When you get run over by a freight train, the cause of death is usually delivered by the locomotive…Not the caboose.

The rainy night of February 26, in Sanford Florida, Trayvon Martin was shot by George Zimmerman, neighborhood watch captain for the Twin Lakes community.  Zimmerman is the figurative caboose in the tragic tale in the shooting of Trayvon Martin.

The Twin Lakes neighborhood that George Zimmerman became neighborhood watch captain had suffered eight burglaries plus other crimes, in the 15 months prior to Trayvon Martin's shooting.

One of the burglaries was a brazen, horrific day time break in to the home of Olivia Bertalan who was alone with her infant as two men broke in and ransacked her home, while she and her baby huddled in terror in a bedroom.  The two criminals left with her valuables before police arrived.

This was the final straw for citizens in the community and it was decided to organize a Neighborhood Watch because police were not preventing the crime being inflicted on them.  So the community resorted to tactics to try to defend themselves.

Perhaps if the Sanford Police Department had more resources, it could have sent extra patrols to the Twin lakes community and focused on crime abatement…Rather than citizens taking it upon themselves to enhance their protection.

The saying when danger is seconds away, the police are just minutes away, could not have been any more evident as the Twin lakes community was assailed by crime.  Time after time police came after the crime was committed; to take reports and statements….But this did nothing to prevent the crime in the first place.

The Zimmerman trial spotlighted detective work, forensic experts, medical examiners and skilled attorneys trying to persuade a jury of George Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence in the death of Trayvon Martin.

Perhaps what should be on trial is how law enforcement failed to protect the Twin Lakes community from crime in the first place and why certain steps weren’t followed by law enforcement to help the community to protect itself…The legal system turned on this community and George Zimmerman for only trying to defend themselves from crime: Zimmerman is on trial for his freedom and the Twin Lakes community had to pay a one million dollar judgement

The freight train that killed Trayvon Martin that night was the legal systems failure to protect citizens from crime.  George Zimmerman and the Twin Lakes community were only the caboose in that long train of events.