By Lustitia Aequalis

On a summer night in 2024, 36-year-old Sonya Massey called 911 to report a possible prowler outside her Springfield, Illinois home. A single mother of two with deep religious faith, she expected protection. Instead, a Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy—Sean Grayson—shot her in the face inside her own home.

The shooting wasn’t just another tragedy—it was preventable. After Grayson’s arrest, his record revealed DUI convictions, sloppy evidence handling, reckless pursuits, and a reputation for impulsive behavior.

Yet none of it stopped him from wearing a badge.

Illinois responded with the first law in the nation requiring every police recruit to sign away the secrecy around their past.

🚨 What the Law Says

Signed by Governor JB Pritzker and sponsored by legislators connected to the Massey family, the law requires:

• Full disclosure of past employment records, including unredacted job performance reviews, psychological and physical fitness reports, civil and criminal court history.

• Access to sealed settlement agreements, nondisclosure clauses, and separation agreements from previous law enforcement jobs.

• Court authority to compel reluctant agencies to release documents.

• Judicial access to records sealed by court order if necessary for hiring review.

No other state has a law this sweeping.

⚖️ Why It Matters

Illinois lawmakers and police chiefs agree: this isn’t about punishment— it’s about trust.

• Communities should know that when they call for help, the officer responding has no hidden history of bias or misconduct.

• Departments need to know the full background of the people they’re putting in uniform.

• Families like the Masseys shouldn’t learn—too late—that a tragedy was avoidable.
  

As James Wilburn, Sonya’s father, put it:

“People should not be able to go from department to department and their records not follow them.”

📌 The Limits—and the Lesson

Even with this law, Grayson’s hiring might not have been blocked. His history was already known to the Sangamon County sheriff who hired him. That reality is the hard truth: a law can open the file, but it can’t force the right decision. Which means the community’s role in holding law enforcement accountable is still critical.

🛡️ Accountability Isn’t Just for Hiring

When hiring systems fail, real-time documentation becomes the public’s safety net. That’s where your phone—and the right tools—make the difference.

The Witness App was built for exactly these gaps:

• Record encounters the moment they happen.

• Auto-backup video to the cloud so it can’t “go missing.”

• Send real-time alerts to trusted contacts, because misconduct doesn’t wait for a press release.

Laws like Illinois’ are a step toward transparency. But until every department uses the information they uncover to make safer choices, our own documentation is the community’s frontline defense.

Register for the Witness App release. Practice using it before you need it. Your phone can protect more than just you.

By Lustitia Aequalis

The official federal record says George Floyd was not killed by a police officer. 

In the Department of Justice’s database, his death was captured on video, ruled a homicide, and resulted in a murder conviction, which was mislabeled as a killing by a civilian.

That error is the tip of a nationwide failure. Under the Death in Custody Reporting Act, the DOJ is supposed to track every person who dies in police custody, jail, or prison. Yet a new Marshall Project investigation found hundreds of deaths missing, thousands with critical details blank, and entire states reporting almost nothing.

📊 The Law That’s Not Being Used

Congress passed the Death in Custody Reporting Act in 2000 with a clear goal:

• Count every death connected to law enforcement or corrections.

• Identify patterns.

• Prevent the next one.

The law even allows the DOJ to withhold federal funds from agencies that fail to report. In 25 years, that penalty has never been used.

🕳️ The Data Gaps

The leaked unredacted records from 2019–2023 revealed:

• 681 deaths missing entirely from the federal count.

• Thousands marked “cause unknown” or “pending” for years.

• Hundreds with no name, wrong name, or listed as “Decedent” or “Unknown.”

• Race, age, and location often left blank.

• High-profile cases—like Joshua McLemore in Indiana or Alan Willison in Georgia—absent altogether.

Some states, like Mississippi, reported just one jail death in multiple years. Others, like Louisiana, omitted hundreds despite independent databases showing the true toll.

⚠️ Why This Matters

When deaths disappear from official records:

• There’s no public trail for families seeking justice.

• Lawmakers and watchdogs can’t spot dangerous facilities or abusive patterns.

• Officers and jailers responsible for preventable deaths keep working, unchecked.
  

As policy analyst David Janovsky put it:

“It’s embarrassing to DOJ because the data’s bad, it’s embarrassing to cops because they’re killing people, it’s embarrassing to prisons because they’re letting people die.”

Some agencies see no incentive to comply, especially if federal penalties hit the state’s budget, not their own. Others distrust civilian oversight and resist sharing data that could get people fired. The result? Silence becomes policy.

🛡️ When the System Hides, the People Document

If the federal government can’t even count the dead, communities need their own tools to make the truth visible.

The Witness App puts that power in your hands:

• Record police encounters the moment they happen.

• Store the evidence securely in the cloud—untouchable by local erasure.

• Alert trusted contacts instantly, because some stories can’t wait for the paperwork.

Data gaps aren’t just statistics—they’re the space where injustice grows. Until every death in custody is counted, your own documentation may be the only record that survives.

