legally considered a minor. I also have a 17 year old who is a child in my estimation as a parent. Furthermore, the video of George Zimmerman entering the police station was taken 30 minutes after George Zimmerman had just killed Trayvon and he did not have the injuries as described. Even the one pointed out in the picture above is no proof. We do not know that he did not have the injury prior to Feb 26. If it had just happened 30 minutes prior then where is the blood that would have poured from the reported injuries?
March 29, 2012 - 8:44 pm
I’ve done horseback rides in ten-below-zero weather with windchill, lived in a mountain area where there’s about five hours of enough daylight to not need headlights where it won’t go even NEAR freezing for months (and not from the good side), and to this day I think the most miserable cold I ever felt was when I was training in Pensacola.
Chicago came close, Seattle comes close, but for some unknown reason it was just far more miserable than the temperature had any right to be. Even figuring in that people don’t dress “right” for lower temps, ugh.
Another theory I’ve heard folks put forward after they heard the MSM clips is that he said “goons.” Heaven knows that’s what I’d call some 6’3 guy in a hoody that’s prowling around.
March 29, 2012 - 10:02 pm
If Trayvon had shot George Zimmerman do you have any doubt that this 6’3″ 17-year-old would have been tried as an adult?
George Zimmerman was treated by paramedics before they released him to police custody to be taken to the station where the security footage was recorded. If the paramedics had not been able to stop Zimmerman’s bleeding he would have been transported to an emergency room.
So the injuries Zimmerman suffered were not life-threatening. But that is not the standard of justifiable self-defense. The standard of self-defense is whether if George Zimmerman had not stopped Trayvon Martin from continuing combat against him he could have been maimed or killed.
March 31, 2012 - 10:00 pm
After reading all of the comments and also reading your “peace” on it. I think the speculation should be done for now. We should wait for the Police and FBI to investigate and if they have evidence enough to have a trail then do so. The public is always out to get someone when they aren’t even in the investigation we are human so it is normal to be curious and want to know all the facts. I think we will find that the police did infact take pictures of GZ at the station. He simply could have changed his shirt, may have enen had one in his vehicle. So until we see the pics or have “proof” of his injuries people should stop watching the grainy video we are seeing all over the news and internet. Second even if I don’t enhance the audio from the 911 call I clearly hear “its fucking cold” Its funny if we call a black person something racial but I know a number of black people who have called white people Crackers what about Chinese I’ve heard people call them Chinks…out of anger he cold have said anything he is worried about break ins. Lets let the police decide if there is enough for a trial and let them show us the facts if they do have a trial!
April 1, 2012 - 12:14 am
It is not cold he is saying.He is saying fucking coat. probably struggling to get his gun out because he is wearing a coat. It makes sense because he seems to think Trayvon is armed.
April 1, 2012 - 12:19 am
How cold he he really going to be? maybe if he was wearing just a T shirt. Did you see the coat he was wearing? Did not look like a light duty coat.
April 1, 2012 - 12:42 pm
I listened to the UNenhanced 911 call, and to my ears, Zimmerman is clearly saying, “It’s fucking COLD.”
I also agree with Keisha, that at this point, we need to wait until the investigation is completed and stop bantering with each other as to whose OPINION is the correct OPINION. We don’t have all the facts, and we don’t have all the evidence – only what the media wants to publish and there are two distinct sets of “facts” being disseminated. Patience truly is a virtue.
April 2, 2012 - 9:37 am
why would he be cold with that coat on? I lived in florida and with that coat i find it hard to believe he would be cold with that coat on..maybe a skinny guy with no body fat.makes no sense. Coat makes more sense. he thinks trayvon reached for his waistband. think about it. that is where people reach for a gun. Zimmerman would not be motivated to volunteer that info should it be the case. zimmermans gun would probably be covered by his coat and not easy to pull out quickly. he goes for the gun because he need easy access to it just in case. makes more sense.
April 2, 2012 - 11:01 am
The real tragedy of this stand your ground law is that it is inherently stacked against youths because they are not permitted concealed carrys. Trayvon was not legally old enough to be prepared to protect himself from this stalker.
April 2, 2012 - 11:46 am
I’m glad you raised this subject since it reflects my own beliefs, as I’ve already expressed in comments to Joanne.
Our laws are schizophrenic on the question of age, and in my view infantalize post-pubescent human beings that thousands of years of human culture — and many cultures around the world today — have regarded as adults.
