For training rookie cops, civilians are your best prop

It’s a jungle out there. Lot of crazy people running around with guns.

And then there are the criminals.

Maybe you saw the story in the paper this week about the Huntington Beach Police Department’s training exercise in which one officer occasionally hides a gun in the car of someone who’s been pulled over. The idea is to see whether the officer’s rookie partner can find the gun during a routine vehicle search.

You can see that police have come a long way from simply beating a confession out of a guy.

Anyway, the department recently scrapped the gun-hiding practice after one of the people stopped turned out to be a bad sport about having a cop toss a loaded gun into his trunk. He later filed an official complaint.

The Huntington Beach police spokesman didn’t even try to spin the story this week when our reporter called him. He just said the training ritual didn’t seem to be a very good idea.

Call me crazy, but how are rookies supposed to learn what the street is like unless their elders keep it real? You can’t learn everything about police work from a book.

So an overheated imagination might conjure how the gun-hiding idea sprouted. Perhaps an extended brainstorming session at a local IHOP, in which experienced cops kick around ideas for the rooks that’ll make them better cops and keep the rest of us safe at night.

“OK, if nobody else wants to go first,” an officer says. “How about injecting someone with a drug that makes them convulse and see how the rookie handles it?”

“Might work,” says a veteran captain, who doesn’t seem overly thrilled. “How about arresting people at random -- maybe while they’re shopping -- and telling them they’re suspects in a series of home invasions? If the rookie is paying careful attention, he’ll realize later how innocent people react when they’re wrongly accused.”

“Now you’re talking,” says another cop enthusiastically. “But let’s not stop there. Why not bring a half-dozen of our fake suspects in, stick ‘em in a lineup and then bring in the real victims to identify them? That way, the rookies can learn about the unreliability of eyewitnesses. Afterward, we just apologize to the innocent folks and drive them home.”

“Excellent,” a detective says. “You guys got me thinking. Why confine this to rookie cops? We need a way to test our new dogs, too. I’m just riffing, but maybe we could stop someone walking in the neighborhood, take him somewhere, tell him to strip and then slather him with grape jelly. He puts his clothes back on, we bring him back to Point A and send him home. Twenty minutes later, we take the dog to the neighborhood, give him a whiff of jelly and see if he can track the guy to his house.”

A simultaneous wave of approving murmurs rises from the table of cops as a waitress freshens their coffees. A couple of the guys stuff grape jelly packets into their shirt pockets. Another says, “If you want to have some fun with the civilian, we could make it women’s perfume instead of grape jelly.”

That provokes more laughs. “Here’s one I’ve been thinking of for years,” another cop says. “Because it’s hard to simulate real panic situations, we go down to the pier on Memorial Day and surreptitiously release tear gas into the crowd.”

“That’d be pretty wild,” the captain says, chuckling. “I thought you were going to suggest that we fire rubber bullets from rooftops into a couple of the floats during the 4th of July parade on Main Street. Talk about your panic situation!”

The guys kick around ideas for the better part of an hour. “Don’t you wish they thought like this at the academy?” a veteran cop says, and the others laugh. “We all hate hostage situations, but these guys have to learn. So how about going out some night about 3 a.m. and throw the floodlights on somebody’s house? We could get a chopper, too, just to add some sound effects. We get on the bullhorn and demand that the guy come out. He keeps saying we’ve got the wrong guy, and we find out whether our new guys have the patience to hang in there.”

“I like it,” says another cop, smiling. “But can I ask a favor?”

“Shoot,” the captain says.

“If you’re doing it at 3 in the morning, don’t pick my neighborhood. My dogs are extremely jumpy.”

“That we can do,” the captain says, slapping his colleague on the back. “This is enough for one day, guys,” he says, adjourning the session and picking up the tab.

As the group reaches the front door to leave, the captain winks at them and says, “And, hey, be careful out there.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana

.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.