Attorney: California cops broke law when leaving guns unlocked in car

By Andrew Shepperson

Adding insult to injury, it turns out a group of California police officers that had guns stolen from their car were also in violation of the law, a top prosecutor said Thursday.
The five Taft police officers had gone to help out the University of California, Berkeley Police Department with a free-speech rally last weekend and then stopped for lunch on their way back home, KBAK reported. As the officers were busy eating, a backpack containing two handguns was stolen from their unmarked vehicle.
While the theft was obviously a crime, Kern County Assistant District Attorney Scott Speilman said the officers also broke California state law by not securing their handguns in a locked container when they left them in the vehicle. However, the punishment for that violation would be fairly light, Speilman noted.
“You could potentially face an infraction,” he said. “It is much like a traffic ticket, in that … it is less than a misdemeanor, but it is an infraction that can cost some money.”
Taft Police Chief Ed Whiting agreed in an email that the officers had violated the law but argued there was not enough space in their vehicle to properly store the handguns. Whiting’s email read as follows:
…there is mitigating

Source: Guns.com