By age 17 — the age Trayvon Martin was this past February 26, 2012 — my maternal grandfather had been working for a living for six years and my paternal grandfather had traveled by himself from Russia to the United States then journeyed from New York City to New Orleans, carrying a concealed handgun for protection. At age 16 my own father had played professional saxophone and violin on cruise ships. At age 14 I was regularly selling professional photography to local newspapers.
At age 17 Trayvon Martin could not sign binding contracts in his own name (for example, an apartment lease, a purchase of a car a credit-card application, live on his own, drink alcohol, cigarettes, or a lottery ticket, marry, vote, or purchase a firearm and apply for a Florida CCW license. Yet, if the situation had been reversed and he had shot George Zimmerman, there is no doubt he would have been tried as an adult.
Under most state laws a 15-year-old female who engages in sexual intercourse is considered a victim of statutory rape because she can not legally grant consent; yet, again, if she is charged with a violent felony she can be tried as an adult.
A society in which a class of individuals has none of the rights of an adult yet at the capricious decision of a judge can be held criminally liable as an adult is a society as much in the grip of a double standard with an underclass as the Jim Crow South where blacks were taxed the same as whites — and subject to the same criminal liabilities — yet could not sit in the front of public transit buses, use whites-only public restrooms or public-park water fountains, or marry outside their own skin color.
In my view Trayvon Martin was denied his right to armed self-defense, regardless of how it finally emerges who attacked whom.
April 3, 2012 - 2:46 pm
Touche!
April 3, 2012 - 10:36 pm
I wrote my article “Justifiable Insanity” for the Sierra Times back in March 2001 on the topic of the double-standard applied to young people who have adult liabilities but no adult rights. You can read the reprint in my archive here.
April 5, 2012 - 8:29 am
I suspect Obama and crew will continuously fabricate “crises” up to election day as a way to divert attention away from this failed presidency. Former Obama hitman Rahm Emmanuel repeatedly exclaimed “We shouldn’t let a good crisis go to waste”. We haven’t seen the last of the OWS circus, nor probably more race dramatics and mass protests against anything conservative. The MSM will obediently propagate this narrative. What has surprised me is how the ‘old media’ have become increasingly amateurish in it’s attempt to alter reality. What is scaring me is they may succeed in in their hoodwinked attempt to hang onto the presidency.
April 5, 2012 - 12:11 pm
Good job Mr. Schulman days ahead of Cnn
It was the word cold. Cnn just admited thats
the word.
April 5, 2012 - 5:52 pm
Hi, thanks for putting this up for discussion. I am just finding it hard to think he would all of a sudden mutter somthing like that into the phone to a dispatcher. The other thing he muttered was “they always get away”. His mind was on what this kid was doing, watching him etc. From the call he made this kid sound to be like he was really up to something, everything he did sounded suspicious the way Zimmerman was describing it. Now we know he was just walking home so it’s obvious that everything was being embelished. But why would he say “it’s fucking cold” in the context of the call. He wasn’t thinking of the cold, why didn’t he think the kids hood was up because of the cold, or that he ran because of the rain, he didn’t. He wasn’t taking anything else into consideration. That comment just seems so random in the context of everything else. He was focused solely on the kid, not the surroundings or he would have known it was cold and that’s why his hood is up, it’s raining and that’s why he is standing under the awnings. I don’t think Z is racist, i think it’s possible to be over zealous and profile someone based on things that have happened without being a racist and we are all guilty of that whether we are black, white, polka dot, but that comment seems so random, and it wasn’t really that cold, and his adrenalin must have been pumping and he didn’t take the weather into consideration when surveying the situation so i really don’t think GZ was feeling the cold to much that night. Cheers.
April 6, 2012 - 9:57 am
Now they are saying the lawyers say it was punk George said. I am skeptical. I still think it was coat. In fact it makes me suspicious because I admit i already have a bias of what was said. At first I though he got out of the truck though but after listening again i do not get that impression at all. I do not get the impression that Zimmerman gets out of the truck while on the phone. Trayvon would have had time to approach George while he was on the phone. He says Trayvon is going to the back gate and earlier “they always get away”. Well if you were worried someone was might get away you may say back gate rather than north or south etc. It also shows motive to drive toward the back gate where he could park somewhere near Trayvons destination givin him a reason to reverse direction. After the phone call it would not take long at all for him to drive back to the clubhouse ,get out of his truck and go between the 2 buildings looking for trayvon . At that point a lot of things could have happened. Trayvon could have whooped his ass because he was pissed off. Zimmerman was afraid Martin was armed and went for the gun. He seemed to think trayvon was armed so I don’t take him at his word he reached for the phone. Trayvons call to a girl was up to moments befoer the struggle so i do not take george’s word about the sneaking up on him either. It would be interesting to see if the winds sounds could be duplicated with similar wind speeds.
