The sheer volume of rabid pro-Trayvon ideologues at the TreeHouse gates is staggering. Seriously, I’m not kidding, it is staggering. What is also unbelievable is their level of complete disconnect from reality or fact-based information. It goes to show how strongly embedded the initial portrayal of a false media narrative can be.
We can thank Trayvon Family media consultant Ryan Julison and ABC’s Matt Gutman for the primary false fabrication. They, along with the ready enablers in Orlando Sentinel’s Jeff Weiner and Rene Stutzman have really done a number on the factual psyche of millions.
Jeff Weiner and Rene Stutzman – Orlando Sentinel
Ryan Julison – Family Media Consultant – and – ABC Matt Gutman
That said, if you ever wanted to give Ryan Julison or Matt Gutman the benefit of doubt, for whatever ridiculous reason, after reading this historical article from March 16th it would be virtually impossible. But first, before revisiting, we need to set the stage in the form of a fact based reminder timeline.
Facts:
17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot at 7:17 on Sunday evening February 26th. [Tracy Martin has given at least 4 different versions of his own whereabouts to the media, but we will stick with the most common one he sells]. Tracy Martin arrived home at 10:30pm after dinner with his girlfriend Brandi Green in Orlando. Trayvon was not home because he was dead.
On Monday February 27th after calling various places looking for Trayvon, Tracy Martin called the Sanford Police Dept to report Trayvon a missing person. Shortly before 8am a police squad car arrived to discuss, Tracy showed the police a cell phone picture of Trayvon and the police confirmed Trayvon was in the coroner’s office tagged as a John Doe because he did not have ID.
Simultaneous to this Tracy called Trayvon’s Mom Sybrina Fulton in Fort Lauderdale to tell her Trayvon was missing. Sybrina went to work worried. At approximately 10 am, Sybrina decided she was too distracted by the news and was going home from work. As she got in her car in the parking lot the phone rang and she was notified Trayvon was dead. She sat in the car stunned for a while and then drove home. She never travelled to Sanford until Mid-March.
Following the visual ID confirmation by Tracy of Trayvon, Tracy Martin scheduled an appointment with SPD Detective Serino for Tuesday morning at the Sanford Police Dept. to review the details of the shooting. Tracy then was on the news later in the day Monday with Brandi Green at their townhouse complex. (they appear at the 1:00 minute mark of this video)
On Tuesday 2/28 Tracy Martin went to meet Detective Serino and listened to the explanation of what took place. In addition Tracy listened to the 911 call and told Serino the voice on the tape screaming for help was NOT his son. He requested police clearance for releasing the body, the body was released. Wednesday 2/29 a funeral director named Richard Kurtz drove to Sanford and picked up Trayvon’s body.
Following the conversation with Detective Serino, Tue 2/28, Tracy Martin reached out to his sister-in-law, Patricia Jones, an attorney, who in turn contacted Daryl Parks and Benjamin Crump attorneys based in Tallahassee. The family held a viewing on Friday, March 2. The memorial service and interment were Saturday March 3rd at Roy – Mizell and Kurtz Funeral home in Fort Lauderdale.
Benjamin Crump took the case Thursday 3/1 and reached out to his colleague and NAACP affiliate Natalie Jackson in Orlando Friday 3/2. Natalie Jackson hired Media Communications consultant Ryan Julison who officially came on board Monday March 5th.
So by Monday March 5th the entire contingent of the Scheme Team were assembled. Attorneys Benjamin Crump, Daryl Parks, Natalie Jackson, Jasmine Rand, and media specialist/consultant Ryan Julison.
The Lies and Machinations Began…..
“I got on the phone with Tracy Martin [March 5th] and I told him, ‘It’s not going to be any fun, but this is the only way to find justice,’” Julison said. “You are going to have to bare your soul and express your emotions and your inner grief.” Martin and Fulton agreed. There was only one problem. At first, the media weren’t interested. Julison pitched the story to a long list of media contacts.
Eventually, on Wednesday March 7, Reuters published a story titled “Family of Florida Boy Killed by Neighborhood Watch Seeks Arrest.” The next day, Thursday March 8th, CBS News aired a segment on “This Morning,” and by 10 a.m. a crowd of reporters gathered at Natalie Jackson’s law office for a news conference with Ben Crump and Tracy Martin. A media firestorm had begun.
The day after the news conference, on Friday March 9, Sanford City Council Woman Velma Williams went back to see Police Chief Bill Lee with community activist Kenneth Bentley. “We said, look, chief. Last time I was here I told you a train was coming down the tracks and it was going 50 miles an hour,” Williams recalled.
“I said it’s going 150 miles an hour now. And it doesn’t have any brakes.” Back in New York, civil rights activist Al Sharpton was monitoring events, his interest piqued by an earlier call from Crump.
