Special ops team is 911 for street cops

When a suspected carjacker fleeing police last week tried to escape into a crowded school building, the plainclothes officers who chased him and wrestled him into handcuffs belonged to the Nassau Bureau of Special Operations.

Members of the elite branch tackled the teen last Tuesday, 10 feet from the door of a North Merrick elementary school as he fumbled for a pistol in his waistband, police said.

"Thank God he didn't get into the school," said Lt. Anthony Campagna of the bureau. "What he would have done if he had gotten into the school, I don't want to think about that."

For bureau officers, who are often tasked with prowling in unmarked vehicles in neighborhoods plagued by burglars or robbers or murderers or sneaking into fortified homes where criminals are known to hide out, it was just another day on the job.

"We're 911 for the street cops," said Officer Kirk Brewer, a unit member who's been with the Nassau County Police Department since 1987.

The bureau's portfolio ranges from street crime to helping the U.S. Secret Service, New York State Police and FBI protect presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain when they debated at Hofstra in 2008 -- and it is already helping make plans for when a presidential debate returns to Hofstra this fall.

And its snipers are perched high up every year for the running of the Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park in case of terrorist attack.

"We're not there to watch the ponies," said Sgt. Kevin McCarthy, a supervisor of the bureau, BSO for short.

The life of a bureau officer in some ways is more like that of a firefighter than beat cop, officers said. Unlike most of the officers who patrol the county in single-person cars, bureau officers do their work almost always as a group.

"We work usually in larger groups -- four, six, eight, cops in a team," McCarthy said. "We're involved with the major crimes, the major happenings -- BSO's been involved in all of them."

The bureau was formed in the late 1960s. For every 50 or so who apply, eight may be accepted, depending on the force's needs, McCarthy said.

He said they're looking for "type A personalities . . . go-getters all the way through."

Officer Matt Endres, a former city transit cop who served in the Marines and has "Strength" and "Honor" tattooed on his forearms, said, "If you were ever a kid and you wanted to be a cop, or played cowboys and Indians, this is pretty much the top of the food chain for that 'I-want-to-be-a-cop' guy."

One of the bureau's members, Geoffrey J. Breitkopf, died a year ago when he was mistakenly shot by a uniformed transit cop who mistook him for a threat at a crime scene.

Photos and T-shirts help keep Breitkopf's memory alive at the bureau's headquarters, a cavernous building on Newbridge Road in Bellmore shared with other police units such as robbery, electronics and highway patrol.

A gymnasium there is named in honor of Breitkopf and Michael Califano, a highway patrolman who died in February 2011 when a flatbed truck hit his cruiser parked on the Long Island Expressway.

"Once in . . . never out" is painted above the entrance to the headquarters.

Bureau members train two days a month, usually in a converted Grumman hangar in Bethpage, where they can practice busting down doors in unfamiliar terrain.

The so-called "Tac House" is a maze of movable wooden walls that are made to resemble a place officers might storm.

Every year, bureau officers do 40 to 50 tactical assignments, such as felling hostage takers and executing high-risk warrants and arrests.

"The SWAT work is awesome. There's not enough work, but I know we don't want that," McCarthy said, knocking on a wooden table in the bureau's training room.

In 2002, the bureau helped arrest a psychotic suspect accused of gunning down a Catholic priest and a parishioner at a church service in Lynbrook. During the raid, a bureau officer -- even though he was wearing a protective shield -- was stabbed with a steak knife while apprehending the suspect. The gunman was later convicted of the murders and the stabbing of the cop, Michael Knatz, who survived.

On March 10, a team of bureau cops cased neighborhoods like Hicksville and Plainview that had been hit by a spate of burglaries; then the cops regrouped and searched to look for the shooter of a man in Roosevelt.

"We'll go and flood an area with our group and just try to take those guys down," McCarthy said.

The cops didn't find the shooter that night -- but nabbed a suspect two days later.

Black shrouds their SWAT gear; it's the color of their weapons, their vests, their ballistics shields and their helmets. It's meant to help intimidate suspects into submission, the cops say.

"The shock and awe factor is amazing," Endres said. "We like to go 'boom,' maybe a little grenade, a hand grenade, stun grenade and then, in we go."

Nassau BSO

Members: 70

History: Formed in the late 1960s as the Crime Prevention Unit and got its current name a decade later

Headquarters: Bellmore

Characteristics: Generally work in groups. Does security and SWAT work, patrols areas terrorized by crime