Last July, Sonya Massey called 911 to report a potential prowler outside her Illinois home.
Two minutes after entering, Sangamon County Sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson, who is White, fatally shot Massey, who is Black, in her kitchen. Grayson later said he felt threatened by Massey. He was fired from the sheriff’s office and charged with murder. He pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.
Then-Sheriff Jack Campbell characterized the shooting as an isolated incident, saying Grayson was “a rogue individual that acted outside the scope of his authority.”
But a CBS News investigation found a pattern of alleged misconduct in Sangamon County, with dozens of allegations against the sheriff’s office over the past 20 years. They include at least eight deaths in the custody of Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office deputies and corrections officers, in addition to Massey’s fatal shooting.
Jaimeson Cody’s was one of the deaths — in 2021, he was arrested for aggravated domestic battery. That night in jail, correction officers wanted to move him to a different room, but he resisted.
“They took him down to the ground…and a man of over 300 pounds sat on his back, broke ribs,” said Sha Kelley, the Cody family’s attorney who is suing the sheriff’s office, which denies wrongdoing.
Cody was pronounced dead the next day. His stepmom, Cindy Cody, said he died from positional asphyxia, a condition where breathing is impaired due to body position, and called his death a homicide.
“This is our son that we lost that we’ll never have,” Cindy said.
None of the officers involved in the eight deaths or other misconduct allegations have been criminally charged. In each case, the sheriff’s office and the officers denied any wrongdoing, even in cases settled in civil court by the county.
Starla Smith’s 23-year-old son Dylan Schlieper Clark died from what she says was a treatable staph infection after he was booked at the county jail for drug possession in 2022. An internal affairs investigation determined officers ignored his complaint of pain and request to be taken to the hospital, offering no medical assistance for five hours as they observed him collapsed face down on the floor, foaming at the mouth, surveillance video and law enforcement records show. Smith says the doctors told her that her son could have survived if he received treatment sooner.
“I can’t move on until there’s some kind of justice,” Smith said.
A wrongful death suit filed by Clark’s family is ongoing.
CBS News presented 50 abuse complaints to Sheriff Paula Crouch, who was appointed after the fallout in the wake of Massey’s death. The allegations include violations of due process, excessive tasing, the rape of a woman who called 911 for help, and arrests made with no legal grounds as tools of harassment or intimidation. The sheriff’s office disputed each one of these accusations.
When asked if the office has a policing problem, Crouch said, “I don’t think that the sheriff’s office has a policing problem. Do you run into bad employees? Probably every agency has had those people.”
Crouch spent most of her career working for the Springfield Police Department and retired in 2023 to work as chief deputy for the Sangamon County court clerk. The county board appointed her to be the new sheriff in Sept. 2024 after Cambpell resigned following public pressure after Massey’s fatal shooting.
Sonya Massey’s cousin Sontae says he is still traumatized by what happened.
“I would say to the new sheriff, be a rebel. There’s nowhere to go from here but up,” Sontae said.
The Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office agreed last month to be monitored by the U.S. Justice Department for two years, but the future of that agreement is uncertain. Civil rights agreements reached at the end of the Biden administration are now under review by officials in President Trump’s Justice Department.
