Oops is, yet again, a police term

Rico says that N.R. Kleinfield and Al Baker (son of Russell) have an article in The New York Times about a police shooting (on both sides, alas) in Massapequa:

So many police officers, retired or working patrol, live in and around Massapequa Park, New York, it is something of a “Cop Land”. They listen to scanners, swap crime stories, and remember how it once was.
So, after a flurry of calls about a man wielding knives, the scene filled with officers. Among them were two from different departments and a retired officer from a third. They did not know one another. None of the three, it turned out, were necessarily needed, and it is unclear whether any of them should have even been there. But, in choosing to be there, they became central players in an ugly suburban drama sown with unforeseen twists.
The man with knives, Anthony DiGeronimo, was shot and killed by Nassau County police officers. Officer Geoffrey J. Breitkopf (photo) died by the gun of a transit officer, Glenn Gentile, just four minutes later. And the behavior of the retired officer, John Cafarella, may have pivotally shaped the night’s doomed outcome.
As the episode unfolded a week and a half ago, Mr. Cafarella is believed to have yelled Gun! at a crucial instant. Later, witnesses said, he grabbed the rifle of Officer Breitkopf as he was dying. Other tiny and unlucky factors piled up before the officer’s death: Officer Breitkopf’s rifle had been pointed in the worst possible direction; a small-bore dispute with a neighbor contributed another note of tension to an already taut situation.
One issue is whether the phenomenon of police overresponse to a crime contributed to the confusion. In short order, more than a dozen police officers, and even that count is murky, converged that evening in Massapequa Park on one house, making for an overpopulated scene that was difficult to control, with officers who did not know one another, their guns out.
Louis R. Anemone, the former chief of department of the New York Police Department, was loath to evaluate something he was not involved in, but he did say that the appropriate number of officers answering a call is an issue as old as policing itself. “Throughout my career, cops have always been eager to respond, to help, to get to the scene, and it is one of the inherent dangers of police work,” he said. “There is a very, very, very fine balance.”
The case remains under investigation, and no charges have been filed. As yet, no consensus has been reached on how things ended as they did, and some questions may never be answered.
Police officers run deep through this story. A good number come home to the Cape Cods and ranches of Massapequa Park itself, including Mr. Cafarella. One officer lives down the block from the site of the shootings, but he was out at a movie with his wife at the time. A 79-year-old retired officer lives two doors away from the scene. He was at home watching television that night and did not come out. He was in his pajamas.
Officer Gentile, 33, grew up ten blocks away. His father had been a Nassau County detective, working in a number of the Police Department’s premier units. He retired in 2004, and four years later died of cancer at 55. After high school, in 1996, Glenn Gentile joined the Army and spent a year in Bosnia. He left the service in 2003. Three years later he became a Metropolitan Transportation Authority police officer, one of 700 who patrol the railroads. His younger brother, Anthony, is also an officer with the authority.
Officer Breitkopf, 40, wore a bushy beard, his hair close-cropped. He joined the Nassau police force in 1998 and belonged to its elite special operations unit. The unit’s logo was tattooed on his chest. He was a member of the volunteer fire department in Selden, Suffolk County, where he lived with his wife and two small children. In a former life, he was a BMW mechanic. He was fond of riding his motorcycle.
Mr. Cafarella, 58, retired as a sergeant from the New York Police Department’s Emergency Service Unit in 2008, after 26 years on the force. The unit dealt with confrontations involving violent people and with rescue work. After the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, he climbed ninety stories up one of the towers to get people out. He also worked for eight months at the trade center site after the 11 September attacks, later complaining of respiratory problems and migraines. Paul Hargrove, a retired supervisor in the unit, described him as a skilled officer who did not assert his authority inappropriately, but looked for a role when there was a problem. “Let’s say it was a car accident,” Mr. Hargrove said. “If he was not able to help the people in the car, John would have been the guy directing traffic.”
On Saturday, 12 March, these three men were in three different places, when something requiring police attention unfolded in Massapequa Park.
The village of Massapequa Park sits on the South Shore of Long Island. It fills not much more than two square miles, about an hour’s drive from Manhattan, and resembles many tidy Long Island communities.
Neither Mr. Cafarella nor Officer Gentile would comment for this article. But, according to tentative conclusions of law enforcement officials and the accounts of witnesses, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, this is what happened; there were two distinct chapters:
In the first, a bizarrely dressed young man wearing a white mask and carrying two knives was walking down Front Street. He had passed Johnny McGorey’s Irish Pub and was scratching parked cars. This was Anthony DiGeronimo, 21, who called himself a “spiritual Satanist”. His father, David, said he and his son collected knives.
Theresa Kelly, 71, a retired hairdresser, was backing her Volkswagen Passat out of her driveway to visit her sister for dinner and pinochle. There was a bang on her window, and there was Mr. Geronimo flaunting a knife over the hood of her car.
