Three weeks have passed since Sangamon County, IL, Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson responded to Sonya Massey’s call for help and murdered her in cold blood in the comfort of her own home. While the deputy was rightfully arrested, fired, and charged with first degree murder, the need for major police reform is greater than ever.

Sonya Massey was a mother, aunt, daughter, and human being in need of assistance. She was threatened and had her life stolen in the blink of an eye, even as she apologized and complied with the officer’s commands. While the bodycam footage sent shockwaves through the nation, it remained very clear that the average American has become accustomed to the extrajudicial murder of Black Americans. Sonya Massey deserves justice. American police officers, for decades, have repeatedly failed to serve the people they swear oaths to protect, and it is high time our communities have control of their police.

Police murders of Black Americans do not happen in a vacuum, and they are not the result of the actions of singular bad apples.

The murders of Black Americans do not happen in a vacuum, and they are not the result of the actions of singular bad apples. Most officers of the law are members of police fraternal associations, whose main purpose is to take accountability off of their officers.  City police departments are paid for by the municipality, and staffed through the city, making it much easier to fire personnel, and take corrective action against unlawful interactions with civilians. According to a study by CBS, “Civilians die far more often per arrest in incidents with sheriff’s offices than with police departments. In 2022, sheriffs’ officers were responsible for 27 deaths per 100,000 arrests, nearly three times the rate for local police.”

Tragically the suffering of the Massey family extends beyond the lines of Sangamon county. Earlier this year, Sonya Massey’s 4-year-old cousin, Terrell Miller, was murdered in his home in Macomb IL by Lt Nick Goc. Terrell was at home with his mother when she called 911, requesting help after being sexually assaulted and stabbed by a man in her home. The baby, Terrell, was used as a human shield. While his mother was pregnant with him, a Macomb officer had told his mother that he couldn’t “wait to arrest (her) son.” Four years later, Terrell was murdered by the police. Despite the community pushing for accountability, this officer is still employed and will not be charged for his use of lethal force.

The deeply undemocratic and unaccountable nature of the police puts everyone, especially Black Americans, in danger of this type of deadly response.

What each of these calls have in common is the desire for safety, for help, and a failure of the police to provide this. The deeply undemocratic and unaccountable nature of the police puts everyone, especially Black Americans, in danger for this type of deadly response.

In Chicago, with the leadership of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, residents have won democratically elected civilian police control boards. The struggle to build on this victory continues. Chicago’s mayor retains the power to hire and fire police superintendents. The collaborative effort between the accountability council and the mayor does make it more difficult for agencies to rehire previously terminated officers, like in the case of Sean Grayson, who has worked for 4 agencies in 6 years. In the weeks since killing Sonya Massey, audio recordings of a previous supervisor in Logan County asking Grayson “How do you still work for us?” were released to the press. Grayson was suspected of lying on reports, fabricating justification for stopping a driver, and disobeying orders when he pursued that driver in a dangerous 100 mile per hour chase. Yet, the Sangamon County sheriff’s office went on to hire him just months after this interaction, despite many other red flags, such as his 2016 discharge from the Army for serious misconduct.

Police function at the beck and call of the wealthy, enforcing class oppression and upholding racism. This is their systemic function and design. Currently they are unaccountable to the working class, to black, brown, LGBTQ+, Asian, or Indigenous Americans, and to the communities in which they work. If police are to continue to exist then it is necessary to make them democratically accountable to the communities they serve. The history of police violence demands implementation of democratic community control of the police in cities across the country. Democratic, people’s, community control of the police must be accompanied by a mass movement led by those most affected by police violence. Sonya Massey, Terrell Miller, and so many others should still be here today, and it is up to the people to put an end to the racist murders so embedded in American culture.

Images: George Floyd Protest in Washington, DC – May 30 by Geoff Livingston (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

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