[heisenbit]

It is usually a bad idea to take an incident that does not justify firing by itself (or belongs to a similar class of incidents) as a trigger.

The other alleged professional shortcomings were of a very different nature and that won't work well in court.

[morganvachon]

If all the events happened within an annual evaluation period, it's perfectly normal for him to be fired after a certain number of write-ups. That's standard practice at any public safety job, and indeed most government jobs. I'm guessing this was the third offense in the evaluation period.

I know the media likes to represent police departments as hiding their repeat offender employees behind "the blue shield", but every law enforcement agency I've worked for (three including the one I'm currently at) have strict policies about officer conduct. You screw up more than a couple of times, or you really screw up by causing or allowing a citizen or other officer to be hurt or killed, and your career is over.