As outraged as most people are about George Zimmerman being acquitted, it seems to me that we've forgotten that there was a much greater travesty in this case. Specifically, the fact it took a national outcry to get what the evidence pretty much screamed for--an arrest.
For those who don't recall, police initially brought Zimmerman in for questioning, but ultimately released him because of the palpably erroneous notion that Stand Your Ground not only precluded an arrest, but any sort of investigation into whether the claim was valid. An awful lot of Kossacks--including yours truly--did what the police should have done and dissected Zimmerman's account of what happened when he shot Trayvon Martin. The near-unanimous conclusion? It simply didn't add up. For instance, in order to believe Trayvon Martin was beating Zimmerman up, you'd have to believe a muscular, heavyset guy let a scrawny kid 100 pounds lighter than him just whale away at him. And if he was beaten that badly, why didn't he go to the hospital? And on, and on.
You'd think that if a bunch of untrained eyes didn't think Zimmerman's story didn't pass the smell test, at least a few trained eyes would agree. And at least two sets of trained eyes did. The homicide detective who worked the case wanted Zimmerman arrested for manslaughter that night--but area prosecutors said no because they didn't think there wasn't enough evidence for a conviction. Maybe there wasn't then, but why didn't they investigate further? Additionally, the funeral director who prepared Trayvon's body could not find any injuries on Trayvon's hands that would have likely been there had there been a fight.
I would argue that the failure to arrest Zimmerman in a timely manner, as well as the failure to fully investigate his claims, makes us all less safe because it effectively gives legal sanction to vigilante justice. That's why I say that failure is a much bigger travesty than the fact Zimmerman is a free man.