In 2016, Stephen Mader responded to a 911 call about a man having a mental health crisis. RJ Williams intended to use an unloaded gun to commit suicide by cop, but he only truly posed a danger to himself. Mader arrived, recognized what was going on, and started working to de-escalate. Then, two other officers, Ryan Kuzma and Michael Baker, rocked up, nearly crashed their cars, jumped out, and started screaming at Williams and Mader. Within ten seconds of their arrival, Kuzma shot a neighboring house, shot a nearby car, and finally shot Williams dead.
For this incident, Stephen Mader was fired. Subject of a ProPublica story in late 2018, Stephen Mader is one of the most straightforward examples of the phenomenon I’m talking about. He made no accusations and gave no testimony, other than his statement that night. Mader in fact defended Kuzma’s decision to kill Williams. Within weeks, after making no effort to ask Mader about his decision-making, police chief Rob Alexander fired him for “endangering” Kuzma and Baker, then gave a press conference saying nobody was at fault and all three officers were back at work. While there were other issues at play besides Kuzma and Baker’s recklessness - the 911 dispatcher failed to relay to anyone that the gun was unloaded - firing Mader cut off any potential for those issues to be resolved, and positioned the department to disclaim any sort of responsibility for RJ Williams’ death.
The city of Weirton settled with Mader for a bit less than $200,000 to avoid the question of why, exactly, they had fired him. He has since become a National Guard MP. The family of RJ Williams recieved nothing. I strongly recommend reading ProPublica’s article, which discusses all of this in much more detail and references other, similar incidents.