Trayvon Martin death: Zimmerman handgun 'auction reaches $65m'

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• From the section US & Canada

Image copyright Reuters

Image caption Zimmerman at the time of his arrest and Martin pictured three years before his death

An online auction for the pistol used to kill unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin has apparently reached $65m (£45m), organisers say.

The sale has been plagued by fake bidders including "Racist McShootface".
George Zimmerman, who shot and killed the teenager, had planned to auction what he called "an American icon" on the website Gun Broker on Thursday.
But the web posting was removed just as the auction was due to begin with a reserve price of $5,000 (£3,450).
United Gun Group is now hosting the auction.
In a statement on Twitter they defended the sale of the gun on their site. They were "truly sorry" for the Martin family's loss but said it was their goal to "defend liberty".
"Unless the law has been violated, it is the intention of the United Gun Group to allow its members to use any of the available features. While not always popular this is where we stand."

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Mr Zimmerman said the gun was recently returned to him

On Friday afternoon, the top bidder was a user named Craig Bryant.
Mr Zimmerman, 32, a neighbourhood watchman, was cleared over the death of the 17-year-old in February 2012 after saying he acted in self-defence.
Does the gun belong in a museum?
In an online posting to announce the auction, Mr Zimmerman said that he would use the profits to "fight" the Black Lives Matter movement and oppose Democrat Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
A lawyer for the Martin family told the Washington Post that "it is insulting to this family that he would decide that he would sell the gun that he killed their child with".
"Think about what that means: This is a gun that took a child's life and now he wants to make money off of it."
On the auction site, Mr Zimmerman said it was recently returned to him by the US Department of Justice.
He claimed that the Smithsonian museums had expressed interest in buying the 9 mm handgun, but Smithsonian officials denied that in a statement.
Speaking to a Florida television station, Mr Zimmerman had defended the auction saying "I'm a free American, and I can do what I'd like with my possessions."

Image copyright AP

Image caption Zimmerman has had several encounters with police since being acquitted

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Analysis - Nick Bryant, BBC North America correspondent

Few cases in recent years have been more racially sensitive or led to such an anguished national conversation as the killing of Trayvon Martin. It sparked demonstrations around the country, prompted President Obama to remark that if he had a son, he'd have looked like the black teenager and brought about the first use on social media of the hashtag "Black Lives Matter."
So the decision of the former neighbourhood watchman, George Zimmerman to put the gun he used up for auction not only seems extraordinary but also cruel and callous - especially since he refers to the weapon on the online site as an "American icon."
This is not the first time that Zimmerman has sought to cash in on his notoriety. His first painting of an American flag, emblazoned with the words "God One Nation with Liberty and Justice For All," sold on eBay for the staggering sum of $100,000. But it did not impress critics, who called it "primitive" and "appalling."
Harsher language will no doubt be used to describe the sale of the pistol that killed Trayvon Martin.

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Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Protests were launched nationwide following Martin's death, which helped to create the Black Lives Matter movement

Congressman Hakeem Jeffries said on Thursday that "Trayvon Martin's cold-blooded killer should be in prison. Instead, he is trying to profit from the stunning miscarriage of justice."
Florida police did not arrest Mr Zimmerman for six weeks after the shooting in Sanford, Florida, provoking mass rallies in Florida and throughout the US.
Police justified their decision not to detain him by citing the state's controversial "stand your ground" law, which allows a citizen to use lethal force if he or she feels in imminent danger. Police initially said the law prevented them from bringing charges.
Profiles: Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman
Mr Zimmerman's defence said Trayvon Martin had punched their client, slammed his head into the pavement and reached for Mr Zimmerman's gun. Prosecutors accused Mr Zimmerman of telling a number of lies.
The case led to protests in several cities in the US and to the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Mr Zimmerman's name has been in news headlines several times since his closely watched trial.
Twice, assault charges against his girlfriend were dropped.

Why Have So Many People Never Heard Of The MOVE Bombing?

