No Grey Area
July 24, 2024
Sonya Massey, a petite woman in her mid-30s, called the police because she needed help. She was worried that someone was breaking into her home.
The Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office sent two deputies to Massey’s home. One was Deputy Sean Greyson, who is a big white guy. After sweeping the house and finding no one else there, the officer spoke with Massey, who is Black, for less than 10 minutes. A pot of water boiled on the stove. Massey removed the water, made a remark. Suddenly, Greyson pulled his weapon. Greyson didn’t bother to turn on his body cam, but his partner did. It shows Greyson’s arms with skull tattoos holding a gun. Massey kneeled behind the kitchen counter, protecting herself from the gun. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Greyson shot her three times, one in the head.
He tried to discourage his partner from providing medical aid. “She’s already gone.”
“What else can we do?” he said to his partner as they stood over Massey, dying. “I’m not taking hot boiling water to the face.”
Greyson lied to the dispatcher, saying the gunshot was self-inflicted. He told backup deputies that Massey “came at me with boiling water.”
Greyson had been employed by four different law enforcement agencies and was discharged from the military for “serious misconduct” before landing at the Sangamon sheriff’s office. We don’t yet know why they hired Greyson.
Police killed more people in 2023 than they did in 2022, which was more people than in 2021. This is despite all the talk about proposed reforms to the criminal legal system since the summer of 2020 when Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, and racial justice protests appeared on television. At that time, there were elected officials asking for reforms they could propose locally that might decrease the violence. These ideas included reducing no-knock raids, developing service units that were alternatives to armed police, outlawing certain dangerous tactics like chokeholds, and reducing reliance on cash bail. Law enforcement officers marched with protestors in an attempt to show how seriously they took the problem of racist policing.
All of this, and yet, the number of people killed by the police goes UP. It would seem that the criminal system reforms, whatever they accomplished, did not accomplish the one thing most normal people want from a public agency – that people are not worse off than they were before. A living person should not call a government agency and end up no longer alive.
So, if we are not meeting this core metric, perhaps we are asking the wrong questions.
Because I used to argue for reforms, I understand why people believe that the government can reform around 18,000 separate agencies of mass violence and, at least, turn that violence away from those who do not seem to deserve it. But, not only did even the simplest reforms provoke so much backlash that they were never given the kind of funding or support necessary, money continued to pour unabated into police agencies, even ones run by Oath Keepers. Congress could never agree on the George Floyd Policing Act, and even if they did, nothing in the provisions would have protected Massey.
Greyson is facing criminal charges of murder, so we are supposed to think that at least the process is working, albeit imperfectly since Massey’s death cannot be repaired. Maybe there will be a trial. Maybe even a good one, one that relies on a prosecutor who is skilled at opposing the policing agency that ensures she has cases to prosecute. Maybe Massey’s family will file a civil rights lawsuit and a court will find qualified immunity doesn’t apply because there’s a case somewhere else about boiling water being an insufficient reason to shoot someone. Maybe the Department of Justice will also investigate and order more, but different, trainings, with requirements that future residents of the county will complain about.
What happens to Greyson feels incidental. If he is convicted, there is a vast network of law enforcement supporters who will support him financially and emotionally, by defending his honor and his financial livelihood. If not, he’ll go back to work.
The sheriff says this is not representative of his department, posting on Facebook:
The actions taken by Deputy Grayson do not reflect the values and training of the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office or law enforcement as a whole. Good law enforcement officers stand with our community in condemning actions that undermine the trust and safety we strive to uphold. In times like these, it is crucial for leadership across all sides and spectrums to come together to heal our community…We are committed to justice and accountability.
Because the sheriff cannot be held legally responsible for Greyson’s violence, he will spend more time worrying about the morale of his officers than he will about the people who are afraid those officers might kill them.
It’s all not only not enough, it’s asking the wrong question. The question is not, how to make these 18,000 killing agencies kill fewer people. It’s, what is this government that needs 18,000 killing agencies? Who are we?