A man in Buena Park, California was attempting to purchase a roll of Mentos mints when an off-duty police officer pulled a gun on him in April.
Surveillance footage shows 49-year-old customer Jose Arreola handing money to the cashier at a Chevron station, before a man behind him pulls a gun from his pocket and announces that he's a police officer. Arreola responds by saying that he had just paid for the candy, but the officer insists that he put the roll of Mentos back on the counter and leave the store.
After a few tense moments, the Chevron cashier tells the off-duty officer that Arreola had in fact paid for the candy, and the officer apologizes for his mistake.
"It’s been a month and I still can’t shake it," Arreola told The Orange County Register on Friday. "It was traumatic, the whole incident."
"He was so arrogant and cocky, because he holds a badge—because he's a cop," Arreola says. "We just feel like we can't trust cops no more. I've seen a lot of videos of cops mistreating people, but I never thought it would happen to me. I just feel disappointed."
The officer was "way out of policy, even for Orange County," explains Joe Domanick, associate director of the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College. He tells The Orange County Register, "It’s astounding there would be a police officer who would think it’s OK to do it. It’s entirely opposite of what’s going on in police departments. You pull a gun as a last resort. It shows the officer has been poorly trained or not trained at all or he’s totally unsuited to be a police officer."
