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George Zimmerman reportedly did have broken nose, black eyes

George Zimmerman (Photo by Gary Green/The Orlando Sentinel-Pool/Getty Images)
MIAMI (AP) — Court records show George Zimmerman had a pair of black eyes, a nose fracture and two cuts to the back of his head after the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
ABC News reports the medical records were part of evidence released Tuesday that prosecutors have in the second-degree murder case against Zimmerman. He has entered a plea of not guilty and claims self-defense in the Feb. 26 shooting. A message left Tuesday evening with Zimmerman’s attorney was not immediately returned.
WATCH “TODAY SHOW’ COVERAGE OF THE INJURIES ZIMMERMAN SUSTAINED:

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Zimmerman was treated Feb. 27 at Altamonte Family Practice. A phone call made Tuesday evening to the practice rang unanswered.
Some of the injuries were previously reported by The Associated Press based on video of Zimmerman at a jail sally port.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

WASHINGTON – The family of slain Florida teenager Trayvon Martin said Wednesday that a police video showing the shooter, George Zimmerman, arriving at the station for questioning discredits claims he acted in self-defense.

By Jacquelyn Martin, AP
“It just shows that everything that Zimmerman has been saying, that the police have been reporting, is false,” the teen’s father, Tracy Martin, told USA TODAY as he watched the video on television in a Washington hotel Wednesday night.
ABC News said it obtained the police surveillance video, and it was replayed on other networks. Sanford police Sgt. David Morgenstern told the Associated Press that the video is of Zimmerman.
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“From what I saw, Zimmerman had no blood on his face, had no grass on the back of his clothes, no cuts on the back of his head,” Martin said.
Family attorney Benjamin Crump said the video and lack of evidence of a struggle knocks down Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense and shows officials botched their investigation.

Trayvon Martin was talking on his cell phone when he was shot and killed in February.
“You’re witnessing a conspiracy in the first degree,” Crump said. “If they don’t arrest this guy — there’s a conspiracy at this point.”
The police surveillance video taken the night that Trayvon was shot dead, shows Zimmerman, 28, arriving at the Sanford, Fla., police station in a police car, exiting with his hands cuffed behind his back and being led to questioning.
The 17-year-old’s death has sparked a national conversation about racial profiling. He was fatally shot Feb. 26 after Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, followed him because he said the teen looked suspicious.
Trayvon, who is black and wore a hooded sweatshirt, was unarmed; Zimmerman is described by police as white; his family says he is Hispanic.
No charges have been filed against Zimmerman. He had told police that Trayvon jumped him and smashed his head into the pavement. According to an initial police report, an officer noticed Zimmerman was bleeding from the nose and back of his head and showed signs of having been in a struggle.
George Zimmerman: Neighborhood watch captain involved in shooting death of Trayvon Martin

Orange County Jail via Miami Herald via AP
Crump said the national outpouring of outrage in the case won’t stop until Zimmerman is arrested.
“I think the people aren’t going anywhere,” he said referring to the growing online petitions, gatherings and social media campaigns.
Among the displays of support Wednesday was that from Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., who was escorted off the U.S. House floor for wearing a hoodie as he protested the shooting. The lawmaker called for a full investigation into Trayvon’s death.
“Racial profiling has to stop,” Rush said on the House floor. “Just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum.”
The congressman, wearing the hoodie again, said later in a CNN interview that “life is much more than a piece of clothing.”
The House has strict rules about what lawmakers can wear on the floor. Rep. Greg Harper, R-Miss., who was presiding over the chamber when Rush was speaking, banged the gavel repeatedly and reminded him of rules that prohibit the wearing of hats in the chamber while the House is in session.
Harper said wearing a hoodie was “not consistent with this rule.” Rush was escorted out.
The hoodie has become a symbol of support for Trayvon. Miami Heat stars LeBron James and Dwyane Wade and their teammates wore hooded sweatshirts in pictures as part of the “We Are Trayvon” campaign.
Tens of thousands of people have posted pictures of themselves wearing hoodies on Twitter, Facebook and other social media.
Zimmerman’s lawyer and l friends have spoken in defense of the neighborhood watch volunteer, saying he is not a racist. He has dropped from sight since the killing and has not made any public remarks.
Despite the police decision not to charge Zimmerman at the time, several other probes are ongoing. The U.S. Justice Department has opened an investigation, and a Seminole County, Fla., grand jury is considering possible charges. The grand jury is likely to convene April 10.
More than 30,000 people signed an NAACP petition to Florida prosecutors in just a 24-hour period.
Contributing: The Associated

Florida man lives to tell of ‘shoot first’ horror

By Tom Brown
MIAMI | Fri Mar 23, 2012 1:12am EDT
(Reuters) – On June 5, 2006, not long after Florida enacted the first “Stand Your Ground” law in the United States, unarmed Jason Rosenbloom was shot in the stomach and chest by his next-door neighbor after a shouting match over trash.

