On June 5, 2006, not long after Florida enacted the first “Stand Your Ground” law in the US, unarmed Jason Rosenbloom was shot in the stomach and chest by his next-door neighbor after an argument over trash.
Exactly what happened that day in Clearwater, Florida, is still disputed. Kenneth Allen, a retired police officer, said he shot Rosenbloom because he was trying to storm into his house.
Rosenbloom said in a telephone interview this week he never tried to enter the house and was in Allen’s yard, about 3m from his front door, when he was shot moments after he put his hands up.
Now living in Hawaii, Rosenbloom said he had been unaware of the growing outrage over last month’s shooting in Sanford, Florida, of an unarmed black teenager by a neighborhood watch captain.
Trayvon Martin, 17, was shot by George Zimmerman on Feb. 26 while walking back to the house where he was staying with his father in a gated community. Sanford police have not arrested Zimmerman, largely because Stand Your Ground requires them, without clear evidence of malice and in the absence of eyewitness testimony to the contrary, to accept Zimmerman’s argument he was acting in self-defense.
Allen was not arrested in the shooting of Rosenbloom. Sergeant Tom Nestor of the Pinellas County sheriff’s office said Allen was found to have acted in self-defense when he pumped two rounds into Rosenbloom with his 9mm semi-automatic pistol.
“He meant for me to be dead and he never called 911,” said Rosenbloom, 36, adding that Allen, now 65, bent over him and using an expletive, warned him not to tangle “with an ex-cop” as he lay bleeding on the ground.
“The police closed it on his words alone,” said Rosenbloom, explaining how the case that began with a complaint about him leaving eight trash bags on the curb instead of the regulation six, was closed after what he described as only a summary investigation.
Allen, contacted by phone in rural Georgia, said on Thursday he had “no regrets” about shooting Rosenbloom, describing him as a “little punk” who was “lucky to be alive.”
He denied using profanity after shooting his neighbor, who he claimed had forced his way into the house and threatened to “beat my ass.”
Police say Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which loosened formerly restrictive rules for using deadly force and gives people wide latitude to employ it in self--defense, was never officially cited in the Rosenbloom case.
Dubbed the “Shoot First, Ask Questions Later” law by critics, the statute extends even beyond self-defense and is seen by some as encouraging vigilante justice.
The law, approved under former Florida governor Jeb Bush after a big push by pro-gun advocates led by the National Rifle Association, was passed over numerous objections from the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association and state law enforcement officials. Florida Governor Rick Scott, announced the formation of a task force on Thursday to “thoroughly review” the law in the wake of the Martin shooting.
According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, at least 23 states have passed laws similar to Florida’s since 2005.
Florida does not keep comprehensive records to gauge the impact of Stand Your Ground, but the St Petersburg Times said on Friday that the law had been invoked at least 130 times statewide since 2005, and that “justifiable homicides” had more than tripled since the law went into effect.
In cases where the law had been invoked, about 70 percent involved a fatality, the newspaper said.
Despite assertions from supporters of the law that it has worked as a deterrent of violent crime, Dennis Henigan, a lawyer and veteran vice president of the Brady Campaign, said the state was still saddled with a “tragic record” on violent crime.
“It’s quite remarkable how consistently awful Florida’s record has been,” Henigan said. “It takes some work to finish in the top five in violent crime among all the states every single year for the last 30 years.”
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