Shot in cold blood: Sonya Massey

[Core Imposter]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/22/us/video/sonya-massey-police-bodycam-footage-digvid-2

This is why bodycams are necessary. And this is why I hope to never have to call the police. The officer says, "it came to our feet too!" There are a lot of officers out there who are so afraid that a light breeze could set them off.

In many ways in a lot of places the cops are almost indistinguishable from gangs. And while there are many, many good officers the climate is such that nobody is safe whenever they are around. Unfortunately, many will make this a racial issue when race is only a component. Until we can get past issues of race we are not going to see and understand and until we understand this will just keep happening time and time again.

Edit: Okay, maybe not cold blood. Maybe 2nd degree depending on the statue. But the agency this guy worked for needs to be cleared out.

 

[amadeus]

I’m at work so excuse the scatterbrain thoughts but we could start with a couple of things like uniforms and language.

Uniforms: more Mayberry and less Judge Dredd.

Language: calling people not cops “civilians?” You are also civilians. You are not in the military. People are also not “targets.”

One thing I said the other day elsewhere: stop getting these dumb guys with the arm sleeve tattoos. You know they’re just waiting to shoot someone and get away with it. Let’s stop kidding ourselves.

 

[Farm Boy]

The second some idiot puts a Punisher logo on anything they own I think they should be disqualified entirely from policing.

They can't get the recruitment they want. There simply are not enough qualified, fit, and decent humans willing to take the job. So you get a lot of meanies, idiots, and *******s. Which seems to actually correlate with fitness, for whatever that's caused by and worth.

 

[amadeus]

The second some idiot puts a Punisher logo on anything they own I think they should be disqualified entirely from policing.

I don’t even know what that is, but it sounds stupid. Why did the police even have pieces of flair anyway? If they want to bedazzle themselves, go work at TGI Fridays.

 

[Kyriakos]

Looks like murder due to idiocy. A drop of boiling water won't do you any harm - a shot to the head, on the other hand.

 

[amadeus]

Looks like murder due to idiocy. A drop of boiling water won't do you any harm - a shot to the head, on the other hand.

Shot to the head? Must be street for OPTIMAL KINETIC TARGET NEUTRALIZATION ZONE like we learned in the academy.

 

[Kyriakos]

Shot to the head? Must be street for OPTIMAL KINETIC TARGET NEUTRALIZATION ZONE like we learned in the academy.

Perceived HP risk is practically real.

 

[E.man]

You're in a street level arms race so cops are scared and then the public is scared of them.

Have a look at policing where everyone is not armed.

 

[EvaDK]

An American police officer goes through about six months of training, before going on patrol.

Here, they study for three years at the police academy, before becoming police officers.

It seems Massey was fatally shot, because this officer had no proper training in how to handle and defuse a situation that he and his partner themselves created. So, he resorted to his gun to solve the situation instead.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I am not sure whether this is more of a case of brevity of training rather than a culture of violent vigilantism in the US police force

 

[red_elk]

I didn't get it. They freaked out just because she was approaching them with a pot of boiling water, or I'm missing something?

 

[EgonSpengler]

The second some idiot puts a Punisher logo on anything they own I think they should be disqualified entirely from policing.

And the sad irony of a police officer displaying that logo is perhaps fitting, for someone who's dumb enough to do it in the first place. For those who don't know, The Punisher is a Marvel Comics character from the 1970s. The character's whole raison d'etre was as a critique of law enforcement as ineffectual, inept, and corrupt. Much like Batman, who came out of the gang-ruled cities like New York and Chicago in the 1930s, The Punisher started to kick [butt] and take names in 1970s New York because police officers were at best useless.

An American police officer goes through about six months of training, before going on patrol.

Here, they study for three years at the police academy, before becoming police officers.

It seems Massey was fatally shot, because this officer had no proper training in how to handle and defuse a situation that he and his partner themselves created. So, he resorted to his gun to solve the situation instead.

Most police are not trained to defuse a situation. At all. Just the opposite, in fact, they're taught to use escalating levels of force until they have control of the person and the situation, up to and including lethal force. A police officer will escalate a traffic stop into a use of lethal force, because that's what they're told to do. I haven't watched the video, but I'm guessing the officer began by raising his voice and issuing a command?