Exactly what happened that day in Clearwater, Florida, is still open to dispute. Kenneth Allen, a retired police officer, said he shot Rosenbloom because he was trying to storm into his house.

Rosenbloom told Reuters in a telephone interview this week he never tried to enter the house and was in Allen’s yard, about 10 feet (3 meters) 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 February 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 Pinella’s 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.

“They made me the bad guy,” he added.

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.”

WIDE LATITUDE IN CASE OF SELF-DEFENSE

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.

But Rosenbloom considers himself one of the first victims of the new law in Florida and one of the few who has lived to give a first-hand account of how he said it can be used to shoot to kill with impunity.

The law, which extended the “castle doctrine” allowing residents to shoot would-be burglars or intruders entering their homes, gives legal protection to anyone, anywhere, to use deadly force in a case where a person is attacked and believes his life or safety is in danger.

One of the law’s legislative sponsors said it was partly motivated by a rash of looting and theft after a series of hurricanes hit Florida in 2005.

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.

“A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity … has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony,” the law says.

“I think it’s a very foolish law meant to turn a blind eye,” Rosenbloom said, referring to how Stand Your Ground has been criticized in the past for protecting people who might formerly have been prosecuted for assault or murder.

‘CONSISTENTLY AWFUL’

The law, approved under former 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’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, announced the formation of a task force on Thursday to “thoroughly review” the law in the wake of the Martin shooting.

“Basically it’s a law that fixed something that wasn’t broken, and then it created a lot of problems,” said William “Willie” Meggs, veteran state attorney for the 2nd Judicial Circuit in Tallahassee, the Florida capital.

“I have been an outspoken critic of the law since it came into existence and I would suspect we may be doing something about it after all the interest we’re seeing in it now,” he said.

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 found that in the first five years after the law was enacted, “justifiable homicides” in Florida more than tripled, to more than 100 in 2010 from just over 30. The Stand Your Ground law was invoked in at least 93 cases over that time period, involving 65 deaths.

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.”

‘NOT A ‘LICENSE TO KILL’

Supporters of Stand Your Ground say it has worked well, while arguing it should not be applied in the Zimmerman case.

“It’s not a 007 license to kill,” said Sean Caranna, who heads a gun rights group called Florida Carry.

Republican State Representative Dennis Baxley, one of the authors of the Stand Your Ground law, said it did not protect people who pursued and confronted their victims, as occurred in Sanford, according to lawyers for the parents of the dead teenager.

“That’s where he (Zimmerman) stepped out on thin ice away from protection of this statute,” he said.

Defending Stand Your Ground, Baxley said that while errors may occur, such as the death of Martin, it was important that the law err on the side of those who fear they are facing “a perceived” threat.

“That’s good public policy. I think we have a good statute and I would hate to lose anything in it that protects people from harm. It saves lives,” Baxley added.

Rosenbloom still has health problems stemming from his injuries and a bullet remains lodged in his right hip.

“Now I live as far away from Florida in America as you can freaking get,” he said, explaining his recent move to Hawaii was aimed at leaving a lot of bad memories behind in what he now calls the “Gunshine State,” a play on Florida’s nickname, “the Sunshine State.”

His family was struck by a second tragedy only three days after he was shot by Allen. Rosenbloom said his younger brother Joshua was shot and killed by police after threatening to commit suicide by disemboweling himself with a sword.

Twenty-year-old Joshua Rosenbloom, a manic depressive, was acting out after hearing his brother was in intensive care in a Tampa hospital, recovering from his gunshot wounds, Rosenbloom said. He was shot three times in his bedroom when police approached while he was still holding the sword in his hands, his older brother said.

Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American teenager, was shot and killed in a gated community in Florida late last month by a white neighborhood watch captain, according to police. But the watch captain, George Zimmerman — a 26-year-old college student who has admitted to police that he shot the young man — still walks free. And Martin’s family is pleading for answers and demanding justice.

At this point there are more questions than answers in the young man’s death, but this much is known: Martin was packing little more than a bag of candy and a canned iced tea on the night he was killed.

“He had a gun, and Trayvon had Skittles,” Benjamin Crump, a family attorney, told The Huffington Post this afternoon.

