FL Deputy Fired for Waving Weapons and Quoting "Training Day"

A Lake County, FL, deputy sheriff has been fired for playfully waving his firearm and Taser while quoting lines from Denzel Washington’s character in “Training Day,” an action movie about a corrupt cop, the Sheriff’s Office said Thursday.

Deputy Dean Zipes, who was hired in December 2015, was fired April 21 for the incident and other allegations that he twice pulled out his firearm in an office setting and once made a motion to draw his service weapon at a pizza delivery boy, joking that he was alleged Orlando cop-killer Markeith Loyd , the Orlando Sentinel reports.

Zipes was quoting a profanity-laced scene in the 2001 movie about 4 a.m. Feb. 16 in which Washington’s character points two pistols at a rape suspect and rubs his weapons together in front of a police trainee, according to an internal-affairs report.

Zipes said he doesn’t know what “sparked” his actions that morning, but that he was trying to be funny and was also on edge because of an armed robbery his sector responded to that night, the report said.