After police chief Lee told reporters on Monday March 12 he lacked any probable cause, or contradictory evidence, to arrest Zimmerman, Al Sharpton took up Trayvon Martin’s cause on his MSNBC show, fueling cable television competition and contacted Jesse Jackson and NAACP President Ben Jealous.
Simultaneously, facing a dead-end with Police Chief Lee the Scheme Team turned their attention to Sanford Mayor Jeff Triplett and Sanford City Manager Bonaparte. By Friday March 16th a personal 6pm visit in the mayor’s office was taking place. The attendees were Sybrina Fulton, Tracy Martin, Daryl Parks, Benjamin Crump, Natalie Jackson, Ryan Julison, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Ben Jealous, Bonaparte et al. They listened to the 911 tapes.
What follows here is the article written by Matt Gutman of ABC following this meeting with the media narrative of Ryan Julison providing the details. Remember, this article was written on March 16th, the same day as the meeting in Mayor Triplett’s office.
I will bolden and emphasize the lies within the article but will not alter the text at all, nor will I emphasize the brutally obvious bias:
March 16th – Police recordings made the night a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain allegedly shot and killed an unarmed 17-year-old boy outside his stepmother’s home sent the boy’s mother screaming from the room and prompted his father to declare, “He killed my son,” according to a family representative.
The series of emergency and non-emergency calls to police depict the apparent progression of events on Feb. 26 that led to the watch captain, George Zimmerman, 28, who is white, allegedly shooting Trayvon Martin, a high-school junior who is black, as the teen made his way home with a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea.
The contents of the calls and the family’s reaction to them were recounted to ABC News by a representative of the boy’s family, Ryan Julison, and ABC News affiliate WFTV published excerpts from the 911 calls.
On one call to a non-emergency dispatch number, according to Julison, Zimmerman says, “He’s checking me out,” and then, “This guy looks like he’s on drugs, he’s definitely messed up.”
“There’s a real suspicious guy. This guy looks like he’s up to no good, on drugs or something,” Zimmerman can be heard telling the dispatcher.
“These a**holes always get away,” he adds.
The dispatcher is heard trying to discourage Zimmerman, asking, “Are you following him?.. Okay, we don’t need you to do that.”
Within minutes, however, 911 calls are being made to police reporting the two are fighting.
“They’re wrestling right in the back of my porch,” one frantic caller says. “The guy’s yelling help and I’m not going out.”
On a second call someone’s screams for help can be heard and what sounds like two gunshots.
The caller’s boyfriend shouts, “Get down,” and after the second apparent gunshot the shouts for help cease, Julison told ABC News.
“There’s gun shots. Uh, I’m pretty sure the guy is dead out here, holy sh**,” a caller says into the phone.
One witness describes Zimmerman after the shooting.
“He’s out there with a flashlight. The guy is raising his hands up saying he shot the person,” the caller said.
Martin’s family listened to eight tapes, Julison said. At one point, Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s mother, ran out of the room screaming and crying, barely lasting through half the tapes.
The boy’s father, Tracey Martin, stoic and measured until then, erupted, Julison said.
“He killed my son,” Martin said, according to Julison. “He killed my son. He couldn’t control himself.”
The Sanford, Fla., Police Department, relenting to massive public pressure, plans to release parts of the 911 tapes pertaining to the shooting, multiple sources told ABC News.
But police wanted the boy’s family to hear the tapes before they were released to the public, a family source told ABC News.
A week after ABC News uncovered questionable police conduct in the investigation of the fatal shooting, including the alleged “correction” of at least one eyewitness’ account, outrage that the shooter remains free is intensifying.
“It’s surprising. It’s shocking,” said Tracy Martin, Trayvon’s father. “It lets me know that justice is just not being served here. All we want is justice for our son. We’re not asking for anything out of the ordinary.”
In an interview with ABC News, Martin’s mother, Fulton, tearfully said she only seeks an arrest.
“Let a judge and jury decide the rest,” she added.
In the meantime, outrage is spreading across the Internet.
The Seminole County State Attorney’s Office was so bombarded by emails demanding that it prosecute Zimmerman that its website had to be taken down for 45 minutes, according to a spokeswoman for the office.
One of several petitions for Zimmerman’s arrest has garnered more than 250,000 signatures on a change.org site, and at one point signatures were pouring in at the rate of 10,000 an hour, according to the website.
The outrage has been partly buoyed by calls for non-violent action by hip-hop luminaries, including Russell Simmons, who has been tweeting about the tragedy and warning against its possible vigilante violence.
“Trayvon Martin didn’t die so we can create a race war he died so we can promote better understanding. We must start honest dialogue,” Simmons wrote.
