Gun play

Perception is reality. If a toy gun looks like a real gun, cocks like a real gun and intimidates like a real gun, police are going to act as if it’s a real gun. “When criminals are making real guns look fake and toy guns are being altered to look real, officers’ lives are being put at risk,” Spokane County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Cpl. Dave Reagan said. “We want to go home at night, so we are going to treat it like it’s a real gun.”

Toy gun users are removing or painting over the plastic orange tips on the fake weapons, which were put there so they could be distinguished from the real weapons, law enforcement officials said.

Safety bulletins from the federal government have been sent to law enforcement agencies warning that the “bad guys” are painting their gun barrels a different color, adding a piece of colored tape to gun tips or installing plastic orange tips on real guns to make officers think the guns are “toys.”

Now, law enforcement officers faced with any gun-like weapon can’t make assumptions either way.

“We’ve explained the danger of having these replica guns,” Reagan said. “If people don’t follow officers’ instructions (about dropping any type gun) it could be bad for the community, bad for the family and bad for the officers.”

An officer’s worst nightmare is to shoot someone wielding a fake gun, Spokane Police Department spokesman Dick Cottam said.

For law enforcement officers in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Los Angeles, that nightmare has been realized.

On Jan. 2, 2003, a police officer shot and killed 17-year-old Allen Newsome after he pulled a pellet gun on a detective dressed as a delivery man, according to a report on toy guns by International Health & Epidemiology Research Center. On Oct. 28, 2000, a Los Angeles police officer fatally shot Anthony Dwain Lee, an actor, at a Halloween party. The officer responded to the party because of a noise complaint. Lee was wearing a rubber gun as part of his costume.

The recent documented incidents involving toy guns in the Spokane-area fortunately haven’t ended in fatalities, but the potential obviously exists.

A Spokane police officer encountered a convicted felon in late April at a downtown park who reached for what appeared to be a real weapon. The toy gun was taken into evidence, and the man was charged with unlawful possession of a dangerous weapon.

One of the man’s previous convictions was intimidation with a dangerous weapon. The officer brought John Christopher Davis, 31, to the ground at gun point and took the toy gun into evidence.

Reagan said the Sheriff’s Office most commonly deals with road rage incidents in which the toy guns are used to intimidate people.

If someone brandishes a fake gun in a road rage incident and “the victim considers it real, it might as well have been real because you will be charged accordingly,” Reagan said. “If you point a fake gun at an officer and he kills the person, the law will fall on law enforcement’s side.”

Liberty Lake, a city of about 5,000 residents just east of Spokane Valley, has had four incidents involving toy guns in the last two months.

Brian Asmus, Liberty Lake’s police chief, said on two occasions, “our officers contacted young people that were holding the guns and as the kids turned to face the officers they had these guns in their hand.

“The officers have had no choice but to respond by drawing their own handguns and ordering them to drop the guns,” Asmus said in a recent letter to Liberty Lake’s City Council to bring the problem to their attention.

“The two 12-year-old boys didn’t point the guns at the officers or the incident could have been worse,” he said. “Luckily the kids complied with the officers’ orders and they were able to determine they were fake guns.”

In late April, two 15-year-old boys were walking through a Liberty Lake apartment complex with toy guns.

Police arrived at Big Trout Lodge and “initially the teens did not realize why we were concerned.”

One teen hid the gun in a front sweatshirt pocket and the other teen came over with his toy gun still in his hand, police said. The teens eventually complied with the officers’ orders and the guns were seized.

The 15-year-olds were told if they wanted the toy guns back, they had to come to the station with a parent.

“Parents need to understand that these toy guns aren’t like the ones they played with as a kid,” Asmus said. “These AirSoft Pro BB and pellet guns are exact replicas, right down to a real gun manufacturer’s name and logo imprinted on them, removable magazine and a working slide just like a real automatic weapon.

“Officers are not going to assume that because it is a child (holding one these guns) that it is a toy gun,” Asmus said. “We can’t afford to make that assumption.”