If Simon Byrne hadn't resigned as chief constable just hours earlier, the disclosure that the data breach which happened on his watch could cost the cash-strapped PSNI £240 million in security and legal costs would surely have pushed him out the door.
And if not that, then the thoroughly dispiriting revelation that Catholic officers have been advised to bring their personal protection weapons with them to Mass would likely have sealed his fate.
On Monday afternoon, Mr Byrne, embattled and increasingly isolated, bowed to the inevitable and agreed it was "time for someone new to lead the PSNI".
It was emblematic of the last days of his tenure as chief constable, when he was at the mercy of events rather than in control of them, that it was left to Deirdre Toner, chair of the Policing Board, to read the absent Mr Byrne's resignation statement for him.
The monumental data breach which saw details of 10,000 PSNI officers and staff published online following a freedom of information request, followed by news of further breaches involving officers' notes being lost and stolen, was devastating.
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But the final straw was last week's damning High Court ruling and Mr Byrne's response to it. Mr Justice Scoffield found that the PSNI had acted unlawfully when it disciplined two junior officers involved in a controversial arrest at a commemoration to mark the anniversary of the loyalist massacre at the Sean Graham bookmakers on Belfast's Ormeau Road. The judge said that Mr Byrne seemed to have believed that unless the officers were sanctioned, Sinn Féin would withdraw its support for the PSNI – something the party has firmly denied.
The taint of allegations of political policing led to unionist calls for his resignation. The Police Federation was also furious at how its members had been treated by a dysfunctional senior leadership.
And having first accepted the judgment, in a bizarre move Mr Byrne later changed his mind and said he was considering appealing it. It was yet another misstep, pitching him deeper into his own maelstrom of calamities. Already fragile, support in Mr Byrne collapsed totally.
A chief constable ought to command confidence, and project a strong sense of law and order; Mr Byrne's tenure ended in flaw and disorder.
The disarray in policing is an echo of the wider drift in governance and public services which has accelerated with the DUP's punishing boycott of power-sharing.
PSNI officers and staff undoubtedly deserve better. So too do the rest of us.
