How to Get Fired as a Cop in 3 Days – FINAL UPDATE

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How to Get Fired as a Cop in Three Days – A Small Town Reckoning

On a warm Saturday evening in late May, the sky above the Front Range turned lavender as the sun dipped behind the Rockies. The town of Brookhaven, Colorado—population just under eighty thousand—settled into its usual rhythm of patio dinners, dog walkers, and the distant hum of traffic along Eisenhower Boulevard.

At 8:27 p.m., the first 911 call came in.

“There’s a woman walking in and out of the road,” the caller said. “She’s singing or yelling or something. I think she’s going to get hit.”

Within minutes, two Brookhaven Police Department patrol cars rolled toward the scene. Officer Daniel Hobbs had been on the force for six years, steady and methodical. Officer Russell Moreno had been hired eleven months earlier. He was still on probation—technically a full officer, but not yet protected by the department’s civil service safeguards.

When they arrived, they found her in a parking lot near a strip mall—a woman in her thirties, thin, sunburned, with tangled hair and an oversized jacket draped around her shoulders despite the warmth. She was pacing between painted parking lines, singing loudly to no one in particular.

“I’m just walking and singing,” she declared when Hobbs approached. “Is that illegal today?”

Hobbs kept his tone calm. “Ma’am, we got calls you were walking in traffic. We just want to make sure you’re safe.”

“Safe from what?” she asked, tilting her head. “The sky? The wind? The government?”

Her name, they would later learn, was Angela Hall. She had a history of mental health struggles and sometimes drifted between friends’ couches and low-cost motels. That night, she seemed agitated but coherent—eccentric, perhaps, but not violent.

Moreno watched from a few steps back, arms folded across his vest. He had responded to three mental health calls already that month. Each one left him feeling frustrated and underprepared. He had joined the force to chase burglars and break up fights, not to parse rambling metaphors from people who refused help.

“Do you have ID on you?” he asked.

“I have a voice,” Angela replied. “Is that not identification enough?”

Hobbs tried again. “Where are you headed tonight?”

“Forward,” she said simply, then laughed.

For nearly ten minutes, they spoke with her. She insisted she wasn’t in traffic now. Hobbs confirmed she was currently in the parking lot. Moreno reminded her that callers had seen her step into the roadway earlier.

“I step where my feet go,” she said. “It’s a free country, isn’t it?”

The question hung in the air longer than it should have.

Eventually, Moreno made the decision. “We’re going to detain you for a mental health evaluation,” he said. “For your safety.”

“For my safety?” Angela repeated. “Or yours?”

She didn’t resist when Hobbs gently took her arm. She stiffened when the handcuffs clicked around her wrists behind her back.

“You’re making a mistake,” she said quietly.

They placed her in the back of Hobbs’ patrol car and transported her to Brookhaven Medical Center for evaluation under Colorado’s protective custody statute. The hospital staff was accustomed to these drop-offs. An intake nurse led them to a small examination room with pale green walls and a narrow bed bolted to the floor.

Angela sat on the edge of the bed, hands cuffed, shoulders tight.

“I was just singing,” she murmured.

The nurse began asking questions—name, date of birth, current medications. Angela’s answers drifted. She grew irritated when the nurse asked if she’d been drinking.

“Don’t speak to me like I’m broken,” she snapped.

Moreno stepped closer. “Watch your language,” he said.

She looked up at him, eyes sharp. “You took my freedom for singing.”

“Ma’am, that’s not why you’re here.”

She leaned forward suddenly and spat. The saliva struck Moreno’s cheek and slid down toward his jaw.

For half a second, the room froze.

Moreno reacted.

His right hand came up in a swift motion, striking the side of Angela’s face. Not a full swing, not a dramatic punch—but forceful enough that her head snapped sideways. The sound echoed in the small room.

Hobbs grabbed Moreno’s shoulder instantly. “Hey! Back off!”

Angela’s eyes widened. “You hit me,” she said, stunned. “I’m cuffed.”

Moreno stepped back, breathing hard. “She assaulted me,” he said. “She spit on me.”

The nurse stood rigid against the wall, hands trembling.

Hobbs guided Moreno out into the hallway. “What was that?” he demanded in a low voice.

“She spit on me,” Moreno repeated. “That’s assault.”

“She’s restrained,” Hobbs said. “You can’t just—”

“I redirected her,” Moreno interrupted. “I prevented another spit.”

But even as he spoke, the certainty in his voice wavered.

Hospital security had already begun reviewing the surveillance footage. Within hours, the department’s watch commander was notified. By morning, the chief had seen the body camera video from both officers.

The footage was clear.

Angela, handcuffed. Angela, spitting. Moreno’s hand striking her face.

The chief called Moreno into his office the next day.

“You’re on administrative leave,” he said.

Moreno sat stiffly, jaw clenched. “She assaulted me.”

“I understand that,” the chief replied. “But she was restrained.”

“So I just let her spit on me?”

“You step back,” the chief said evenly. “You disengage. You call for assistance. You don’t strike a handcuffed patient in a hospital room.”

Within seventy-two hours of the incident, the department terminated Moreno’s employment. As a probationary officer, he had few procedural protections. The letter cited violation of use-of-force policy and conduct unbecoming an officer.

