Editorial: Better rules for 911 crime scenes

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority police officer who shot plainclothes Nassau police Officer Geoffrey J. Breitkopf to death made a horrifying mistake, but he shouldn't face criminal charges

That's what the Nassau County District Attorney's office concluded, correctly, after a thorough investigation of the events of March 12, 2011. Anthony DiGeronimo, masked and armed with numerous knives, menaced innocents, vandalized cars and was shot to death inside his Massapequa Park home after approaching police. Breitkopf responded to a radio call for help and arrived with a rifle in hand. A retired cop, also at the scene, saw Breitkopf, yelled "gun," and the MTA officer shot Breitkopf dead.

A somewhat similar situation, the robbery of a Seaford drugstore in December that left a federal agent dead after an off-duty New York City police officer and a retired Nassau cop ran to the scene, is still under investigation.

We are never going to come up with a code of conduct for police officers, or anybody else, that eliminates tragic mistakes, but we can do better, and new rules in Nassau should help. The department will require identifying vests for anyone responding to 911 calls, create special radio alerts, and limit crime scene access to officers and detectives involved in the initial investigation.

But the people who deserve real blame in these cases are the criminals who spurred the chaos, not those who made honest mistakes in trying to stop them.