Joe Biden has called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, moments after shocking police video was released showing an Illinois officer fatally shooting Sonya Massey after she called police fearing a home intruder.
In his first public statement since dropping his bid for re-election, Biden said the shooting of Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman, by white Sangamon county sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson, in her home in Springfield, after a dispute over a pot of boiling water, “reminds us that all too often Black Americans face fears for their safety in ways many of the rest of us do not”.
Biden, who is recovering from Covid at his home in Delaware, said Massey, “a beloved mother, friend, daughter and young Black woman … should be alive today”.
I definitely don’t think it was a joke. Her twitchy nature and constant fear strike me as someone facing a mental health issue. Specifically schizophrenia as she said she was hearing people around the house. All that said, a cop should be able to recognize those signs immediately and should have used less lethal force at the most. His first instinct shouldn’t have been to bridge the gap and get closer after he felt “threatened.”