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”.
The thing I found most interesting about the whole interaction is that the first thing the police say to her when they make contact is “we looked around outside and didn’t find anyone”. Like they’re challenging her to contradict them.
That is technically true, but it omits some very relevant information, i.e. that they found a vehicle parked nearby which had very clearly been broken into. That might not have happened that evening, but they don’t know that. And they don’t mention it when they talk to her. They instead start by saying that the reason she called (she heard a prowler) could not be confirmed. This statement sets up the entire tone of their interaction. There’s nobody for them to arrest, so now they’re clearly annoyed that she’s wasting their time. They start treating her like a suspect instead of a victim. They want her name, her ID. They invite themselves in without cause and start looking through her house. It escalates from there, and ends in murder. The shooting officer then outright lies about the circumstances of the shooting, saying Massey was coming at him with a pot of boiling water and threatening him. She had put the pot down in the sink and was just standing in the kitchen. See, he’d turned his body camera off and didn’t realize his partner was still recording.
This was a fucking extra-judicial execution.
Like they’re challenging her to contradict them.
I had a slightly different take on this - if she had said “OK thanks guys, I feel a lot better now. See you later.” it probably all wouldn’t have ended in murder.
What I can’t understand is why they entered the house after that interaction and the video I saw didn’t show.
After that it all went downhill aggressively. The tone of her “Jesus retribution” comment was actually very soft. The cop putting his hand on his gun and his incredibly aggressive tone was mental. Pure escalation with someone who obviously has mental health issues. She was never going to get out alive. :( It reminded me of that awful video of the young lad on the hotel floor who was executed. Very upsetting to watch.
if she had said “OK thanks guys, I feel a lot better now. See you later.” it probably all wouldn’t have ended in murder.
Why even say this victim blaming bullshit? Yes, I read the rest of your comment, I just don’t know why you felt the need to preface it by blaming an innocent dead woman for getting shot by the cop she called for help.
I shouldn’t even need to say any of this, but she could have been cursing them off the moment they arrived for all I care. That’s literally her constitutional right. And if it were a white woman, and she was cursing them from the moment they arrived, she’d still be alive right now 100%. Perhaps detained or arrested, and/or maybe a few bruises. But alive.
This country is going to need to have a reckoning. We failed Reconstruction, and in retrospect we probably should have let Sherman burn the South to the ground after the war, and now the chickens are coming to roost.
(Yes I know this was in Illinois. The legacy of slavery is everywhere).
What I can’t understand is why they entered the house after that interaction and the video I saw didn’t show.
To my knowledge, there was no reason or justification given. Grayson had turned off his body cam, and his partner had walked away to get the license plate of the car in the driveway. Grayson followed her into her home asking for ID. She seemed confused and scattered through the whole encounter. She might have been intoxicated or on medication. She might have had mental health problems. She may have even been using illegal drugs. But none of that is a crime if you’re in your own home not bothering anyone. IMO, they were fishing for a reason to treat her as a suspect.
This video has a good breakdown with footage from both officers’ body cams: https://youtu.be/7jP3FGj7syI
Just watching it now. Heads up you linked to near the end of the video so for anyone else this is the start.
Very upsetting viewing so far tbh so exercise caution on whether or not you’re up for viewing.
Edit: Oh God this just gets worse and worse the more I watch. He had a tazer and chose his gun. :( That poor woman. Still watching in pieces as it’s busy here…
Just finished. It’s a good analysis of a terrible situation. Zero justification for killing that woman. Just a little kindness and it all could have been avoided. The killer was a giant dick from start to finish.
Fixed the link. Thanks for the heads up!
No worries. Thanks for the link to the video. It was a good analysis, an unpleasant watch but I’m glad I saw it.
Also fuck that guy. Like really, really fuck that guy. Just a single ounce of empathy or kindness instead of frustration and anger and that woman would still be alive and her family wouldn’t be grieving this.
But also I’m glad to see justice being done (so far).
I do feel sorry for his partner, who obviously early on knew the guy wasn’t OK on that particular day, tried to smooth him out early on in the car but unfortunately wasn’t able to. The whole thing is very sad.
Okay, so the officer orders her to take a pot of boiling water off the stove, and then shoots her in the face for doing so.
No wonder those charges came so fast.
The crazy thing seemed fairly relaxed until she said she “rebuked him unto Jesus”. Seemed like it went from “haha I don’t want to be around a person carrying boiling water”, and she seemed to respond jokingly with the Jesus thing, which immediately made the cop respond as if she just pointed a gun at him?
