No doubt, Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell quickly took the proper steps after one of his deputies killed unarmed Sonya Massey in her Springfield area home on July 6.
Campbell arrested and fired Sean Grayson right away. Grayson remains in jail on charges of first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct.
Last Monday night, before hundreds of people at a community meeting at Springfield’s Union Baptist Church, Campbell apologized for the shooting.
“I stand here today before you with arms wide open, and I ask for your forgiveness,” Campbell said. “I ask Ms. Massey and her family for forgiveness. I offer up no excuses. What I do is offer our attempt to do better, to be better.”
Body camera video from Grayson’s partner — Grayson had not activated his camera — showed Grayson suddenly became agitated and shot Massey as she attempted to move a pot of boiling water from the stove. The deputies were responding to the 36-year-old woman’s 911 call to report a possible prowler outside her home.
But in truth, Campbell’s apology rings a bit hollow compared to what he later told NBC News: “He alone is responsible for this,” Campbell said of Grayson. “He failed to do what he was trained to do, what he had experience to do, what he’s equipped to do. He and he alone is responsible for that.”
Meanwhile, attention should remain squarely on the all-important question that Massey’s family and the rest of the public, especially Sangamon County residents, deserve to have answered: How did Grayson, who had worked for multiple law enforcement agencies before applying with Sangamon County, end up getting hired in the first place?
Yes, there is a well-documented nationwide shortage of police officers. But five jobs in four years and an Army discharge after the first of two drunken driving convictions seem to be huge red flags, especially for an applicant for a policing job.
When Grayson was a Logan County deputy sheriff, his supervisors took him to task for disobeying a command to end a 110 mph police chase that ended when he struck a deer with his squad car. In a 2022 audio recording after the accident, Logan County Deputy Chief Nate Miller asked Grayson: “Seven months on, how are you still employed by us?”
“I don’t know,” Grayson said.
He was hired by Sangamon County the following year. He had a reference from a longtime deputy — who happened to be his fiancée’s father, as WCIA in Springfield reported.
Amazingly, Campbell told NBC News he wasn’t sure the demerits in his past would have been serious enough to prevent Grayson from being hired. His office also released documents in which two of Grayson’s previous law enforcement employers said he needed more training.
And Campbell’s office also said in a police call a day before the fatal encounter, Massey’s mother — fearful of some kind of encounter — asked a 911 dispatcher not to send aggressive officers to her daughter’s house.
Campbell’s words sound good from a church pulpit. But accountability, not words, are what’s needed now.
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