CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) - An attorney representing Sonya Massey’s family has responded after a union filed a grievance on behalf of the former deputy who shot her and then withdrew it.
The Illinois Fraternal Order of Police Labor Council had claimed in the grievance that Sangamon County fired Deputy Sean Grayson without just cause after investigators said Grayson shot and killed the Springfield woman earlier this month after she called 911 to report a possible prowler.
The lead attorney representing Massey's family, Ben Crump, as well as civil rights leader Reverend Al Sharpton held a news conference at a church on Chicago's West Side Tuesday, demanding the union withdraw the grievance
Crump said he believes that led the union to back down, especially because of video of the incident.
“Do they see the same video we saw?” Crump asked. “We came, standing with the family, against the police union, to respond to them.”
But, the union told WBBM the grievance was part of the due process procedures guaranteed by contract, and the union claims it chose not to proceed because of its own internal processes.
The union also claimed the grievance was not intended to take away the sympathy it feels for Massey's family.
Grayson was vetted and approved for hiring by Sangamon County in May 2023 despite two drunk-driving convictions, the first of which got him ejected from the Army for “serious misconduct," and having six jobs in four years, including as a sheriff's deputy in Logan County, where he was reprimanded for ignoring a command to end a high-speed chase and ended up hitting a deer.
Sharpton renewed calls for Congress to approve the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act which U.S. House Democrats approved in 2021 before the legislation died in the Senate. It aims to crack down on police misconduct, excessive force and racial bias in law enforcement.
And he encouraged Illinois to adopt a law in Sonya Massey's name that would prevent law enforcement officers from moving rapidly from one department to another, suggesting that Grayson was forced out of one or more previous jobs. There's no evidence of that despite some discipline problems.
“If you're bad in one precinct, why would we think all of a sudden you have some kind of Damascus Road knock-off-the-horse change of heart in another district?" Sharpton said. "A bad cop is a bad cop.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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