Martin, 17, a high school junior who lived with his mother in Miami, was visiting his father and stepmother at their home in Sanford, a suburb of Orlando, on the weekend of Feb. 26. During halftime of the NBA All-Star Game, Martin’s family said he walked to a nearby convenience store to get some candy for his younger brother. On his way back home, according to reports, he caught the attention of George Zimmerman, a 26-year-old college student and self-appointed captain of The Retreat at Twin Lakes neighborhood watch.

Zimmerman, armed with a 9mm handgun, trailed the boy in his car. At some point, Zimmerman called 911, telling the operator there was a “suspicious person in the area,” according to a police report acquired by HuffPost.

Not long after the call, some sort of altercation ensued between Zimmerman and Martin. Then neighbors said they heard gunfire.

The Sanford Police arrived and found Martin lying face down on a patch of grass about 70 feet from his family’s home, a pack of candy in one pocket and an iced tea in the other.

“What happened between him being confronted, up to the point where he got shot, nobody knows but him and that guy,” Tracy Martin, the boy’s father, told HuffPost. “I’m looking for justice for my family. I want answers but I don’t have any to give — not for his mother, his brothers or sisters. We don’t have nothing, but we want answers.”

According to reports, Zimmerman’s gun was legal and he has claimed to authorities that he shot Martin in self-defense. Crump, the family’s attorney, described Zimmerman as a “loose cannon” and questioned why any neighborhood watchman would be carrying a loaded gun. He has asked law enforcement authorities to turn over recordings of the call to 911 that Zimmerman made the night of the shooting, in the hopes that it might shed some light on the incident. Crump said if the recordings are not given to the family, he will file a public records lawsuit on their behalf.

Crump said the family is demanding that the Sanford Police arrest Zimmerman, and that the Seminole County State Attorney’s Office review the case and press charges.

“They say they are still investigating,” Crump said. “I’m not sure what there is to investigate. What’s suspicious about this kid? That’s what the family is crying out, that our kid is like any other kid.”

A call and an email to Chief Bill Lee of the Sanford Police Department were not immediately returned on Thursday. A phone number listed for Zimmerman has been disconnected, and his current whereabouts are not known.

Lynn Bumpus-Hooper, a spokeswoman for the Seminole County State Attorney’s Office, said that the office has not received the case from the police, and until an arrest is made, it will not be involved.

“We have not received a case [from the Sanford PD] yet, but we will give it our full consideration when we do,” Bumpus-Hooper said. She said it is not rare for several weeks to pass before the State Attorney’s Office receives a homicide or murder case from the police.

Meanwhile, a heartbroken father struggles to deal with the weight of his son’s death. He tells the story of his son’s heroics at age 9, when he pulled his father from a burning kitchen, and of his love of sports and horseback riding and his dreams of attending college and becoming an aviation mechanic.

“Right now we’re all on pins and needles,” Tracy Martin said. “When I asked the police why there’s been no arrest, they told me they respected [Zimmerman’s] background, that he studied criminal justice for four years and that he was squeaky clean.”

He continued: “My question to them was, did they run my child’s background check? They said yes. I asked them what they came up with, and they said nothing. So I asked if Zimmerman having a clean record, did that give him the right to shoot and kill an unarmed kid?”

In the “Committee News” section of last month’s issue of the gated community’s newsletter, “Retreat Reflections,” the neighborhood watch committee asked for additional volunteers and warned: “Please keep your eyes open” and “If you see something suspicious or out of place, report it!”

For more information, it said, call George Zimmerman.

UPDATE:

Chief Bill Lee of the Sanford Police Department on Thursday evening said the account given by Martin’s family and attorney is correct, that Zimmerman saw the young man walking home from the store. He said that Zimmerman did indeed call 911 and report a suspicious person, and that he was told not to follow him.

“For some reason he felt that Trayvon, the way that he was walking or appeared seemed suspicious to him,” Lee said. “He called this in and at one part of this initial call [the dispatcher] recommends him not to follow Trayvon. A police officer is on the way at that point.”

Lee said that Zimmerman instead followed Martin.

“I believe that Mr. Zimmerman was trying to, by his account, find an address to give the officers and also trying to keep Trayvon in eyesight.”

Zimmerman told the police that Martin noticed that he was being followed and asked, “what’s your problem?”

That’s when a physical confrontation ensued, Lee said. And moments later, Martin was shot.

Lee said that Zimmerman has a legal permit to carry the weapon used in the shooting, and that he told police that he shot Martin in self-defense.

“He felt the need to defend himself,” Lee said. “ I don’t think it was his intent to go and shoot somebody” that night.

The chief said the police have met with Zimmerman on two to three separate occasions, and that their investigation should be wrapped up this week. He said all of the evidence in the case will be delivered to the Seminole County State Attorney’s Office soon after.

