The shooting death of Trayvon Martin on February 26, 2012 marked a turning point for many black residents of Sanford, who say their problems with members of the local police force – some of which they say had been going on for years, if not decades – gained national attention for the first time. Now, many of the city’s residents – black and white – are reflecting on how the city has changed over the past year, and anticipating the closure they say will come with a trial.
George Zimmerman, 28, is set to stand trial for second-degree murder in June, unless his case is dismissed in an upcoming Stand Your Ground hearing. Zimmerman is claiming self-defense in the shooting, saying the 17-year-old attacked him.
Changes in the police force
Since the shooting, which sparked waves of protests after Sanford police initially declined to arrest Zimmerman, much has changed in Sanford. Then-police chief Bill Lee was fired last June, following a lengthy and contentious process in which the city manager, Norton Bonaparte, grappled with whether to allow him to remain, and the city commission rejected Lee’s attempt to resign.
The city has hired a new chief – Cecil Smith. The Chicago native, who is African-American, will be the fifth man to lead the city’s police force in the just over two years.
Bonaparte said he was looking for a new top cop “who Sanford police officers can look to for leadership” given all the tumult at the top of the department. He says he also sought “an individual with proven experience building an excellent rapport bet the community and the police department.” Bonaparte says he hopes Smith can help build a police department “that the Sanford community respects and trusts,” and where “all segments of the community trust the police department and feel they are respected by the police department.”
“Well any time you go through an experience like that you have to look back and reflect,” says city commissioner Mike McCarty.
McCarty, who is white, was one of three commissioners, including the city’s mayor, Jeff Triplett, to cast a vote of “no confidence” against former chief Bill Lee last year. “I reflect back on all those things of how that was done and the tumbling effect of what we had to go through: the death of a young man but [also] $750,000 in expenses for the city.”
Triplett, who serves as the city’s mayor part time, while also working for a local bank, says he has seen changes in Sanford over the past year. “We‘ve spent a lot of time in meetings, listening to all walks of life discuss not only what transpired but [also] their past feelings, the history; the things that have been weighing heavily on a lot of people’s hearts,” he said.
“I think we’ve changed in the fact that we’re actually opening up some doors — between city hall and the police department, between city hall and the neighborhoods surrounding city hall, and I think everyone has kind of come to a realization that we’ve got to talk about this,” Triplett said, referring to police-community relations that have sometimes frayed along racial lines. “We’ve got some longstanding grudges and some history that have now come out. I don’t think that would have happened if this tragedy wouldn’t have happened.”
Some black Sanford residents expressed relief that the new chief, who begins his tenure April 1st, comes from outside Seminole County, and is not associated with what local black residents call the “good old boys” network. Among them is Francis Oliver, a longtime local activist who runs the black history museum in the historic Goldsboro section of the city, where a memorial to the Miami teen was moved after some residents of the gated community where he died objected to its placement there.
“You know, we had the problem with the police chief,” said Oliver, whose daughter Natalie Jackson is one of the lawyers representing Trayvon Martin’s parents. “Once that was solved, once Billy Lee was fired, and we had an interim chief, things really got rough here in Sanford between what I call the ‘old’ Sanford and the ‘new’ Sanford.”
Former Chief Lee did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Next: Residents claim shootings go unsolved
Among the chief current complaints of black residents has been the response to shootings in predominantly black sections like Goldsboro and Georgetown – places far removed from the gated community where Martin died, and which residents have long complained are largely neglected by police.
“I think there was a sense, especially in the African-American community, that the police were not taking them seriously – that they were not giving them the same level of service that they were in the non-black community,” Bonaparte said. “We’re sensitive to the perception that our residents have about our police department.”
To turn that perception around, and to respond to what he characterized as an “increased number of shootings” in parts of the city, Bonaparte says the city has created “neighborhood response units” – smaller units of ten officers who can respond quickly to reports of shooting incidents. “We’re showing a much more visible police presence” in an effort to improve public safety, Bonaparte said.
He also cited the creation of a blue ribbon panel on police community relations which meets every two weeks – part of a nine-point plan recommended by Justice Department officials who came to the city at the height of the Trayvon Martin protests, to talk with community and city leaders about a way forward in improving police-community relations.
Rev. Valerie Houston, a prominent local pastor whose Allen Chapel AME church has served as a home base for black community activism and outcry over the Martin shooting, co-chairs the blue ribbon panel, and says elements of the city’s multi-ethnic community have come together in the wake of the shootings.
“Sanford has changed in the fact that since the shooting of Trayvon Martin there have been many groups and different entities that are still working towards a common goal to improve the Sanford community as well as the police department, as well as mobilization of the ministers,” Houston said.
Turner Clayton, who heads the local NAACP in Sanford, calls Smith’s hiring “a huge start.” And he, like Triplett, sees a silver lining for Sanford in the tragedy.
“Well it has definitely brought about a huge change,” Clayton said. “In fact, it brought about a huge awareness of things the black community had been complaining about for a number of years.”
Clayton said that before the Martin shooting, “no one wanted to believe any of the things the black community was saying” regarding strained relationships with police. “Of course, this particular case kind of brought that to the surface.”