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May 18, 20158:04 PM ET

Gene Demby

A policeman stands guard on Pine Street in West Philadelphia near the remains of 61 row houses days after they were destroyed by fire on May 13, 1985, when police dropped explosives into a house occupied by members of the radical group MOVE.

George Widman/AP

After my stories last week on the 30th anniversary of the MOVE siege in West Philadelphia in 1985, in which Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a residential neighborhood, leaving 11 dead — including five children — we were surprised by how many people told us they'd never heard of the bombing.

I'd never heard of the MOVE bombing before this @GeeDee215 story. Unbelievable. http://t.co/jRlmyYgR6e pic.twitter.com/sq6xFmkidK

— Steve Mullis (@stevemullis) May 14, 2015

At first, we thought the knowledge gap might be generational. My Code Switch teammate Kat Chow, who was born years after the MOVE incident, had never heard of it. But another NPR colleague who's about a generation older hadn't either.
Maybe it was regional. On Twitter, a few people told us the bombing never landed on their radars until they moved to the Philadelphia area. But even though Tasneem Raja, my editor on Code Switch, grew up 20 minutes north of Philly and attended a "hippie" (her words) Quaker high school where events like the Kent State shootings got a lot of airtime in class, she remembers hearing about MOVE only from her dad, never in school.
I grew up in Philly during and after the bombing. My elementary school was the kind of place where we we learned Afrocentric songs and teachers dressed in kente cloth, while my high school was overwhelmingly black. We never discussed it in class, either.

Code Switch

I'm From Philly. 30 Years Later, I'm Still Trying To Make Sense Of The MOVE Bombing

What gives? It's seems incredible that so many people had never heard about the time American law enforcement bombed U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, which, on top of the deaths, left dozens of bystanders' homes destroyed in an uncontrolled fire that the police commissioner told firefighters not to put out right away. The details are so extreme, so over-the-top. How have we forgotten this?
I put the question to Robin Wagner-Pacifici, who teaches at the New School and has written books on MOVE and other fringe militant groups involved in bloody government standoffs, including the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, and the Weaver family in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. She has noticed that while those groups identified with each other to a degree, referring to each other in their manifestos as fellow victims of the state, they don't seem to feel the same way about MOVE. "They created this kind of genealogy," she says, "but none of them mentioned MOVE."
She thinks the reason was ideological: MOVE's quasi-Rastafarian, anti-technology, pro-animal-rights worldview doesn't neatly fit on any part of the political spectrum, while other militant groups she has studied had some degree of overlap. And you can't lump MOVE in with other black power movements of the time, either; black radical groups often bristled at their tactics.
In the universe of violent fringe movements that ended in deadly mayhem, MOVE occupies a lonely branch. To some degree, maybe this helps explain why the story of MOVE isn't better known: If few people feel like your ideological kin, few people feel cause to carry your torch.
Wagner-Pacifici also traces this relative obscurity back to the players involved. Unlike other fringe groups she has studied, MOVE's final confrontation wasn't with a big federal agency like the FBI or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. They clashed with local Philly cops and some state police. So while the story of Ruby Ridge has been folded into the larger national debate on gun control and the limits of federal power, the political implications of MOVE were seen as more provincial and self-contained. And unsurprisingly, local politicians were all too eager to move on and leave those implications behind.
Of course, Ferguson protesters faced off against local law enforcement, too, and Ferguson city cops would have loved if Michael Brown's death had stayed a hyperlocal affair. But technology has changed everything in the decades since May 13, 1985. If the MOVE bombing were to happen today, bystanders would be furiously uploading videos to YouTube, spawning Twitter hashtags and interconnected protests in cities around the country. CNN would be camped out in West Philly for weeks, to say nothing of the countless think-pieces.
If MOVE happened today, it might be quickly folded into the classroom, as has happened with other recent incidents of police violence. Teachers have all the materials at their fingertips: clips from livestreams, links to mainstream news articles and personal blogs, embeddable tweets, and so on. Back in the mid-80s, you'd have to wait around for the inevitable Frontline documentary or for an academic to publish a book. History gets commodified and redistributed much more quickly today.
The MOVE story faded into relative obscurity partly because no one connects with their cause today, and largely because the mechanisms to preserve the story weren't in place yet. But had it happened now, it would be much harder to forget.

