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Florida Deputy Gets the Boot After Impersonating Denzel Washington In ‘Training Day’

Former Lake Country Deputy Dean Zipes said he was just trying to be funny when he replicated scenes from the movie “Training Day.” (Video screenshot courtesy of NBC4i.com/Warner Bros.)

A Florida deputy has been fired after playfully waving his gun and Taser while impersonating actor Denzel Washington in the cult classic movie “Training Day,” the Lake County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday, May 4.

Deputy Dean Zipes was terminated April 21 for the incident, along with other allegations that he twice pulled out his weapon in an office setting and even motioned to draw his firearm on a pizza delivery boy, joking that the teen was accused cop-killer Markeith Loyd, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

During the Feb. 16 incident, Zipes reportedly enacted a profanity-laced scene from the 2001 hit movie in which Washington’s character draws two pistols on a rape suspect and rubs his weapons together in front of a police trainee. Zipes rubbed his pistol and Taser together, also in front of a trainee, in the direction of a nearby convenience store, an internal affairs report stated. Several other deputies witnessed the incident.

Zipes told investigators he didn’t know what prompted his behavior that day but said he was trying to be funny and take the edge off following an armed robbery his sector responded to earlier.

“I am not a rogue, reckless, dangerous, insane guy that slipped through the cracks at the hiring process and somehow got a gun and a badge,” the ex-officer said, adding that he’s “just a guy going through some stuff.”

The Orlando Sentinel reported that investigators also responded to complaints filed by Zipes about offensive remarks made to him by fellow deputies. However, investigators heard that the soon-to-be fired deputy had twice drawn his gun in an office setting, made racial slurs and even “made a scene in a local Starbucks after not receiving free coffee.”

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