In this op-ed, Angie Jaime explores the connection between the tragic death of Sonya Massey, presidential hopeful Kamala Harris' rise to power, and America's police crisis.
Sonya Massey called 911 to report what she believed was a prowler in the area around her Springfield, Illinois home. A body camera video released on Monday shows that two officers responded and walked around the house to inspect before knocking on the door of the home. A few minutes later, Massey opened the door. The first thing she said upon seeing the two officers? “Don’t hurt me.”
From there, footage shows the interaction in which the police duo grew increasingly frustrated with Massey’s behavior as she looked for identification they requested. Then, with the permission of the officers, the video shows Massey going to the stove to get a pot of boiling water, where she at one point appears to share a bit of levity with officers.
The interaction quickly escalated just moments later, when Massey said, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus” over her shoulder. The now former Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy, Sean Grayson, then threatened to shoot her and raised his 9mm pistol, the video shows. Massey apologized, raised her hands and ducked. Grayson can then be seen firing his pistol at her. After Grayson shot her, the video shows Grayson discouraging his partner from grabbing a medical kit to save her. “You can go get it, but that’s a headshot,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do, man.”
The footage is harrowing; a Black woman alone allowing two white, male officers into her home in the middle of the night for help with a suspected prowler, despite the very real risks interacting with police could bring. She is unarmed and relatively calm, if at times confused in her actions. Her father has told news sources that she had been in mental health treatment recently. Still, the interaction resulted in the tragic death of Sonya Massey, and an indictment of first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct for Grayson. (In a court appearance last week Grayson pleaded not guilty to the charges.)
Any other moment, the story of Massey’s death at the hands of police would have taken over social media and news conversations for weeks or months, perhaps even sparking significant protests as it had in the aftermath of deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, and many others. Though the incident occurred on July 6, bodycam footage of Massey’s death was not released until Monday, July 22—less than 24 hours after another seismic moment in the American public took place: the end of President Biden’s campaign for reelection, and the announcement of Vice President Kamala Harris’s bid for nomination on Sunday.
The Internet, as they say, broke. A tidal wave of Kamala memes and videos and reactions to reactions of reactions spilled forward from every news channel and social platform, dominating conversations digital and real-world. In the days since, Harris’ presidential campaign has been the topic on the minds of individuals and families across the country. Groups rallied on Zoom calls from every corner of the United States to raise historic amounts of money in grassroots campaign donations. Analysts spilled digital ink and soaked up television air time.
The competing imagery is, however, one of cognitive dissonance. On one hand, the beaming, joyous face of the would-be first woman, and the first African American and Asian American President of the United States, a former prosecutor and California’s “top cop.” On the other, seeping through the cracks in the media landscape: the shocking footage of Massey’s death.
“We are prepping for virulent misogynoir this election while trying to get one of us across the finish line and simultaneously push for peace across global genocides,” writer and activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham wrote in an Instagram caption. “We can’t scroll without unprovoked attacks on everything from our dateability to our femininity to our bitterness—all results of the very systems and attitudes you depend on us to fight for you. We set the blueprint on Sunday calls and wake to videos of a brutality specifically reserved for us.”
Elsewhere on Threads, Packnett Cunningham also raised that Massey’s death is part of a long legacy of lynching. “Sonya Massey is a descendant of William Donnegan, who was lynched in 1908 during a Springfield, Illinois racist massacre. They were [killed] in the same city. By the hands of the same people. And died in the same hospital,” she wrote.
Indeed, James Wilburn, Massey’s father, noted how egregious the killing of his daughter was, given his own former profession. "Some of my best friends are in law enforcement. I'm former law enforcement," he told CBS, "so it's embarrassing."
In the case of Harris, it’s worth parsing out how she has both benefited from and received backlash from the police culture in which she cultivated her legal and political aspirations. Back in 2016 as California Attorney General, she gave herself the moniker “top cop” of the biggest state in the nation, positioning herself as tough on crime and in lock-step with police. As she rose to Senator of California, her stances often shifted, becoming a polarizing figure in the state. As public attitudes towards police became more critical, she distanced herself from the narrative her self-given nickname suggested.
By then, opponents had latched on. Tulsi Gabbard’s criticism of her track record as a prosecutor has dogged her and evolved into somewhat of a conspiracy theory, that she had sent untold numbers of Black and brown men to prison in California for drug offenses. The reality is of course more nuanced, according to a 2019 investigation from the San Jose Mercury News. During her time as San Francisco District Attorney, her office totaled 1,956 misdemeanor and felony convictions for marijuana possession, cultivation or sale between 2004-2010. Only 45 were sent to state prison. While district attorney, she did however pioneer programs like Back on Track, which enabled low-level drug offenders to obtain a high school diploma and a job instead of prison time.
On Tuesday, Harris perhaps shrewdly seized the moment of conversation surrounding Sonya Massey to push forward legislation regulating police. Writing in a post on X, “Sonya Massey deserved to be safe. The disturbing footage released yesterday confirms what we know from the lived experiences of so many — we have much work to do to ensure that our justice system fully lives up to its name.” Together with President Biden, she called for Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a bill which civil rights advocates say can be pushed further. The ACLU said in a statement following the reintroduction of the George Floyd act in May, “Congress must go further to provide strong federal intervention that protects the rights of individuals against the often unchecked power of the police.”
Ultimately, Harris’ alignment with the police and carceral state will be subject to scrutiny in the days and weeks leading up to the election – and it is highly likely that she will face racist abuse and disinformation online and across the media. But what remains to be seen is how, the complexities of her standing as a Black woman in the highest corridors of power positioned closely with police, does or does not protect her — does or does not backfire against her.
Massey’s death is an all-too-chilling reminder that no one in America, from everyday citizens in need of help, to the country’s “top cop” escapes the realities of an insidious police culture – one that perpetuates and simultaneously obscures its own violence against people of color.