South Carolina Man Accused Of Killing, Burning And Burying 2 Men Is Granted Bail

The gun George Zimmerman said he used on Trayvon Martin is up for auction again after being delisted

By Wesley Lowery, Travis M. Andrews and Niraj Chokshi May 12 at 4:12 PM

George Zimmerman, who shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and was acquitted of all charges, is selling the gun he says was used in the 2012 shooting. This is far from Zimmerman's first controversy since his acquittal in 2013. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

After one online gun seller pulled his listing, George Zimmerman has found a new website on which he plans to auction the gun he said he used to kill Trayvon Martin.
Zimmerman initially posted the 9mm pistol on GunBroker.com on Wednesday night, more than four years after he shot and killed Martin, an unarmed black teenager.
“I am honored and humbled to announce the sale of an American Firearm Icon,” read Zimmerman’s description of the gun, a Kel-Tec PF-9. “The firearm for sale is the firearm that was used to defend my life and end the brutal attack from Trayvon Martin on 2/26/2012.”
But on Thursday morning, that listing vanished from Gunbroker, which later said in a statement that it wanted “no part” in the sale of a firearm whose use in the fatal 2012 shooting in Florida sparked a nationwide debate over race relations and “stand your ground” laws.
“We reserve the right to reject listings at our sole discretion, and have done so with the Zimmerman listing,” the statement read. “We want no part in the listing on our web site or in any of the publicity it is receiving.”
Undeterred, Zimmerman found a new place to sell the weapon.
“Unfortunately, Gun broker was not prepared for the traffic and publicity surrounding the auction of my firearm,” he said in an email to The Post on Thursday. “It has now been placed with another auction house.”
Todd Underwood, owner of UnitedGunGroup.com, confirmed Thursday afternoon that Zimmerman’s gun is now listed on his site, which Underwood described as a “pro-Second Amendment community” created this year after Facebook banned private gun sales.
“I talked to George Zimmerman earlier today and told him that as long as all laws are being followed, he can list the gun on our site,” Underwood told The Post. “I don’t support it, I don’t condone it, I don’t have anything against it. It’s his property, it’s his decision.”
Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter in the fatal shooting of Martin in Sanford, but was acquitted by a Florida jury in July 2013.
“Why shouldn’t he be selling it?!” Underwood said when asked about outrage sparked by Zimmerman’s auction plans. “Here’s the thing, parents lost their child and as a father it breaks my heart to even contemplate going through what they went through.

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“But when you look at the facts of the case, he was charged and he was exonerated by a jury of his peers. This shouldn’t even be a story. A gentleman who did nothing wrong is selling a personal possession of his to the highest bidder.”
Zimmerman said in the listing that proceeds of the auction will be used to “fight [Black Lives Matter] violence against Law Enforcement officers” and to “ensure the demise of Angela Correy’s persecution career and Hillary Clinton’s anti-firearm rhetoric,” though he hasn’t described how that would happen.

[George Zimmerman’s many, many controversies since the Trayvon Martin case]

Corey, whose name was misspelled, is the special prosecutor who was appointed by then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) to investigate Martin’s shooting death.
An attorney for Martin’s family said Thursday that Zimmerman’s plan to auction the gun was “insulting and disrespectful.”
“It is insulting to this family that he would decide that he would sell the gun that he killed their child with,” Daryl D. Parks, one of the attorneys for the family, told The Washington Post. “Think about what that means: This is a gun that took a child’s life, and now he wants to make money off of it.”
On both auction websites, Zimmerman claimed the case number from the trial is written on the gun in permanent marker and that “The Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C.” has expressed interest in “owning and displaying the firearm,” though he did not specify which museum.
The Smithsonian Institution, which operates 19 museums, refuted that claim Thursday morning, before the gun disappeared from the auction site.

