Here’s what I have read from multiple, conflicting sources out of the Detroit press:
1. The weapon was a S&W M&P .40, department-issue.
The DPD claims that their weapons “don’t have a safety,” and the M&P’s 1911-style slide safety is optional. I’ll get to that in a sec.
The M&P .40 reporting is backed up by S&W press releases about the DPD contract in 2009. So if we are, in fact, talking about a department-issued pistol, it was a M&P in .40 S&W.
Without the optional slide safety, the M&P has a trigger safety like a Glock and internal safety blocks to prevent discharge upon being dropped.
2. I have seen consistent reporting that the pistol was in a waistband holster, under the cop’s shirt.
3. I have seen three conflicting reports in the Detroit press as to how the woman was hugging the LEO: From behind, in front and around his knees.
I think it is pretty obvious that it would take an extraordinary sequence of events for the deceased to have been shot in the heart and lung from a waistband-carried rig if she were hugging the LEO from the front or the back, unless he was 7’ tall and she was a very short person.
There’s something else going on here, the DPD isn’t reporting it.
As for the “our pistols don’t have a safety” line from the DPD press interview: This is going to bite them badly in court, should a lawyer want to make hay. S&W offered an additional manual safety on the pistol and DPD didn’t avail themselves of this option? Hoooooo.
Yeah, like he was DANCING WITH HIS WIFE when a strange woman came up and grabbed him from behind.
Not too hard to figure out what happened next. Of course, I am sure he wiped his wife's fingerprints off the trigger before the EMT's and POLICE arrived.
With a waistband-holstered gun, the only scenario where I could see the bullet entering her chest is if she was on her knees giving him head at the time.