I know about insubordination, as my employment jacket will attest.

So Const. Tash Baiati and moi have something in common: a one-week suspension.

But my infraction amounted to losing my marbles — temporary insanity — during the debilitating Paul Bernardo trial, having a meltdown with Star management. No editors were hurt or the public put at risk.

Baiati killed a car — firing 23 rounds from his pistol, reloading in between, at a stolen vehicle which by any sane measure of assessment was pinned on the spot, having already collided with a police cruiser, another scout car positioning alongside the suspect driver’s door, preventing escape, and still other cruisers strategically surrounding the scene.

Baiati’s fellow officers on the scene told police professional standards investigators they believed the stolen silver sedan was still able to break out of the defensive box. You know, pull a Fast & Furious stunt or maybe levitate itself and flee, possibly posing a risk to the public.

What we know now, but no officer knew then — midday on Sept. 16, 2015 — is that the driver was in fact a reckless and criminally infested dude, with a length-of-your-arm record, 173 convictions, that included multiple dangerous car chases and once using his vehicle to drag a police officer 25 metres.

In hindsight, using lethal force might have been justifiable — if the situation had been more immediately threatening, beyond the 60-year-old Edward Skotnicki’s struggling refusal to comply with orders to get out of the car and stop resisting, even as a constable reached into the vehicle attempting to control the suspect.

But hindsight — and foresight, as an exculpatory factor — are routinely advanced when cops are investigated for using lethal force: I feared for my life. I feared for another officer’s life. I feared for civilian life.

Holding officers accountable for their actions is an endless source of debate and dispute, in a judicial system where cops are at the front-line end of the law, on the same side, so to speak, as judges and prosecutors. It is a card their defence lawyers predictably play, and overwhelmingly with success.

A police disciplinary tribunal did, on Monday, hold Baiati accountable — to the tune of seven days’ docked pay on the single count of insubordination. That charge resulted from procedural Toronto Police Service firearms rules that forbid firing a gun at a car solely to disable it.

In the agreed statement of facts, Baiati contended that he recognized he did not have a clear shot at the driver because two officers were still close to the car and reaching into it. Baiati believed “he and the other officers were in imminent danger if the stolen car were to be put in motion,” according to the tribunal’s written decision.

Thus, aiming at the hood of the car instead: Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. Reload. Vehicle “suddenly and inexplicably” lurched forward. (Recall all the times a suspect officer has avowed: He was coming at me!)

Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.

The expiring sedan could not be resuscitated.

Whether in those few moments Baiati ever gave even passing thought to the possible consequences of his decision to fire repeatedly — at a busy Parliament St. intersection, drivers and pedestrians all around — discharging a double fusillade of bullets that could easily have ricocheted off the sedan, injuring or killing himself, another officer, a member of the public — is unclear.

But he had options. He ignored them.

“If a situation escalated dangerously or if the consequences of continued intervention increased the danger, disengagement may be appropriate,” Insp. Richard Hegedus, the hearing officer, wrote. “There were options available to Constable Baiati.”

It was doubtless a chaotic event. But police officers are expected to exercise some judgment in heart-pounding situations. Law enforcement is held to a higher standard, with good reason, though it most often goes the other way in judicial matters — courts and tribunals hold them to a lower standard, cutting slack for the dangerous job they do. When the situation is reversed, cops never cut slack with an accused — routinely overbooking, dumping the defendant into a trough of charges.

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From that gerrymandered equation, among other imbalances of power and status, arises a deepening distrust for police.

A car is a lethal weapon, of course it is, but this one was demonstrably incapacitated. Baiati turned a bad situation worse. In the process, with the abundance of media coverage the event generated, the Toronto Police Service was again brought into disrepute.

The ensuing Professional Standards investigation concluded that Baiati discharging his weapon was justified under the Criminal Code but contrary to service regulations for taking down a car with the objective of disabling it. Baiati didn’t break any laws; he violating a police service order.

Baiati, who pleaded guilty, gets credit from the tribunal for his co-operation and attending, at the earliest opportunity, a one-day remedial training program at the Toronto Police College.

It was sheer good fortune that a car was the only casualty.

And for this severe misjudgment, Baiati loses seven days pay.

Last week saw the release of the Independent Police Oversight Review, which addressed a plethora of concerns and dissatisfaction with the civilian agencies tasked with holding cops accountable. The report did not address the historical lapses of Police Act tribunals and how very puny their decisions have been over the decades. Surely their practices also deserve scrutiny.

I don’t want Baiati’s hide. In truth, I suspect we have nothing in common, beyond a professional notation on our employment records, with my added clobbering of Olympic credentials withdrawal and forbidden to step foot in the courthouse for the remainder of Bernardo’s trial. The Star’s disciplinarians don’t do wrist-slap-lite.

And I don’t have a gun.

Actually, check that. I do.