Trayvon Martin was just a 17 year old kid

Trayvon Martin, age 17

This article should make all parents think about the fact that Trayvon Martin was just a kid.  A quote from a linked blog on this article puts it this way:

"This was a kid. A child. With a family who loved and cared about him and still does. We talk endlessly about protecting children and family values when the truth is we don’t think many children are worthy of protection. Quite the opposite. We don’t value many families.

Look at this case and see how the basic decency that Trayvon and his family are owed as human beings has been trampled and spit on at so many points.

Despite the fact that the police knew George Zimmerman went after a smaller, younger kid, who wasn’t doing anything wrong, despite the fact that they knew Zimmerman was armed and Trayvon was not. …

They ran a background check on Trayvon Martin, who was dead, but not on George Zimmerman, the man who killed him. They believed Zimmerman had a clean record – on his own assertion, apparently. Turns out he doesn’t. They ran alcohol/drug tests on Trayvon Martin (likely as a routine part of an autopsy), but not on Zimmerman, his murderer.

The police didn’t have the basic decency to do their job and investigate whether Trayvon Martin had a reason for being in the neighborhood, whether he had any friends or family in the neighborhood. Instead, they tagged him as a “John Doe.” His family thought he was missing. They had to call around and essentially do the work for the police of identifying their dead son."

Trayvon Martin was just a kid. He was a kid who was shot by an adult for being a kid walking on the street where he had a right to be.

(see HERE for our original post on the Trayvon Martin shooting)

UPDATE (4/27/12):  A more nuanced look at the history of Zimmerman, the rash of burglaries in the months before and his role in "policing" them, and the days and moments before the shooting:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/25/us-usa-florida-shooting-zimmerman-idUSBRE83O18H20120425