If you have time today, check out Trymaine Lee and John Rudolf's excellent article over at The Huffington Post. In the piece, Lee dissects not only the Sanford police force's mishandling of the Trayvon Martin case--from their failure to interview key witnesses like Martin's girlfriend and neglecting to pull his cell phone records to not running a criminal background check on George Zimmerman until after he was released from custody--but the department's history of sloppy investigation work.
Lee and Rudolf cite several other cases, including the 2010 murder of 17-year-old Ikeem Ruffin, who was gunned down in an apartment complex by a masked man during a robbery.
"Police found 18-year-old Tarance Terrell Moore standing by the victim and calling for an ambulance, but the teen was already dead. The gun used in the killing was never recovered. The next day, police charged Moore with robbery and murder in Ruffin's death.
He was denied bail and locked in Seminole County Jail awaiting trial. More than a year later, Seminole County prosecutors dropped the murder charge, which carried a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole, in exchange for a guilty plea to a charge of robbery with a firearm. Moore was sentenced to nine years in prison."
The piece also discusses a December 2011 incident in which Justin Collison, a young white man and son of a Sanford police supervisor, attacked a homeless black man named Sherman Ware and yelled racial slurs while he lay on the ground unconscious. Despite having sworn statements from witnesses and a video tape of the attack, Collison was released and not charged until a month later, when the video was broadcast on local television.
Read it HERE.
Comments