A woman whose house was raided by armed officers after her 12-year-old son was seen with a toy gun has said she supports police action targeting firearm crime but believes they acted out of all proportion. Mina Agyepong’s son Kai was arrested and handcuffed during the operation in Somers Town, north London, before being freed when officers realised it was a BB or plastic pellet gun. Her solicitor has asked the Met to hand over body camera footage after the force said it supported the officers’ actions on the night of 17 July. Chief Supt Raj Kohli, Camden borough commander, said it showed “sensitive and empathetic policing”. Agyepong, 42, a housing association governance officer, told the Guardian: “I understand the police have to do their job and I’m totally behind the police following up reports, particularly around firearms. “But if you think of response as a spectrum, they sent everything other than teargas and helicopters. They had dogs, they had an ambulance, obviously the firearms unit. [It was a] very, very high-level response to a report that somebody has seen what they thought was a gun inside a private residence on a dark night through partially open blinds.” She said that in the six years living in the house, the only previous police activity had been when Kai was brought home by officers after being stopped and searched. Nothing was found. Agyepong said an officer who rang her the day after the raid told her that the member of the public who called said they had seen a gun being handled by a black male and that when they passed the property again 10 minutes later it had been put down on the side. “There was no suggestion there was anyone that was imminent danger or threat,” she said. “I struggle to see how they can justify sending that level of response to my house. Their guns were on us at all times, they had the red laser beams on my children’s heads [she has also two daughters], on their bodies. The whole time all I was thinking was: ‘We’re going to get shot.’” She said Kai was on his laptop when he picked up the BB gun, which was given to him by a friend and did not have pellets in it, and had not been waving it about. Cmdr Kyle Gordon, the Met’s lead for firearms, said on Sunday that he had watched the body camera footage and the officers acted in line with training and expectations. Agyepong’s solicitor, Iain Gould, who has also requested the call logs from the night, criticised the Met for referring to Kai as a youth and said it “appears to have been a totally disproportionate use of force that put the lives of a mother and her young children in grave danger”. He said: “Are black boys allowed to be boys (and play with toy guns in the safety – and what should be sanctity – of their own homes) or are they in the eyes of the Met always ‘youths’ with all the connotations of delinquency, troublemaking and potential threat which that particular word conveys?”