By John Ruberry
Did demonization of cops lead to a police-involved murder? Just as demonization of the military may have contributed to the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War?
Earlier this month, Sonya Massey, a black woman from Woodside Township, Illinois, was shot to death, according to police bodycam video footage, by Sangamon County deputy sheriff Sean Grayson. Massey called the police because she believed there was a prowler at her home. The cop, who has since been fired and is now charged with murder and other charges, has a rocky employment history, being employed either part-time or full-time by six different central Illinois police departments in four years, although in one of those jobs, for a small-town police department, he was let go because wouldn’t reside within 10-miles of the village.
Grayson is white, and the racial angle has brought rare national media attention to downstate Illinois.
He is a military veteran who left the service under a general discharge. According to KSHB-TV in Kansas City, Grayson “was discharged from the U.S. Army for serious misconduct during his year-and-a-half service in Fort Riley.”
According to KSDK-TV in St. Louis, Grayson has two DUI convictions, one in 2015 to which he pleaded guilty to, and another the following year he weas found guilty in a bench trial.
In his last job, according to Capitol News Illinois, prior to being hired full time by the Sangamon County sheriff’s office–another deputy sheriff position with Logan County–Grayson’s performance was poor. In a report, a chief deputy wrote that Grayson need “extensive” training after failing to follow commands. The same officer wrote that Grayson needed “additional traffic stop training, report writing training, high-stress decision making process classes, and needs to read, discuss and understand issued Logan County Sheriff’s Department policies.”
Capitol News Illinois offered additional disturbing details. “Seven months on. How are you still employed by us?” the chief deputy asked Grayson in a meeting about his job performance. “I don’t know,” was his reply.
As for My Lai, the massacre, which occurred in 1968, saw at least 300 civilians killed, including elderly people, children and infants. Some women and children were brutally gang raped. The only soldier convicted for the massacre was 2nd Lieutenant William Calley. Originally given a life sentence of hard labor in a military court martial, President Richard M. Nixon commuted that sentence to three years of house arrest.
At the time, Americans wondered how Calley, a junior college dropout who failed most of his courses, became an officer. While he did score well in a military exam, Linda Greenhouse, writing for the New York Times in 1974, said of Calley that he was someone who “apparently failed at almost everything he had tried to do.” Between quitting junior college and enlisting in the US Army in 1966, Calley’s jobs included working as a bellhop and as a dishwasher.
Normally, such a background wouldn’t be considered the makings of officer material. While the anti-war movement hadn’t reached its peak in 1966, plenty of young college graduates were being told by their parents and peers to dodge the draft, in a stealth fashion, by enlisting in the National Guard instead.
In short, the talent pool for American military officers wasn’t deep during the Vietnam War. Hence, Calley.
As for Grayson, he was hired for his first part-time police job, in the small town of Pawnee, in August 2020. That was six years after the Michael Brown killing in Ferguson, Missouri and the Laquan McDonald murder in Chicago. Both were of course police-involved killings–ones that ramped up anti-cop sentiment.
And three months before Grayson started his law enforcement job in Pawnee, George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Not only was the anti-police rhetoric sent into hyperdrive by the media and agenda-driven leftist politicians, but it was also the beginning of the Defund the Police movement.
Four years after Floyd’s murder, because of retirements and struggles in hiring replacements, many police departments don’t have enough cops. For instance, three months ago, Chicago’s police superintendant, Larry Snelling, said of the CPD, “We’re down close to 2,000 officers.”
The ACAB–All Cops Are Bastards–sentiment so many Americans believe in, or have been indoctrinated in, may be offering a bitter harvest.
The Massey shooting death could be the beginning of a tragic trend.
UPDATE July 30:
Yesterday the Washington Post reported that Calley, 80, died in hospice care in April. Citing the Social Security Index, the New York Times confirmed his passing. The cause of Calley’s death is not known.
John Ruberry regularly blogs in Illinois at Marathon Pundit.
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