Officer Pleads No Contest to Felony Gun Charge

A local police officer pleaded no contest Friday to a felony charge that she illegally fired another officer’s gun behind a Diamond Bar tavern where officers were partying last summer.

Pomona Superior Court Commissioner Wade Olson sentenced Officer Kerry Marie Shannon, 30, to three years’ probation, ordered her to pay a $1,000 fine plus penalty assessments and perform 500 hours of community service.

Although Shannon escaped a prison term, Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Krag said the felony conviction bars Shannon from possessing a gun for the rest of her life.

The conviction almost certainly will end her police career, officials said. El Monte police are required to carry a gun.

Shannon entered the plea to negligent discharge of a firearm as her trial was scheduled to begin Friday.

A conviction could have resulted in a sentence of up to three years in prison, Krag said.

The incident occurred just after midnight July 21 in an alley behind Kick’s Bar on Golden Springs Drive.

Shannon and several other rookie officers had been celebrating the end of their probationary year with the department. She went into the alley with two other officers and fired one shot from a .45-caliber semiautomatic gun belonging to her brother-in-law, an Alhambra police officer, prosecutors said.

The shot was supposedly a celebratory action, officials said. Another El Monte police officer reported the incident and investigators later found a bullet casing at the scene.

Since the charges were filed in November, Shannon has been suspended with pay, El Monte police said. She is also the subject of an internal affairs investigation, officials said.