We have never expressed interest in collecting George Zimmerman’s firearm, and have no plans to ever collect or display it in any museums

— Smithsonian (@smithsonian) May 12, 2016

“The firearm is fully functional as the attempts by the Department of Justice on behalf of B. Hussein Obama to render the firearm inoperable were thwarted by my phenomenal Defense Attorney,” Zimmerman wrote, “I recognize the purchaser’s ownership and right to do with the firearm as they wish.”
He closed the description with si vis pacem para bellum, which means “If you want peace, prepare for war” in Latin.
Bidding opens at $5,000.

[Anger flows at acquittal of George Zimmerman in death of Trayvon Martin]

Police officer Timothy Smith holds up the gun that was used to kill Trayvon Martin in this 2013 photo, taken during the George Zimmerman trial in Florida. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/EPA file)

Zimmerman told Fox affiliate WOFL on Wednesday that he “recently received [the gun] back from the Department of Justice. They took it after my trial, after I was exonerated.”
He told the Orlando station that he had received death threats since listing the firearm on Gunbroker.com but decided to continue with the sale anyway.
“What I’ve decided to do is not cower,” he said. “I’m a free American. I can do what I want with my possessions.”
Parks, the attorney for Martin’s relatives, said Thursday that “the family does not want to dignify this with a response. Everyone agrees this is insulting and disrespectful. Without question, as time passes, we are seeing more and more the real person — who George Zimmerman really is versus who he was portrayed to be by his defense team.”

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Stories that will be the talk of the morning.

[George Zimmerman inserted himself into 2016 politics. Now a Clinton ally is tying him to Trump.]

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) criticized Zimmerman’s decision to sell the gun in a statement issued shortly before the sale was halted then moved to the second auction site.
“Trayvon Martin’s cold-blooded killer should be in prison,” Jeffries said. “Instead, he is trying to profit from the stunning miscarriage of justice that occurred three years ago in a Florida courtroom. It should shock the conscience of every decent American that this man is peddling his murder weapon for sale. America must reject this merchant of death once and for all.”
This isn’t the first time Zimmerman has caused controversy by selling a personal item. In August, he teamed up with Florida Gun Supply — a store that had publicly declared itself a “Muslim-free zone” — to sell prints of a painting by Zimmerman depicting a Confederate battle flag. It included the inscription, “The 2nd protects our 1st,” presumably referring to the Second and First amendments.
This post has been updated.

Hold Up: Poultry Processing Workers Wear Diapers To Work Because They Aren’t Allowed Bathroom Breaks!

The DEA is Top Drug Dealer in US and ATF is Top Gun Trafficker

Entire Florida Police Dept Busted Laundering Tens of Millions for International Drug Cartels

Justin Gardner | The Free Thought Project
Bal Harbour, FL – The village of Bal Harbour, population 2,513, may have a tiny footprint on the northern tip of Miami Beach, but its police department had grand aspirations of going after international drug traffickers, and making a few million dollars while they were at it.
The Bal Harbour PD and the Glades County Sheriff’s Office set up a giant money laundering scheme with the purported goal of busting drug cartels and stemming the surge of drug dealing going on in the area. But it all fell apart when federal investigators and the Miami-Herald found strange things going on.

The two-year operation, which took in more than $55 million from criminal groups, resulted in zero arrests but netted $2.4 million for the police posing as money launderers. Members of the 12-person task force traveled far and wide to carry out their deals, from Los Angeles to New York to Puerto Rico.
Along the way, the small-town cops got a taste of luxury as they used the money for first-class flights, luxury hotels, Mac computers and submachine guns. Meanwhile, the Bal Harbour PD and Glades County Sheriffs were buying all sorts of fancy new equipment.
Besides these “official” uses of the money, confidential records obtained by the Miami-Herald show that officers withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars with no record of where the money went.

