On July 6, Sonya Massey was brutally murdered by a Sangamon County, Illinois, sheriff’s deputy after she called the police to ask for assistance with a potential intruder. Like Breonna Taylor, Charleena Lyles and Atatiana Jefferson, Massey was a Black woman tragically murdered by police in her own home.
When sheriffs arrived at Massey’s home, they did not find an intruder outside and went inside to look around. Finding no one else, they began barking orders at Massey, escalating the interaction immediately. Massey complied with all the officers’ instructions, including removing a pot of water from the stove, and said “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.” In response to mere words from an unarmed woman in her own home, Deputy Sean Grayson pulled out his weapon and shouted expletives as he threatened to shoot Massey in the face. Massey immediately set down the pot and went to kneel on the ground with her hands up. Despite Massey having no pot in hand, Grayson repeatedly shouted at her to “Drop the f—ing pot” and shot her multiple times while she was already on the ground.
The Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board records show that Grayson, 30, worked three full-time and three part-time jobs in four police departments and two sheriff’s offices over the past four years, all within the state of Illinois. And court records show that Grayson was charged with two DUIs in Illinois’ Macoupin County—two years in a row. It speaks to the gross level of negligence of a system that gives men with track records like Grayson’s chance after chance and a loaded gun, while the very lives of Black women like Sonya Massey are treated as disposable.
Protestors from the Springfield, Illinois community took to the streets demanding justice for Sonya Massey. The public pressure no doubt contributed to the eventual release of the horrific and violent body camera footage. Demonstrators chanted and held signsreading “Black Lives Matter” and “Say Her Name”–refrains too often heard as a result of racist police violence in America.
Grayson, the killer cop, has been charged with murder. That criminal charges were levied is a testament to the power of the people’s movement against racist police terror in Springfield and across the United States.
According to her family, Massey was a descendant of William Donnegan, a Black man who survived a lynching by a white mob during the infamous 1908 Springfield race riots that took 17 Black lives over the course of two days. Those horrendous August massacres led to the creation of the NAACP–and clearly, the war on Black America has not ended. As one of Sonya’s family members said:
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The entire racist, sexist system of policing makes working class and oppressed people less safe. “Don’t hurt me,” Massey said when the deputies arrived at her house—working class people know cops are dangerous and even deadly. Grayson’s words and actions prove this in the extreme. As Massey took her last breath, former deputy Grayson said, “the f—ing b— was crazy” and then directed other officers not to provide medical assistance. This killer cop had no regard for Sonya Massey’s life. Despite court documents citing Massey as “calm, possibly unwell, and non-aggressive” and her having assured Grayson that she was doing okay mentally and had taken her medicine, his actions show the blatant disregard and criminalization of a person with a potential mental health diagnosis. The heartbreaking footage confirms what we already knew: this killer cop perpetrated the cold-blooded murder of a civilian who had requested help.
In this case–unlike many other instances of racist police terror — the killer cop was actually charged with murder. This would not have been possible without the mass uprising of 2020 after the brutal murder of George Floyd by racist killer cop Derek Chauvin. But this is not enough. Former deputy Grayson believed he could act with impunity, which indicates just how guilty the entire U.S. system of policing is. Police have killed over 700 people already this year, putting 2024 on track to become the deadliest year for police killings since 2013.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have opportunistically used Massey’s murder to call for the passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing act, which Harris co-authored in the Senate. Of course, reforms that would end qualified immunity, no-knock entry, excessive force, and other forms of police violence are a step in the right direction. But we shouldn’t be fooled—Kamala Harris built her career on mass incarceration policies that led to huge numbers of Black Americans being locked up. She aggressively pursued non-violent drug charges, supported the use of prison labor, locked up parents over truancy, and supported the death penalty. To really end the war on Black America, we need to get rid of this racist, capitalist system once and for all.
Sonya Massey, Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, and all victims of racist, sexist police terror deserve a whole new system–a system where Black women can feel safe in their own homes. We need a system in our control that meets our own needs for housing, healthcare, and education—a system in which no woman feels compelled to say to the people who are supposed to help her:
please don’t hurt me.