I knew a guy that defended Zimmerman because he thought Zimmerman was a cop in training and then upon finding out he was wrong changed his opinion 0%. There was definitely the early inklings of Blue Lives Matter bubbling up in the discourse, but a lot of it was the media reframing the story towards it about Martin being black as a way of avoiding talking about that the original protests began in response to the local police flat out letting Zimmerman off the hook from the very beginning.