Joe Biden has called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, moments after shocking police video was released showing an Illinois officer fatally shooting Sonya Massey after she called police fearing a home intruder.

In his first public statement since dropping his bid for re-election, Biden said the shooting of Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman, by white Sangamon county sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson, in her home in Springfield, after a dispute over a pot of boiling water, “reminds us that all too often Black Americans face fears for their safety in ways many of the rest of us do not”.

Biden, who is recovering from Covid at his home in Delaware, said Massey, “a beloved mother, friend, daughter and young Black woman … should be alive today”.

  • Nougat@fedia.io
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    3 months ago

    Okay, so the officer orders her to take a pot of boiling water off the stove, and then shoots her in the face for doing so.

    No wonder those charges came so fast.

    • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      The crazy thing seemed fairly relaxed until she said she “rebuked him unto Jesus”. Seemed like it went from “haha I don’t want to be around a person carrying boiling water”, and she seemed to respond jokingly with the Jesus thing, which immediately made the cop respond as if she just pointed a gun at him?

      Does this guy think this lady is some kind of biblical sorcerer?

      • 5oap10116@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Can’t wait for the defense being:

        “She said she was going to ‘rebuke me in the name of Jesus’ and I felt my soul was in imminent danger from this woman and her boiling cauldron of witchcraft”

      • Nougat@fedia.io
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        3 months ago

        Does this guy think this lady is some kind of biblical sorcerer?

        See my other comment about where Springfield, IL, is; it’s not out of the question.

      • mean_bean279@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I definitely don’t think it was a joke. Her twitchy nature and constant fear strike me as someone facing a mental health issue. Specifically schizophrenia as she said she was hearing people around the house. All that said, a cop should be able to recognize those signs immediately and should have used less lethal force at the most. His first instinct shouldn’t have been to bridge the gap and get closer after he felt “threatened.”

        • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Schizophrenic people still have a sense of humor… To me it came off as if she recognized that the cop was afraid of her and made a snappy comeback, because it’s generally offensive to be accused of wanting to mame strangers with boiling water.

          Rebuke just means to criticize, it’s not an attack, or even aggressive. To rebuke someone to God, is just saying your going to complain about their behavior to God. Tbh the moments before she was killed seem to me the most coherent and responsive she behaved during the entire encounter.

          • Nora@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            This was what I got from it too. She was offended that they would think that she would attack them with boiling water.

            It’s kinda like she said “don’t bring that Hateful ideas into my house.” She was warding of the bad juju and disagreeing at the same time.

            I think she’s also not dumb and knows what officers are capable of and might have knew where things were going. The police were escalating the situation for no good reason. And she was scared, cause they kill people who are black for very little. In this case they killed her for listening to them.

          • mean_bean279@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Not when they’re paranoid. Which she is now confirmed to have been a paranoid schizophrenic. It runs in my family and I’ve seen it quite frequently and heard the stories of others in my family that have seen it. When you know the signs it’s incredibly easy to spot, and police should be trained on the simple signs to figure this out and better help them keep a situation calm.

            Article

            • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              police should be trained on the simple signs to figure this out and better help them keep a situation calm.

              Or just maybe, we should have other workers available than tinhorn sheriff wannabes with guns in our local governments that you can call to de-escalate situations. But no no, that’d be too much like defunding the police.

              • frostysauce@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                A good friend of mine lives in Burlington, VT and has schizophrenia. There is a service there, First Call, that will send people trained to recognize mental illness and deescalate the situation only getting police involved as a last resort.

                Or at least that’s how it is supposed to go. Said friend was still drug away by police with First Call on the scene before. At least they weren’t shot, I guess. Still if they are ever in need of outside intervention I saved the number in my phone and I’m sure as shit not calling the police on them.

                I wish more cities had a similar service.

              • mean_bean279@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                She actively thought people were outside her house trying to get in. That’s what you send the police for. A counselor can’t ask someone to go away if there was an actual threat and they were armed. This is one of those events where a police officer was the best initial call and then as things continued the way they were they should have brought in a counselor.

      • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        I don’t think he turned it off before he shot her, just that he didn’t have it on until after he shot her.

        This is still murder and he’s a fuckin pig that should rot in the prison industrial complex he feeds. Fuck him and his cop buddies. But I didn’t get the info from this article that he turned it off himself. Just didn’t turn it on in the first place, which he’s supposed to do before every interaction.