He doesn’t belong in prison for dong something stupid, though I guess you could argue reckless endangerment. If he had shot the customers to his left, instead of his own finger he would deserve jail time, though.
The gun shop employee also shares responsibility and may be even more culpable than the cop. While it is stupid and foolish to ASS/U/ME (you know what Felix Unger says happens when we do that) that a gun handed to you by a gun shop employee is unloaded, it really ALWAYS should be the case.
There was negligence in allowing the loaded gun to get into the display case, then negligence in the employee not checking to see if it was loaded, and then finally the cop was negligent in violating rules 1, 2 and 3 of gun safety.
I seriously doubt the cop was fired for having only 9 1/2 fingers. I’m sure they would have given him some sort of desk duty if he couldn’t do normal police work with half a digit missing, if he had been injured in a different manner.
I suspect he was fired for some combination of having an extremely, negligent discharge, that COULD have killed an innocent person, and possibly for going gun shopping while on duty (unless he was on break at the time).
“...I seriously doubt the cop was fired for having only 9 1/2 fingers....”
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Particularly since the missing 1/2 (or 1/3, 1/4?) finger is apparently on his non dominant hand.
He doesn’t belong in prison for dong something stupid,
If this happened to an ordinary citizen, he/she would be PROSECUTED, No Questions asked, and considering he shot a POLICE OFFICER, Attempted Murder of a Police Officer charges are in order.