Last week, our last call of the night had an officer on our shift deploy the new Taser for the first time. He hit the accused with both cartridges, after the first blast wasn't enough to convince him to get off of his ex-girlfriend, whom he was straddling and pummelling to a bloody pulp.
We arrived on scene a few minutes later. I learned that the two shared children had been trying to pry daddy off of mommy. The four year old was seemingly OK. But the two year old had blood covering his face, from one of his father's back-strokes taken to his nose as he rained blows down on the child's mother while the toddler tried to wedge himself between the two.
I asked the mother for a cloth. She was already more concerned about the whereabouts of her cell phone than the wellbeing of her bleeding baby. I cleaned the boy, changed his day-old diaper and then put clothes on him that I found in a pile on the couch. He had been shivering each time the door opened.
By the time we were finishing the video statement with the victim, she was expressing regret that her baby daddy was going to be locked-up. She refused the hospital for her injuries, instead deciding to head home and not pick up her children from her sister-in-law's until the next morning, so she could get cosy with the guy she had been beaten for texting to that night.
Dad won't be convicted, and will almost certainly be out on bail long before trial. She wasn't going to show-up to testify for his upcoming case from the last time he beat her senseless. This time won't be any different.
