Fired 'Trayvon Target' Cop Blames Conspiracy

Targets were a 'no-shoot training aid,' Ron King says
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 15, 2013 2:12 AM CDT
Updated Apr 15, 2013 6:21 AM CDT

The Florida police sergeant sacked for bringing Trayvon Martin-themed targets to a firearms training session says the targets were a "no-shoot training aid" and his firing was politically motivated. In a video posted on YouTube, Sgt. Ron King apologizes to the slain teenager's family and suggests others are using "the Martin family and myself as a way to further their own political and career agendas," the Christian Science Monitor reports.

"As an instructor in the law enforcement field, I can tell you that using real-life situations as a training scenario is not uncommon," he says. King, who bought the targets online, claims the person who reported him doesn't like the chief of Port Canaveral Police—a force just an hour away from where Martin was shot—and is using the incident to "shed bad light on the chief in an effort to further that agenda." Instead of the initial outrage over the targets, the Monitor notes that the incident now seems more "a nationwide airing of a squabble within one small Florida police department." (More Trayvon Martin stories.)

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