Baltimore Officer Shoots Boy Who Police Say Had Replica Gun

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/us/baltimore-officer-shoots-boy-who-police-say-hadreplica-gun.html

Version 0 of 1.

A plainclothes police officer shot and wounded a 13-year-old boy who was seen carrying a replica handgun as he walked down a Baltimore street on Wednesday, the city’s police commissioner said.

Two plainclothes officers from the department’s intelligence division spotted the boy while they were driving in an unmarked police car, Kevin Davis, the police commissioner, said at a news conference. After the officers stopped and identified themselves as the police, the boy ran with the replica handgun still in his hand, the commissioner said.

The officers pursued the boy for about 150 yards, rounding a corner before one of them opened fire, he said. The chief did not say where the boy had been shot but said he was expected to live.

The commissioner said that he did not believe the officer who fired acted inappropriately and that he did not know if the boy had threatened the officers or given them reason to believe their lives were in danger.

Commissioner Davis said he had seen the boy’s replica gun and could not tell the difference between it and a real firearm. He described it as “a dead-on ringer for a Beretta 92 FS semiautomatic pistol.”

He said the boy and his mother, who was taken in for questioning, were responsible for making a series of decisions that led to the police chase and shooting. “The mom knew that her young son, a 13-year-old young man, left their home with what the mom describes as a b.b. gun in his hand,” he told reporters.

The shooting occurred on the first anniversary of the funeral of Freddie Gray, a young man who died after being injured in police custody and whose funeral was followed by a riot that shook the city.

“Today is an important day,” the commissioner said. “It’s not lost on me what April 27 means to this city and what it means to this Police Department and what it means to me personally.”

He told reporters that the shooting took place in the context of rising gun violence in the city, where he said gun-related arrests had risen “an astounding 60 percent” this year. He also said there had been “a significant spate of gun violence” in the city over the previous 48 hours.