Bogs this seems like an awful lot of assumption, where do you get all of your info?
What info? That on GZ? It is all pretty much out there in the record. And there is some logic involved. The Travon Martin killing was an "Oh-shiit!" moment for the homeowner association and the police department. Here is why.
I have tried to keep it simple. Successful homeowner, block watch programs have one model that works. They train as many people as possible to do the job. Ask how many people were on the block watch in this neighborhood; I did.
Determine their level of training. The one thing that can be determined by inference is this block-watchman was not properly trained to approach a subject. If done properly, nothing should happen. If you list all the things that can go wrong, the worst did. Either an armed man in a car totally lost his edge to a 5'11", 158 lbs., seventeen year old, or he murdered him without adequate provocation. There is no middle ground. It is one or the other. So any testimony by police or professionals who trained Mr. Zimmerman is tainted, too suspect to be trusted. Mr. Zimmerman got himself in over his head, and since proper training is repetition, there was not enough or adequate training. Which brings up the problem hinted at by several users. The problem Wooly so astutely brought up, the attitude that you can pass a law putting more guns into the average idiot's hands, with little or no training and expect not to have murder and misery.
Which brings up the next point. Why wasn't there a patrol of two? The best way to keep an individual from getting in trouble is the buddy system. He is less likely to panic, and an individual in opposition is less likely to cause a ruckus when confronted by two, especially when done correctly. And by the way, for any of you 'cowboys' out there who would have taught that 'punk' a 'thing or two,' the first thing a Marine learns on guard duty when having to confront someone is to find something to hide behind. The second is to shout, "Who is there?" Any ex-Marine will be laughing by now because this is exactly the way a Marine is and has been taught in basic training for the last 100 years.
So now in addition to the watchman, his police and civilian trainers all having some liability in this situation, determinable just by the facts of the situation, there is more.
I have listened to law enforcement, attorneys, gun advocates, the man who held my concealed carry class and the president of my own neighborhood association (HOA) who is a former city attorney, all state unequivocally that a watchman should never carry a gun. If the neighborhood is so dangerous that armed guards are necessary, then the association is better off hiring off duty policemen. Otherwise, a link between block watch and the police through 9-1-1 with photographs of criminal activity is good enough. Everybody has a huge liability in this case with GZ claiming he was on patrol officially representing the homeowners association with a gun. Expect a lot to go into the question of why someone so meek and unable to defend himself had a gun and killed a seventeen year old walking through the neighborhood.
The guy that did our CCP classes talked about the woman that shot the intruder that broke into her house and attempted to rape her before she killed him with her service weapon. She was a police officer. Here is her problem. She had her targets showing her good range scores framed and hung on her walls. I think her conviction was later overturned, but if it wasn't so easy to establish her state of mind was shoot first and ask questions later, she would have never been charged.
Since most people are listening to the bull shiit about TM being a hulking gang banger, drug addict, all of which are lies designed to play upon the public's prejudices and you look for what is important, what did GZ do before and immediately after this incident it is pretty easy to see the truth.
As far as people wondering incredulously what this country is coming to, I was a child in the early 1960's when on vacation in the deep south and assaulted by a local woman (white) for drinking out of an 'others' drinking fountain. I mean this woman was going to smack me until my dad came to my rescue. That is what this country is coming to. And if that is not enough, 60 years before that, my great uncles risked beatings on the streets of some neighborhoods of Detroit just because they were Irish.