Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot.

After the death of George Floyd and the movement it provoked, it looked like there might be a serious national effort to address racial bias in policing. It also looked like there might be a genuine dialogue about the appropriate use of force by police in their encounters with the public. Neither happened and both debates were short-circuited.

The July 6 police shooting of 36-year-old Sonya Massey, an African-American woman from Springfield, Illinois, is the most prominent example of where lack of progress around police reform has led — an absolutely senseless death at the hands of an out-of-control policemen. This was a shooting that the police could not defend.

The local sheriff, Jack Campbell, fired the shooter who was subsequently charged with first-degree murder. Campbell said: “Sonya Massey lost her life due to one unjustifiable and reckless decision from Deputy Sean Grayson. Grayson had other options available that he should have used. His actions were inexcusable and do not reflect the values or training of our office.”

Massey had called 911 because she thought there was an intruder in her house. She had been having mental health issues. She had admitted herself into a 30-day in-patient program in St. Louis but inexplicably she left the program after two days and returned home.

Massey’s mother had called 911 on July 5 to report her daughter was having a mental breakdown. The police were unaware of that call. When they arrived at the Massey residence on July 6, they asked Massey to identify herself to them. Massey went to search for identification but then she went into the kitchen to her stove to turn off a pot of boiling water. One deputy asked her to turn the hot water off.

While she handled the pot, a deputy said he was moving “away from your hot steaming water”. Massey answered, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”

The deputy said “Huh?” Massey repeated the rebuke comment and said, “I’m sorry.” She then ducked behind a breakfast bar. It appeared she was trying to shield herself. Grayson told her “Drop the f—— pot!” and almost simultaneously fired three shots at Massey, fatally wounding her.

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The cops had only been at Massey’s residence for less than three minutes when Grayson fired the shots. After he essentially executed Massey, Grayson made no effort to administer medical care to Massey.

Grayson’s body-worn camera was not operating until after he shot Massey but the other deputy at the scene did have his body-cam rolling. It is likely Grayson thought he could get away with the shooting because he had his body-cam off.

The other body-cam contradicted Grayson’s story. Grayson said Massey came at him with boiling water but that is not what the body-cam showed. In the first dispatch audio, the police told hospital staff Sonya Massey died by suicide. They said, “self-inflicted.” The police didn’t take the time to get their story straight.

How many times have we seen this story? In the New York Times, Charles Blow wrote, “This kind of devastation has happened so often, to so many families, that it has become a motif of Black existence in this country, an enduring injury, a simmering sadness, an ambient terror.”

Even before the Massey killing, Grayson had a checkered history. He had been discharged from the Army for serious misconduct. He had been charged with two DUIs. Since 2020 he had been employed by six law enforcement agencies.

He is an example of what has been called “wandering officers” who drift from police department to police department after being let go under unclear but seemingly unfavorable circumstances. New hires don’t get properly vetted. There are 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the U.S. and there is no national database for tracking and weeding out rogue officers.

Nothing stops someone like Grayson from hiding past misdeeds when they move on to a new police job. According to CNN, there is a police misconduct registry, the National Decertification Index which lists about 55,000 officers who had their law enforcement certificate or license revoked due to misconduct but its coverage is “spotty.” Grayson had never been decertified.

Before he murdered George Floyd, Derek Chauvin had 18 prior complaints filed against him with the Minneapolis Internal Affairs.

Campaign Zero, an organization that studies police violence, found that 2023 was the deadliest year for police violence. There has been no improvement since George Floyd died. Police killed 1,329 people in 2023. Black and brown individuals were disproportionately affected. These 2023 numbers happened even though there has been a national decline in homicides and other violent crimes.

Fewer than 2% of officer-involved shootings are ever prosecuted and less than 1% result in guilty pleas or convictions. Donald Trump, a convicted felon, has been calling for immunity for the police for their “official acts,” something that has been de facto already happening. I would suggest the perception of likely immunity was one factor that propelled Grayson.

The Massey case has led to new calls to revive the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, federal legislation that was drafted to address police brutality and racial profiling. The bill previously passed the House in 2021 but stalled in the Senate.

It is little remembered that the site of the Massey crime, Springfield, Illinois, the hometown of Abraham Lincoln, was the scene of a race riot and lynchings in 1908. A large white mob lynched two Black men, killed and wounded scores more, destroyed the homes and businesses of Black and Jewish residents and drove thousands from the city. Following in that tradition, Sonya Massey was the victim of a modern-day lynching.