Happy Birthday, Zac

Today would have been Zac's 19th birthday. 

The Way Things Stand:


In a few days it will be 7 months since Zac was killed.  Justice For Zac has learned that the Sheriff's Department report on Zac's case is now in the hands of the L.A. District Attorney's Office, which will review the report for any "penal code violations"; Zac's family and friends are waiting for the Deputy District Attorney who is handling Zac's case to decide if there are.

The Sheriff's Department, so quick to assign blame to Zac for his own killing, so quick to brand him as a "drug suspect," has now done a complete about-face and has met with Zac's mother, assuring her that Zac broke no laws; he did nothing wrong. And when we say Sheriff's Department, we are meaning Sheriff Lee Baca, Himself. That was his statement to Zac's mother: "Zac broke no laws; he did nothing wrong." 


But we already knew that. We knew it way before this Coroner's foresenic report (pictured below) was even finished. We knew it.

click to enlarge

The wheels are moving slowly in this case; anyone familiar with the way the justice system moves is aware of that, or is aware of it now. Many of us are learning this in the hardest of ways: the interminable waiting. But because there is waiting, don't be fooled into thinking there is no action beneath the calm, still waters. The wheels keep moving, even when we don't see them, they keep moving .... forward.


Happy Birthday, Zac.

UPDATE: This post at local blog, street-hassle, pretty much sums up our disappointment at the lack of any meaningful local print or television news coverage on Zac's case:

But what is most challenging to our sensibility is the failure of local journalism in this matter. The fact that the public instantly knows the name of the officer in shootings involving an LAPD badge, but does not know any of the principles in this County and Federal matter after nearly seven months, is the single greatest disgrace, the single greatest evidence of impotence, of the LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, and Los Angeles Daily News of the past year, and perhaps of the past decade. These have all failed Zac personally; and they have failed his family, his loved ones catastrophically.

You can read the rest at street-hassle.