A University of Maryland police officer was critically injured when accidentally shot in the head during a training exercise on Tuesday. He was transported to Shock Trauma for treatment. (Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun video)
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said Wednesday there was "no acceptable explanation" for the shooting that critically wounded a University of Maryland campus police officer during a city police training exercise.
With state police conducting a criminal investigation, city police brass have launched a broad review after the unidentified officer was shot in the head Tuesday with a live round while training at a closed state psychiatric hospital in Owings Mills.
Among the subjects of the inquiry, according to a police spokesman, is that top command including the director of the training academy say they were unaware that the hospital site was being used for training. "There was a communication breakdown in the chain of command that is being investigated," said spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.
There was also a lack of ranking supervisors on site, Guglielmi said.
He confirmed that Efren Edwards, a 25-year veteran and a training academy instructor detailed part-time to Police Commissioner Anthony Batts' executive protection unit, was among the officers present, though he was not the officer who fired the shots.
The wounded officer remained in critical condition Wednesday but was responsive, Guglielmi said.
Rawlings-Blake, who met with members of the wounded officer's family at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, said she had confidence that police would "get to the bottom of it."
"I was so angry I was almost speechless to think that something like this could happen," Rawlings-Blake said Wednesday, speaking after the Board of Estimates meeting. "I made a commitment to the trainee's family that we would get to the bottom of it."
Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts immediately moved to suspend all police academy operations and training programs pending a safety review.
In an e-mail to staff, Batts said six members of the training academy chain of command, including training academy director Maj. Eric Russell, had been suspended pending further investigation. He also said that counseling is being provided to everyone involved.
"Our Professional Standards & Accountability Bureau is conducting an over-arching assessment of the incident. They have two goals: determine why this happened, and how we can prevent this type of tragic incident from ever happening again," Batts wrote in the e-mail. "We must do everything we can to learn from this horrible event and be as transparent and forthcoming as possible ? we owe those involved in this tragedy nothing less."
He said the Maryland Police and Correctional Training Commission would also conduct a review.
State police are leading the criminal probe, because the shooting occurred at the former Rosewood Center, a state facility that has been used by other agencies for police training.
Few details of what happened have been made available, and it was unclear how live rounds found their way into a training environment.
The officer, who was not identified at the request of his family, is in his 40s and was hired by the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus in July 2012. Officers from smaller agencies commonly take part in training with larger police forces to conserve resources.
Retired Lt. Col. Michael Andrew, who oversaw the city's SWAT teams, said live ammunition is rarely used in any training scenario. Most guns used in training are distinguished by red handles and have no magazines or firing pins. In classroom settings, he said, "They won't even let you in the building with a loaded weapon."
Andrew said his SWAT teams trained weekly in a former city maintenance shop.
"They weren't using live ammunition," he said. "They would painstakingly make sure everything was unloaded and simulate live ammunition."
Police would not offer any details about Tuesday's training exercise, saying that information was part of their investigation. In recent years, police have described using "active shooter" training exercises in which officers use so-called "simunition" bullets similar to paintballs.
Simunitions are fired from a standard handgun and explode on impact. They allow officers to practice in realistic situations, often in abandoned buildings.
The former Rosewood Center dates to 1888 and once housed as many as 3,000 patients with developmental disabilities. Its population dwindled to 166 residents by 2010, when Gov. Martin O'Malley ordered its closure. Most of the remaining residents were relocated to group homes.
jfenton@baltsun.com
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