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.
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.
Good comment but I think doing ‘illegal drugs’ in your own home is still illegal.
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).
I think you misconstrued my intent which was just that I didn’t agree with this take from the person I was replying to:
Like they’re challenging her to contradict them.
I was merely trying to point out that I felt the cops (and murder cop in particular) were ready, keen even, to get away when they were standing on the porch. Murder cop seemed pissed off the entire time he was going to the call (his partner is constantly checking if he’s OK), when searching the back yard and also while dealing with that lady so I was surprised he didn’t take the opportunity to just fuck off back to his car. I felt like he really wanted to.
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.
Yeah, tbh I’m not American but that does ring true with me as a frequent external viewer of horror stories like this.
What I can’t understand is why they entered the house after that interaction
To find an excuse to punish arrest her.
Regardless of context from the onset the dialogue was between someone in a position of power and someone who wasn’t. Regardless of the reaction of the woman the cop was in the position of power. Any failing was on him and him alone. Men (yes I’m generalizing The Internet and that you are a man) need to understand this. White men (yes I’m generalizing The Internet and that you are a white man) need to understand this.
Regardless of the context this was about power. Shit needs to change.
I agree with you on everything you said (and yeah I’m a white lad). Beyond what you said, the dialogue also included so much frustration and ultimately murderous rage. It could have been dealt with so kindly and so easily and wasn’t.
The one caveat I’ll give is that I live an ocean away in a country where cops don’t carry guns. We never face things like this and I am so fucking glad that we don’t. This whole thing was tragic. I’m really upset about it. It honestly fucked up my evening but I can only imagine what it’s done to her family. :(
“With great power, there must come great responsibility.” Spider-Man comes up in a lot of my political arguments and it’s an incredibly useful tool to get to some people.
I dont care what sex you are or what or who you are but Honest to god I dont even give a fucking shit what the fuck ypur point is I dont get on the internet for power tripping fucking whatever the fuck you are fucks to power tripe when all I am doing is minding my own business and honestly I dont really give a fuck. K? Understand? ass head fuck guy or girl whatever the fuck you are guy
As a retired medic who has has to deal with my share of the mentally ill, I will try to add a little context perhaps.
What got them to enter the apartment is they probably realized they were dealing with a mentally ill person who was not properly on their meds, (we can’t say for sure at this point - but it’s as likely as not), and they then started what should have been a simple welfare check. Which can entail entry to observe the person and the general living conditions. Cops do welfare checks everyday, multiple times a day. The next step if they determine there is a problem, is to request medical assistance, an ambulance, to deal with the person. The cops are to remain in scene and assist if needed - i.e. help talk the patient into seeking medical help or sometimes stop an assault on EMS. But that’s what SHOULD have happened.
Instead a straight up murder was committed.
Yea Daniel Shaver. This is the exact same video and I consider that the most sensless police murder we have on film.
That’s his name. Thank you. I knew his first name but didn’t want to Google it to be reminded of it any more than necessary tbh. It’s one of those occasional intrusive thoughts videos for me that I’m sure we all have our own little library of.
I still can’t believe the killer got away with it. Daniel had no way to get out alive.
Turning your body camera off deliberately or knowingly failing to maintain it to keep it running should automatically cause the cop to be treated as a an unreliable witness and as a suspect for any potential crime happening
There shouldn’t even be a fucking power button on those things. It should just be ON ALL THE GODDAMN TIME from the picosecond a pig’s shift starts. Zero exceptions. If it gets shut off, you get one warning, happens again gtfo and we pull your pig license. If it happens and you’re involved in a police activity that results in injury or death, fucking fired and arrested pending full investigation AND we pull your pig license even if it’s your first fuckup.
From other articles I’ve read she was schizophrenic and a neighbor had said that this was a fairly common occurrence.
Oh dang, the punishment for schizophrenia in America is execution? You all have it rough over there.
sad that there is no way to contradict this since any judge will side with the cop and his buddies on the force who backed his story up
and police reform is not even talked about with the candidates anymore plus Biden has completely forgotten his campaign promise of police reform
Biden has completely forgotten his campaign promise of police reform
A) not true.
B) not even remotely relevant
Democrats tried to pass police reform bills in congress multiple times this term and were blocked by Republicans at every turn. Biden did what he was able to do and enacted an executive order that was the most comprehensive police reform action in decades. But there are limits to what he can do. So please fuck off with your attempt to turn this into Biden’s fault by telling lies.
the current police problem was in part grown by Biden’s efforts during his fifty years as a politician
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.
