Police in midtown Manhattan are being critiqued after they shot to death a mentally deranged woman who had just stabbed two pedestrians on 7th Avenue, one of them fatally. The woman, 49-year-old Pamela Cisneros, then turned on police officers who responded to the stabbings and tasered her after she repeatedly ignored their commands to drop the two kitchen knives she was holding. The electrical charge did not drop her; instead, an enraged Cisneros then charged at police officers, two of whom shot her as she flailed the large blades at them. 710 WOR’s Curtis Sliwa and Larry Mendte talked about the shooting. Cisnersos was tased, but unlike the police officers reacting in real time, they had the luxury of viewing the footage repeatedly after the fact. Both hosts came to the same conclusion: the cops were justified to shoot Cisneros because she failed to listen to the police and chose to attack them.
Larry said the NYPD was justified to shoot Cisneros, as she disregarded several commands from several officers to put the knives down and then charged at police with the knives drawn: “Most police shootings, the vast majority, are justified, but because there’s been a couple that didn’t line up the way they should have, and because a couple of people shot at somebody when they shouldn’t have, you decide every single time the police use a gun [that] there’s something the matter. There must be something off, there must be something wrong, there must be something more they can do. Many times, that is exactly what they are trained to do.”
Curtis suggested that perhaps the NYPD might want to take a closer look at the tasers they are giving the rank-and-file cops: “I’ve seen situations where they have tasered a suspect that they had surrounded and it seemed to enrage the suspect, who then lunges at them. That was clearly the case in the case of this woman, who lunged at them with the knives out after they had told her to drop the knives. I wonder if the tasers that they use are powerful enough to knock a person down. I’ve certainly seen tasers, when used appropriately, can knock down a guy who’s 6-foot-8 and 320 pounds. I’m just wondering if they’re powerful enough.”
Photo Credit: Getty Images