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 saw part of one US police training video, and I’m not surprised by this outcome. They are brainwashed to fear for themselves and believe everyone is trying to kill them. Doesn’t justify the crime, but this could have been any other cop, and it isn’t enough to hold that one cop accountable.
If this was a war, this would have been a warcrime and the guilt falls on not just the soldier who fired the shot.
Was the baby resisting?
The baby was resting, but the cops were illiterate as usual, so…
calling the cops on someone in America is like calling a personal death squad that sometimes might kill you instead
If you explode a baby’s head with a gun, let’s just skip the trial and send 'em straight to prison for the rest of their life because there’s nothing left for you in this world. Your humanity card has been withdrawn.
People like this deserve to be put in front of a firing squad with a target on their head to see if it explodes too, but I doubt it will because they probably have a thick skull.
if I had killed a little kid, accidentally or otherwise, I wouldn’t have thought twice. I’d killed myself on the fucking spot. On the fucking spot. I would’ve stuck the gun in me mouth. On the fucking spot!
And the psyche of the cops is so bent that instead they go like “oh… whoops. my bad, guys, my bad.”
Really? Prison wasn’t what I was thinking. Why waste tax payer dollars?
This city sounds like a shitshow, Social Services came the day before to take the baby but no one answered the door so they just left? They didn’t even check with the apartment management office? My mom used to do that for a living and would always have the police come with her for any situation like that.
It obviously was a bad situation before the cops showed up, but the father was right to not let them in at first. This situation is exactly what the ‘defund the police’ slogan was aiming at, Social Services should have definitely responded with the police, really any time the police believe a child is involved.
Idk about social services in other places, but I had a buddy that was a social worker. His caseload was something like eight times higher than it should have been. Trying to get in touch weekly with people who don’t want to see you. You can try to prioritize to the best of your knowledge, but there’s only so much you can do.
The passive voice writing in this article is as usual playing defense for the police.
Independence police’s response to that 911 call ended with the shooting death of Pike, 34, and her two month old daughter, Destinii Hope. Let me rephrase this in a less passive way. The response to that 911 call from the independence police officer ended with him shooting Pike, 34 and her two month old daughter, Destinii Hope, to death.
I’m not implying this specific author or newspaper are writing in this style out of malice. I think this is part of a problem with the culture in journalism, because most articles on police violence are written this way.
That’s an interesting observation. But, I can also feel that the point of journalism is to deliver facts about what has transpired, not to place blame, unless it is unequivocally true along with proof. It is however important to expose weaknesses in society, so that people don’t get away with murder, literally or figuratively.
Still, that’s something very interesting that you brought up. It could be just a style common in journalism, or more deliberate so as not to take responsibility for calling anyone out.
The USA never heard of tasers?
I mean you shouldn’t tase everyone but at least if you shoot someone with it at least they are taken out of the equation with a high chance of survival.
Funny you say that…the same police force almost killed some kid with tasers.
Oh, they use those when they want to torture you.
There was an alternative option out there that I haven’t seen much of - it’s an attachment on normal 9mm pistols, that dampens the first shot with a less-lethal projectile. The idea is, if someone is resisting, you can use the shot and avoid killing them. If they’re playing Superman, then you still have lethal force ready in the rest of the magazine.
Police departments haven’t favored it. I assume, because they just gosh darn love killing.
Hear me out on this: Let’s leave guns to the undeniable ‘this is for killing’ variety. We need to reduce the normalization that it’s ok to draw a gun and this would only serve to have a stronger ‘gun first policy’ to encounters. I don’t want to be in a world where I hear gunshots and have to question if it’s non-lethal or not. “It’s ok. I only heard one shot.” Is not the next step I want to see.
I would assume that if the police were forced to use this they would condition themselves to double tap in every scenario to get right to the lethal rounds.
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.
Not only that but you have to be a preeeety exact distance from the target, too far and you’re likely to miss a prong entirely, too close and there’s no chance you get enough prong spread for intramuscular incapacitation to take effect (think the difference between taser videos where they get the right spread and the guy locks up vs videos where they don’t and we get the “I’ll get you removed” video lol).
(Of course as you said this situation likely called for neither. It seems to be a domestic between a 30ish/yo woman and her older MIL, unless one of them was armed this was a “hands” matter not a “weapons” matter, at worst OC spray.)
I tought this was on the onion
I swear, cops will shoot anything that moves, and then anything that doesn’t, and then anything else.
And then fire blindly at nothing at all (see the acorn incident)
Police readers have PTSD episode and shoot all the trees in the yard.
I remember that 😮💨
The ONLY way this could have been Prevented was if that BABY Had a Gun and shot FIRST! But of Course if you Shoot a Cop you Deserve Death so there’s LITERALLY NO WAY for this 2 Month Old Baby to have ended up Alive (In America!)!
No shit she reached for a knife. She had every right to stab that officer to death after he blew her baby’s brains out right in front of her.
Yeah, if this were a criminal case in my country it would look like this: murder(+?)/manslaughter on the child (+) no justification, not in the line of duty (+), ergo (+); manslaughter mother (+), justification? Self-defense? Mother herself justified? No imminent attack, child OS already dead, but her attack excused. Self defense possible for the officer, but self-defense provocation at least carelessly, most likely on purpose = heavy reduction of self-defense measures to basically just evasion and restraining, using the firearm in excess of that = not justifiable; possible excuse excess of violence for self-defense, caused the situation and escalated it beyond anything reasonable, better trained and armed, not excusable = manslaughter on the mother (+)
This would likely get you life in prison (so earliest parol after 15 years) here. And I doubt this would be something any officer or DA would dare to burn their hands over to cover up, as they would be held accountable for that coverup or meddling and go to prison themselves
Your comment has the order confused. The cop fired because she was reaching for the knife.
Well look at you, licking police boots hoping you get permission to go all the way up the thigh!
Coombs and other family members say that Destinii was lying on her mother’s chest when a police bullet hit her in the head. Destinii’s mother also died, from a second bullet family members say came from the same officer.
Meanwhile, in the two weeks since the shooting, Independence police have refused to give any details about the shooting. But hey, you keep licking those boots nice and clean.
*Looks at Russian police*
Well, it only breaks legs and beats pregnant. There is a room for worsement.
US police’s laughable incompetence is usually hilarious entertainment us outside of the US, but this one is incredibly tragic and heartbreaking.
This is ridiculous for any country, let alone the top economy in the world. They’re like toddlers with guys. Even veterans conduct themselves in an amateur and grossly negligent way. There is honestly no way to shame the US police uniform to the entire world more than it already has been, though.
Let’s have a round of applause for the “good” guy with the gun.
Oh wait, ACAB. Especially this one. Can’t wait till we collectively forget about it so the PIIT crew (or whatever they call themselves, I’m not going back) can clean up by sweeping it all under the rug.
New form of jury nullification: “We, the jury, want to sentence this bastard cop to the death penalty even though the spineless prosecutor is not asking for it.”
