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Denzel Washington And Ethan Hawke In 'Training Day'

Source: Archive Photos / Getty

Back in February, a Lake County deputy thought he was Denzel Washington in Training Day back. Now he’s fired.

If anyone knows anything about the 2001 film Training Day, you’d know that Washington plays a crooked cop who uses excessive force and corrupt tactics on the job. For some reason, Deputy Dean Zipes thought it was appropriate to mimic the character when he reenacted a scene from the movie. A colleague witnessed Zipes waving his gun in one hand and a taser in the other. He recited lines from a scene where Washington’s character confronts a suspect, pointing his gun from his chest to the suspect.

The incident was caught on video (no audio) via a deputy’s patrol car. According to an internal affairs report, a supervisor said that Zipes posed a “serious safety concern to citizens and other deputies.”

Zipes was already under investigation at the time for “pulling his firearm out of his holster twice in an office setting and using racial slurs,” said one internal affairs report. Another incident reported that Zipes “pulled his weapon out of his holster” in the break room and “pointed it at the glass windows and stated he never got to shoot the gun.”

Zipes was fired on April 21 for harassment, on duty use of a firearm, and other violations.

Good riddance.