Let me inform you what I see and listen to within the video of Sonya Massey’s killing: A nervous girl, head tilted down towards her cellphone, as if hoping somebody—possibly a member of the family—has replied to her messages. A shaky voice wanting to listen to phrases of reassurance.
“You didn’t see anyone?” she asks the 2 law-enforcement officers who have been despatched to her home after she had known as 911 to report what she thought was an intruder.
“We checked the entire space,” one of many officers tells her.
“Okay,” she says in a whisper.
When one of many officers, Deputy Sean Grayson, speaks once more, he sounds suspicious: “What took you so lengthy to reply the door?” He doesn’t assume that she have to be afraid, which is why she dialed 911 within the first place. As a substitute, he appears like he’s interrogating her. In one other story, she is perhaps the damsel in misery, however Black ladies are hardly seen that method.
Nonetheless, she addresses him respectfully, to point that she understands his place of authority: “Oh, I used to be making an attempt to placed on some garments, sir, I’m sorry,” she says. She is carrying a silky-looking cream-colored gown, so lengthy that it brushes the bottom; a T-shirt over pajama pants with a flamingo-pink string; and a headband like so many Black ladies put on whereas sleeping to guard our hair.
Grayson’s companion asks if there’s the rest they’ll do for her. When she doesn’t reply, Grayson repeats the query, enunciating it as if talking to a toddler: “Is. There. Something. Else. I. Can. Do. For. You?”
“No, sir,” she says, absolutely conscious of the officer’s annoyance.
Her regular politeness jogged my memory of the best way that many Black kids are taught early on to work together with law enforcement officials: At all times reply “Sure, sir” or “No, sir.” Assume that they’ll have detrimental assumptions about you, assumptions that you could be have to defuse to guard your self from getting damage.
[Read: The problem with police-shooting videos]
Then Grayson asks about her psychological state. Massey’s household has mentioned that she had mental-health points, and it’s clear the officer has concluded that one thing is fallacious together with her. She replies that she has taken her drugs. She continues to be well mannered, however now she simply desires to return inside her dwelling. Possibly one thing has turn into clear to her, as effectively: that these officers are usually not going to assist her. “I like y’all. Thank y’all,” she says as she tries to shut her entrance door.
Because the killings in 2020 of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and the racial-justice protests that adopted, I’ve turn into considerably desensitized to police violence. I obtained bored with studying stunning prose capturing the final moments of somebody who ought to by no means have died. This stuff occur, I’ve sometimes advised myself. However watching this video, I felt outraged another time by the barbarous misuse of police energy and by the mindless lack of harmless lives.
Was it the intimacy of the video? Was it the picture of Massey standing on her porch, as the sunshine emanating from her lounge highlighted her slender body? I noticed a small girl in her nightclothes having a tense change with an officer who was larger. And stronger. And armed.
Was it the truth that, at night time, I typically FaceTime my aunt, who can also be named Sonia, although she spells it with an i as an alternative of a y? Whether it is after 9 p.m., I can nearly assure that her pixie minimize can be hidden beneath a silk scarf identical to Massey’s, wrapped round her head like a bandage.
Then the video skips forward: The officers have entered her dwelling. They’re telling Massey to indicate them her ID. Why?
I see the folded garments on the highest of her couch, the scattered pillows, the reusable purchasing bag with gadgets spilling out. Within the kitchen there’s a blender, a plant, two plastic bottles. The door has come off one of many kitchen cupboards, and you’ll see all the things stacked inside.
[Wesley Lowery: Why there was no racial reckoning]
Me seeing this feels a violation. However the scene additionally feels acquainted. I do know firsthand that soiled dishes in a sink, garments tossed all through an house, or piles of junk will be the outward indicators of deep private struggles.
In Massey’s kitchen, a pot of water boils on the range. Grayson orders her to take it off the flame. Because the physique digital camera follows her, I discover a black rolling chair that will make extra sense in an workplace. On one other chair, pumpkin-orange cloth pours out of a cardboard field. Massey places on her oven mitts earlier than lifting the pot. It appears to happen to the officers solely now that the water—meant for cooking pasta, possibly, or rice—have to be sizzling.