Does this guy think this lady is some kind of biblical sorcerer?
Can’t wait for the defense being:
“She said she was going to ‘rebuke me in the name of Jesus’ and I felt my soul was in imminent danger from this woman and her boiling cauldron of witchcraft”
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.”
Yea…that cop is getting life in prison. There’s no defense for that.
This cop bounced between MULTIPLE police departments.
The core is fucking rotten. Prison is like slapping a bandaid on cancer.
Unfortunately, that’s all we got. There’s not a cure all for this one. So, like cancer, cut away the bad parts, apply some chemo, and pray it doesn’t come back.
4/5 cops are good people. We don’t have an answer for smashing all the bad ones at once.
No. They’re not. If they were, they’d be stopping this themselves. This guy shot her. What about the other officers that were there? At least one other is mentioned in the article. Why didn’t they immediately draw on him and stop him from attacking this woman?
Every time we hear about one of these bad cops, there’s other cops just standing around doing nothing at best, and helping at worst.
No ‘good people’ are cops. If they were good people when they went in, they either get fired, get mysteriously dead on the job, or stop being good. There are no other options.
Then what’s your solution?
We could start with holding police officers responsible. It’s great that they charged this one, but why aren’t the other police there being charged as accomplices since they took no action to prevent the shooting?
So here’s a few simple starter thoughts.
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Establish an external agency with the mandate of prosecuting police. They have their own prosecutorial system, their own investigators, their own prosecutors, their own courts and their own judges, completely unconnected to the prosecutorial system the police work with. You cannot have the same people that work together one day and rely on each other be the ones to investigate each other, it doesn’t work. Not even a separate ‘internal affairs division’ is enough.
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Any police officer who discharges their weapon, for any reason, is immediately suspended, and any pay is withheld until an investigation for why the weapon was discharged is completed. The investigation of course is conducted by that external agency.
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If a police officer discharging a weapon causes injury or death, all police officers on the scene are suspended and their pay withheld until the investigation is over.
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If the police officer who discharged their weapon is charged with assault, murder, whatever, then all other officers at the scene are charged as accomplices, unless they took proactive action to prevent the first officer from committing their illegal action. Think of it like felony murder - if you and a group of friends are committing a crime and someone is murdered, you are all prosecutable under felony murder even if you had no direct hand in the murder at all.
That’s probably a good start, it may not solve all the problems, but it’d be a lot better than what’s being done now, which is very, very little. I’d say an even better thing to do in addition would be to have every current police officer purged and never work in law enforcement again. All police organizations kinda need a clean slate with fresh people and no organizational momentum and culture carryover from how it’s happening now, because a lot of what needs to change is organizational culture, and just altering the rules is more difficult than rebuilding a completely new organizational culture from the ground up.
At least you offered a solution. But it’s batshit crazy.
Have every current police officer purged
That’s impossible…there’s not enough people out there qualified to replace the current police force.
I do like an external review of every discharge of a weapon, but I think the immediate suspension is too much.
The accomplice bit I’m on the fence. In this case, the other officer was in shock I think. He’s not going to shoot his partner after the fact, which would be the only reasonable action. He could have arrested him I guess, but that all happened pretty quick)
(Really put yourself in that situation…a guy who you trust with your life pulls his gun, says "I’m going to shoot you in the face, and proceeds to shoot the person in the face…Personally, I’d have total brain lock in complete and utter shock of that tragic fuck up).
IMO…I still like some cops. In my interactions with them 8 of 10 have been professional, INCLUDING having one draw on me once (it’s a dumb story, and I fucked up).
I think we CAN reform the shit out of the force in general, but you can’t start from a place where “all cops are bad.” They aren’t.
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Does the proposed bill ensure American police get like three years training to become community-oriented and not a power tripping police officers?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_City
Exactly the reverse, actually
For those not in the know, Springfield, IL, is the state capital (capitol?). It’s waaaay down in the generally rural middle of the state, with a 2022 population of just over 113,000. It is not anything like the Chicago metro area.
Capital. A Capitol is the building where the legislature presides.
Bro, you run the justice department do something about it.
What federal law did these cops break that the DOJ could prosecute?
He’s doing about the entirety of what he can do right now by urging congress to pass this bill, he’s already signed several executive orders on police reform.
Well, isn’t murder a crime? There’s your broken law…
Well, isn’t murder a crime?
Not when it is part of an official government act, at least according to the SCOTUS.
Strafe a hospital, bomb a wedding, waterboard a migrant, rape a nun. It’s all good, so long as you’re doing it on the payroll of a state institution.
