By \CounterPunch
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
Deputy Sean Grayson didn’t turn on his body camera until after he’d shot Sonya Massey three times. This is probably why he thought he could get away with saying he killed Massey in self-defense, as she was charging toward him with a pot of boiling water. What Grayson didn’t realize is that his partner’s body cam recorded the entire fatal encounter, showing that the diminutive, unarmed Massey was hiding from the Springfield deputy, when Grayson walked around the kitchen counter, shot her in the face and left her to bleed out. Then he lied about it…lies that were caught on tape and exposed as lies on tape.
Grayson should never have been hired as a cop.
His record contains one blemish and red flag after another, starting with his abbreviated career in the US Army. Sean Grayson joined the Army in May 2014, but his career as a wheeled vehicle mechanic lasted less than two years, before he was discharged for “misconduct, (serious offense).” During his time in the Army, Grayson pleaded guilty to charges of driving under the influence. Shortly after his discharge, he was arrested again for drunk driving.
On his application for a job with the Logan County Sheriff’s Department, Grayson said he had been drunk “a lot” in his life.
Despite this dubious resume, Grayson received his law enforcement certification in 2021 and over the next three years was hired by six different law enforcement agencies: the town police departments of Pawnee, Kincaid, Virden and Auburn, Illinois and the sheriff’s offices in Logan and Sangamon Counties. For the first couple of years as a cop, Grayson was only paid $17.50 an hour, but he was compensated by gaining the authority to exert power over people making much more or nothing at all.
While working as a deputy for Logan County, Grayson was disciplined by the department for a high-speed vehicle chase that resulted in him wrecking his cruiser after hitting a deer. It was determined that Grayson had violated department policy on vehicle pursuits.
Two complaints were filed against Grayson during his short stint in Logan County, one by a woman who accused him of “inappropriate behavior” during an arrest and another by a jail inmate who claimed Grayson had “abused his power” during an interrogation in his cell. Neither complaint led to any charges or disciplinary action.
In another incident last year, Grayson became irate when Wayman Meredith, police chief of Girard, Illinois, refused to call child protective services on a woman outside of Grayson’s mother’s home. “He was acting like a bully,” Meredith told CBS News. “He was wanting me to do stuff that was not kosher.”
Audio recordings obtained by CBS News show that two years before he shot Sonya Massey, Grayson was reprimanded for falsifying information in his police reports while working for the Logan County sheriff’s office.
“If we can’t trust what you say and what you see, we can’t have you in our uniform,” a supervisor can be heard telling Grayson on one of the tapes. “The sheriff and I will not tolerate lying or deception…Officers [like you] have been charged and they end up in jail.” READ MORE…
