At other jobs, even committing an infraction that didn't injure nor kill anybody but was against company policy is enough to get terminated. It's often a liability issue for the company.
And that's still the case here? This is just one more possible punishment. I'm sure if at tech companies workers were receiving docked vacation they would be raging on HN.
Tech workers and police are extremely different types of workers with extremely different job responsibilities, working agreements/contracts, and level of impact on the groups that oversee them. We are not the same by a country mile.