Posted on 01/31/2026 2:57:36 AM PST by Leaning Right
Sean Grayson, the former Sangamon County sheriff's deputy, was sentenced on Thursday to 20 years in prison after he was convicted in October 2025 of second-degree murder for the July 2024 fatal shooting of Sonya Massey, a Black woman who called 911 to report a possible intruder at her home in Springfield, Illinois.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
One bothersome thing (among many) about this story is how the media tried to make it a racial issue: white police officer shoots black woman.
It is instead a story about a bad cop. This deputy has a long history of previous poor behavior, including a misconduct discharge from the Army.
I remember seeing this on you tube. The shooting was on body cam. I remember cringing, and thinking this was not going to end well, and it didn’t
This guy was “afraid for his life” but he was a cop, and a bad enough cop that his first instinct was to take what could’ve been a routine takedown situation to the extreme. I may have seen that kind of thing happening in Minneapolis but the court(s) will have to decide on that.
For 2nd degree murder convictions Illinois defendants must serve at least 50% of the imposed sentence before eligibility for parole or good-time credits.
If he behaves in prison, which is iffy, he could be out in less than 10 with time already served factored in.
I saw the video.
She was clearly threatening him, now maybe he had other options like retreating.
But murder??? Nahhh.
This is a good example of why you should never call the cops to your house—ever.
This was a bad shoot by a bad cop. Even if the woman was a direct threat, the deputy easily could have taken a few steps back. Then there would have been a kitchen counter between him and the woman.
But I agree with you in that 20 years seems excessive. It looks like racial politics played a big part here.
I regularly watch Youtube channels such as Audit the Audit, the Civil Rights Lawyer and the Lackluster Channel, which focus on bad policing. There are a lot of bad cops in this country.
YouTube’s “The Civil Rights Lawyer” is excellent. But it’s often a gut-wrenching experience, watching how deliberately evil some cops are.
What’s going on here? My (uneducated) guess is that for many reasons, it’s difficult to get good people to go into police work these days. So departments take what they can get.
And that includes hiring bad cops who were fired from other departments.
And now a disclaimer: I continue to believe that most cops range from adequate to excellent. But the bad ones can (and do) wreck the reputation of the profession.
If there’s an easy fix here, I don’t see it.
He was several feet away and she went to take the boiling pot away...I don’t recall any move she made towards him..smart cop would have just backed up a little more but not our hero....
I think its also training..if they are told from day one that their lives are more important than ordinary citizens,they act that way.....aren’t they supposed to protect us?
Liberals, with their "defund the police" and other anti-law enforcement campaigns helped to bring this about. An emerging adult who is morally straight and wants to serve society by maintaining order, helping stranded motorists and arresting bad guys will now think twice, not wanting to end up like Derek Chauvin. So departments will be forced to choose people of lesser moral character.
“I remember cringing, and thinking this was not going to end well, and it didn’t”
I can’t understand why he was even still working in the job with his history of unwarranted high speed chases, lying about situations, and problems with fellow deputies. And he was a problem in the military being tossed at two years in for unspecified offenses along with a history of DUI. Great candidate, huh?
wy69
“....aren’t they supposed to protect us?”
Protection goes out the window when someone begins the action of harming you as a police officer. His mistake was that he didn’t take any action before the incident escalated. He caused it.
He had a history:
https://invisible.institute/sean-grayson-misconduct
wy69
“ There are a lot of bad cops in this country.”
There are a lot of bad people in this country, many have no emotional control and are mentally unstable.
In 2017 there was a similar case in Minneapolis where a black Somalian cop murdered an unarmed white woman in cold blood.
The Somalian cop, Muhamid Noor, got off with a short jail sentence that anounted to a slap on the wrist.
Just look up “Justine Damond fatally shot by Minneapolis P.D. officer Mohamed Noor”
NC Tyrant Hunter?
I remember that. It was terrible!
YouTube’s “The Civil Rights Lawyer” is a great American, a bulldog who calls out bad cops.
On the other hand, “NC Tyrant Hunter” is a provocateur, a piece of trash. He’ll set up a camera to film, say, a marijuana dispensary. Then he acts all offended when someone asks what he’s doing.
Everything NC Tyrant Hunter does is legal. And also garbage.
A little possible scalding is better than 20 years in stir.
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