Trayvon Martin Death Spotlights Neighborhood Watch Groups Sarah Beth Glicksteen for The New York Times Protesters outside the Sanford, Fla., police station on Thursday calling for an arrest in the shooting of Trayvon Martin. SANFORD, Fla. - Last August, Wendy Dorival got a call about setting up a local neighborhood watch. As the volunteer coordinator for the Police Department here, she gets such calls regularly, and the city already had at least 10 active watch groups. So she thought nothing of this call, from George Zimmerman. She set up a visit for the next month at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, a gated community that had been dealing with a string of burglaries. When 25 residents showed up, a decent turnout, she had the residents introduce themselves; after all, people join the groups to look out for each other. She then gave a PowerPoint presentation and distributed a handbook. As she always does, she emphasized what a neighborhood watch is - and what it is not. In every presentation, "I go through what the rules and responsibilities are," she said Thursday. The volunteers" role, she said, is "being the eyes and ears" for the police, "not the vigilante." Members of a neighborhood watch "are not supposed to confront anyone," she said. We get paid to get into harm's way. You don't do that. You just call them from the safety of your home or your vehicle. Using a gun in the neighborhood watch role would be out of the question, she said in an interview. Mr. Zimmerman was there, she recalled, and the local group appointed him their coordinator. But on Feb. 26, Mr. Zimmerman, 28, pursued, confronted and fatally shot Trayvon Martin, 17, an unarmed black high school student who had been carrying only an iced tea and a bag of Skittles. In the weeks since, public reaction has gone from a simmer to a full boil. Mr. Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, has been interviewed by the police, but officials decided not to charge him in the shooting, citing his assertion of self-defense under a lenient Florida law known as Stand Your Ground. He was licensed to carry a concealed weapon. He has said nothing publicly about the case in the face of the growing community anger and rallies calling for his prosecution. On Thursday, the city's police chief, Bill Lee, announced that he would temporarily step aside. "While I stand by the Sanford Police Department, its personnel and the investigation that was conducted in regards to the Trayvon Martin case," he said at a news conference, "it is apparent that my involvement in this matter is overshadowing the process." The day before, the City Commission passed a vote of no confidence in the chief by three votes to two. This week, the state announced that a grand jury would be empanelled next month to review the case, and the civil rights division of the Department of Justice said it would open an investigation. On Thursday evening, Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi of Florida announced that the state attorney who had been handling the case, Norman R. Wolfinger, was stepping aside "to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest or impropriety," and that the state attorney from Jacksonville, Angela B. Corey, would take over the investigation. Also on Thursday evening, a boisterous rally led by the Rev. Al Sharpton took place at a lakefront park in Sanford. People - some arriving by bus from Atlanta, others having flown in from around the country - wore homemade T-shirts reading "I am Trayvon Martin," and carried posters with his image; others had posters with Mr. Zimmerman's picture and calls for his arrest. Many carried bottles of Arizona Iced Tea and wore makeshift necklaces with a box of Skittles around their necks. Mr. Sharpton introduced Trayvon Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, who told the crowd, "Trayvon is your son." To Ms. Dorival, the widening controversy has led to a false impression about neighborhood watch programs, which she said strengthen local communities and help reduce crime. "I believe in neighborhood watch," she said. I advocate for neighborhood watch. I don't want this black eye for neighborhood watch. Campbell Robertson reported from Sanford, and John Schwartz from New York.