The sheriff for Illinois’ Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office, which employed the former deputy who shot and killed Sonya Massey in her home earlier this month after she called 911 to report a possible intruder, said during public comments Monday night that they had “failed” her.

“Sonya Massey – I speak her name and I’ll never forget it,” Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell said during a “Community Healing & Listening Session” Monday night at Union Baptist Church in Springfield. “She called for help and we failed. That’s all she did: call for help."

“I’m going to say something right now I’ve never said in my career before: we failed,” Campbell continued. "We did not do our jobs. We failed Sonya. We failed Sonya’s family and friends. We failed the community. I stand here today before you with arms wide open to ask for forgiveness.”

  • ccunning@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    63
    ·
    2 months ago

    “I’m going to say something right now I’ve never said in my career before: we failed,” Campbell continued. "We did not do our jobs. We failed Sonya. We failed Sonya’s family and friends. We failed the community. I stand here today before you with arms wide open to ask for forgiveness.”

    Great. So how did you end up hiring this known asshole, and what are you going to do to keep it from happening again?

    • MagicShel@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      40
      ·
      2 months ago

      Yes. Forgiveness demands a commitment to be better in the future. No matter how eloquently and humbly phrased, this is just “sorry” if there are no concrete actions being committed to.

      • ccunning@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        24
        ·
        2 months ago

        The common refrain from my childhood was “‘Sorry’ isn’t good enough”.

        It was really annoying at 8yo, but I get it now…

    • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      2 months ago

      and what are you going to do to keep it from happening again?

      “People are asking questions. What we are going to do to stop anyone from finding out when this happens next time?”

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      Police chief:

      To ensure this doesn’t happen again, we’ve prepared hundreds of “I’m sorry” templates that will fire off. So when our officers do heinous shit like this again, the Sorry will be within 24 hours, not a week later.

      Some examples of these, you ask?

      Sorry for shooting your dog.

      Sorry for roughing up your grandfather.

      Sorry for showing up at the robbery hours later.

      Sorry for laughing when you called for aid.

      Sorry for raping that woman.

      Sorry for all stats about us beating our spouses and partners.

      Sorry for spending millions on taxpayer money on surveillance that statistically has shown it doesn’t move the needle in public safety

      We can do better. By saying sorry faster.

    • Zombiepirate@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      Wow, this is the first time that police department has failed with him at the helm? What an incredible record!

      In the sense that it lacks credibility.

    • NobodyElse@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      Hiring “bad apples” needs to be a crime for the sheriff, chief, etc. It’s sad that’s what it would take to keep guns and badges out of these guys hands.

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    37
    ·
    2 months ago

    If there’s no actual consequences for the department, this wasn’t a failure. This was a success they don’t like getting bad PR for.

  • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    30
    ·
    2 months ago

    Imagine if the police used some critical thinking. Discharged from the military for his conduct, 2 DUIs (thats just when he got caught). How the hell did this guy keep his job as law enforcement after the first DUI? That should pretty much immediately take you off the force. If they can’t be trusted to drive sober and responsibly, how can we trust them as a law enforcement officer? What if they showed up drunk to work as well?

    This situation could have been avoided if the police were more critical of themselves as an organization and had stricter rules and regulations for themselves.

    • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      2 months ago

      Imagine if the police used some critical thinking.

      Intelligence is liberal, elitist wankery.
      Education is a threat to good, rightwing common-sense.
      Critical thinking is an Alphabet Mafia agenda.

      I would not be surprised if the Supreme Court banned critical thinking.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    2 months ago

    Nice words. Truly. But words are meaningless without actions to back them up and make sure it never happens again.

    • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      2 months ago

      They could start by firing any cop with a DUI. Seems like a conflict to keep those people employed by the police.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      2 months ago

      Yeah. Cops always want to treat this as a one off incidents no one could have saw coming…

      Isnt this one of the ones where dude was fired from multiple agencies and kept getting hired?

      If these cops want “forgiveness” they need to be proactive and fire every other cop they employ like this, and stop hiring new ones.

      They want to blame the bad apples, but refuse to get rid of them until it’s national news.

  • Shawdow194@kbin.run
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    2 months ago

    “We did not do our jobs.”

    When most people don’t do their jobs they get fired

    ACAB

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    2 months ago

    “Please accept our apology for this tragic event which we failed to prevent. Please also accept our apology for the next tragic event we fail to prevent.”

  • TheOneCurly@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    2 months ago

    If a construction worker started cutting beams and caused the building to collapse that wouldn’t be “not doing their job”, that would be active and malicious sabotage. This isn’t even remotely an apology, it makes it sound like they just ignored a call for help, not actively created a situation that no one asked for.

  • Verdant Banana@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    keep voting in pro police candidates to lead the country and we end up with undertrained over funded police forces that self regulates

  • Media Bias Fact Checker@lemmy.worldB
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 months ago
    ABC News Media Bias Fact Check Credibility: [High] (Click to view Full Report)

    Name: ABC News Bias: Left-Center
    Factual Reporting: High
    Country: United States of America
    Full Report: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/abc-news/

    Check the bias and credibility of this article on Ground.News


    Thanks to Media Bias Fact Check for their access to the API.
    Please consider supporting them by donating.

    Footer

    Beep boop. This action was performed automatically. If you dont like me then please block me.💔
    If you have any questions or comments about me, you can make a post to LW Support lemmy community.