Posted on 03/16/2011 10:26:05 AM PDT by neverdem
Nassau County police officers who witnessed the fatal shooting of a fellow officer last weekend said that the victim was wearing his badge and that they did not hear the officer who shot him identify himself or yell anything before firing, the president of the Nassau police union said Monday.
“No one heard, ‘Stop! Police!’ ” James Carver, the president of the Nassau County Police Benevolent Association, said.
However, someone seems to have yelled something: officers have said that a civilian at the chaotic scene — possibly a retired New York City police sergeant — was heard yelling “Gun! Gun!” or words to that effect just before Officer Geoffrey J. Breitkopf, who was in plain clothes and carrying a rifle, was shot on Saturday night, Mr. Carver said.
If the account is accurate, it adds a member of a third police department, albeit retired, to the scrum of officers outside a crime scene where a lack of recognition among officers proved fatal. The officer who fired the fatal shot was from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s police department.
The union’s account of the shooting of Officer Breitkopf, 40, a 12-year veteran of the Nassau County force, also suggests that his fellow Nassau officers knew he was a police officer but that the transit agency officer who shot him, Glenn Gentile, 33, did not.
The shooting occurred outside a home in Massapequa Park where, a few minutes earlier, a deranged man, Anthony DiGeronimo, 21...
--snip--
Little was known about Officer Gentile’s career. He joined the department in 2006, a spokesman for the transit agency said. His union declined to comment, and attempts to reach him on Monday were not successful. On Sunday, the Nassau County police commissioner, Lawrence W. Mulvey, said it was unlikely that he would be charged with a crime...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
mamslaughter geesh, it’s time for new glasses.
Yeah, and that Transit cop FINALLY got to shoot someone!
Getting selected for the MTA is like hitting the lottery,
spending your last year before retiring racking out the OT
for your pension.
‘POLICE OFFICER’ loud and clear will be heard by the undeaf....
(I admittedly come from a family of loud mouths...which include my late dad who was NYPD and you could hear him loud and clear from a block away if he wanted you to hear him...)
You know, the story (and title) are indicative of the accountability-avoidance and ‘non-thinking’ excuse .
i.e. “They yelled gun!” —> So it really wasn’t our fault because we were just reacting.
Funny thing is such a defense would be extraordinarily strained if used by a soldier in a gunfight investigation in a warzone where, by definition, their lives are in danger and reaction-time & training are paramount.
seems to me that this was a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ situation. too many people reacted, too few people thought.
Ain't THAT sumthin!!!
btw: if I read this correctly, the shooter had to have had good aim - he shot the guy without shooting the other cop tackling him. am i the only one who thinks this stopry doesn’t add up?
He must have gone to a “Zero tolerance” school.
I think you might get some arguments about that. Once units make contact, then all bets are off. It this case, the original perp was already shot and down, but it appears this johnny come lately in planclothes with a M4 slung upside down over his shoulder gets wasted after this retired NYPD sergeant freaks out upon seeing the M4, and Gentile overreacts and kills him.
I wonder how much of the militarization of the police has caused this?
Even IF true, since when is the sound of the word “Gun!” validly taken as a command to open fire? Dear God, just because someone has a firearm in their hand is no excuse to shoot them!
1. The deceased pointed his gun at them.
2. Refused to drop it after being ordered to do so.
3. The officer who shot “was in fear for his life.”
Witnesses to the contrary? Just ignore those.
“Buffs” (even retired cops) are always a problem. I have a family member in LE and believe me, these people can seriously complicate situations.
“Gun” is a warning word that cops use when the (supposedly unarmed) suspect brings out a weapon. At that point, it’s their lives - or his. If you were a cop, how would you vote?
Unfortunately, in this case, the cop was carrying the weapon and the retired-cop police-buff screamed the warning word. How would you react?
A very, very sad situation. Let’s hope everyone learns from it, and it does not happen again.
But it's always way cool to whip out a gun and shoot.
You don’t seem to realize how little time it takes for a bad guy to whip out a gun and shoot. Cops are trained to hear the word “gun” and turn immediately to the suspect and simply shoot. There’s no time to evaluate anything.
When the bad guy has a gun, only one person is going to go home from this encounter. And the cops want it to be them who goes home, not the bad guy who got off a couple of shots while they were “determining if there was a threat.”
You obviously don’t know the speed of a bullet.
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