Toschi sending fanmail about himself.

Does anyone else find it jarring when Toschi is confronted by internal affairs and is discovered to have been writing fanmail about himself and sending it to the newspaper?

Ruffalo’s characterisation was brilliant but I cannot see the character he portrayed - a no-nonsense hard working detective (who was the basis of Dirty Harry) being so vain and silly as to write his own fanmail. And I certainly can’t see him writing a hoax Zodiac letter, as he was briefly suspected of doing.

I wonder if the real life Tosci was more of a clown.