You have two choices in life: You can be cool, or you can be a cop.

Although a police officer may be totally chill when they’re off-duty, there’s something within the cop mindset that tells them that the best way to relate to the hoi polloi is to be Totally Hip while they’re wearing their cap and badge.

This rarely ends well. Sometimes, it verges on unconstitutional — for example, there was a brief period when cops began pulling people over to give them gifts, leading to many breathless articles telling them not to do that and that it’s actually illegal to do so. Other times, it’s simply cringey. Go onto TikTok and search “cop dance,” and you’ll be flooded with videos of officers feebly attempting the Nae-Nae in a country where half of all murders go unsolved.

Then, there’s the rare example of a cop who tries to be so cool that it becomes straight dangerous. This leads us to an incident that happened in Denver at the distillery and dance club Mile High Spirits. While trying to stunt on a group of random observers, an FBI agent named Chase Bishop did a backflip — and negligently discharged his firearm into someone’s leg.

He attempted a quick recovery, but the damage was already done: He shot his gun into someone’s leg, severing his artery in the process.

The victim, a guy named Thomas Reddington, was about as chill as one could be about the situation, telling the Denver Post, “I've done stupid things at bars to impress girls, too.” Respect.

Still, Bishop was rightfully punished for his actions. He was fired from the FBI and was sentenced to two years unsupervised probation, per the BBC — less one would expect for nearly blowing a guy’s leg off, but at least it’s something. He also never explained why he, as an FBI agent, decided to shove his gun in his waistband like a wannabe gangster, but I suppose there are some questions to which we’ll never get answers.

Reddington, for his part, was satisfied with the sentence, saying he held “no personal grudge against Mr Bishop.” Let’s just hope that the next cop who tries something like this at least has a good holster.