I am not sure whether this is more of a case of brevity of training rather than a culture of violent vigilantism in the US police force

This. Except that it isn't vigilantism, it's both legal and the social norm. It's really only been the blink of an eye that police are being charged for using excessive force against people. One of the reasons police and their apologists are so taken aback by things like BLM and "Pattern & Practice" investigations - in addition to racism, of course - is that use of violence by police with total impunity has been the accepted norm for our entire history. Merely suggesting that police maybe shouldn't be [screwing] with people quite so much is fliipping the proverbial table over. To a lot of people, it's like saying up is down and 2+2=5.

I didn't get it. They freaked out just because she was approaching them with a pot of boiling water, or I'm missing something?

You're not missing anything.

 

[Kyriakos]

I do like that the murderer said "the water was also near our feet". Boiling water, even if it was near his booted feet, wouldn't magically dissolve his legs.
It's ironic how the victim thought to make a joke, that she'd baptize them with the water, and that joke cost her her life.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I haven't watched the video, but I'm guessing the officer began by raising his voice and issuing a command?

From the Guardian:

Spoiler Potentially upsetting :

After an initial discussion and request for Massey’s driver’s license, Grayson spotted a pot of boiling water on the stove and ordered Massey to remove it to avoid starting a fire. In doing so, Massey asks the officers – who visibly distance themselves from her as she goes to handle the pot – why they moved away from her.

“Where you going?” she asks them.

“Away from your hot steaming water,” Grayson answers, with a laugh, before Massey responds: “Away from the hot steaming water? Oh, I’ll rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”

With his gun drawn, Grayson closed the distance between himself and Massey, who was beginning to kneel behind a counter with her hands up.

“You better fudging not, I swear to God I’ll fudging shoot you right in your fudging face,” Grayson warned.

Massey can be heard saying, “I’m sorry,” as Grayson continues to advance. “I’m sorry,” she says again as Grayson fires three shots, striking her with a bullet below the eye that exited from the back of her neck.

 

[Kyriakos]

Diagnosis: Cretinism.

 

[Lexicus]

I am not sure whether this is more of a case of brevity of training rather than a culture of violent vigilantism in the US police force

Both, one of these officers had been previously fired from like 5 other departments and I'm sure a perusal of both officer's phones and social media will reveal plenty of fascist ideology.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Wikipedia says that several US states require more training for barbers and manicurists than they do for police officers. "As of 2017" Wikipedia says, "34 states do not require deescalation training for all police officers, and other states require minimal training in deescalation (for example, 1 hour per year in Georgia)."

Wikipedia says that most U.S. states require licensure of police officers, but not all, and in places that do require a license, taking an officer's license away is a whole other thing. Most states can revoke an officer's license on conviction for a felony (which necessarily must mean there are a few states that can't even revoke an officer's license if he's convicted of a felony), and fewer than 1/3rd of them can revoke an officer's license for being fired for cause. In only "some" states must a police department report a firing to the state's certification board. A 2019 study by Yale Law Review found 1,100 working officers in Florida had been fired at some point in the past, 800 of those for misconduct. This is just Florida, and that doesn't count officers who were fired but reinstated after arbitration. The authors of the study admit their numbers are likely to be underestimates.

Police officer certification and licensure in the United States - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Gori the Grey]

"As of 2017" Wikipedia says, "34 states do not require deescalation training for all police officers, and other states require minimal training in deescalation (for example, 1 hour per year in Georgia)."

Be a good campaign plank for Harris.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

Thanks for not posting a video of the actual shooting; I get the picture already.
I'd like to break this down a bit. I've 2 initial thoughts:

So I presume the officers feared for their safety because the person was moving a pot of boiling water off the stove. They thought she would just turn it off or move it to a different burner; she thought she could [I guess] strain whatever was in it. So right there is a lack of communication. Why one cop couldn't volunteer to shut it off with her permission, while the other watched her, I don't know...
And with a potential intruder still around, was it that big of a fire hazard to want to deal with right away? Just let it boil over, and that's how it goes.

Now while scalding water can cause serious injury, I doubt this (to me) small frail woman would've been able to launch a pot of it across the room at them for it to be able to hurt them. Nor run with it at them either to [I guess] dump it on them.

All in all, not very good for the police here.

 

[Core Imposter]

.In a situation like this one is there any chance that there would be a blood sample taken of the officers?