Frightened, she tooted her horn and dialed 911 on her cellphone. It was 8:15 p.m. A woman at McGorey’s, as it happened, had already called the police twice, the first time at 8:10. Two more 911 calls would follow Ms. Kelly’s. Mr. DiGeronimo withdrew, and Ms. Kelly drove slowly down the street, watching where he was going. He lived around the corner, but she did not know him. She also called her son, Sean, 43, who lived with her, and told him what was going on.
A Nassau County police officer, dispatched at 8:13, pulled up within a couple of minutes and confronted Mr. DiGeronimo. A second officer arrived at almost the same time.
Right then Mr. Cafarella and his wife were driving by. Mr. Cafarella made the fourth 911 call.
He pulled over, got out, and tried to help the officers talk the masked man into dropping his knives. Mr. DiGeronimo retreated into his parents’ house on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Front Street, pursued by the two officers. Backup was radioed for, and additional officers arrived.
Ms. Kelly was outside the DiGeronimo house by her car, its door open. She said the scene was “total chaos”, with officers dashing every which way. A man in a red fleece, she said, was “running all over like a lunatic, shouting orders; he caused a lot of chaos.”
One of the first officers on the scene said Mr. Cafarella was wearing a red fleece, and the authorities believe no plainclothes officer was there then.
Mr. DiGeronimo barricaded himself inside his bedroom. Suddenly, Mr. DiGeronimo emerged, clutching a knife over his head, and lurched at the two officers monitoring him. Both shot him, and he crumpled on the floor.
After she heard the gunfire, Ms. Kelly said, the man in the fleece cursed at her to leave and shoved her into her car, kicking the door shut with his foot.
The second chapter can be introduced with the subplot of Sean Kelly— Theresa Kelly’s son— and his sneakers. He was upstairs in his room, channel surfing. He has been unemployed for two years, trying to find something in shipping or importing. When he got his mother’s call, he yanked on his sneakers, called a relative and dashed outside. By the time he reached the street, Mr. DiGeronimo was dead. As he sped down the street, he found himself flanked by a police officer. Mr. Kelly said the officer brusquely ordered him to leave, but Mr. Kelly persisted that he was going to his mother because she had been threatened. The officer repeated his order, then showed him a can of pepper spray. A second officer extracted a nightstick. At that point, Mr. Kelly said, someone from the neighborhood told him to let the officers do their work, and he backed off.
Officer Gentile had been at the Massapequa Long Island Rail Road station. Hearing the call crackle over the police radio frequency, he and his partner responded. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said its officers frequently assisted other agencies, just as other officers often helped the agency. By the time they got there, the disturbance was over.
Shortly afterward, Officer Breitkopf drove up with his partner.
After Mr. DiGeronimo was shot, the police put out a “10-87” over the radio, police code for slow down the response. This is different than a “disregard” code, which would have meant not to respond. It is not known if Officer Breitkopf heard the 10-87. Officer Breitkopf was in plain clothes. His police shield hung on a lanyard around his neck, but it is unknown whether it was visible. He retrieved his rifle from his trunk, slung it over his shoulder, the barrel pointed down, and, in the darkness, strode toward the house. The police said taking a rifle was appropriate for a situation in which a dangerous person was barricaded. The Nassau officers knew him. As he crossed the lawn, he greeted a couple of them and let them know he was going to assess the situation.
The rest happened fast. Someone said, Gun! or He’s got a gun! Mr. Cafarella told investigators that he might have said that. The brief confrontation moments before with Mr. Kelly may have been on the minds of some officers. The transit officers did not know Officer Breitkopf. Spotting a man with a rifle, Officer Gentile’s partner came up either from behind him or to his side and grabbed him on his right shoulder, trying to stop him. At this point, Officer Breitkopf’s rifle swiveled upward so that it was pointing toward the nearby Officer Gentile. The altered position of the rifle may have resulted from his shoulder being jostled. It is also conceivable that Officer Breitkopf heard “gun” and reflexively raised his rifle, not imagining anyone was talking about him.
It was just about 8:23. Officer Gentile was a few feet away. The authorities said he told investigators he saw a man pointing a rifle toward him. Protocol when a police officer confronts someone suspicious is to yell, “Police, don’t move.” A plainclothes officer is then to respond: Police, don’t shoot. The authorities believe nothing was said, and time probably did not allow anything to be said. Officer Gentile fired. It was only the second time in a decade that a transit officer had shot a gun in the line of duty. Hit in the side, Officer Breitkopf collapsed next to a tree. Officers who knew him shouted: He’s police!
At nearly the same time, according to an officer who was there, Mr. Cafarella came over and ripped the rifle off of the stricken officer. Seeing this, another officer drew his gun and nearly shot Mr. Cafarella. An officer clutched Mr. Cafarella by his throat and seized the rifle. He said Mr. Cafarella identified himself as a retired police officer who was “on the job”.
Officer Gentile stood frozen on the lawn, mute and distraught. An ambulance raced Officer Breitkopf to the hospital, and there he was pronounced dead.