Whenever multiple agencies are deployed in a police operation, all kinds of shit can happen if the operation was not preplanned and coordinated.
In 1973, a single gunman rampaged through the upper floors of the Howard Johnson’s Hotel near the French Quarter of New Orleans, killing 10 people, including five NOPD officers. Cops from a dozen local and state police agencies responded to the scene. Some cops on the roof of another building mistook New Orleans officers searching the hotel for the ‘gunmen’ – at first it was believed there were several gunmen involved – and fired at them. Fortunately they did not hit any of their fellow officers.
The problem was that, without any planning and coordination, the cops from each of the responding agencies were acting independently of each other and didn’t have any idea of who was who and what other cops were doing. Cops from each agency were doing their own thing to the extent that the whole facade of the hotel had to be rebuilt because there was so much damage from indiscriminate shooting on all four sides of the building. And much of the shooting was done at distances that made the firing completely useless.
The most recent example is the killing of a New York MTA cop by a Nassau police officer. The Nassau officers had no idea the MTA officer was another cop.
NY BLUE-ON-BLUE SHOOTING CAME AFTEER RETIRED COP YELLED ‘GUN!’
A retired cop with no business at the scene yelled, ‘Gun,’ an official said
By Selim Algar and Leonard Greene
The New York Post
March 17, 2011
NEW YORK — The friendly-fire shooting that cost a Long Island cop his life was a point-blank blunder that started when a retired cop with no business at the scene yelled, "Gun," an official said yesterday.
Geoffrey Breitkopf, 40, was shot and killed Saturday by an MTA cop responding to a call at a Massapequa Park house where Nassau police had killed a knife-wielding Satan worshipper.
The MTA officers were assisting county cops with mop-up duty when Nassau County Special Ops Officer Breitkopf arrived in a car with his partner, according to Nassau County Police Benevolent Association president James Carver.
As Breitkopf walked toward the house in plain clothes with a rifle slung over his shoulder and his badge around his neck, an unidentified retired NYPD sergeant from the neighborhood - milling around outside - cried out, "Gun!" Carver said.
One of the MTA cops tried to wrestle the rifle away, while the other, Glenn Gentile, fired a single shot, hitting Breitkopf in the side, Carver said.
Gentile and his partner were then trying to handcuff the dying officer on the lawn when his hysterical partner ran over and cried, "He's one of us," according to Carver.
"There's a lot of anger with my guys right now about this whole thing," Carver said. "My guy was dead before he hit the ground. He had no chance."
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