City settles fatal police shooting lawsuit for $5.89 million after mother, infant killed
By Andy Alcock
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INDEPENDENCE, Missouri (KMBC) — A high-profile and deadly police involved shooting in Independence has resulted in an almost $6 million lawsuit settlement.
Independence Police released body cam video showing two officers’ November 2024 confrontation with Maria Pike while she was holding her infant daughter Destinii.
It shows Pike grabbing a knife from her bedroom table, then moving towards one of the officers before he fatally shoots both Pike and the baby.
“This is textbook, literally this is current best practice policing,” said then Independence Police Chief Adam Dustman shortly after the shooting.
Pike’s family clearly disagrees.
The lawsuit petition states the officers identified Pike as an emotionally disturbed person and called for a mental health co-responder for assistance.
The suit states that despite that call, the officers tried to take Destinii away from her mother before the mental health co-responder arrived.
“The female mental health co-responder had arrived to the doorway of the apartment and heard gunshots,” the lawsuit states. “Had the officers waited just a few seconds longer before escalating the situation, the “co-responder” would have intervened and assisted.”
“There was a lot of an opportunity to say, you know, hey, there’s no imminent danger right now. We’re going to step outside and wait for somebody who’s a trained professional to come in and give us assistance,” said Lauren Bonds, an attorney with the National Police Accountability Project. “That kind of crisis response model is only useful when it’s actually used.
Now, the city has agreed to settle the lawsuit for $5.89 million.
More than $900,000 of it is taxpayer money.
On Monday, the Independence City Council agreed to transfer up to $2.7 million from the city’s general fund to a “risk management fund”.
The money is for legal fees and settlements and comes from increased bond issuance fees.
The remaining more than $4.9 million is being paid by the city’s insurance.
“Even though cities pay millions of dollars a year for coverage, what will happen is they’ll say coverage specifically for police will be either overly expensive or you won’t be able to get coverage at all,” said Dan Hobart, a former Independence city councilman.
Hobart is concerned about dozens of settled lawsuits involving the Independence Police Department.
Many of them have involved officers suing their own department.
Hobart said the lawsuits are having an impact on city services.
“Clearly, millions of dollars have come out of the city coffers. And the real big problem is literally what bucket of funds are they coming out of, I literally have no idea,” he said.
Bonds said the Pike lawsuit’s settlement size and short time frame of roughly a year and a half to settle are both unusual.
“I think that is an indication that the city was very concerned about liability and taking the case to a jury,” she said.
The Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office declined to prosecute the two officers.
According to a city spokesperson, the two officers no longer work for the Independence Police Department.
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