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USA Today/ - News, Seg, 02 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Civil Rights)
Sanford residents: 'We are good people'
SANFORD, Fla. – Thao Boyd, a Vietnamese immigrant
in this small city at the center of a national uproar over
racial profiling, wants people to know one thing about
her adopted community:
"Everybody knows Sanford now, but don't be scared
about Sanford," says Boyd, 37, who owns a nail salon
downtown. "Come visit us whenever you are ready."
In the 15 years that Boyd has lived here, she says, she
has never felt discriminated against. What's more, she
says, she can drive the 15 minutes from her house to
the salon and know a family on almost every block
where she could stop and ask for help if she ever
needed it.
"We are good people here," she says.
Over the past two weeks, this city of 54,000, once
known for its vast celery fields, is now known as the
place where an unarmed 17-year-old black teen
walking home from the store with a bag of candy in his
pocket was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch
volunteer.
Trayvon Martin died on Feb. 26. Police did not arrest
the shooter, George Zimmerman, 28. Zimmerman is
white and Hispanic.
The Orlando Sentinel reported Sunday that two voice
identification experts it contacted said the person
overheard on a 911 call that night was not
Zimmerman, who told police he was the one
screaming for help. Martin's mother says it was her
son's voice.
As Trayvon's family, activists, celebrities and ordinary
folks across the country call for Zimmerman's arrest,
the community has been overwhelmed with news
trucks, reporters, high-profile civil rights leaders
including Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and
thousands of protesters. Another rally was held
Sunday in Miami.
At a meeting with city commissioners March 26,
Sharpton warned that Sanford risks becoming the 21st
century's Selma or Birmingham, two Southern cities
that became synonymous with racial hate during the
1960s civil rights movement.
But residents here say the comparison is unfair.
"Sanford is not a racist town, it's just not," says Nancy
Kruckemyer, 57, who is white. "Everybody wants
justice."
As the investigation continues into the shooting, "I feel
there is a heaviness in town," Kruckemyer says.
Some black residents, too, say Sanford is no longer a
community with flagrant racial tension between black
and white residents. About a third of the city's
residents are black.
Pastor Valarie Houston agrees that the races generally
get along fine in Sanford. She says the tension that
exists sits squarely with the police department and
how it treats members of the black community.
"The police department is not fair to the
African-American community," she says. She says
police investigations are weak or non-existent when
black people are killed.
The Trayvon Martin case, she says, "is just one of
many."
At a community meeting with the NAACP last week,
more than a dozen families complained of unfair
treatment by the police. Their allegations ranged from
an officer hitting a 10-year-old boy to what they see as
a poor investigation and failure to arrest Zimmerman.
Those are the frustrations the Trayvon Martin case has
tapped, Houston says.
Thousands of protesters chanting "Justice for Trayvon"
marched to the police department Saturday in the
latest of several rallies here. The department did not
return phone calls requesting comment.
"It's a beautiful city and we have a lot of good qualities,
but if this is the publicity the city needs to straighten
things up as far as the law, then so be it," says
Lazarus Mitchell, 30, who coaches youngsters in a
football athletic league at Fort Mellon Park, the site of
one of the largest rallies for Trayvon. Mitchell, who is
black, has white and black children on his teams.
City manager Norton Bonaparte, Sanford's first black
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