The recent murder of teenager Trayvon Martin by a “neighborhood watch crime captain” , George Zimmerman, on February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida, is a tragedy and a sad event being played out not only in the news but in the lives of Trayvon’s family, friends, supporters and concerned citizens. We are still a civilized nation and this should not have happened but it did. However, unfortunately, here we are in the year of our Lord 2012 and African-Americans are still having issues because of the color of their skin and the type of clothing they wear. Oftentimes, when an egregious event takes place in one’s life, the culprit will use the person’s ethnicity to justify the act.
This type of behavior happens on the street and in the courtroom. The fact this happened in a community with a homeowner association leads me to my next point.
The ground work for allowing “self help” in planned, sustainable communities has been put in place across the country during legislative sessions. In Texas, the seed was planted in the HB 2869 bill introduced by Rep. Linda Harper-Brown (R) District 105, for Las Colinas, Texas. This seed bridges the gap between “self-help” laws and “stand-your-ground” laws discussed in greater detail later in this article.
What was specifically alarming to me in that bill was the use of the word “self-help”. Since homeowners in Texas lose their homes through homeowner and property owner association foreclosures and homeowners also lose money via fines assessed on the way they treat their property, it was a bit perplexing to contemplate the next step being taken to protect property values in Texas, which appeared to be a final solution type action leading to bodily harm or loss. Even though the question was put to the legislative committee hearing HB 2869, the intent behind why the word “self-help” was in the bill, a response was never received.
In an Advocacy Review Report 04, Page 3, the concern for a hidden agenda behind the use of the word “self-help” was also voiced. The bill passed with the feel-good affect that it was only pertaining to this particular area—Las Colinas, Texas—which is a mixed association with businesses and houses. In 1987, a case concerning a handful of homeowners who were delinquent in their maintenance fees (in the early days, assessment fees were called maintenance fees) was granted by the Texas Supreme Court that ushered in the nightmare we have now in our homeowner and property owner associations. While the case concerned one homeowner association, the concept of allowing homeowner associations to foreclose on our homesteads in Texas was given birth and that concept has spread across the country in various forms.
Then in Texas, one of our legislators, Senator John Carona, during an eleventh hour process with then Governor Bush’s blessings gave birth to another blood sucking scam concerning our property rights allowing fines to be assessed against the way we live in our houses.
When I saw the words “self-help” in Rep. Harper-Brown’s bill, I saw “self-help” as another seed being planted in our communities under the guise of another innocent baby living among us. The bill describes “self-help” to mean “the process by which a property owners’ association takes remedial action with regard to property governed by the association after the exhaustion of traditional enforcement efforts.” My concern in my Advocacy Review Report and at the legislative hearing was “What exactly does that mean? What else does this bill want our legislators to do to property owners?”
My immediate thoughts about this were “Something that has been rumored and noted for years is a property owner association’s ability to bring in the police into our communities and not necessarily to protect owners and their property but to keep us in line at our own meetings. This bill is seeking complete control and force beyond foreclosures over homeowners and their property. It has a New World Order fill to it and a subtle foundation for a police state in our communities. “
It appears with the first shooting of its kind by Mr. Zimmerman, this seed has grown into a full-scale attack on people who do not fit the mold of the neighborhood which, needless to say, was the true purpose of the various new bills across the country ushering in this type of “self-help”.
It also states in the Harper-Brown bill on Page 11, Sect. 215.008. Restrictive Covenants (1)(c ) “Unless prohibited or restricted by municipal ordinance or county code, an association may use self-help to enforce its restrictive covenants against a residential or commercial property owner as necessary to prevent immediate harm to a person or property, or as otherwise reasonable. If a property owner commits a subsequent repeat violation of the restrictive covenants within 12 months of the initial violation, the association is not required to provide the property owner with advance notice before the association implements self-help.”
When you legislatively give homeowner or property owner associations or whatever you want to call them ambiguous authority to do something, you are going to end up with a Trayvon Martin situation.
Community associations should never be given the authority to interact with the public on the same level of police and other law enforcement agents who are trained in the use of their weapons. The public is not surprised by an authorized law officer with a weapon and if law enforcement step outside of procedure and injure someone, there are regulations in place to deal with it. When you allow a community watch group to police itself as though it were trained law enforcement, you will have chaos such as with the Trayvon Martin incident.
The United States is supposed to be a country for all people, “with equal justice and liberty for all”; however, and regrettably, we are also a country that operates in the shadow of bias and inequality on all levels of life when it pertains to people of color, financial status, or ethnicity.
If this notion that community associations have the right to police themselves is not immediately stopped, more Trayvon Martin incidents will occur.
This is the best time before more incidents like this occur for the Federal government to step in and regulate the millions of community associations spread across the United States. Their practice of foreclosing on homes, assessing fines against homeowners’ properties for the way they use their own property and restricting community associations from creating “self-help” laws or grandfathering the “Stand-your-ground” laws into community associations by watch group individuals allowing private communities to police themselves in the same manner as a bona fide police would, must be reassessed. Homeowner and Property Owners Associations must be regulated, listed and monitored throughout the United States. They have absolutely too much power to be so loosely controlled and monitored by both the State Government and the Federal Government. Once these laws are enacted in our communities giving these associations the right to do this and that, these laws will eventually be misconstrued and taken to another level not intended when the bill was originally enacted such as the “Castle Doctrine” or “Stand-Your-Ground Law” created for people to protect their homes and/or themselves, now being used by Mr. Zimmerman in his killing of Trayvon Martin.