One of many officers backs away. Massey appears confused; she asks the place he’s going. He tells her he doesn’t need to get hit by boiling water.
Then she says: “I rebuke you within the title of Jesus.”
“Huh?”
“I rebuke you within the title of Jesus.”
To the officers, this appears weird—understandably. However I’ve heard the phrase earlier than, primarily as a result of I’ve relations and associates who name on Jesus for all types of various causes. I requested my brother-in-law, who’s a pastor, what it technically means. Within the church, he mentioned, to rebuke is to solid out a demon, or preserve a demon from utilizing an individual to do one thing unhealthy. The phrase will be mentioned casually, although, in response to somebody’s misbehavior. When Massey says it, her voice is louder and clearer than it has been earlier than, however she doesn’t sound indignant. It’s the tone of voice that you just would possibly use whereas saying: For goodness’ sake, that is actually getting ridiculous.
“You higher fucking not,” Grayson responds, the fashion rolling off his tongue. “I’ll shoot you in your fucking face.”
Massey crouches down behind the kitchen counter, terrified, apologizing. I can’t inform what occurs to the pot. She places it down, possibly. Later, the water will spill throughout the ground. Does it scald her? We don’t know, as a result of the officer does precisely what he mentioned he was going to do. He shoots her within the face.
Grayson didn’t see Massey because the mom of two youngsters, or a “daddy’s lady”—as her father described her—or a lady who merely wanted assist. Her humanity was invisible to him. It didn’t matter that a couple of minutes earlier she’d known as him “sir,” despite the fact that he was six years youthful than she was. She mentioned she cherished the police. It didn’t save her.
After her physique drops to the bottom, the opposite officer says he’ll go get a medical package to see if he will help her. “Nah,” Grayson says, “she’s achieved. You possibly can go get it, however that’s a headshot.” I hear him attempt to justify the capturing: He says he wasn’t about to take a pot of boiling water to his face, despite the fact that Massey was already at floor degree when he pulled the set off.
Grayson goes to retrieve the medical package in any case, although he says, “I imply there’s not a lot we are able to do.” We notice then that she’s nonetheless respiration: “She’s nonetheless gasping a bit,” the companion says, and he presses one thing towards her head to attempt to cease the bleeding. I think about the power it should have taken for her physique to hold onto life in these moments. Was she capable of hear Grayson, a public servant whom she had put her religion in, dismiss her so rapidly? By the point he comes again, it’s too late.
“This is the worst police-shooting video ever,” Ben Crump, the lawyer representing Massey’s household, mentioned at a information convention. He is aware of what he’s speaking about: He has represented the households of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and others, over greater than 20 years. We have now the report of what occurred solely as a result of it was captured by Grayson’s companion: Grayson himself by no means turned on his physique digital camera. Sonya Massey’s tax {dollars} had contributed to the wage of the officer who killed her. That’s the madness of being Black on this nation.
[Read: Stop calling Breonna Taylor’s killing a ‘tragedy’]
Not like the victims of different police killings, Massey doesn’t have a motion behind her. The general public response to the video has been comparatively muted. Possibly that’s partly as a result of, this time, the sheriff’s division was fast to fireplace the officer. Grayson now faces costs together with first-degree homicide, to which he has pleaded not responsible. Certainly it’s additionally as a result of others have turn into desensitized like I had, feeling that we had witnessed a lot violence that the one strategy to preserve going was to distance ourselves from it. And possibly it’s as a result of she died throughout a time of larger information.
The identical week the footage of Massey’s killing was launched, we noticed Kamala Harris take the mantle of the Democratic Get together. I do know I can’t be the one one scuffling with this cognitive dissonance. This, too, is what it means to be Black in America: One Black girl has the prospect to win probably the most highly effective place on this planet, whereas on the similar time, one other Black girl, even at her most susceptible, carrying her nightclothes and headband, is perceived as a risk—and shot to demise in her kitchen.
