Protest against police brutality: 'hands up, don't shoot'
(Image by Fibonacci Blue from flickr) Details DMCA
I've called the police many times in the last few years. I live in an independent senior complex where some people believe it's a now or never chance to codifying, in law and in customs, the US as a Christian nation for white men to rule.
Some seniors consider all nighters, with drink and drugs, their God-given right. They are free!
On the other hand, I'm black woman. A "childless cat lady." The neighbors I've had to call the police on are white, conservative, patriotic. "Christian." Progress can't sweep away the old days. Not if the watchful adhere only to the quota.
The woman below me, Christian or not, by her own admission, suffers from a mental illness. She's intolerant of "noise." And for her, "noise" constitutes just about anything I do. Such as using this laptop to type this article or later, to watch the news or to listen to music. My walking is a problem too. So is using flushing the toilet after 10 pm. She's called the police for these activities she considers offensive.
I'm punished if I violate her rules! It's an apartment complex, and I pay rent, but she believes she is entitled to set the rules by which I must live. To call her a racist is to note that a mice is small. I've already suffered a seizure in January of this year as a result of her pounding below me and the skunk marijuana coming from the tenant in the apartment adjacent to mine.
Nonetheless, I have hesitated to call the police. I have called, and I've survived. But as many blacks in the US can tell you, it's isn't a pleasant feeling waiting for the police to arrive and hoping, echoing Sonya Massey's mother, that a "combative" office doesn't arrive ready to rock and roll. A little knowledge about history. Is that too much to ask? A little knowledge of US history would go a long way.
Police departments should know something about the foundation of this nation. In all fairness to police departments called in to oversee "civic" concerns, there should be another agency we can call on for "civic" matters. For dealing with mental illness. For whatever isn't an outright crime. Although some nights, I have sat up thinking on the abuse from this woman below and her harassment. I think there is something criminal about her behavior.
How do I bring up the subject of "racism" in a town that doesn't want to hear about the history that word conjures? In a town where Kyle Rittenhouse did his thing with little pushback!
And yet there is something criminal in the behavior of police officer Sean P. Grayson who arrives at the home of 36-year-old Sonya Massey, near Springfield. Illinois.
I recall James Baldwin's "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon" (Going to Meet the Man), in which he envisions a scene that happens all too frequently-- in his time and in ours. He's walking, at night, minding his business, and a police car pulls up behind him. "'Hey, boy. Come on over here.'" And he must oblige this man. It's America, but he's black and still not free.
This police officer, supposed to be there to serve and protect all Americans knows he's confronting a black person. A black person. As a black, Baldwin knows the office is really not obligated to serve and protect him! "'So you go on over. He says, 'Boy, I believe you're drunk.'" And if you answer back, "'No, no, sir,' he'll beat you because you're calling him a liar. And if you say anything else, unless it's something to make him laugh, he'll take you in and beat you, just for fun. The trick is to think of some way for them to have their fun without beating you up.'"
When the police are at my door, I realize that they are still men in black. They have guns. I have shelves of books. I might be seen as one of those uppity... Then there are my two cats. I'm one of J. D. Vance's "childless cat ladies."
So I'm silence in this very lopsided scenario, in which democracy is challenged and usually loses.
Sonya Massey, mother of a 17-year-old son and a 15-year-daughter, who lives with their father, frequently experienced episodes of mental crises. No crime here, is there?
But here enters Sean P. Grayson. He has experienced trouble staying employed. Staying calm, too. Over 6 feet and at 228 pounds, Grayson is no match for this frail woman we see on Grayson's body cam. suffering from a mental crisis. His training should have provided him with clues. This woman before him is no threat! Unfortunately, Grayson enters Massey's home and, once she greets them, she's the one in "imminent" danger!
Massey seems to be following a script, an all-too familiar one for some of us Americans. While Massey seems calm, the police officer seems jittery. Soon, he notices a pot of boiling water on the stove in the kitchen. Massey is given permission to tend to it. We don't want a fire, do we? He seems human. She seems to assume she's perceived as a human being, someone who will, of course, survive this encounter.
But then comes Grayson's voice, shouting at her. Shouting for her to put the pot down! Put it down! Guns are drawn and pointed at her!
"' I swear to God I'll shoot you right in your f------ face.'"
Massey is at some distance from the officers. I see this in the video. They have guns. She has a pot of water and seems too far from Grayson.
