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According to an eyewitness, a D.C. Police detective (pictured above w/ gun) went nuts after kids pelted his Hummer with snowballs at 14th and U Streets NW this afternoon. The veteran detective got out of his car and eventually grabbed for his gun, displaying it to the crowd. He did not immediately identify himself as a police officer. He calmed down once his fellow uniformed cop arrived. Apparently, someone called 911 to report a man with gun. The snowball fight had been well hyped on Twitter. The news of the incident first broke there. We caught up with an eyewitness moments ago.

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Eyewitness Matthew Bradley tells City Desk:

“An hour ago, we showed up to see a snowball fight already in progress. Two factions along 14th Street along the intersection. It was pretty friendly, mostly OK. At one point, there was one interaction with the police that I saw. A cop got stuck in the snow. People stopped and helped him out. A couple moments later, at the intersection, heading west along U was this big maroon Hummer. A small faction of people decided to target it with snowballs. They’re throwing snowballs at the Hummer. It turns out the driver of the Hummer is a detective. He gets out. He’s waving a walkie talkie. It’s not going well. Then he starts waving a gun. He hadn’t identified himself at this point. There was a point where things cooled off a bit, more police showed up, and he identified himself at that point. The name was Det. Baylor. My guess was B-A-Y-L-O-R.”

“There was a point where it got really tense. The experience for many people was snowball fight kind of fun…and then there’s a guy with a gun.”

Bradley says he heard that the police were responding to a 911 call for a man with a gun. The detective calmed down once his fellow cops arrived. Bradley says that he thinks the cop was a detective but is not 100 percent sure. D.C. Police later confirm that the gun-waving cop is a veteran detective.

Later in the incident, the detective goes into the crowd and grabs a man who he thinks threw a snowball at him:

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RhossH1bm4&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]