Pasadena Officer Shot During 'Horseplay' With Loaded Firearm

On a September afternoon in 2025, inside a Pasadena parking garage, a police officer drew his service weapon as a joke. His colleague, driving toward him in a patrol vehicle, saw the gun pointed in his direction and drew his own firearm in response. The vehicle's occupant fired. The bullet struck the officer who had initiated the exchange, entering his shoulder.

The incident remained largely out of public view until months later, when dashcam footage surfaced and news outlets began reporting on what had transpired. The video shows the sequence clearly: one officer standing near a police vehicle raises his gun in what was meant to be a quick-draw gesture, a moment of workplace levity with loaded weapons. The driver reacts by drawing his own gun. In the confusion or instinct of that moment, a shot fires. The officer who started the exchange goes down.

Pasadena Police Chief Gene Harris characterized the shooting as stemming from "unsafe and out-of-policy horseplay involving loaded firearms." The language is precise and damning—not an accident, not a misunderstanding, but a deliberate choice to handle weapons in a manner that violated department protocol. Two trained officers, carrying guns as part of their job, decided to point them at each other as a form of play.

The officer who was shot recovered from the wound. Harris confirmed that disciplinary measures were taken in response to the incident, though he did not specify what those measures entailed—whether they amounted to retraining, suspension, reassignment, or something else entirely. The public record on consequences remains opaque.

The incident raises a straightforward question about the gap between training and behavior. Police departments across the country teach firearm safety as foundational: treat every gun as loaded, never point a weapon at anything you do not intend to destroy, keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. These are not suggestions. They are the baseline rules meant to prevent exactly this kind of outcome. Yet here were two officers, presumably trained in these principles, choosing to ignore them in a moment they apparently thought was harmless.

What makes the story notable is not that it is unique—negligent discharges happen in law enforcement, as they do in civilian gun ownership—but that it happened in Pasadena, a city with some of the strictest gun laws in California, and that it involved officers whose job it is to enforce those laws and model responsible firearm handling. The irony is not lost: officers in a jurisdiction known for gun control engaged in precisely the kind of reckless behavior that gun safety advocates point to as evidence of why strict rules matter.

The officer recovered. The department took action, though the specifics remain undisclosed. The video exists now as a record of what happens when training and protocol collide with a moment of judgment that goes wrong. It is a small incident in the larger landscape of policing, but it carries a clear lesson about the distance between knowing the rules and following them when no one is watching.