But Massey apologizes. She says, she is sorry!
And she ducks because she knows. She knows history, and she calls out to Grayson, "'I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.'"
And Grayson fires three shots, and one, as he threatened, hits Massey in the face.
The world see this once again. Once again the world sees what has been happening so often. Too often.
Grayson tells his superiors back at the station that he feared this woman. This over 6 foot, 228-pound man fears her ! Massey, Grayson tells his superiors, might have thrown a pot of boiling water at him! "'I was in imminent fear of getting boiling liquid to my face or chest which would have caused great bodily harm or death. I fired my duty weapon in Sonya's direction.'"
Grayson's narrative, pointing to "imminent" danger to his life distracts us from seeing the human being lying in a pool of blood in her own kitchen. Please, please, Massey's mother said to the police when she called them on July 6, 2024, please! "'I don't want you guys to hurt her.'" Don't send "'combative officers.'"
And yet...
The blood is pouring from Massey's body. The second office asks if he could go to the car to retrieve a medical kit, and Grayson, true to his fearfulness of black people, responds with indifference to the life he has just taken. No, she's done.
Done!
It's a shot to the head. She's done!
Grayson is pleading not guilty to the charge of first-degree murder and aggravated battery with a firearm at a Sangamon County courthouse.
Because he was in fear of this black woman!
According to Sangamon's Sheriff Jack Campbell "Grayson had options available that he should have used. His actions were inexcusable, and do not reflect the values of training of our office."
And yet, here, again, I've heard about these values and this training. And here, again, there's another black person dead on her kitchen floor as a result of calling the police for help. Massey, according to a CNN report, called to state that she had seen a "prowler" about her house, and regardless of whether there was or wasn't a "prowler," Massey shouldn't have been the victim of Grayson's fear of black people. He, instead, should have been compassionate and recognized in Massey someone in needed of mental healthcare.
When Grayson tells Massey that they didn't need a fire, and sends her to the kitchen to tend to the boiling pot of water that was a poor decision on Grayson's part, Campbell claims. "Allowing someone potentially in a crisis near a dangerous object is a recipe for a negative outcome." That fear that is part of the DNA of Grayson's make up is present when he arrives at a black American's home.
Of course, there were non-deadly alternatives but Grayson had issues! Didn't he? Issues that black Americans are tired of confronting again and again. Baldwin address these issues on his watch, and here is America in the 21st century still confronting white fear of black people. Massey, no matter what her mental state, does actually represent a threat for those who believe that white is superior. Certainly, innocent!
As Professor Carol Anderson writes in White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, black Americans represent "a threat to the status quo of inequality." The US, she concludes didn't so much as "face a crime problem that was racialized." America, in fact, "faced a race problem that was criminalized." Massey's race made her a criminal in Grayson's eyes.
There is a problem: For Grayson, a crime was in progress!
It's Grayson who steps toward Massey and the boiling pot of water. It's Grayson who narrows the gap between the black woman and himself, between the supposed dangerous threat to his life and himself. It's Grayson who comes toward Massey with the same old stance, with gun in hand, and the belief in his superiority and the power to act on defending that belief.
And he does. Just as he warned Massey a few seconds before he fires.
Will there be accountability? Eric King, co-editor of Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners, speaking to journalists, warns about police unions and associations that serve and protect the police from just such incidents as the Massey shooting. These lobbyists are determined to make it harder for families like the Massey's and for attorneys like Ben Crump to see justice when it comes to police shootings of innocent citizens.
Terrible things, Baldwin told us, happens when "a white man faces a black man" or woman. He recalls the countless basements of police stations in which he was taken and "heard and endured the secrets of desperate white men and women." They know, he adds, that their secrets were safe with him. Because who would believe him-- a black man? Americans wouldn't believe him "because they would know that what I said was true," Baldwin concludes.
But with the murder of George Floyd caught on video, the secrets were out for all to see. And endure. There are conscientious citizens, with cellphone camera, and there are the body cams of the police officers. And usually we are still not believed when we say-- look at the hate fear produces!
Look at what you refuse to let go of!
Some of these Americans will say, No. This isn't us. It's not America! Racism and white supremacy aren't American ideologies!
It's yet another rogue cop!
How are black Americans less fearful of the police when we are offered that narrative time and time again?
