Around here police are police whether on duty or not whether moonlighting as armed security or not so when Martin confronted “Officer” Zimmerman and asked him,”Why are you following me?”, he could have said,”I’m Officer Zimmerman of the Sanford Police and was wondering what you are doing here”. The final outcome, if Martin was still stupid enough to swing on him, would have probably been the same for Martin except an off duty cop would have shot him sooner. The other difference would be “Officer” Zimmerman would still be a free man. So what’s your point?
I was just wondering whether you would recognize the part that Martin's judgement might have played. Had Martin assumed that Zimmerman was justified in his inquiry and had Martin assumed that Zimmerman might be armed, then Martin would perhaps be alive. Zimmerman would not have had to do anything differently.
We've all heard of "suicide by cop". Perhaps we need to recognize "suicide by armed citizen".