The woman, Talisa Coombs, told Delaney she’d just gotten into what she alleged was a physical altercation with her granddaughter’s mother, Maria Pike, and called 911. Independence police’s response to that 911 call ended with the shooting death of Pike, 34, and her two month old daughter, Destinii Hope — who were identified Tuesday by authorities from the Police Involved Investigative Team, or PIIT, a team of eastern Jackson County detectives called in to investigate police shootings and use-of-force incidents.
The officer who fired his weapon was “a long-tenured veteran of law enforcement,” Dustman said. That officer and another two who were at the scene are on administrative leave.
I don’t want to defend the police here. It seems like they’re more than capable of defending themselves against toddlers and innocent people sleeping in their homes.
What I will say though is on the efficiency of tasers. They’re grrrreat, if you get skin contact with both electrodes, on the first try. But both prongs must hit, pierce the clothing, and get skin contact. Reloading the taser, or switching to the side arm, can take too long. There’s a lot of myths about what will stop a taser, and I guess that some of the myths are affecting cops in their choice of force method.
But going for the gun on a disturbance call about a woman with a baby and the baby’s grandmother? And shooting the baby? What, as the baby identified as an armed and dangerous fugitive?
It’s only a problem if you think that you need to kill. And I mean there lots of different tasers, you just described one and then went on to say that it won’t work.