This is not talking about it, huh? Thanks for not even reading the summary in your neverending quest to get Trump elected.
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.”
Schizophrenic people still have a sense of humor… To me it came off as if she recognized that the cop was afraid of her and made a snappy comeback, because it’s generally offensive to be accused of wanting to mame strangers with boiling water.
Rebuke just means to criticize, it’s not an attack, or even aggressive. To rebuke someone to God, is just saying your going to complain about their behavior to God. Tbh the moments before she was killed seem to me the most coherent and responsive she behaved during the entire encounter.
And the fact that he turned his camera off right before he killed her makes this first degree for sure
I don’t think he turned it off before he shot her, just that he didn’t have it on until after he shot her.
This is still murder and he’s a fuckin pig that should rot in the prison industrial complex he feeds. Fuck him and his cop buddies. But I didn’t get the info from this article that he turned it off himself. Just didn’t turn it on in the first place, which he’s supposed to do before every interaction.
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.
If I were a cop I’d be happy to have a body cam because it would help me cover my ass in case someone accused me of something.
But this attitude is probably why I’m not a cop.
I had a similar experience with something that Lemmy would generally oppose. I used to be concerned that Google kept track of my location and nearly everything I do on my phone. However, I was accused of something serious that typically cannot be disproven otherwise, and since it’s something perpetrators often get away with, people tend to believe the accuser without evidence. When that happened, I was so happy that Google had a record of my location because it would have demonstrated that I wasn’t where the accuser said I was, nor did I have the contact they said I had. I not only offered to show my location history to investigators, but asked them to so it would clear my name. I guess my sincerity was evident because they didn’t even bother and dropped the whole thing shortly after.
I agree with you. If I were a cop, I’d want every second of my day indisputably recorded to clear my name in case I’m ever falsely accused of something. I don’t know what it is about me. Maybe my autistic traits make me seem suspicious or like a careless asshole to others, maybe my evident self-doubt make me an easy target for predators, or maybe my lack of conformity and unique style of accomplishing things give people an uncomfortable intuitive feeling about me, but I think I get accused/blamed for a lot of things I didn’t do or had any intent of doing more than normal. I know I would eventually be accused of some bs and would need evidence to demonstrate my innocence.
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 suppose the definition of justice is flexible, between preventative justice and restorative justice and so on, but in this case I am referring specifically to holding guilty people accountable for their actions. There will be no making right what happened here, not by any stretch of the imagination, and there is still a lot more work that needs to be done to make sure this sort of thing never happens again. But while I am sure it is of little consolation to Sonya’s family, her murderer is going to prison.
I know there are long-standing charicatures in media of the “corrupt cop” type of character shooting some innocent person and then planting a knife or drugs on them to make it look like self-defense, but that wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t some grain of truth to it.
With the body cam footage that had been released, there is no question of his guilt. There’s no way for the police to cover this up by painting another innocent victim as a criminal, dragging her name through the mud, just to keep this racist scumbag on payroll and free to keep terrorizing the people he’s supposed to protect. The racists don’t have to gather in droves to protect this monster and put a community through hell to further some disgusting agenda or another.
It doesn’t fill the void, but it is some degree of justice which is better than none.
… 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
Conservatives have been backing the cop, as expected, and trying to make her seem like a dangerous criminal
6 departments in 4 years, this cop shouldn’t have had a job period. This department is partly liable for this just by employing him
Make police officers individually responsible for carrying insurance for their job.
If they can’t behave then they won’t be able to afford the insurance as the insurance company will raise the fees, and then they can’t get a job they shouldn’t be doing in the first place
I saw the video, the cop had absolutely no justification for it. I don’t care what his religious believes are, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus” is not a valid reason. What’s heartbreaking is what her last words were: “I’m sorry”.
In a just world the cop would get a minimum of 20 years and possibly even a life sentence or capital punishment.
I’m confused. I may have missed it, but why are religious beliefs even in this conversation? Did he say that he shot her for Jesus or something?
I agree that this POS should rot, the video just shows a murderer murdering an innocent person.
Edit: I missed the part of the video where the lady says the Jesus stuff. I see what you are saying now.