“We’re going to present all the information and if they feel that based on all of the evidence that we’re able to produce that Mr. Zimmerman has satisfied the requirement that he shot in self defense, they may, but if not, he would be charged with some type of homicide or manslaughter,” Lee said.

“It is certainly and absolutely a tragedy, especially for the Martin Family,” Lee said. “No one expects their teenage son to go the store and never come back.”
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On December 8, 2009, reggae singer Buju Banton slipped on his swim trunks, pulled a pair of jeans over them, and, along with two friends — a female companion and his longtime driver and pal, Ian Thomas — jumped into his silver Land Rover with a “Jah One” vanity plate. They left his modest duplex in suburban Tamarac and began the drive to the Gulf Coast for a day of fun in the sun.

Alexander JohnsonAlex JohnsonDavid Oscar MarkusReggaeArts, Entertainment, and Media
As the exit sign for Naples came into view, Buju called a man they were to meet named Junior to give him a heads-up they would soon arrive. But Junior said plans had changed. They needed to drive to Sarasota and meet him at a restaurant. From there they would grab keys for a friend’s boat. Buju agreed.

In Sarasota, the three men sipped margaritas at a restaurant while the lady friend sat in the car. A short while later, the trio headed for a dimly lit warehouse, where someone closed and locked the shutter door behind them. Inside, a stranger who was lurking in the corner began speaking to Junior in Spanish, leaving Buju clueless. There was no boat or keys in sight.

With his long dreadlocks pulled into a ponytail, Buju paced and swayed, his lanky frame oozing nervousness. He asked to use the bathroom but was told the toilet was broken.

“Let me go do it outside,” he said.

Junior and the stranger avoided answering him. Then the stranger walked over to a parked car and opened a hidden compartment in the trunk to reveal 20 plastic-wrapped kilos of cocaine.

“I felt my stomach turn,” Buju testified months later. “I tried to play it down and be calm. I keep telling myself… be cool, be cool, it’s gonna be, just be cool.”

Buju’s friend Thomas was cool. He plucked a kilo from the pile and plopped it onto a workbench. Buju followed closely behind, peeking over his friend’s shoulder as he made a small incision in the packaging. Thomas dabbed a fingertip of the powder on his tongue and proffered the blade to Buju, who followed suit.

After tasting the cocaine, Buju sank into a chair in the corner. He fiddled and tried to occupy himself while Thomas pulled out a phone and negotiated prices with an apparent buyer in Georgia.

“Yo, find out how much he wants,” Buju murmured. He later claimed he had no idea who was on the line and that his remark was just an attempt to appear legitimate, to play it cool. Thomas carried on without pausing.

When the warehouse door screeched open, the men exchanged phone numbers. Buju claims he spent the long drive back to Tamarac throwing up from a combination of stress and margaritas. Later that night, Junior phoned the singer twice. Buju avoided the calls.

The next day, Thomas drove back to Sarasota alone and met Junior at an Applebee’s for a round of negotiations. Junior pushed to get Buju involved in that day’s antics. “He does not want to do nothing, man,” Thomas responded. “That’s not him, you know? Music, eat, sleep, shit every day.” Junior agreed to sell five kilos to Thomas’s connection in Georgia, then left the restaurant, called his supervisor at the Drug Enforcement Agency, and said it was a “miracle” that he held onto the deal.

On the morning of December 10, 2009, authorities busted Thomas and a guy from Georgia named James Mack at the Sarasota warehouse, where the two were caught with a gun and $135,000 in cash while trying to buy several kilos. Cops then pulled Buju from his Tamarac home and placed him under arrest on two charges: conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute cocaine and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking offense — even though the firearm at issue was carried by Mack, not Buju.

It’s a case built upon the handiwork of a mendacious snitch — Alex Johnson, AKA Junior — with an extensive criminal history and clear financial motives to see Buju arrested. An aggressive federal prosecutor spent big in two weeklong trials in Tampa to secure a celebrity conviction. The saga sheds light on how far the government will go and how dirty it will play to win the few big battles left in the long-ago failed War on Drugs. Now, while one of the most successful and controversial Jamaican artists — a man who won a Grammy for best reggae album a year ago — sits in a Miami penitentiary, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is considering whether unconstitutional tactics were used to nail a man who had no known criminal record.

Mark Anthony Myrie, better known by his nickname Buju (“Banton” is a title applied to storytellers and DJs), was born into the blistering heat of Kingston in July 1973. The youngest of 15, he grew up immersed in the poverty and political strife of a country that had gained its independence from the British Empire only a decade earlier. His mom sold provisions at the local market; his dad was out of the picture. As a young boy, he sneaked out at night and peeked into the nearby dancehalls to wtach locals perform.

