I've never believed that Trayvon ran up on Z to throw the "first punch."

[brett_jv]

107. At least I admit I made a minor and largely irrelevant error

One which, in fact, has absolutely zero bearing regarding my overall point ... so imho you're being disingenuous by jumping on it, but ... whatever.

The simple facts are:

1) 311/911 operators are NOT 'police', and
2) The very operator involved testified that people in his position are basically forbidden to give orders to anyone to do anything, and that hence what he was actually doing there was clarifying that he wasn't telling GZ to follow Trayvon.

These operators (actually probably their superiors) are liable for any 'direct orders' they give to people. 'Yes...follow him', and 'No, don't follow him' ... both would constitute 'orders'. An operator would never know if ANY order ... could turn out to be dangerous, in the end.

So, the operator, at the time, was 'covering his rear', making it clear that NO ORDER TO FOLLOW is being given here. He was worried that his previous requests for information as to 'what Trayvon was doing' was being construed by Zimmerman as 'official requests for him to follow', so he was trying to put that potential misconception (which could get him in trouble) to rest.

If you don't 'get' why it's baloney to say he was 'ordered' by 'police' to 'not/stop following', without further elaboration as to what you mean by 'police' and by 'order' ... then I don't know. I guess we have different definitions of these words.

I contend that, using the common, literal meaning of these two words, such an assertion is simply not a true statement. There were no actual orders given to GZ at all, much less by 'the police'.

Lastly, my guess is that ZimZim most likely knows a lot more than the average person when it comes to 'calling 311/911', and what the extent of the operators authority is. Seeing as how he was calling them all the time