Years before sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson gunned down Sonya Massey in her own home, he had been discharged from the Army for serious misconduct and had a history of driving under the influence, records show.
He also failed to obey a command while working for another sheriff’s office in Illinois and was told he needed “high stress decision making classes,” the agency’s documents reveal.
Grayson, who was a Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy before he was fired and charged with murder, responded to a report of a prowler at Massey’s home July 6. Bodycam footage from another deputy showed Massey saying she rebuked Grayson, and Grayson responded by threatening the 36-year-old. The exchange ended with Grayson shooting Massey and failing to render aid.
I certainly can’t argue with your lived experience, but I hope you’ll appreciate that from my point of view it’s an anecdote, even though I don’t doubt your sincerity, nor the accuracy of your statement.
I agree with all of this, but combined with the information in the OP, what we can do, rather than blame that cop for their own mental health struggles (although I do blame a person with those kinds of anger control issues for choosing a career where they need to decide whether to kill people or not), I think there must be, should be, and should always have been actual consequences not only for the cop who pulled the trigger, but for the folks who hired and retained him.
And if the answer is “for this reason or that they didn’t have knowledge of all those details” - then THAT problem can be the first one that supposed well meaning police solve if they want to start building some faith that they actually want to solve these problems as badly as us potential targets do.
The post you originally replied to is the closest I’ve ever come to actually saying it, but although I usually refuse to even get that close, I will distill down a somewhat famous Chris Rock skit to only its punchline. I may not walk around saying ACAB, but I understand.
A big part of them having their own mental health struggles is that it’s also some of the most unhinged people that can make some of the best conflict deescalators because we’ve been there. A big part of the reason I’m so good at this is because I know what I’ve done and what I’m capable of and I know what my stupid ass should’ve been told when I was doing dumb shit. I’ve actually wound up in restraints being forced medication after getting my ass beat by the cops for being a mentally ill little shit. A LOT of people start out thinking they’re going to be the person that makes the change they needed way back when.
The difference is I’ve had 3 years of literally the most intense psychological therapy that exists and I was going to that therapy while I was working with some of the most acutely ill psychiatric patients that exist so I was actively processing and growing from my own childhood and history while I was also learning to manage these patients, so those same therapists got the chance to simultaneously help me process the experiences I was actively having AND contextualize my innate responses to that exact environment.
It’s a situation that’s almost impossible to replicate without the kind of financial resources that the people running this country don’t want to dedicate to this end, and not just because they’re stingy but because they’re actively benefiting from convincing us to brutalize each other instead of picking our heads up and realizing what’s happening and going after them instead. It really does all come down to class warfare in the end (BTW Dialectal Behavior Therapy also includes a STRONG element of controlling your own mental energy so you can channel it to combat systemic injustices as effectively as possible).
Also, you have to be unhinged to walk up to a convicted violent felon with psychosis who thinks you’re trying to hurt them and think you’re just going to talk them into not going for your throat. Sane people run.