The Baltimore police supervisor suspended over the death of Freddie Gray was accused of threatening to kill a man as part of an alleged “pattern of intimidation and violence” that led to a temporary restraining order.



Lieutenant Brian Rice was ordered to stay away from the man after a series of alleged confrontations, including one armed standoff that led to a 911 call and officers from two police departments spending 90 minutes defusing the situation, according to court filings.



“I am seeking protection immediately,” the man wrote to a court in Carroll County, Maryland, in January 2013. He alleged Rice’s behaviour had caused him “to have constant fear for my personal safety” and a “fear of imminent harm or death from Brian Rice”.

The Guardian is aware of the man’s identity but is not naming him due to the nature of the allegations. He declined to comment during a telephone conversation with the Guardian. Rice and the Baltimore police department did not respond to emails requesting comment.



Freddie Gray. Photograph: Courtesy of Murphy, Falcon & Murphy

The emergency protective order was granted. According to a separate filing, Rice had firearms confiscated. In addition to his police-issued Glock pistol, he was said to own a personal Glock handgun, long guns and a cross-bow. The protective order was then lifted after a week when a judge ruled there was no basis in Maryland law for it to continue.



Rice, 41, was one of six officers suspended pending a criminal inquiry into the death of Gray, who died after his neck was “80% severed” by the breaking of three vertebrae, according to his family’s attorney, who said Gray’s voice box was almost crushed.



The lieutenant chased Gray on a bicycle after the 25-year-old made eye contact with him and fled on the morning of 12 April, according to police. A knife was found in one of Gray’s pockets. After he was arrested and dragged to a police wagon he lapsed into a coma and died in hospital a week later. City officials insist his injury occurred inside the vehicle.



The man seeking protection from Rice in 2013 alleged to the court that Rice had said during an apparently alcohol-fuelled confrontation at the man’s house at 2am one morning in June 2012 that he “planned to kill” the man.



“I witnessed Brian Rice remove a black semi-automatic handgun from the trunk of his vehicle,” the man wrote in his petition for protection. As Rice screamed demands for the man to come out of his house, the man called 911 and officers from Carroll County sheriff’s department and Westminster police department arrived, he wrote.



“They remained on scene for approximately one and a half hours,” said the man. “Brian Rice was allowed to leave on foot.” A sheriff’s department spokesman said on Wednesday he could find no record of the call-out. “We were probably there as backup,” he said.



However the man said he had previously not bothered to call 911 in response to threats from Rice due to the officer’s position in local law enforcement. “What good will it do?” he quoted his wife as saying. “He abuses his power as a police supervisor and no one believes us.”



In the two months preceding the armed threat at the man’s house, he said, Rice sent him “numerous harassing and sexually explicit text messages” from his Baltimore police department-issued BlackBerry. Rice refused to stop when asked to cease, the man said.



The man said he finally applied for protection because five days earlier, Rice arrived again at the man’s house in his Hyundai Sonata, before exiting and slamming his car door, yelling and waving his arms at the man. He finally returned to the driver’s seat, “racing the engine” while inching the car towards the man and flashing the headlights.



“This caused me to become distraught and fear my life was about to end,” the man wrote, adding that he was “terrified and had immense fear” of the police lieutenant.



Baltimore police said in an update on Wednesday that five of the six officers involved had provided investigators with written statements. There was no indication of whether or not Rice had given a statement.



A city police union meanwhile criticised demonstrations that have sprung up in Baltimore over Gray’s death, saying it was “very concerned about the rhetoric of the protests.”



“In fact, the images seen on television look and sound much like a lynch mob,” Baltimore’s fraternal order of police said in a statement, “in that they are calling for the immediate imprisonment of these officers without them ever receiving the due process that is the constitutional right of every citizen, including law enforcement officers.”

