According to the Baltimore County Police Department, officers sought to serve Gaines a warrant in relation to an earlier traffic violation.
Immediately after the first officer entered her home to serve the warrant, Gaines pointed a shotgun at him, prompting him to withdraw without shots being fired.
[5] That verdict was overturned in February 2019 by Judge Mickey Norman, who ruled that physical evidence suggests Gaines was raising her weapon when shot, thus posing a threat to Ruby and his team.
[12] After the incident, police reported that Gaines, though not actively affiliated with any specific anti-government group, identified and behaved as a 'free person' who does not recognize governmental authority.
[13] Gaines' use of an irregular, homemade "license plate", her telling to the officers that she didn't "follow [their] laws" and the content of her social media posts indicate that she may have identified with the sovereign citizen movement.
Sovereign citizen ideology is rooted in a pseudolegal conspiracy theory implying that government authority is illegitimate and that laws no longer apply to people once they have proclaimed themselves free of legal constraints.
[14] According to police reports, Gaines was stopped for a traffic violation for having a piece of cardboard with writing on it in place of a license plate.
The officers gave her the citation, ordering her to exit her vehicle, and informing her that they would be impounding it as it had no license and was no longer registered in the state of Maryland.
[3] In early November, a new video was released from the incident showing Gaines talking into the camera, expressing her exhaustion but concurrent refusal to back down from arriving officers: "I'm at peace.
[37][38] In the days following the shooting, local artists in Baltimore gathered to sell works to raise money for Gaines' family.
[39] A candlelit vigil was held at sunset at the entrance of Baltimore City College, the school where Gaines graduated from in 2010.
[21] In the days following the incident, a protest was held in New York City, approximately 100 people attended, with the involvement of Black Youth Project 100 and a local group named "NYC Shut It Down" as part of a reoccurring protest event titled "People's Monday".
[41][42] The Phoenix chapter of the African National Women's Organization held a protest for Gaines and two others recently killed by police.
[44][45] On August 15, 2016, a protest was held outside of the Maryland Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) conference at the Hyatt-Regency hotel.
[48][49] A small protest occurred on August 27, 2016, at McKeldin Square in the Inner Harbor area of Baltimore; the group was led by the People's Power Assembly.
[51] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maryland condemned the shooting, releasing a statement saying that the police "decided that they needed to use deadly force to execute that warrant, and needed to expose themselves to the known risk of deadly force being used on them, knowing that a five year old child might be in the line of fire"[29] The National Organization for Women called for the United States Department of Justice to investigate Gaines' death, arguing that police were only at Gaines' home to serve warrants (not to arrest her) and were unable to deescalate the standoff.
[52] The National LGBTQ Task Force condemned the shooting, calling on state and federal authorities to investigate the incident.
[55] Gaines' mother was reportedly at the scene before the fatal shooting, however, she stated she was not allowed to intervene in the standoff, though she had pleaded to negotiate to end the confrontation.
[59] Others have called for the hiring of more female police officers, arguing that policewomen would be less likely to use lethal force to resolve conflicts.
[60] The incident is noted as being further evidence of a trend of live-streaming confrontations between citizens (specifically, Black Americans) and police in the United States.
"[30][4] The corporate watchdog group SumOfUs criticised Facebook for setting a precedent of censorship by orders of police, stating that the move is a threat to civil liberties, owing to the current use of shareable video on social media as an instrument in exposing police violence in the United States.
[4] Activists maintain that cutting off an account or otherwise controlling social media access becomes a strike against those fighting police abuse.
[67][68][7] It has been reported that a month and-a-half later, on August 15, 2020, Judge Norman had retired, however there are records of him presiding over matters within the jurisdiction of Baltimore County up until December of 2021.