Police Professionalism

"I was thinking, 'what the hell is this?'" said Thomas Cox as he watched a Huntington Beach, California, police officer place a gun in the trunk of his car. Cox had just been pulled over by the police for hitting another vehicle and leaving the scene of an accident. Not too worry. It was all a training scenario, as Cox found out only later. Police chief Kenneth Small says his officers plant guns, fake drugs and drug paraphernalia in cars they've stopped as a way of training new officers in searches. He added that using a loaded gun, as the officer who put the gun in Cox's car testified he had done, is against department policy, but the department exonerated that officer of wrongdoing because that policy wasn't well understood.