Activists and the attorney for the family of Sonya Massey met at a West Side church on Tuesday to call for federal and state police reforms they said would have prevented Massey’s death at the hands of a Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy in her downstate home earlier this month.
Speaking at New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church in the city’s West Garfield Park neighborhood, attorney Ben Crump, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Massey’s family members condemned the actions of the now-fired sheriff’s deputy who has been charged with Massey’s murder and the sheriff’s office that hired him. The group also called on Congress to approve the stalled George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
Former deputy Sean Grayson is charged with first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct in Massey’s July 6 death, which has drawn condemnation from local, state and federal leaders and sparked a new wave of calls for lawmakers to pass the Floyd bill, which would create various police reforms following Floyd’s murder by an officer in Minnesota in 2020.
The measure passed the U.S. House, but stalled in the Senate. Crump and Sharpton said the act would have prohibited officers with histories of misconduct from moving between departments or counties.
The Sangamon County sheriff’s office was the sixth Illinois police department Grayson had worked for in less than four years, according to records from the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board. Court records also show that in the last decade, Grayson has two DUIs on his record in nearby Macoupin County.
Speaking to reporters and later to hundreds of rallygoers beneath a large circular window that spelled “remembrance” in its stained glass, Crump, Sharpton and others questioned why the Sangamon County sheriff’s office had hired Grayson. They called on Illinois legislators to pass a measure to prevent officers with histories of misconduct from moving between departments or counties.
“If you’re banned in one precinct, why would we think you’d have some Damascus Road, back on the horse change of heart?” Sharpton said. “A bad cop is a bad cop. We should have the right to check the records of officers.”
Sharpton and Crump also called for Democratic leaders to address Massey’s death at the party’s national convention, just weeks away in Chicago.
“If you think you are going to come to Chicago and hold a Democratic convention and not talk about Sonya Massey, I tell you … we are going to stand with this family because that family could be anyone in this room,” Sharpton told the crowd.
Asked to respond to an apology and admittance of failure by Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell, Sharpton said other members of Massey’s family had already called on Campbell to resign.
“Their words without the cameras ring hollow until we see their actions,” Crump said.
The Illinois Fraternal Order of Police closed its Springfield office Monday and Tuesday after receiving several threats over the weekend from people who mistakenly believed that the group had filed a labor grievance backing Grayson, according to the group’s president, Chris Southport.
The IFOP issued a statement Monday clarifying that the organization had not filed a grievance on Grayson’s behalf. The Fraternal Order of Police Labor Council, which shares a name with the Illinois lodge through a marketing agreement, filed the grievance but withdrew it, WCIA reported. The office would remain closed Wednesday, Southport said.
At the rally in support of the Massey family, Sharpton told people in the pews that he wanted to set a tone for the response to Massey’s death.
“Long after the crowds are gone and the cameras are gone, these two children have lost their mother and this mother has lost a daughter,” he said.
Massey’s son, Malachi Hill Massey, said his mother had been “everything” to him and that he was still stunned over the manner of her death.
“I would have never in the world thought that the police would have shot my mom,” he said. “Like, how?”
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