I can remember there was a particular song by a great singer from my country by the name of Mr. Dennis Brown, and this song was called ‘Promised Land,'” Buju would later testify. “In those days, we lived in a — what is called a board house, and we had… like metal sheets on top of our roof. Whenever the sounds would be playing across the street, our neighboring community, it would shake the very foundations of this house. And I always admired that song and tell myself one day I want to be part of the… creation of this kind of music.”

Curly Cash, a Jamaican-born musician now living in Miami, remembers when Buju didn’t have a pair of shoes and owned few clothes beyond his khaki school uniform. They would hang around Kingston, Buju climbing orange trees to pluck his lunch. There was something pesky about him, Cash says. His confidence and determination seemed absurd for such a young boy. The older Cash once lent 20 bucks to Buju. He also suggested the boy spend some time looking for a job. But poor, hungry Buju just laughed. It was music or nothing.

United States Marshals Service
Buju’s mug shot after he was arrested at his Tamarac duplex in December 2009.

Buju and his Miami-based attorney, David Oscar Markus.
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Alexander JohnsonAlex JohnsonDavid Oscar MarkusReggaeArts, Entertainment, and Media
In the ’80s, it took months if not years for an artist to get into a recording booth in Jamaica. Aspiring performers waited around the gates of studios praying that a producer would give them a break. It was a rainy day when Buju’s chance came. He ended up in a taxi with an older DJ named Clement Irie who was going down to Blue Mountain studio. Irie wrapped up his set and asked the producer to give the boastful teenager a shot. The producer told Buju, who was then toasting under the moniker Gargamel, to sing when the red light came on.

“I didn’t stop singing until the rhythm itself stopped playing,” Buju recalled during court testimony. “When I opened my eyes and looked, they were all jumping around here like they liked what I was singing. Yeah, and that is where I really got my first start.”

He was pure dancehall, spitting out lascivious boasts over pummeling beats. His roaring delivery quickly became a trademark many would emulate. Buju began churning out singles, and in 1992, he broke Bob Marley’s record for number one hits in a year.

But also that year, “Boom Bye Bye,” a single he had recorded while still a teenager, was re-released. It is a violent antigay song that, among other things, discusses shooting homosexuals and burning them “like an old tire wheel.” The song opens with this declaration: “World is in trouble/Anytime Buju Banton come/Batty bwoy get up an run/At gunshot me head back/Hear I tell him now crew/It’s like, boom bye bye/Inna batty bwoy head. ” Batty bwoy is a derogatory term for gay men.

Buju’s old friend, silk-voiced reggae star Wayne Wonder, remembers how “Boom Bye Bye” came about. He and Buju blew up in Jamaica around the same time. In the early days, Wonder says, they would “campaign,” or party, through the dancehalls to build up their following. They collaborated on numerous hits at Kingston’s Penthouse Records and went on to tour Japan, Europe, and dozens of other places together.

“We were listening to Punanny Riddim [a popular reggae beat] in my two-door Civic [and] just picked up Buju,” Wonder recalls while working at his home studio in Davie. “We were driving back down and pick up one of my little girlfriends. And she gives us dis story about two guys who got caught in a bathroom. ‘Boom Bye Bye’ wasn’t intended for any animosity or to incite violence ‘pon gays and lesbians. It was just a personal thing, you know. And a vibe come out in the car, and Buju just says, ‘a boom bye bye in a batty bwoy head,'” Wonder recalls to the beat of the song as he rises out of his chair.

It is widely reported that the song was inspired by the rape and murder of a young boy by a gay man in Jamaica. While the song grew popular as a way for Jamaicans who were enraged by that incident to funnel their anger, it had the opposite effect in the United States and Europe. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and dozens of other groups denounced the violent lyrics as hate speech. His airplay abroad diminished. Labels took a step back. Even years after the song’s release, sponsors would back out of festivals when they learned Buju was on the bill.

Carolyn Cooper, PhD, a professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of West Indies, explains, “The Jamaican language is very metaphorical. I try to make the argument that when Buju says all homosexuals must die — it sounds very literal — it’s an indictment of homosexuality and not an incitement to actually kill all homosexuals.”

But people like Brian Winfield, managing director for Equality Florida, contend that “Boom Bye Bye” couldn’t be a clearer incitement of violence against gay people. “The lyrics talk about shooting gay people; they call on listeners to shoot gay people in the head and burn gay people with acid and fire,” he says. “[Buju] has been profiting off the song for 20 years.”

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2012-02-09/news/reggae-great-buju-banton-is-locked-up-on-dubious-drug-charges/2/

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