John Wright, a retired Seminole County Sheriff, and a member of the city’s blue ribbon task force, agrees. “It’s been portrayed as if you don’t live here, there’s nothing wrong,” he said. “But that is not where we are.”
Wright said the task force accepted some of his recommendations to partner with neighboring police forces to tackle the higher crime rates in parts of the city. “I’m glad to report that things are looking a lot better.”
Next: ‘Everybody still talks about Trayvon Martin’
Local resident Traymon Williams, 27, who attended the rallies and church vigils demanding Zimmerman’s arrest last spring, agrees that over the past year, local leaders have sought to “shift the focus from the Trayvon Martin case into more productive ways of uniting the community.” He cites a gun buy-back program launched by the Sanford Police Department, saying it was “the first time that I can ever recall them doing any such thing.”
“The focus has shifted from the Trayvon Martin case to them getting guns off the street, and educating people on Stand your Ground,” Williams said of police, though he is more reticent about the sweeps police are conducting in predominantly black areas of the city. “They’re trying to clamp down on young black males — stopping them from committing crimes; really that’s been the focus.”
Bonaparte counters that, “the police are doing increased visibility in the areas that have experienced the shootings. And they are being proactive in making Sanford a safer community.”
As for race relations, “things haven’t gotten any better,” Williams says. “If anything, I guess people just stay in their own lanes, you know. Blacks staying with blacks and whites staying with whites and-and that’s about it.”
Williams says Martin’s killing is still very fresh in the minds of his peers.
“Everybody [still] talks about Trayvon Martin and the people are still wearing their t-shirts: even if the color has faded out of them, you’ll still see a Trayvon Martin t-shirt,” he said. “I even have one of my own that used to be black and now it’s kind of turning gray. But I still wear it just for, you know, the symbolic purpose of the whole thing.”
Williams, who a year ago said the shooting impacted him all the more because he shares a similar first name with Martin, says people in Sanford are ready to get on with the trial; to “just put it like in our rear view mirrors.”
Still, he worries about what will happen in the city if Zimmerman is acquitted. “Race relations would be shattered probably forever,” he says, adding that a conviction would send a message “that you can’t just go about killing young black males and just get away with it.”
Oliver, meanwhile, says, “the people of Sanford are nervous, period, about the trial.”
“I have people tell me, ‘well he’s gonna get off, he’s gonna get off,’” she says about Zimmerman, though she adds, “we do believe that justice will be served and that the justice that’s deserved [for] Trayvon he’ll get.”
“But,” Oliver adds, “we do believe too, that if that does not happen, I don’t know what’s going to happen to Sanford.”
Zimmerman’s attorney Mark O’Mara worries about sentiments like that.
“My fear is that people are tying civil rights to a verdict that isn’t a civil rights case,” O’Mara said. “Here’s my concern: if the facts come out, as they have come out over the past year, that convince a jury, that George was acting in self defense, then we have to respect that verdict.”
O’Mara says he wishes the case would be “divorced from all the symbolism that people have attached to it,” though he recognizes that the roots of people’s passion over the case lie in Sanford’s history.
“Certainly there’s no question that the Sanford police department, and Sanford as a town, has had its concerns over the way it’s handled its race relations,” O’Mara says. But he insists there’s no evidence that his client acted with racist intent, or that police, in initially releasing Zimmerman, essentially sent the message: “don’t worry about it, you just killed a black kid, that’s okay go home.”
“So while I’m OK with this being the starting point for conversation” about race and the justice system, O’Mara said, “it is not the sum and substance of it. This is not a case where we have to say, George has to get convicted for civil rights to prevail. Let me tell you something: [if] George gets convicted, civil rights did not prevail. What really would have happened if he gets convicted, is the system just got so skewed out of whack, that it convicted an innocent man. That would be my take from it.”
A “stand your ground” immunity hearing is scheduled in the case for April 22nd. If that fails, Zimmerman will go to trial June 10th.
Triplett believes that whatever the outcome of the case, just putting it in the hands of the court has eased tensions in the city.
“You know, a lot of those conversations and the people coming to our town, and the rallies, it was about demanding justice,” Triplett says. “It was about getting [the case] out of the Sanford police department’s hands and into a prosecutor’s, to make a decision.”
“Those decisions have been made,” Triplett says of the charges filed against Zimmerman. “It is now in the state of Florida’s hands, from the prosecution side, and the defendant’s hands, for them to work it out now. I want to think — call me naïve a little bit — but temperatures have calmed down.”
Bonaparte agrees, though he said the city is prepared for a strong public reaction to a verdict in the Zimmerman trial, whatever that verdict is. He adds that the work the city is doing to bring its various communities together is important, whatever ultimately happens in the case.
“I would say that in honoring the life of Trayvon Martin,” said Bonaparte, calling the death “a tragic situation where a young man’s life was taken,” – “In honoring that I think we have an obligation to make Sanford a better community.”
Editor’s note: George Zimmerman has sued NBCUniversal for defamation and the company has strongly denied his allegations.
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