You aren't a security guard, and you don't go on patrol. You WANT to be incognito or else criminals will know you're watching and do their crimes when you aren't around. Being part of neighborhood watch simply means being aware of what's going on in your neighborhood as you go about your normal business and report any suspicious activity. It's simply being casually observant.
For instance, if I walk down to the corner mailbox to mail a letter I just casually observe what's going on. If I notice nothing unusual, fine. If I notice, say, a stranger looking into car windows of my neighbors' cars in a suspicious manner, I note details of the person for identification and while continuing on my way to mail my letter I call 911 to report. Then I casually walk back to my house observing if the person is still around and still acting suspicious. I DON'T get involved. I DON'T give the suspicious person any reason to think I'm observing them. I may hang around out of sight from the suspicious person and keep an eye on them in case they leave so I can report in what direction they went. I DON'T follow them. A neighborhood watch volunteer does nothing but observe and report. That's IT. If the person gets away, so be it. I'm NOT a security guard or law enforcement. ALL I do is observe and report.
Zimmerman was untrained in neighborhood watch protocol and behaved even more like law enforcement than even a security guard, which is completely the opposite of what neighborhood watch volunteers are supposed to do. His obnoxious methods both irritated and frightened his neighbors yet nothing was ever done to correct his behavior, and every time he got away with his unconventional irritating and even frightening behavior he never got any blowback from anyone for it thereby reinforcing in his mind that his behavior was correct when it was anything but.
It annoys me to no end that the media continually identifies him as being a neighborhood watchman when he was not a part of the organization, received no training, and acted in a manner completely opposite of how he was supposed to including going so far as to carry a concealed weapon. Doing this has given the neighborhood watch program and its volunteers a very undeserved bad rap.
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