Springfield, IL (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – Three and a half months after then-Sangamon County deputy Sean Grayson shot and killed Sonya Massey in her Springfield home, a Massey Commission is starting to investigate the issues of policing and race.
Grayson is white. Massey was black.
The commission’s first meeting Monday night heard from Kelly Hurst, a professor of medical humanities at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield. “We talk about prejudice quite a bit,” she said, “and it is sometimes a softer, gentler word than racism. Even though that’s what we mean, even though we mean there’s a race problem here. But racism is race prejudice plus the misuse of systems and institutions.”
Ideas floated so far focus on accused murderer Grayson: not hiring cops with DUI’s on their record, and scrutinizing police job-hoppers more closely. Grayson is claiming self-defense in the caught-on-video killing.
During Monday’s public comment period, citizen Hewitt Douglass sounded a discouraging word: “You’re not learning nothing here,” he said. “What you did was talk to yourself,” before thundering, “The problem we’ve got here in Springfield, yes, is racism! From all over the world!”
The three-and-a-half hour meeting ended a day which began with Grayson’s pretrial hearing being pushed back six weeks, as his lawyers hope to free him from jail pending trial.
