Hannah Drake felt something akin to emotional whiplash when she saw the video of an Illinois police officer killing Sonya Massey earlier this week.
Drake, 48, described the moment as the “dichotomy of being a Black woman in America.”
The bodycam footage showing the 36-year-old Black mother of two being shot in her own kitchen by Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson was published Monday.
Massey had called 911 to report a possible intruder in her Springfield home on July 6. Thirty minutes later, she was dead.
The shooting occurred as another deputy was clearing the house. Grayson began “aggressively yelling” at Massey to put down a pot of boiling water she had removed from her stove, although he had given her permission to do so. Grayson can be heard in the bodycam footage saying “I swear to God. I’ll f— shoot you right in your f— face” before firing a bullet at Massey’s head.
The footage was released just as the Democratic Party began to rally around Vice President Kamala Harris, making her the presumptive nominee to replace President Joe Biden – much to the elation of many Black women, some of whom have felt taken for granted by the Democratic Party.
“It’s like we’re in a domestic violence relationship with America,” Drake said. “It’s like a honeymoon phase, and then it’s right back to violence.”
It’s an eerily familiar feeling for the activist and poet, who was integral in passing police reform in Louisville, Kentucky, after the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor.
Four years ago, people across the U.S. called for a racial reckoning in the wake of the killings of Taylor and George Floyd. Major companies made financial pledges to reduce racial disparities, and lawmakers promised to meet the demands for policy change.
But progress toward those goals has been slow – particularly at the federal level, where few substantive policies have been passed to curb police-incited violence. Last year, police killed more Americans than any other year on record.
Harris called the Massey family to offer condolences and released a statement Tuesday saying “we have much work to do to ensure that our justice system fully lives up to its name.”
“Sonya Massey deserved to be safe,” Harris said, adding she and second gentlemen Doug Emhoff were “grieving her senseless death.”
For activists like Drake, Massey’s killing marks yet another flashpoint in the struggle to end the scourge. Her death, they say, brings even more urgency to their cause.
‘Russian roulette’
Timothy Findley Jr., a pastor in Louisville, Kentucky, organized protests demanding justice after Taylor’s death in 2020. Today, Findley finds himself questioning whether the work he did and the attention he helped draw to police brutality made a difference.
In light of Massey’s case, Findley said he believes there are few ways Black and brown people can interact safely with law enforcement. The officer who shot Massey was responding to a call for help she had initiated about a possible intruder. When he shot her in the head, she was holding a pot of water.
“For me, like with so many others, it continues to reinforce the belief that law enforcement is not always the helpful, friendly entity that we need,” Findley said. “You call 911, and it’s almost like Russian roulette. Depending on who you get, it could be the end of your life.”
DeRay McKesson views the path of progress slightly differently. As leader of the organization Campaign Zero, McKesson works to pass local and state policies to reduce police violence. McKesson became a civil rights activist after 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, nearly 10 years ago.
“This last decade is the first sustained period of activism ever around the police,” McKesson said of the improvements he has seen since.
Seven states now have adopted Campaign Zero’s recommended restrictions on the use of no-knock raids, the practice that allowed police to enter Taylor’s home.
Renewed calls for action
McKesson, however, doesn’t deny that more change is needed. When he heard of Massey’s death earlier this month, the first thing he researched was the police department’s local use of force policy because often, “they’re awful.”
“They allow the police to kill people,” McKesson said. “Imagine if you had a job where no matter what you did, it was impossible to be held accountable.”
The officer who shot Massey was fired after the incident. But an Illinois labor council representing the officer has since filed a complaint, arguing that he was terminated “without just cause.” Before Massey’s killing, the officer had a disciplinary record that included claims of bullying and abuse of power, according to reporting by CBS News.
Those circumstances are part of the reason Lonita Baker, an attorney who represented Taylor’s family, believes a cultural change in the way law enforcement organizations operate is equally as important as policy reform.
“We can have all the legislation in the world, but if we still have the bad people, they’re still going to do bad things,” Baker said.
Efforts to decrease police brutality, she said, should be focused at the local level – where most departments are run. She has advocated for more thoughtful hiring practices and enacting better systems of addressing misconduct within police departments.
At the federal level, Baker puts the blame for policy action squarely in the hands of Congress, which has yet to pass the comprehensive George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
“As someone that works, and pushes for continued change, I’m going to continue like every little bit that we get is a step in the right direction,” Baker affirmed. “Is it fast enough? Absolutely not.”
Trahern Crews, an activist who founded Black Lives Matter Minnesota, urged Democrats to make racial justice a policy priority ahead of the 2024 general election. Though he said he won’t vote for former President Donald Trump, Crews believes Democrats need to earn the votes of Black Americans by more ardently pushing for policy change in the next few months.
Massey’s death “is just a wake-up call for all of us across the country that we still have a lot of work, work to do, and that we have to get to it,” Crews said.
“The only way we won’t go backwards is if we continue to stay in the streets and continue to organize and continue to put, not just pressure on police departments, but also on elected officials to do the right thing and enact policies into a law.”
Contributing: Steven Spearie, Springfield State Journal-Register
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