BALTIMORE (AP) - Police have shot and wounded three people over a five-day span in Baltimore, two carrying guns authorities later found to be either fake or unloaded, and a third wearing what looked like an explosive vest and later deemed harmless.
Police spokesman T.J. Smith said Monday that investigations are being conducted, and it appears the officers in each case acted in accordance with their training to neutralize potential threats and minimize possible harm. He said that while neither gun was loaded with bullets and the vest turned out to be a fake, the threat of possible violence in each case warranted police action.
“It’s unusual to have these three incidents lumped together. But to say there was no threat is absolutely unequivocally incorrect, because the perceived threat was absolutely there,” Smith said.
The latest shooting occurred Sunday morning when a police officer shot a man three times who had walked up to his parked patrol car and pointed a gun at him, police said. The man, who is in critical condition, is facing assault and weapons charges, authorities said. According to police, the man after being shot asked the officer why he didn’t “finish him off.”
Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said at a news conference Monday that although the internal investigation into that case is still in preliminary stages, all signs point to what he called a possible attempt to commit “suicide by cop.”
“Upon secondary review of that gun, it was not loaded. Obviously the police officer had no way of knowing that whatsoever,” Davis said. “So it gives us the initial impression, and we’re still at the preliminary point in our investigation, that the suspect’s intent may have been to commit suicide by cop. We suspect that because he pointed a gun at a police officer in full uniform inside a police cruiser and the gun was unloaded.”
On Wednesday, police said, an officer shot and wounded a 13-year-old boy who refused to drop a BB gun so realistic that a reporter at a news conference had a hard time distinguishing the replica from a semi-automatic handgun set beside it.
On Friday, police said, department snipers shot a man in a hedgehog costume who walked into a local TV station wearing a bright red vest designed to look like an explosive device.
The officers have all been placed on routine administrative leave.
The recent incidents coincided with the one-year anniversary of the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who had been critically injured in the back of a police transport van. Gray’s death prompted protests and rioting in Baltimore, and intensified scrutiny of the city’s police department and how its officers treat young black men.
The nonfatal shootings also follow a fatal police-involved shooting in late March. Police said officers shot and killed a father and son they said were poised to open fire on an East Baltimore street in broad daylight. The father was armed with a semiautomatic rifle, his son with a pistol, according to police.
This year has seen a series of incidents of police officers being killed in the line of duty. In February, two Harford County sheriff’s deputies were fatally shot outside of an Abingdon eatery. A Virginia police officer was killed while responding to a domestic disturbance, and an officer in Philadelphia was shot during an ambush.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.