12mo ago

Deputy who killed Sonya Massey was removed from the Army, had DUIs and needed ‘high stress decision’ classes, records show

www.cnn.com

Deputy who killed Sonya Massey was removed from the Army, had DUIs and needed ‘high stress decision’ classes, records show | CNN

Years before sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson gunned down Sonya Massey in her own home, he had been discharged from the Army for serious misconduct and had a history of driving under the influence, records show.

He also failed to obey a command while working for another sheriff’s office in Illinois and was told he needed “high stress decision making classes,” the agency’s documents reveal.

Grayson, who was a Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy before he was fired and charged with murder, responded to a report of a prowler at Massey’s home July 6. Bodycam footage from another deputy showed Massey saying she rebuked Grayson, and Grayson responded by threatening the 36-year-old. The exchange ended with Grayson shooting Massey and failing to render aid.

43 comments

So in other words, there was every reason to realize that this guy shouldn't have access to a gun and a badge, but neither his coworkers nor his supervisors did anything about it.
AND THAT is why people say ACAB, because the other police who allowed this man to remain an officer are 100% complicit in this outcome.
Why do we have to wait until they fucking execute someone to do something about it?
Edit: And the bootlicker who downvoted without even the courage to disagree openly can go eat a bag of dicks.
- Hey I just wanted to say thanks for the lengthy and detailed response, and I don't mean to seem I'm reducing it just to your final paragraph, but articles like these (which I see with reasonable regularity) lead me to believe that the real world applications of the defund movement do tend to be supported by those who are actually doing the work or are adjacent to it.
  https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/07/25/police-mental-health-alternative-911
  As someone else has already pointed out, in this specific circumstance it seems likely to me they would have sent police anyhow, which is why I think the other important step is to start letting the folks who hire and retain these clearly problematic officers feel some of the heat - whether financially or through civil suit (thanks QI), or other means.
  What I do not support is giving more funding to any department without some ironclad limitations on how they can use it and actual consequences for failing to use it in that way. I have lost all faith that any such increase in funds will be used appropriately though, or that any related agreement will actually be enforceable enough to have the desired effect.
  As I mentioned elsewhere, we had decades of uncritical support of police from most of the population until cameras started showing up everywhere to let us see what we were supporting. It turns out those decades of mostly uncritical support do not seem to have resulted in the sorts of police we want, so I'm skeptical that any such conditions will be obeyed or enforced.
- What’s worse is they hired him in the first place.
- I didn't downvote.
  
  I don't think I said you did.
- Well, you better remove as much funding as possible from every police agency, and make sure that being a cop is as unpopular a career as possible, while still saying that having a police force is a vital part of our societal structure and so they have to find someone to hire.
  Surely those efforts will help to solve this very genuine problem.
  
  Or we could start by getting rid of that fucking police fraternity and raising our quality standards for who gets hired as an officer.
  
  Cops make themselves unpopular, and they already get more than their share of communities funds.
  
  It's true the messaging was terrible, it should've been "lets reallocate law enforcement funds to mental healthcare, crisis intervention workers, and job programs!" or something but that doesn't roll off the tongue and lets be honest would've just been decried as socialism and a "government handout" anyway.
  edit: I guess the messaging served it's purpose, bringing the issue to the forefront, we're still talking about it now.
  
  I wish we didn't live in a binary world where there weren't only two possible things that can be done about every issue, both quite extreme.
  
  help to solve this very genuine problem.
  I'm so glad you asked, even though you didn't.
  Here are some examples of what defunding actually means.
  https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/07/25/police-mental-health-alternative-911
If we ever get a progressive president maybe we'll actually fix it.
Until "bad apples" fuck up the rest of the cops money, they won't care.
Start taking the settlements out of their union/pension accounts. And all of a sudden I think cops will start electing different kinds of unions reps, ones that won't fight hardest to keep the worst cops on duty
- Not really under the purview of a president though (nor are they really a king, even with the insane Scotus decision.)
  People need to vote in local elections for people to fix this as most departments are locally run and overseen. At most you might get your state to pass something but even then that would be only blue states.
  It would be nice to have Congress do something but i don't ever see that happening as Republicans wouldn't go near it and even some Democrats wouldn't.
  Problem is a lot of people don't really care as much about this as other things.
- Until “bad apples” fuck up the rest of the cops money, they won’t care.
  I've come to realize this is the only answer. Settlements have to get big enough that taxes get high enough that localities are motivated to put actual pressure on their police. Having said that, apparently the number has to get pretty big before folks start to care.
  
