The Huffington Post has a lengthy, but very interesting piece up today talking about the failures of the Sanford, Fl. police department in prior investigations:

In the summer of 2010, a masked man gunned down Ikeem Ruffin, 17, in an apartment complex on this city’s north side. When police arrived, they found Ruffin dead and another teenager beside the body calling for an ambulance. The next day, police charged the teen with robbery and murder.

Prosecutors dropped the murder charge last August and said another man, still unidentified, pulled the trigger. Teresa Ruffin, the victim’s mother, said the police overlooked important evidence — including a witness who pointed to another suspect — and allowed her son’s killer to go free.

“They didn’t do their job,” Ruffin said of the police.

Ruffin, who is black, said she sees parallels between how Sanford police officers handled her son’s murder and how they investigated the killing of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teenager shot to death Feb. 26 by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who told police he acted in self-defense.

The entire Trayvon Martin story has not really been about race, but rather about the inability of a police department to properly investigate and a state law that may go too far. Again, this piece is really worth a thorough reading as it does bring into light what has so many outraged. When you’re done reading it, ask yourself what would have happened if one simple change was made in the story – Trayvon was the shooter and Zimmerman was the victim. I’m sure there would still be outrage, but it would be coming from the other side of the argument.