Sharpton to lead Fla. march for slain teen

Sanford, Fla., officials said they lost confidence in their police chief as outrage over the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen spread across the country. The city commission voted 3-2 in favor of a non-binding motion of no confidence in Police Chief Bill Lee Jr. after residents and civil rights leaders complained Lee had not arrested a 28-year-old man who confessed to shooting Trayvon Martin, 17, while Martin was walking home from a convenience store after buying some candy and a drink. "I take no pleasure in publicly flogging our police chief. He's a good man," City Commissioner Mark McCarty said. City Manager Norton Bonaparte did not say Wednesday night what steps he would take concerning Lee's future. "By Florida statute, law enforcement was PROHIBITED from making an arrest based on the facts and circumstances they had at the time," he said in a statement. Gunman George Zimmerman, a volunteer neighborhood-watch member, told police he shot Trayvon Feb. 26 in self-defense. He has not been charged and has gone into seclusion. Two women who live near the shooting scene said Martin was lying face-down, with Zimmerman looming over him, after he was shot. "If it was self-defense, why was [Zimmerman] on Trayvon's back?" one of the witnesses, Mary Cutcher, told CNN. Law-enforcement officials released 911 police tapes last week that cast doubt on Zimmerman's self-defense justification. The tapes indicate that after Zimmerman, a white Latino, called police to express his suspicions about Trayvon, who was walking in his gated community wearing a hooded sweatshirt, he disregarded a police dispatcher's instruction not to follow the teenager. A lawyer representing Martin's family, Benjamin Crump, said the teenager told his girlfriend on his cellphone moments before he was shot that he was being followed by a strange man. Cries for help were also heard on 911 tapes of calls made by neighbors. Zimmerman told police the cries were his. Trayvon's mother said the voice belonged to her son. The Rev. Al Sharpton -- a civil rights activist and MSNBC political analyst -- was to lead a rally in Sanford Thursday, and the city planned for thousands of people at a special meeting Monday night to focus on the case. Other marches were planned in cities including Pittsburgh; Chicago; Milwaukee; San Francisco; Oakland, Calif.; Washington; Norfolk, Va.' and Iowa City, Iowa, a Facebook page reviewed by United Press International indicated. In New York's Union Square Wednesday night, hundreds, including Martin's parents, marched in memory of the slain teenager in a "Million Hoodies March." Many protesters wore hoodies, or hooded sweatshirts. "Our son is your son," Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, told the racially diverse crowd. "This is not about a black and white thing. This is about a right and wrong thing," she said.