That was worse than I was picturing. She immediately dropped to her knees while saying sorry (twice, panicked) , with her hands up and they shot her. She had released the pot the moment they got aggravated. It’s such a shame that this keeps happening and the only response police have is “more money please.”
Just tired of reading about this shit while our DOJ twiddles its thumbs and our legislature waves little “Blue Lives Matter” flags in the faces of the survivors.
Just glad they’re not messing around with this one, and went ahead with the three charges of first degree murder.
And wouldn’t you know it, it’s thanks to bodycam footage that we have irrefutable proof of this clear and unquestionably excessive use of force against an innocent victim.
The bodycam footage that thousands of police departments throughout the US are still pushing back against because they want people to think it impedes their ability to appropriately deliver justice, when it is actually, finally, allowing justice to take place. The necessity of which was caused primarily by police brutality against people of color, just like this situation, where there was no witness account other than the cop’s side of the story.
If this happened ten years ago, back before bodycams became more widespread, the cop would have gotten off with a short paid suspension and no other punishment, because all there would be is the cop’s one-sided account of how she clearly assaulted him with a deadly weapon and reached for his gun.
… You act as if cops don’t love bodycams too lol.
Everyone but the people doing dumb shit loves accountability. Cops love that it gets bad apples out before they spoil anything too.
https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/body-worn-cameras-what-evidence-tells-us
Dude, the bad apples spoiled things long before any of us were born.
That’s not really how churn works but okay.
Unless by apples you mean society in general, because people are everywhere. But that’s more indicative of your bushel, not ours lol.
No, I mean the police in general. Do you really not know how police were even worse to black people before the Civil Rights act?
… so… you’re in agreement with them lol?
How did you even come close to getting that from what I said?
Are body cams really providing justice? Where is Sonya’s justice? Hailing body cams as the ultimate police reform is the type of thing I’d expect a cop to say. For people who have been experiencing this racist police violence for generations, it’s clear that body cams are at best a half measure, and at worst a means of documenting all of the brutal murders that pigs continue to carry out on innocent people while body cams are running. The answer isn’t in body cams, but in comprehensive police reform. So long as the pigs are running around with sus norse tattoos, toxic masculinity (“nah im good” -cop who just developed a tremor in has hand after holding in the brains of a gasping woman for 5 min), guaranteed firearms, no psychological training, gang support via departments, body cams aren’t really going to do shit to protect at-risk people.
I am very critical of this ultra pro body cam discourse. It seems like a distraction. Make no mistake, there is no justice today because of the body cams present for Sonya’s execution.
I can’t wait for Americans to stop talking about race like it matters…
As soon as it stops mattering, they will.
Shut the fuck up.
Some people just want racism to stay forever …
You’re not fooling anyone.
Fooling? Pal, when I lived in America briefly, that was the first time in my entire life I heard someone say ‘removed,’ with sincerity about a black person… with zero shame… Just fucking meant it.
Americans treatment of race across the board is fucked. The fact that so many well-meaning people who want a world where race is as important as hair colour, won’t stop making race relevant in every conversation…
It’s absolutely fucked.
So hang on, you’ve correctly identified there’s a lot of racism in the US, but your solution… Is that we shouldn’t bring up race in racially biased situations? We shouldn’t call out racism?
???
Middle aged white dude in 'merica here. The amount of legitimate racists who openly identify themselves when I drive my old beat up pickup truck is insane.
We have a real problem that requires we focus on race until we remove racists from power. Well meaning people are just those fighting the issue of racism. You may see it different but we won’t fix it by ignoring it.
He doesn’t see it differently, he’s a concern trolling racist a step away from screeching All Lives Matter.
Fair opinion… But if you actually listen to the racist for 5 seconds they directly use the kinds of rhetoric I’m referring to to legitimise their rhetoric and behaviours.
One can battle racists and racism, without being racist. Unfortunately, there have been many many cases of Americans not understanding that in recent years.
It’s probably a loud small group, but your comments suggest that it’s still a problem.
From my experience in semi rural America it’s 50/50. I drive the old shit truck and hear racist shit from about half the white people I interact with. It’s not a loud small group unfortunately. It’s a group that stays quiet around brown people or foreign people that only speaks when it feels comfortable thinking it’s around other racists. I used to think it was a loud small group. Now, I cannot overstate how unbelievably racist they are.
DROP THE FUCKING POT! Didn’t Kamala back these cops when she was a DA?
This was in Springfield, Illinois and she was a DA in San Francisco, California. So presumably not.