News of the firing broke quickly. A local civil rights attorney posted the bodycam footage online with a headline that spread like wildfire: How to Get Fired as a Cop in Three Days.

The video amassed millions of views in a matter of weeks. Comment sections erupted. Some called Moreno a thug. Others insisted spitting was assault and officers had a right to defend themselves.

Angela, meanwhile, was released from the hospital the next morning with a swollen cheek and a citation for disorderly conduct that was later dismissed. She moved in temporarily with her sister in Denver.

“I keep replaying it,” she told her sister one night. “The sound. I was angry. I shouldn’t have spit. But he hit me like I wasn’t human.”

The district attorney’s office reviewed the case. After a month-long investigation, they charged Moreno with third-degree assault—a misdemeanor alleging he knowingly or recklessly caused bodily injury.

The charge surprised some in the law enforcement community. Police unions quietly worried about precedent. If every questionable strike became a criminal case, where would that leave officers forced to make split-second decisions?

The trial began nearly a year later.

The courtroom was small but packed. Reporters lined the back wall. The bodycam footage played on a large monitor for the jury—twelve citizens who shifted uncomfortably as the strike replayed in slow motion.

The prosecutor argued that Moreno’s action was retaliation, not protection. “He was angry,” she said. “He reacted out of frustration. She was handcuffed. She posed no imminent threat.”

The defense countered that spitting carries health risks and qualifies as assault. An expert in police training testified that officers are taught to prevent further assaults and may use reasonable force to stop them.

Moreno took the stand in his own defense.

“I didn’t punch her,” he said. “I struck to redirect her face. I had seconds to react. I was concerned about bodily fluids.”

The prosecutor pressed him. “You couldn’t step back?”

“She was close,” he replied. “It happened fast.”

When the jury retired to deliberate, tension filled the air. Some spectators expected hours of debate.

It took forty-seven minutes.

Not guilty.

A murmur rippled through the courtroom. Angela stared straight ahead, expression unreadable.

Outside, Moreno exhaled deeply as cameras flashed. “I’m grateful the jury saw the truth,” he said.

Angela did not speak to reporters.

In the weeks that followed, the case became a lightning rod in Brookhaven. City council meetings filled with residents arguing over police accountability. Some demanded reforms—clearer de-escalation protocols, independent oversight. Others accused critics of undermining law enforcement.

Chief Ramirez addressed the community at a public forum.

“The criminal standard is beyond a reasonable doubt,” she said. “Our department’s policy standard is different. An acquittal does not automatically mean conduct met our expectations.”

Still, the question lingered: if a jury found no crime, was the firing fair?

Moreno applied to several departments in neighboring counties. Most did not respond. One invited him for an interview, then rescinded it after community members circulated the viral video again.

The internet does not forget.

Angela filed a civil lawsuit against the city, alleging excessive force and unlawful detention. The city eventually settled for an undisclosed sum, avoiding a drawn-out trial.

Months later, Angela stood once again on a sidewalk at dusk—this time outside a small community art center where she attended group therapy sessions. She still sang sometimes, quietly now. She was working part-time shelving books at a thrift store.

“I don’t hate him,” she told her therapist. “I just wish he’d seen me.”

Moreno, meanwhile, took a job in private security. He told friends he missed patrol—the sense of purpose, the structure. He maintained that he had done what he thought necessary in the moment.

“I became a cop to help people,” he said one evening over drinks. “I got punished for protecting myself.”

Hobbs remained on the force. The incident haunted him in subtler ways. He had replayed the moment countless times—the spit, the strike, his own voice saying, Back off. He wondered if he could have positioned himself differently, anticipated better, intervened faster.

The department instituted new training modules on responding to mental health crises. Officers practiced stepping back, creating distance, recognizing the difference between insult and danger.

The phrase “protective custody” took on new weight. Protect from what? Protect for whom?

In Brookhaven, opinions remained divided. But one fact was undeniable: three days had been enough to end a career. Not because of a riot or a scandal spanning years, but because of a single impulsive motion captured on camera.

The story did not resolve neatly into heroes and villains. Angela had spit. Moreno had struck. A jury had acquitted. A department had fired. The public had judged in its own court of opinion.

Perhaps the truest lesson lay somewhere in between: authority carries power, and power demands restraint. Especially when the person in front of you is restrained.

On the anniversary of the incident, the viral video resurfaced again online, shared by someone new who had just discovered it. Comments filled with the same debate as before.

Angela did not read them.

Moreno tried not to.

Life moved forward in Brookhaven. Patrol cars still cruised at dusk. Officers still responded to calls about wandering strangers and worried citizens. Most encounters ended without incident. A few did not.

And somewhere in a small evidence locker at the courthouse, a DVD labeled State v. Moreno sat quietly, sealed but not erased—like a reminder that justice, like freedom, is complicated.

For some, the verdict meant the system worked.

For others, it proved the opposite.

But for everyone involved, the events of that warm May night would remain a turning point—a moment when a split-second decision met the unblinking eye of a camera, and a town was forced to ask itself what accountability really means.

In the end, perhaps the question was not how to get fired as a cop in three days.

Perhaps it was how to remember, in the hardest moments, that the badge does not cancel humanity—on either side of the handcuffs.