On NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” Wednesday night, in an episode about the rise of a vigilante group that formed after a string of rapes, there was a reference to the Feb. 26 fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla.
Detective Amanda Rollins, played by Kelli Giddish, likened the group to that situation.
“It’s like that Trayvon Martin kid getting shot in Florida,” she said. “It’s what happens when people try to take the law in their own hands.”
The “Law & Order” series hasn’t shied away from diving into controversial issues that are split along ideological lines. One of the knocks on the original “Law & Order” series is that it had a tendency to champion liberal causes. Its successor, “Law & Order: SVU,” has received the same criticisms for lining up the same way.