Today was a bad day to check Facebook.

As we all know, George Zimmerman was found not guilty in the Trayvon Martin case last night.  Is it the correct verdict based on what actually transpired the night that Martin was shot?  I have no idea.  I wasn’t there.  But that doesn’t stop people from deciding that Zimmerman is a murderer.  Well, not only a murderer, but a racist murderer.

Many people have been saying, “Oh, I’m sure things would have been much different if…blah blah blah.”  They change the races of people around and the situation and I even saw one who brought up abortion.  It was an impressive instance of stretching to stitch some relevant examples together.

We do not know if the motive behind Zimmerman following Martin was racism.  Only Zimmerman knows that.  And really, that shouldn’t matter.  If someone’s trying to do harm to me, I don’t care if it’s because he hates white people.

Getting back to the point I wanted to make, what people don’t seem to understand is that the burden of proof is on the prosecution.  I really haven’t heard any good evidence to prove that Zimmerman murdered Martin.  The evidence I’ve heard was “He shouldn’t have followed him” and “Come on, he shot a black dude.”  Um, okay.

As I was reading these comments by people about the case, it reminded me of a video I’ve seen maybe 6 months to a year ago.  Watch the video:

This is a clear case of walking up to someone minding their own business and committing assault and battery.  This boy was walking down the street doing absolutely nothing wrong.  But a cop followed him from behind, initiated the “confrontation,” and beat him on the side of the head with the cold metal of his gun (actually, the gun would have been hot after it discharged when it hit his head).

No one died here, so I understand that the results of this example aren’t as serious as the death of Trayvon Martin.  However, with all of the visual evidence here, why wasn’t a big ordeal made about this?  Why, upon showing someone this video, would people make excuses for the cops?

This boy spent time in jail because the cops lied about what happened.  Only after the video surfaced did the cops face any consequences.  What would have happened if the cops killed the boy and there were no surveillance video?

If you want to get upset about racial profiling and violence, I think that’s a good thing.  Acting on racism should not be tolerated.  But get upset about the correct cases…don’t make up facts to create some righteous indignation for yourself.