According to Wikipedia, “Many states have some form of Castle Doctrine or Stand Your Ground law. {{Alabama,[6] Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa[7], Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island,[8] South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah,[9] West Virginia and Wyoming have adopted Castle Doctrine statutes, and other states (Iowa[10], Montana,[11]Nebraska,[12] New Hampshire, Virginia,[13] and Washington) are currently considering “Stand Your Ground” laws of their own.[14][15][16]
Some of the states that have passed or are considering “stand your ground” laws already implement “stand your ground” principles in their case law. Indiana and Georgia, among other states, already had “stand your ground” case law and passed “stand your ground” statutes due to possible concerns of the case law being replaced by “duty to retreat” in later court rulings. Other states, including Washington, have “stand your ground” in their case law but have not adopted statutes; West Virginia had a long tradition of “stand your ground” in its case law[17] before codifying it as a statute in 2008. These states did not have civil immunity for self defense in their previous self defense statutes.
A stand-your-ground law states that a person may use deadly force in self-defense when there is reasonable belief of a threat, without an obligation to retreat first. In some cases, a person may use deadly force in public areas without a duty to retreat. Under these legal concepts, a person is justified in using deadly force in certain situations and the “stand your ground” law would be a defense or immunity to criminal charges and civil suit. The difference between immunity and a defense is that an immunity bars suit, charges, detention and arrest. A defense permits a plaintiff or the state to seek civil damages or a criminal conviction. More than half of the states in the United States have adopted the Castle doctrine, stating that a person has no duty to retreat when their home is attacked. Some states go a step further, removing the duty of retreat from any location. “Stand Your Ground”, “Line In The Sand” or “No Duty To Retreat” laws thus state that a person has no duty or other requirement to abandon a place in which he has a right to be, or to give up ground to an assailant. Under such laws, there is no duty to retreat from anywhere the defender may legally be.[1] Other restrictions may still exist; when in public, a person must be carrying the firearm in a legal manner, whether concealed or openly.
“Stand your ground” governs U.S. federal case law in which self-defense is asserted against a charge of criminal homicide. The Supreme Court ruled in Beard v. U.S. (158 U.S. 550 (1895)) that a man who was “on his premises” when he came under attack and “…did not provoke the assault, and had at the time reasonable grounds to believe, and in good faith believed, that the deceased intended to take his life, or do him great bodily harm…was not obliged to retreat, nor to consider whether he could safely retreat, but was entitled to stand his ground.”[2][3]
Texas:
In 2007 Texas passed House Bill 1815 (now codified in Texas Penal Code Article 46, Section 2) which made Texas a Castle Doctrine state.[28] The bill also allowed persons to carry concealed weapons in their vehicles and to and from them, subject to certain provisions. Chapter 9, Section 31 and 32 of the Texas Penal Code comprises Texas’ Stand Your Ground law. “
According to www.motherjones.com “What happened to Trayvon?
Martin, a Miami native, was visiting his father in Sanford and watching the NBA All-Star game at a house in a gated Sanford community, the Retreat at Twin Lakes. That evening, Martin walked out to the nearby 7-Eleven to get some Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea. On his return trip, he drew the attention of Zimmerman, who was patrolling the neighborhood in a sport-utility vehicle and called 911 to report “a real suspicious guy.”
“This guy looks like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something,” Zimmerman told the dispatcher. “It’s raining, and he’s just walking around looking about.” The man tried to explain where he was. “Now he’s coming towards me. He’s got his hand in his waistband. And he’s a black male…Something’s wrong with him. Yup, he’s coming to check me out. He’s got something in his hands. I don’t know what his deal is…These assholes, they always get away.”
After discussing his location with the dispatcher, Zimmerman exclaimed, “Shit, he’s running,” and the following sounds suggest he left his vehicle to run after Martin.
“Are you following him?” the dispatcher asked. Zimmerman replied: “Yep.”
“Okay, we don’t need you to do that,” the dispatcher warned.
Several minutes later, according to other callers to 911 in the neighborhood, Zimmerman and Martin got into a wrestling match on the ground. One of the pair could be heard screaming for help. Then a single shot rang out, and Martin lay dead.
Are the 911 recordings available to the public?
Yes. After public pressure, the city of Sanford played the tapes for Martin’s family, then released the audio recordings. Here are some excerpts. You can also read a full transcript of George Zimmerman’s initial police call here, along with an examination of whether he used a racial epithet, as some listeners have suggested.”
It is sad we are still at this stage in life that Trayvon Martin lost his life in a country in which the goal has or should be for and toward equality for everyone. While it may be on the surface an equal playing field for all, it obviously is not. Regardless of our Constitutional tools in place to equalize the playing field for everyone, African-Americans are still being judged by their appearance and being racially profiled not only in our communities but in the courtroom where justice is suppose to be equal and blind. Every day in the life of most African-Americans a little bit of self suffers a death, whether it is a spiritual death, a self-esteem death, a right to justice death, a right to get a job death, a right to be treated the same death, a right to jog and/or walk our dog in our neighborhood death, a right to litigate your court case without bias as a pro se litigate death, a right to be treated as an equal death, a right to enjoy an event on the same level as others death, and on and on and on.
Trayvon’s death has triggered more hate from various sources and at a time of year when we soon will be celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is our Lord and Saviour. If mankind continues to fail to respect the systems created for all in regard to African-Americans, then not only will Trayvon’s death be resolved by God but all who bring pain and suffering to their neighbors will be held accountable for their behavior for their failure to embrace the teachings of Jesus Christ “’You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Mathew 22:39). Hate . Hate. Hate must be replaced with Love Love . Love. As long as we judge others by the color of their skin, we are contributing to our own Spiritual death. Justice has its way of rising to the occasion and bias is always the loser.
Harvellajones1234@sbcglobal.net
The National Homeowners Advocate Group, LLC © 2012.
