In Florida, New Black Panthers rip Obama, Holder over Martin shooting

SANFORD, Fla. — Rallying in front of the Sanford Police Department headquarters, members of the New Black Panther Party ripped President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder for not responding forcefully enough to the killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager.

Mikhail Muhammad, the southern regional minister for the New Black Panther Party, told The Daily Caller that he thinks that the DOJ’s decision to get involved in this case came “a little too late.”

The DOJ didn’t decide to get involved until after Democratic Rep. Corrine Brown pressed Holder for federal help on the case. The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division finally announced it was launching an investigation into the case on March 19, according to The Miami Herald, nearly a month after Martin was killed.

“With all federal civil rights crimes, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person acted intentionally and with the specific intent to do something which the law forbids — the highest level of intent in criminal law,” an unnamed DOJ spokesperson told The Herald. “Negligence, recklessness, mistakes and accidents are not prosecutable under the federal criminal civil rights laws.”

“The community has lost confidence in our government,” Muhammad, the leader of a small Thursday afternoon protest, said. “He [Holder] waited to make a decision to step in. Why? To appease the black community? To make them believe that we’re citizens?”

Muhammad said he doesn’t have confidence in Holder’s ability to handle the case correctly and is concerned that Holder is only interested in political spoils he may reap from the tragedy.

Another Panther, James Evans Muhammad, the national education director of the Black Power Movement, told TheDC he wants Obama to speak up and — as one of his supporters — is upset the president has thus refused to do so. (RELATED: Embattled