A video of the July 2014 encounter was recorded by the patrol car's dashboard camera and released by the Seattle Police Department in January.

The video showed officer Cynthia Whitlatch pulling her cruiser up to a corner where the man, William Wingate, was standing, and yelling at him to drop the golf club.

SPD officer involved in the controversial arrest of a 70-year-old man with a golf club fired. http://t.co/mI8rSn8FAT pic.twitter.com/YpbibhvBcn — KIRO 7 (@KIRO7Seattle) September 15, 2015

She told him he had swung it at her, and that audio and video recordings from her cruiser would back up her allegations.

Wingate, who is now 70, appeared surprised in the video, seemed to have trouble hearing the officer, and then insisted he had done no such thing. He said he had used the golf club as a cane for 20 years.

Wingate was eventually convicted of unlawfully using a weapon under a plea deal in which the charge would be dismissed if he had no other offenses for two years. It was the first time he had been arrested. The charges against Wingate were later dismissed, but several other behavioral complaints about Whitlatch surfaced including one based on racially-charged Facebook posts.

Facebook post from Seattle officer. CBS News

No recordings surfaced to bolster Whitlach's version of events, and after a state lawmaker questioned the arrest, the city attorney's office took another look. Prosecutors dismissed the conviction, and the police department apologized for the arrest and returned his golf club. The department said in January the officer had "received counseling" from her supervisor -- which O'Toole initially deemed an appropriate resolution.

But then the chief became aware of troubling Facebook posts made by Whitlatch about a month after the arrest -- at a time when protests in Ferguson, Missouri, had gripped the nation's attention. The weekly newspaper The Stranger reported that Whitlatch said she was tired of "black peoples (sic) paranoia" and wrote of "chronic black racism that far exceeds any white racism in this country."

CBS affiliate KIRO reports that Whitlatch was removed from patrol in January. And was fired on Tuesday because she failed to understand how her behavior was "unnecessarily aggressive," the chief said.