An officer with the Denver Police Department has been terminated from his job after what a supervisor called an extraordinary series of bad decisions" involving an unauthorized vehicle pursuit, filing a false report, and attempting to conceal damage to his patrol car using "white out."

According to the Denver Post, Deputy Director of Denver Public Safety Mary Dulacki wrote in a discipline letter that Officer Nicholas Mauro "so significantly violated the public trust that the only appropriate penalty for this rule violation is termination."

An internal investigation into an incident in November 2019 revealed that Officer Mauro initiated a vehicle pursuit without illuminating the patrol car's lights and sirens. The pursuit ended when the suspect vehicle crashed into a residence. The homeowner then sought to file a report, but Mauro advised that it could be done online.

Mauro then logged a false report that he simply found the vehicle damaged on the side of the road, several blocks from the woman’s house. He also logged a request that the vehicle be towed from the scene, not mentioning the chase, the crash or the damage to the woman’s house or his own patrol car.