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“They were like bank robbers with badges,” said Dennis Fitzgerald, an attorney and former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who taught undercover tactics for the U.S. State Department. “It had no law enforcement objective. The objective was to make money.”

The operation, which was not fully reported to federal authorities, funneled millions of dollars to overseas criminals and interfered with investigations being carried out on known money launderers.
The latest revelations show that at least 20 people in Venezuela were sent drug money from the Florida cops, including William Amaro Sanchez, the foreign minister under Hugo Chavez and now special assistant to President Nicolas Maduro.
They wired a total of $211,000 to Sanchez, even while the U.S. government was investigating Venezuelan government leaders involved in the drug trade. Instead of reporting their knowledge of Sanchez to federal agencies, the cops went on laundering money, taking their cut, and all the while aiding Sanchez in his machinations, which likely included political corruption.


Four other Venezuelan criminals and smugglers were major recipients of the millions being wired from the Bal Harbour PD and Glades County Sheriff’s Office, including a figure tied to one of the largest drug cartels in the hemisphere.
These actions violated strict federal bans on sending illegal money overseas, and the Florida cops never investigated the backgrounds of the people receiving their laundered drug money.

“I can’t think of a more podunk town than Bal Harbour — not in a bad way. But in the sense that these cops would have otherwise been stopping traffic or shooting radar,” said Ruben Oliva, who has represented alleged narco-traffickers since the 1980s. “In reality they were being launderers. The minute they started doing busts, it would have been over

This is like a movie. You’ve got these guys and they’re flying all over. They’re saying, ‘Hey, I’m in the big leagues.’ I’ve seen every kind of law enforcement money-laundering investigations. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s really one for the ages.”

After the Department of Justice busted the Bal Harbour PD for misspending seized money to pay police salaries, the Miami-Herald began deeper investigations and found a much bigger pool of money that was never noticed by the feds. Soon after that, the ambitious sting operation—which was really just a money-making scheme—began to fall apart.

“The Miami Herald gained unprecedented access to the confidential records of the undercover investigation, reviewing thousands of records including cash pickup reports, emails, DEA reports, bank statements and wire transfers for millions of dollars. The inquiry found:

Police routinely withdrew cash — thousands at a time — totaling $1.3 million from undercover bank accounts, but to this day there are no records to show where the money was spent. “In all my years of law enforcement, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Chief Overton said.

Bal Harbour officials say they cannot find receipts for hundreds of thousands in expenses, including five-star hotel bookings, dinners that ran up to $1,000 and scores of purchases like laptops, iPads, electronic money counters, flower deliveries, and even iTunes downloads.

While posing as launderers, police delivered nearly $20 million to storefront businesses in Miami-Dade to launder the money for drug groups — gathering critical evidence against the business owners — yet took no action against them. Years later, the businesses are still open, some still suspected by federal agents of laundering for the cartels.”

Cash deposits to SunTrust Bank totaling $28 million do not appear anywhere in police records. It’s no coincidence that the operation was launched “at a time law enforcement agencies across Florida were looking to boost their budgets during one of the state’s toughest economic periods.”


“We had to find a revenue stream,” said Duane Pottorff, chief of law enforcement for Glades. “It allowed us to have resources we wouldn’t normally have.”
Federal authorities and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have launched probes into the Bal Harbour police, which will surely confirm the rampant abuses of power. However, the fact that these types of shady operations, carried out with the help of agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, can occur at all is even more troubling.
Government creates a black market of drugs and blood money through prohibition, then under the War on Drugs it grants itself the power to break the law and get involved in money laundering operations. While the professed goal is to “sting” the bad guys, government rakes in millions upon millions of dollars to further bolster its prohibition and war on drugs.
The War on Drugs is the real scheme that should be investigated