Two teenage boys sustained gunshot wounds April 7 from what police say was the accidental discharge of an undercover officer's weapon. Last week, the boys' lawyers said the state's attorney's office has assured them their clients won't have to face any criminal charges stemming from the incident.

Gee, thanks.

Police have been stingy with details, citing ongoing investigations into the shooting, but they've told us this much: Undercover officers doing reconnaissance in the 8300 block of Pleasant Chase Road in Jessup, in advance of the execution of a search warrant, witnessed what they believed to be drug activity. The officers decided to confront Garcia Wilson and Dwayne Usery, both 15-year-old residents of Jessup, and as they were exiting their vehicles, one officer, who had drawn his weapon, tripped and, instinctively putting his hands out to break his fall, accidentally pulled the trigger.

Even though both boys suffered wounds -- one to the arm, the other in the abdomen -- police maintain only one bullet was fired. Charles Jerome Ware is skeptical about that part and about other aspects of the police account.

Ware is Wilson's attorney, and makes no bones about his intention to seek restitution for his client, who he says continues to undergo treatment for emotional distress resulting from the incident.

Ware says Wilson volunteered, without prompting, that he heard not one, but two shots, and that he seemed quite certain about it.

The type of gun involved is one of the details of this case that police have not made public (another being the undercover officer's name), but Ware says two different firearms experts have told him that if the officer was carrying a 9-millimeter handgun -- favored by police for, among other reasons, its excellent safety features -- it is highly unlikely for it to have gone off accidentally just because the officer stumbled.

Police spokeswoman Sherry Llewellyn said this week that, for now, the ball is in the court of the state's attorney's office.

Noting that such cases might or might not go before a grand jury, state's attorney's office spokesman Wayne Kirwan wouldn't talk about it or even confirm that the office is looking into the matter, although he acknowledged that the state's attorney does probe police-involved shootings.

My question, he said, puts him ''in the position of standing in the pouring-down rain and saying 'I can neither confirm nor deny that it's raining.' "

The state's attorney's office has sent letters to Ware and to Usery's lawyer, Jason Shapiro, noting that no criminal charges will be filed against their clients. Yet police say they found drugs at the scene.

Llewellyn said she did not know what sort of drugs officers recovered, or in what quantity. Those sorts of details weren't among those officers gave her for the initial release on the matter, and police are unlikely to make public any further information on the case until the state's attorney's office has completed its probe, Llewellyn said.

"Part of my problem with the police is the lack of transparency," Ware said. "The public deserves to know what happened."

Hard to argue with that. It's been better than two months and there are still some pretty basic blanks to fill in here.

Maybe it really was just an innocent goof by a well-intentioned person, but the longer this thing drags on, the more it looks like the police have something to hide and are just hoping everyone forgets about it.

These were two unarmed kids shot by police. Patience for an explanation beyond "oops" ought to be getting thin.

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