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—perhaps 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 should be afraid, which is why she dialed 911 within the first place. As an alternative, he seems 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 scarf like so many Black ladies put on whereas sleeping to guard our hair.
Grayson’s companion asks if there’s anything 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, certainly conscious of the officer’s annoyance.
Her regular politeness jogged my memory of the way in which that many Black youngsters 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 adverse assumptions about you, assumptions that you could be must defuse to guard your self from getting damage.
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 improper along with her. She replies that she has taken her drugs. She continues to be well mannered, however now she simply needs to return inside her house. Perhaps one thing has change into clear to her, as nicely: that these officers usually are not going to assist her. “I really 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 change into considerably desensitized to police violence. I bought uninterested in studying stunning prose capturing the final moments of somebody who ought to by no means have died. These items occur, I’ve sometimes informed myself. However watching this video, I felt outraged yet again 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 evening, I typically FaceTime my aunt, who can also be named Sonia, although she spells it with an i as a substitute of a y? Whether it is after 9 p.m., I can virtually assure that her pixie minimize will probably be hidden beneath a silk scarf similar to Massey’s, wrapped round her head like a bandage.
Then the video skips forward: The officers have entered her house. 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 procuring 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 may see all the pieces stacked inside.
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 might 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 digicam follows her, I discover a black rolling chair that may make extra sense in an workplace. On one other chair, pumpkin-orange material 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, perhaps, or rice—should be sizzling.
One of many officers backs away. Massey appears confused; she asks the place he’s going. He tells her he doesn’t wish to get hit by boiling water.
Then she says: “I rebuke you within the identify of Jesus.”
“Huh?”
“I rebuke you within the identify of Jesus.”
To the officers, this appears weird—understandably. However I’ve heard the phrase earlier than, primarily as a result of I’ve members of the family 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 maintain a demon from utilizing an individual to do one thing unhealthy. The phrase might 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 offended. It’s the tone of voice that you just may use whereas saying: For goodness’ sake, that is actually getting ridiculous.
“You higher fucking not,” Grayson responds, the craze 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, perhaps. 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 woman”—as her father described her—or a girl 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 liked 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 might help her. “Nah,” Grayson says, “she’s executed. 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 will do.” We understand then that she’s nonetheless respiration: “She’s nonetheless gasping a bit,” the companion says, and he presses one thing in opposition to her head to attempt to cease the bleeding. I think about the power it will need to have taken for her physique to hold onto life in these moments. Was she in a position to 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 now have the file of what occurred solely as a result of it was captured by Grayson’s companion: Grayson himself by no means turned on his physique digicam. 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.
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. Perhaps that’s partly as a result of, this time, the sheriff’s division was fast to fireplace the officer. Grayson now faces fees together with first-degree homicide, to which he has pleaded not responsible. Certainly it’s additionally as a result of others have change into desensitized like I had, feeling that we had witnessed a lot violence that the one option to maintain going was to distance ourselves from it. And perhaps 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 Occasion. 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 essentially the most highly effective place on this planet, whereas on the identical time, one other Black girl, even at her most susceptible, carrying her nightclothes and headband, is perceived as a menace—and shot to demise in her kitchen.
