Sonya Massey’s Death Could Have Been Prevented With Better Police Culture, Experts Say

The police shooting death of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman in Springfield, Illinois, renewed a call from elected officials for police reform legislation and ignited ongoing demonstrations demanding police accountability nationwide.

Former Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson, who fatally shot Massey, has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder. But to prevent cases like this from happening in the future, experts argue more pressure needs to be put on law enforcement to change police culture.

“This woman needed help. She was scared. And rather than de-escalate the situation, [Grayson] escalated the situation by pulling out his gun and barking orders,” Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, told HuffPost.

“But unfortunately, in some police departments, those tactics are still used,” Wexler continued. “And if we are going to change, if we are going to learn from tragedies like this, we have to not just select different officers but change the tactics they use.”

In 2021, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed a criminal justice legislation package that included reforms and accountability for officers. That bill included mandatory training for officers, including use-of-force and de-escalation tactics to prevent or reduce the use of force.

“The unfortunate thing about legislation is that just because it exists does not mean that anyone will abide by it,” said Miltonette Craig, a criminal justice professor at Sam Houston State University.

The 2021 legislation also established a duty to intervene for law enforcement officers in cases where excessive force is exhibited by their partner.

Jillian Snider, a policy director on criminal justice and civil liberties with the R Street Institute and a retired officer with the New York City Police Department, said that in the Massey case, both deputies — Grayson and his still-unnamed partner — made errors during the fatal encounter.

“There are many agencies like the NYPD where we have this duty to intervene in training, and that was a post-George Floyd training. So if you see another officer doing something that you know is absolutely wrong, you are responsible both legally and departmentally to intervene in that situation, to try and diffuse it,” Snider told HuffPost. “We did not see that in this case at all, we just kind of saw this officer go with whatever Grayson was doing.”

HuffPost reached out to Pritzker’s office for comment as to whether the other deputy failed to intervene, but his office did not provide comment. The sheriff’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

When the two deputies walked into Massey’s home, Grayson told her to turn off a stove that had a pot of boiling water on it. As she went into the kitchen to handle the pot, the other deputy stepped back, saying he was moving “away from your hot and steaming water.”

Massey replied, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”

Moments later, Grayson pointed his gun toward Massey and threatened to shoot her if she did not put the pot down. “I’m sorry,” Massey said, and she crouched down to the floor. Grayson shot her three times and said there was no need to get a medical kit because she was shot in the head.

In Grayson’s field report, he wrote that he was in fear for his and the other deputy’s lives and that “I fired my duty weapon.”

“Firearms are not proportional to boiling water, under any circumstance. And it would have been great had the other officer realized a firearm was not necessary and having two drawn is even more over the top,” Craig said.

Hans Menos, vice president of public safety innovations at the Center for Policing Equity, said while officers may have training to de-escalate interactions with civilians, especially those with mental health, some officers tend to escalate the encounters anyhow.

Menos said neither Grayson nor the other deputy needed to go inside Massey’s home and described the decision as escalation, which led to Massey’s fatal shooting. Menos said the officers were “looking for more” than the actual reason they were called to Massey’s home.

“This is escalation. They don’t need to be there,” he said. “What we fail to realize is that police officers are not only failing to de-escalate, but they are often escalating. They are bringing things to a point that they do not need to be at. Ultimately, if they would do less and do what they were called for, Sonya Massey may be alive today.”

Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell condemned Grayson’s actions during the shooting and described him as a “rogue individual” who did not use proper policing tactics. Records from Grayson’s personnel files show he received training in areas such as crisis intervention, civil rights and de-escalation. Grayson’s checkered history of being discharged from the Army for violations, shuffling through six departments in four years and multiple law enforcement agencies citing in his workplace positioned him as a possible red flag in hiring.

In a recent interview with CBS, Campbell doubled down on Grayson’s training, saying he received even more on when and when not to use lethal force.

“He had all the training he needed,” Campbell said. “He just didn’t use it.”

Pritzker called for Campbell’s resignation on Wednesday for hiring Grayson, not meeting with Massey’s family and failing to bring in reforms to his police department.

“He failed to put forward reforms that clearly need to be made — training and other reforms,” Pritzker said during a press conference.

Bree Spencer, a justice senior program director for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said her organization welcomes the reintroduction of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a federal bill designed to improve police training, practices and transparency following the 2020 murder of Floyd by ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. But she still believes there are policing issues that legislation can overlook.

In order to find a solution, Spencer argued Congress needs to address policing reform in a step-by-step process.

“There are problems in policing that are not being addressed by any of the current legislation, or by any current policy. And what it really comes down to is the culture of policing, the culture of sheriff’s departments,” Spencer said.