Carrying Gun Is 'Not a Wise Decision' in Baltimore: Police

BALTIMORE, MD – It is "not a wise decision" to carry a replica gun on the streets of Baltimore, the city's top cop said, the day after a 13-year-old carrying a BB gun was shot and injured by a detective.

Police Commissioner Kevin Davis explained what led to Wednesday's shooting and said he hoped to have discussions that could prevent similar incidents from occurring, speaking at a press conference Thursday afternoon.

Related: Police Shoot 13-Year-Old Carrying 'Dead Ringer' of Gun

The shooting occurred at 4:10 p.m. on Wednesday near Baltimore Police headquarters, where two plainclothes intelligence officers had just attended a meeting with fellow detectives about an uptick in violence; there had been multiple homicides and nonfatal shootings in the city within 48 hours — "all involving firearms," Davis said.

Driving from the meeting to their district station, the two officers saw the teen walking on Baltimore Street with a basketball in one hand and what appeared to be a gun in the other, according to Davis.

The detectives identified themselves as police, told the boy to stop and drop the gun, and the teen ran 150 yards—about 100 yards down Baltimore to Aisquith streets and 50 yards on Aisquith Street—Davis said.

"...At some point, he stopped and turned toward our police officers...[with] what looked like a firearm in his hand," Davis said.

One of the detectives, a 12-year veteran of the department, fired twice and hit the teen twice—once in the leg and once in the shoulder, according to the commissioner, who said the boy was injured "non-fatally, thank God."

The teen was taken to an area hospital for treatment, while Officer Thomas Smith, who fired his weapon, was placed on administrative duty, according to police.

After the shooting, officers handcuffed the boy's mother in what the commissioner described as an "emotional moment" at the scene.

"I have two 13-year-olds," Davis said. "I can only imagine myself or my wife coming outside and seeing the police interact with one of our kids. I can only imagine when this mother came out...and then learned that her son was shot, not only shot, but shot by a police officer."

Davis said that officers made a decision to help secure the area in what was a chaotic situation.

"Emotions run high," Davis said. "So the fact that the police officers on the scene made a decision, a judgment call, during a very volatile scenario to temporarily restrain the mom with handcuffs was a judgment call they made given what was happening at that very emotional, emotional moment..."

He said the entire incident is under investigation and would be fodder for further discussion with the department.

"Are there other ways to handle a distraught mom besides handcuffing her? We are having those discussions," Davis said. "My heart goes out to this 13-year-old; my heart goes out to his mother."

Riot Anniversary Coincides with Shooting

The shooting came during an emotional moment for Baltimore, on the one-year anniversary of the riots that shook the city last spring.

April 27 is "such an important date for our city, for our police department, for me personally," Davis said.

Riots erupted following the funeral for Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old who died in police custody April 19, 2015.

Six officers are charged in connection with Gray's death. One case ended with a hung jury in December, and the next officer to stand trial will appear in court May 10.

For the past year, police-community relations have been under a microscope in Baltimore, and Davis said that the department was probing its response to Wednesday's police-involved shooting of the 13-year-old with the utmost scrutiny.

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'We Can't Call 911. We are 911.'

Despite the recent focus on policing and community — the Department of Justice is conducting an investigation into the methods of the Baltimore Police Department — the commissioner said that a detective shooting the teen Wednesday was not the result of miscommunication. It was a matter of procedure and public safety, he said.

"This has nothing to do with police-community relations," Davis said. "This is a police response to a person seen in broad daylight with a gun in his hand in the middle of a street."

The commissioner asked people to consider the scenario: "If a person is seen walking down a city street with one of those [guns or replicas] in his hand, what do [people] want police to do? What do they expect us to do? Drive by? We can't call 911. We are 911," Davis said.

"What do folks expect us to do if that happens in front of your house, on your street, in your neighborhood, and someone's walking down the street with what looks like to be a gun in his hand? The response in my opinion [for police] is to do something about it..." the commissioner said.

He added that he did not know why the teen decided to run rather than to drop the gun.

"The greater conversation really is, what is a 13-year-old doing with one of these in his hand? And I wish I had an answer for you for that. It's something that certainly this community could do without. With the spate of violence that has existed for a long, long time--the gun violence in particular in Baltimore—we want to keep anything that's a real gun or a replica gun out of the hands of our children," Davis said.

Replica Guns Are Not Toys: Police

The teen was holding a Daisy 177 caliber BB gun that was not sold in toy stores, according to Baltimore Police Media Director T.J. Smith.

"They sell them on Amazon in the hunting section, not the toy section," Smith said. "This is not an orange-tipped gun..."

He said the manufacturer, Daisy, has a warning on its website that people under 16 should not carry the BB gun without parental supervision.

In addition to the fact that there was no parental supervision for the 13-year-old carrying the item, Smith said investigators were looking into the legality of the BB gun.

"There are ordinances in Baltimore against carrying BB guns," Smith said.

He said there should not need to be a law for people to know it puts one's safety in jeopardy to carry a firearm or something that appears to be one.

"When 290-plus people in Baltimore were killed last year with one of these, a handgun," Smith said, "it just isn't a wise decision in a city like ours to walk out with something like this in the middle of the afternoon."

Photo of gun recovered from the scene, courtesy of Baltimore Police.