After a few minutes, Mitchell’s son, along with his girlfriend and the baby, emerged voluntarily, and he was taken into custody. After that, police broke down the door and searched Mitchell’s apartment, but did not find a gun. Another video shows officers breaking down the door while onlookers shouted that it was unlocked.

Mitchell said that the tip the police received was about one of the men with her son, and didn’t involve her family. “They said they had a reliable source saying that there was a gun on [one of the men],” she said. “They arrested him on the porch. I don’t know what that has to do with my house.”

RVCPD Commissioner Charles Gennario said that when officers broke down the door, they thought there was a fourth person still in the apartment. They tried to contact the district attorney’s office first, to get a search warrant, he added. “Even if they weren’t in the apartment, we still would have searched the house,” Gennario explained, “because we were looking for a gun under exigent circumstances, especially if there were children in the apartment.”

But Mitchell said she believes the police handled the situation the wrong way, and is looking into filing a suit against the department.

“I think it’s out of control that the police can do what they want and everything’s fine,” she said. “My door was unlocked. My son voluntarily came out.

“He was yelling out the window and they were pointing guns up at the window,” she continued. “They were going to throw some kind of smoke thing in there. I have video footage from other people saying, ‘No, there’s a baby up there.’”