  taxes get high enough that localities are motivated to put actual pressure on their police
  Yes, but then you see politicians cutting funding to schools and such first, no? Taking settlements from "their own" money (such as pensions) is one of the better solutions I've heard.
- If we ever get a progressive president maybe we'll actually fix it.
  I'm not sure a president could make the necessary changes on their own. I think you'd also need a progressive congress.
  
  FDR got a lot of shit done.
  Even tho he wanted more and the two parties unified against him.
  An actually progressive president can guilt their party into progress, because he'll go to their voters and flat out say the Dems they voted for is holding the whole country back, so next primary he's supporting a challenger.
  Strangely enough, just the threat of that is often enough.
  Hell, Bernie is just a senator but that didn't stop him from going to WV and telling voters that about Manchin.
  And Manchin started supporting the party more.
  Worked a hell of a lot better than Bidens strategy of publicly admitting he would even try to change someone's mind.
- If we ever get a progressive president maybe we’ll actually fix it.
  What do you think a progressive president can/will do to fix this? Biden used every available power of the office to try to push for police reform: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/02/07/fact-sheet-the-biden-harris-administrations-work-to-make-our-communities-safer-and-advance-effective-accountable-policing/
  Real change has to come from congress or state governments. The president has very limited powers here. Mostly they can only impose rules on federal officers, not local police.
  
  Maybe you blocked the other person that asked me, but here's what I told them:
  FDR got a lot of shit done.
  Even tho he wanted more and the two parties unified against him.
  An actually progressive president can guilt their party into progress, because he’ll go to their voters and flat out say the Dems they voted for is holding the whole country back, so next primary he’s supporting a challenger.
  Strangely enough, just the threat of that is often enough.
  Hell, Bernie is just a senator but that didn’t stop him from going to WV and telling voters that about Manchin.
  And Manchin started supporting the party more.
  Worked a hell of a lot better than Bidens strategy of publicly admitting he would even try to change someone’s mind.
If they didn't let just any idiot become a cop Sonya would be alive right now but instead we have iq limits on cops because uncle sam needs his cops nice a dumb.
The video is awful... 1000 other outcomes could have existed here that didn't involve killing her for no reason. One of the articles attached to the link explains each bad decision made and even how he showed zero lack of remorse. It's insane that they would tell her to take care of the pot of boiling water only to then use that as the excuse to consider her a threat when they could have easily done this themselves if they were so worried. They also could have just backed away if it was really so concerning to them as well. They also shot her in the head? If you have to shoot someone, is there even an attempt at all anymore to just shoot them in non vital areas so they can be apprehended, or is the outcome supposed to be shoot to kill? Aiming for the head doesn't sound right for almost all situations.
- He had to approach her to shoot her. Sonya ducked behind a counter when the officer pulled his gun on her and said "I will fucking shoot you in your fucking face". Why would someone approach a threat? He didn't see her as a threat, he saw an excuse to kill her.
  is there even an attempt at all anymore to just shoot them in non vital areas so they can be apprehended, or is the outcome supposed to be shoot to kill?
  It's always shoot to kill, as it should be. A gun is a lethal weapon. It's only use is to kill. Police have less-than-lethal tools if their intent isn't to kill.
  
  He didn’t see her as a threat, he saw an excuse to kill her.
  I come away with this thought often in situations like this.
  Too many cops seem to look for how much force they get to use instead of how much they need to use.
Sounds like a candidate for life in prison.
- He’ll get a promotion by the time his police frat bros are done fucking the system.
- In the same sense that Dennis Kucinich was a candidate for president, yes.
Maybe such classes can be added to the prison curriculum?
So, not quite human…

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