Ordinarily the right way to go about "vetting" varies; however, some things done are:

1) Check the profile for any infraction history. If there are infractions - how severe are they? How recent? Etc.

2) Check recent post history. What does it look like? Are they posting anything constructive? What sort of maturity are they displaying?

3) Forum, in-game, and discord activity - are they active? Are they contributing in anyway to the community?

4) Personal anecdotes - who here has interacted with this user? Was it a positive experience? Can anyone attest positively or negatively to their demeanor/character?

Plus or minus other elements. That's just a practical small thing I came up with that I know I see being followed either intentionally/deliberately or just intuitively.
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As for examples - I'd rather not "out" specific users. That's not particularly appropriate. In general, very rarely do we "drop the hammer" on users. I think the fact that many veterans of Toribash can identify more than two handfuls of users who continue to break the rules repeatedly and are one or another still coming back speaks to that. There's many toxic users with 20+ infractions on their main accounts and bans on alts as well that you may still interact with day to day if you actively engage in-game and on the forums.

In contrast, things like power abuse are treated very heavy handed (as they should be). Just like you stated, staff can and SHOULD be held to a higher standard than regular users. Due to the sensitive nature of when staff are caught abusing their power, I'm not going to feel comfortable dropping names. But I'm more than confident in higher staff like suomynona immediately shutting down any inappropriate situations performed by staff with a much shorter leash and badder bite when those situations do arise.

Hope that helps. I apologies that I'm declining to include specifics. That's a personal choice.