April 6, 2012 - 10:43 am
George Zimmerman should have been arrested immediately for 3rd degree murder or at least involuntary manslaughter. Then the courts and the jury would have determined his fate! Now, there is unrest in America because he was not arrested. He must be arrested, processed, charged, and arraigned A.S.A.P.
April 6, 2012 - 11:35 am
I find this comment, and the ones like it shouted by demagogues in mass demonstrations, the mentality of the lynch mob — explicitly in that the New Black Panther Party issued a dead-or-alive bounty on the life of George Zimmerman.
There was a police investigation, including a police re-creation of the shooting. George Zimmerman was taken into custody. The default position of police and prosecutors is to book, indict, and try if at all possible; that’s how they justify their paychecks. There was a finding by the prosecutor, based on the witness testimony and evidence, that there was no case to be made against George Zimmerman.
Now, because of the demagoguery and a feeding frenzy by major profit-seeking tabloid media including major distortions of the facts of the case, a special prosecutor has been appointed and a grand jury empaneled, with the veiled threat that if there is no indictment and trial there will be riots as there were in April 1992 following the acquittals in the Rodney King beating case. I managed an apartment complex during that week of rioting and arson, in which over 1000 buildings were torched, some of them apartment buildings less than a mile from the ones I managed — and walked armed patrol around for this week. It’s one of the reasons I no longer live in Los Angeles.
The demands, like this one, for the prosecution of a man based on demagogues and tabloids whipping up a race war and public hysteria is not worthy of America. It’s worthy of Nazi Germany and the Salem Witch Trials.
April 10, 2012 - 10:59 am
Edited ***And just one final “ultimate” question…..Did Zimmerman have to shoot to kill? Why not shoot Trayvon in the foot, the arm, hell the buttocks to slow him down?
April 10, 2012 - 11:55 am
Shooting in self-defense is “shooting to stop” not “shooting to slow down.”
April 17, 2012 - 6:36 pm
Neil: Like you, I found that Zimmerman (Z) said “it’s fucking cold,” although I used a different EQ technique than you did. I reported my finding to friends in media on Mar 30, so you found it before I did! He might be saying punks but he’s certainly not saying coons.
After analyzing GZ’s 911 call – and reenacting it, complete with wind – here’s what happened:
After exiting his truck Z walked across the street and onto the grass, at which time a breeze (probably 12-15 mph and out of the east) hit the mouthpiece of his phone and after which he says it’s cold. Dispatch tells Z he doesn’t need to follow TM and Z says “Ok.” Z turns his back to the breeze and the wind noise disappears completely (I’ve tried – it works). At this point Z has been out of his truck 38 seconds and is tapping his shoe against a steel dog crap disposal unit (Bow Wow Pet Waste unit). He’s probably knocking mud, moisture/whatever from his shoe. This tapping noise periodically is heard for the remainder of this 911 call as is the sound of the dog crap device being jostled by the breeze.
That Bow Wow unit is seen in photos (see link below) as being stationed at the intersection of the cut-through and backyard pathway, some 50 feet from the shooting. That unit would be about 170-190 feet from the area where Z presumably parked his truck … and it would take him no more than 27 seconds to cover 190 feet if he walked fast. (I covered 196′ in 27 seconds in my test.)
So he didn’t say coon, he didn’t chase down anyone and he didn’t even run – at least not during that 911 call. He quickly walked “180 feet” and stopped 13 seconds or so after the dispatcher said “we don’t need you to” follow him. Z would have lost TM by that time anyway. He kicked the junk off of his shoe and stayed put until the call was finished; again, the tapping and other can related noise goes to the end of the call.
What happened afterward is anyone’s guess, but the Z 911 call seems pretty straight forward. I’d heard what sounded like the rattling of a REALLY cheap security gate and I had imagined Z was checking one (shaking it) during his call. But after seeing the photo of the dog can and doing “the math” …
April 17, 2012 - 6:52 pm
Lee, this is the single best reporting on the Zimmerman/Martin case I’ve seen so far.