Register for the Witness App. Learn it. Use it. Because the truth is worth more than a statistic.

By Lustitia Aequalis

Days before the school year began in Los Angeles, a 15-year-old San Fernando High School student with significant disabilities sat in a car with his grandmother outside Arleta High School. They were there to register a family member for classes.

By 9:30 a.m., Border Patrol agents had pulled the boy from the car, handcuffed him, and detained him—presumably on mistaken identity. The agents told school officials they were not enforcing immigration law and were not with ICE, but video evidence and eyewitnesses clearly identified police and Border Patrol uniforms.

The boy was released, but as LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho put it: “His freedom will not release him from what he experienced. The trauma will linger. It will not cease. It is unacceptable.”

For instances like this, Lustitia Aequalis has incorporated connected mental health therapists in our mission to help those whose rights have been violated beyond the police stop.

Source: SFGATE

🚨 Why This Matters

School zones are supposed to be safe havens. But here, enforcement actions blurred the boundary between public safety and public harm.

• Vulnerable populations at risk: Children, students with disabilities, and immigrant families carry heightened risk during any law enforcement encounter.

• Confusion and mixed messages: Even as agents denied targeting the school, their presence and tactics created fear and mistrust.

• Collateral harm: Ammunition was reportedly left at the scene, recovered later by school police— a detail that reinforces the recklessness of the operation.
  

🛑 The Push for Protective Zones

Carvalho used the incident to renew his call for a federal buffer zone around schools:

• No immigration enforcement within a defined perimeter for at least one hour before and after school.

• Automatic lockdown protocols if immigration activity is detected nearby.

• Expanded crisis response and mental health support for affected students and families.

LAUSD already limits cooperation with federal immigration enforcement on or near campuses, but the district is expanding outreach—through its We Are One campaign, 24/7 family hotline, and deployment of crisis response teams.

🛡️ Protecting What the System Doesn’t

Incidents like this make one thing clear: Even “safe zones” need proof. Without documentation, these moments risk being buried under official statements.

The Witness App can help secure that proof:

• Record on sight the moment enforcement approaches— before questions start.

• Cloud backup ensures footage can’t be deleted from your phone.

• Instant alerts send real-time evidence to trusted contacts, so the story isn’t lost.

When the safety of school zones is in question, documentation becomes part of the protection.

By Lustitia Aequalis

In June, Minnesota police arrested Vance Boelter, finding in his SUV a semiautomatic rifle and a handwritten list of 11 “people-search” websites—data broker platforms that sell personal information. For less than $50, Boelter had compiled detailed dossiers on 45 state lawmakers: home addresses, family names, daily routines. Prosecutors believe he used this information to kill Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and to injure State Sen. John Hoffman and his spouse.

Boelter’s case is not an anomaly—it’s the latest in a pattern of broker-enabled violence stretching from the 1999 stalking-murder of a former high school classmate to the 2020 killing of Judge Esther Salas’s son.

Source: Lawfare

🛒 The Business of Endangerment

Data brokers make billions harvesting “public” records, scraping social media, and buying private datasets—then reselling them to anyone with a credit card.

• Hyper-targeted profiles: Beyond names and addresses, these files predict routines, link relationships, and identify workplaces, schools, and income ranges.

• Ease of access: What once took weeks of legwork can now be bought in minutes.

• Broad risk: From domestic violence survivors to immigrants, military personnel, and reproductive care seekers—no one is immune.

And when victims try to “opt out,” the process is a maze of hundreds of takedown requests, weeks-long delays, and recurring re-uploads. The burden is on those most at risk.

⚠️ Laws That Leave the Back Door Open

Recent measures like California’s DELETE Act, New Jersey’s Daniel’s Law, and the federal Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act aim to curb exposure. But:

• Protections are often limited to judges, prosecutors, or specific officials.

• Victims must still locate and request removal of their own data.

• Brokers get up to 45 days to comply—plenty of time for harm.

• Ambiguous exemptions and slow enforcement undermine safety.

Even promising federal proposals have been withdrawn before implementation.

📜 The Constitutional Fight

Data brokers hide behind the First Amendment, claiming a right to sell compiled personal information. But courts haven’t settled whether machine-generated, monetized dossiers should be treated as protected “speech” or as dangerous commercial products subject to regulation. The stakes are simple: corporate speech interests versus human safety.

🔐 Protecting Yourself in the Meantime

While lawmakers debate and courts stall, exposure remains real. Brokered data isn’t just a privacy issue— it’s a physical safety threat.

The Witness App offers one shield in this hostile environment:

• Secure, privacy-conscious recording of any in-person encounter.

• Encrypted, cloud-based storage so documentation can’t be seized or erased.

• Timestamped evidence that resists tampering—critical if surveillance-enabled harassment escalates to in-person threats.

Until systemic reforms force data brokers to protect rather than expose, your vigilance and your tools may be the only defense you can count on.

Register for the Witness App. Learn it. Use it. And keep proof in your own hands.