It may have been an allusion a statement by a group called the New Black Liberation Militia, which planned to travel to Sanford, Fla., next week to enact a citizen’s arrest against Zimmerman and bring him to federal authorities.
Sanford, Fla., Police Chief Billy Lee said Zimmerman asserts he shot Martin out of self-defense.
“Until we can establish probable cause to dispute that, we don’t have the grounds to arrest him,” Lee said last Tuesday.
Martin had been staying at his father’s girlfriend’s house during the night of the NBA all-star game Feb. 26.
On his way back into the gated suburban Orlando community after stepping out, Martin, wearing a hood, was spotted by Zimmerman.
Zimmerman described Martin as suspicious because he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and walking slowly in the rain, police later told residents at a town hall.
A dispatcher told him to wait for a police cruiser, and not leave his vehicle.
But about a minute later, Zimmerman left his car wearing a red sweatshirt and pursued Martin on foot between two rows of townhouses, about 70 yards from where the teen was going.
Zimmerman’s pursuit of Martin did not of itself constitute a crime, Lee said.
Witnesses told ABC News a fistfight broke out and, at one point, Zimmerman, who outweighed Martin by more than 100 pounds, was on the ground and that Martin was on top.
Austin Brown, 13, was walking his dog during the time of the altercation and saw both men on the ground but separated.
Brown, along with several other residents, heard someone cry for help, just before hearing a gunshot. Police arrived 60 seconds later and the teen was quickly pronounced dead.
According to the police report, Zimmerman, who was armed with a handgun, was found bleeding from the nose and the back of the head, standing over Martin, who was unresponsive after being shot.
An officer at the scene overheard Zimmerman saying, “I was yelling for someone to help me but no one would help me,” the report said.
Witnesses told ABC News they heard Zimmerman pronounce aloud to the breathless residents watching the violence unfold, “It was self-defense,” and place the gun on the ground.
But after the shooting, a source inside the police department told ABC News that a narcotics detective and not a homicide detective first approached Zimmerman. The detective peppered Zimmerman with questions, the source said, rather than allow Zimmerman to tell his story. Questions can lead a witness, the source said.
Another officer corrected a witness after she told him that she heard the teen cry for help.
The officer told the witness, a long-time teacher, it was Zimmerman who cried for help, said the witness.
ABC News has spoken to the teacher and she confirmed that the officer corrected her when she said she heard the teenager shout for help.
The Sanford Police Department earlier refused to release 911 calls by witnesses and neighbors.
Several of the calls, ABC News has learned, contain the sound of the single gunshot.
Lee publicly admitted that officers accepted Zimmerman’s word at the scene that he had no police record.
Two days later, during a meeting with Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, an officer told the father that Zimmerman’s record was “squeaky clean.”
Yet public records showed that Zimmerman was charged with battery against on officer and resisting arrest in 2005, a charge that was later expunged.
In an a letter to the Orlando Sentinel, Zimmerman’s father contended his son is not a racist.
“At no time did George follow or confront Mr. Martin. When the true details of the event became public, and I hope that will be soon,” the letter said, “everyone should be outraged by the treatment of George Zimmerman in the media.”
“I asked [the police], ‘Well, did you check out my son’s record?'” Tracy Martin told ABC News in an interview Sunday. “What about his? … Trayvon was innocent.”
Trayvon Martin’s Family Seeks Justice
Trayvon Martin had no arrest record or disciplinary action for violence as a student in North Miami’s Krop High School.
On Monday, Lee, seeking to head off racial unrest, tried to reassure the public that his department was doing all it could to reach a fair conclusion, as some in the crowd heckled him by saying, “a little black boy is dead.”
Lee’s department said it plans on passing its investigation over to the state’s attorney office to determine whether to press charges against Zimmerman.
Trayvon Martin’s parents described him as the kind of son who, even at 17, allowed his parents to kiss him publicly.
“That was my baby, my youngest son,” his mother, Sybrina Fulton, told ABC News in an interview in Miami. “He meant a lot to me, I don’t think the police department really understands that. … I need justice for my family, I just want justice for my son.”
Fulton is incensed that Zimmerman left his car despite being urged by dispatchers to stay put.
“My son didn’t do anything,” she said. “He was walking home from the store. Why would the neighborhood watch guy would have a weapon? … It’s just crazy. You are supposed to watch the neighborhood, not take the law into your own hands.” (article)
Again, everything “emboldened” is factually false. Not only is it known to be factually false now, but it was known to be factually false on March 16th when written by the Author Matt Gutman and the Family spokesperson/media consultant Ryan Julison. This is Three weeks after the shooting, and the first paragraph leads off with “White” Zimmerman VS. “Black” Trayvon.
Yet, you will continually see Ryan Julison and Matt Gutman deny in the strongest terms that they did not mislead the public nor advance a false or misleading narrative.
You decide.
