Gee, It Sure Seems Like Sonya Massey's Killer Had No Business Being A Police Officer
We are just saying.
On July 6, 36-year-old mother Sonya Massey of Springfield, Illinois, was shot in the face and killed by (now former) Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson.
Massey, who according to her daughter was a medicated paranoid schizophrenic, had called the police for help because she thought she heard someone outside of her home making noises that could be breaking in. Grayson and his partner came to Massey’s door and grilled her on why it took so long for her to come down to the door (she had to get dressed) before telling her that they had checked the grounds and didn’t find anyone — not in any kind of reassuring way, mind you, in a way that presumes she imagined the noises or was just purposely wasting her time. They then came in and Grayson continued to talk to her like a suspect despite telling her she wasn’t in trouble, clearly put off by the fact that he was making her nervous.
One of the officers told her to take a teapot off of the stovetop “so it doesn’t start a fire” and then when she went to dump the water in the sink, he backed away and when she asked him why “from your steaming hot water.”
In a teasing tone, she said, “Away from the hot steaming water? Oh, I’ll rebuke you in the name of Jesus.” Grayson asked her to repeat, and she said again, in a very non-threatening tone, “I’ll rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”
“You better fucking not or I swear to God I’ll fucking shoot you in the fucking face,” he said, as Massey crouched down, holding the teapot in front of her head, saying “I’m sorry!”
He then did just that. He shot her in her face.
“What else can we do?” Grayson asked his partner. “I’m not taking hot boiling water to the fucking face.”
There are a lot of reasons for why this should not have happened. It shouldn’t have happened because Massey was the one who had called the police for help. It shouldn’t have happened because, despite the words that came out of Grayson’s mouth, Massey was in no way threatening him with a deadly teapot or indicating that she had any intent to throw hot water in his face.
One really big one, however, is that Sean Grayson was a mass of red flags who never, ever should have been in law enforcement to begin with.
Grayson had previously been discharged from the Army for “misconduct (serious offense).” He had two DUIs. Since 2020, he had worked at six (6) different law enforcement agencies in Illinois.
At one of those jobs, his boss noted that he needed to take “high stress decision making classes.”
While Grayson did not appear to have any disciplinary issues while he was an Auburn police officer, records from the Logan County Sheriff’s Office said he needed to take “high stress decision making classes.” The recommendation came after Grayson failed to slow down after his boss called off a vehicle pursuit. Grayson was driving about 110 mph before striking a deer, the records say.
“Deputy Grayson pursued the truck through Lincoln at a high rate of speed, reaching speeds of 63/30 MPH zone and, in my opinion, failed to show due caution while driving through stop intersections,” a Logan County chief deputy wrote in the file.
High-speed police chases are dangerous to begin with. An investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle “found that police pursuits killed more than 3,300 people, including at least 551 bystanders, from 2017 through 2022.” But simply refusing to back down until you accidentally run over a deer? That is bizarre behavior that indicates a refusal to de-escalate that ended up getting someone killed.
As disturbing as it is that he managed to switch around to six different law enforcement agencies, it’s even more concerning that six different agencies were willing to hire him to begin with. With his history? Sure, some of them were because he didn’t want to move, or because he wanted more hours, but six jobs in four years is a lot.
A lot of people have brought up the fact that police officers get very little actual job training compared to other jobs. As Cedric Alexander notes at MSNBC:
A licensed plumber must have thousands of hours of training. The same for a licensed cosmetologist. A police officer? On average, fewer than 700. Indeed, the U.S. has among the lowest police training requirements in the world. It’s unclear what they were taught, but the way the deputies performed inside Massey’s home doesn’t reflect good training.
This part is not particular to Massey, but I’m going to say that while training is certainly an issue, part of the problem is an attitude that police officers tend to develop on the job rather than before it — an attitude that everyone, whether an actual suspect, a witness or a victim, is lying to them and trying to get away with something nefarious. Now, it’s understandable to a degree, because obviously people do lie to the police. But treating people that way puts them on edge and can cause them to act in ways that then make the police officers nervous, which then, all too frequently, results in them shooting someone’s face off. This attitude is an actual safety issue and it needs to be trained out of those police officers who develop it, which Grayson certainly did.
How many people worked with Grayson, saw things headed in this direction and said nothing? Because this isn’t the kind of thing that comes out of nowhere.
Sonya Massey should be alive right now, she should be with her children, but she’s not, because Sean Grayson killed her, and because no one stopped him before he did.
How many people worked with Grayson, saw things headed in this direction and said nothing? Because this isn’t the kind of thing that comes out of nowhere.
And this is why the kids say ACAB. Because even if there are cops who would never shoot a woman in the face over "teapot", they cover up when their partners do. They lie and obstruct for other police. They refuse to inform superiors of dangerous, sloppy, or cruel behavior in colleagues because they don't want to be a "snitch". It's a broken system.
[There are a lot of reasons for why this should not have happened.]
Number one is that they should have said, "Good night, ma'am," after informing her that they checked the grounds and didn't see anyone or any signs of attempted break in.