Officers had difficulty communicating over the radio during the chaotic shooting in Salina that left two police officers dead

Syracuse Police Officer Michael Jensen crouched behind his patrol car, trying to contact his dispatcher to get a handle on a call that quickly went wrong.

“430 to dispatch,” he said into his radio. No answer.

“Why isn’t anyone fucking answering?” he said to his partner.

Jensen was one of seven officers who responded to Christopher Murphy's home in Salina on the night of April 14. They were there for a mundane call: to ticket Murphy for driving at a high rate of speed through Syracuse earlier that evening. But Murphy was waiting with an assault rifle.

Just five minutes after police arrived, two of the officers were dead.

Those five minutes are documented in a report issued Wednesday by the state attorney general's office.

The AG's report provides the first detailed public account of the handling of the call that ended in tragedy and had devastating consequences for two police departments and the community. It is revealed that officers struggled to communicate with each other in the dark of night and did not know where their attacker was as the situation quickly unfolded.

City and county police officials, who conducted their own internal investigations into the incident, said there was nothing officers should have done differently to prevent the tragedy.

Communication on site was hindered. According to the AG's report, Jensen and three other city police officers were unable to speak via radio to the three Onondaga County sheriff's deputies at the scene. City police officials said they would revise their communications policy to prevent similar confusion in the future.

In the darkness of that April night, Jensen tried to determine the whereabouts of the officers.

“Hey,” Jensen radioed to the district emergency call center. “This is SPD Unit 430. Do you guys from the district…have anyone behind the house?”

Seconds later, several shots were fired. Twenty shots in multiple bursts over half a minute.

Jensen didn't know it, but sheriff's Lt. Michael Hoosock had been shot. Hoosock was behind a tree in the backyard of a neighboring home.

Jensen's partner, Officer James Zollo, told the dispatcher, “Shots were fired here.” The dispatcher responded that they were trying to get all officers on the same radio channel.

“We’re working on patching channels here,” he said.

Ninety seconds later, the gunman circled Jensen's vehicle and shot him before he was killed by another city police officer, John Canestrare.

The incident happened so quickly that it was not surprising that there was confusion over which radio channel all officers should be sent to, Syracuse Police Chief Joseph Cecile told syracuse.com. “From zero to 100, very quickly,” he said.

To avoid such situations in the future, city police are working on a new protocol for when Syracuse officers answer calls outside the city, where dispatchers typically use different radio channels. Officers heading out of town on a call will notify a supervisor to establish communication with the outside agency before arriving on the scene, Cecile said.

Julie Corn, Onondaga County's emergency communications and 911 dispatcher, could not say when the new policy would go into effect.

“The SPD has the best time to answer this question. We just know they’re thinking about it,” she said.

When the shooting broke out, Jensen and other city officials were speaking with a dispatcher. Hoosock and the other deputies were talking among themselves.

Frederick Cornelius, a former detective lieutenant with the Cayuga County Sheriff's Office who now runs a private investigation firm, said the 911 center should have responded more quickly to have city and county police officers talking to each other on the same channel.

“In the long term, it seems like there is a 911 problem,” he told syracuse.com.

Cornelius said he was not familiar with Onondaga County's 911 system, but read the AG's report and provided insight into what the protocol should have been.

It was clear from the report that the two dispatchers who spoke to Jensen and Hoosock were not speaking to each other, Cornelius said. That should have been them.

At one point, when the officers heard a gun being loaded and took cover, Jensen asked his dispatcher to direct the officers to a private radio channel that Syracuse police sometimes use. Around the same time, Hoosock asked another dispatcher to switch officers to a county channel often used during major emergencies.

“Someone had to pick a channel and have everyone on it,” Cornelius said. He said the right person to do this in this situation was someone from the 911 center. When Jensen asked to switch to the private channel, one of the two dispatchers or a supervisor should have directed everyone to the district radio channel, Cornelius said.

Cornelius said he wasn't sure if everyone had been on the same channel because Murphy fired so many shots so quickly would have changed the outcome.

Corn said it's normal to initially create confusion on the radio when a major incident occurs. Officers responding to the shooting requested a special radio channel after about a minute at the scene and “they tuned in from there,” she said.

Corn said neither city nor county police have expressed concerns about the April 14 incident.

“When all agencies debriefed after the event, there were no issues with communication,” she said. “I spoke to my partners and everyone was very happy with the communication and support we provided on the day.”

Sheriff Toby Shelley agreed that the 911 operator was not at fault. Given the rapid escalation from ticket to shooting, it would be unreasonable to expect better coordination from officers or dispatchers.

“We respond to such a trivial call that spirals out of control in a matter of seconds,” Shelley said. “How do you manage to patch everything together, the different channels, and keep everyone entertained on the same channel during this period of downtime?”

In any case, Shelley said, it would be difficult for officers to change their radio settings while they have their weapons drawn and are taking cover from a shooter.

Here's a quick look at how quickly things happened, as documented in the AG report. Five minutes of chaos:

8:44:51 p.m.: Jensen and his partner Zollo arrive in their patrol car. At the same time, a replacement unit with officers John Canestrare and Benedict Rath arrives. Hoosock and sheriff's deputies Jacob Barnaba and Adam Bezek are already at the scene.

8:45:22 p.m.: Jensen and Hoosock separately report that it sounds like someone is holding a gun and ask for backup. City officers shine a flashlight into Murphy's car and discover two assault rifle magazines. All officers take cover.

8:47:25 p.m.: Jensen tries to call his dispatcher on the radio. He turns to his partner and says, “Why isn’t anyone fucking answering?”

8:48:13 p.m: Murphy begins firing his weapon in several short bursts.

8:48:38 p.m.: Murphy shoots again, hitting Hoosock, who is behind a tree in a neighbor's backyard.

8:49:59 p.m.: Murphy moves from the back of the house to the front. He comes around Jensen's patrol car and starts shooting. Jensen goes to the back of the car and returns fire. Jensen is hit and falls.

“While you're stopping for a traffic violation, don't think that someone is going to shoot you,” said Brian Higgins, a former police chief in Bergen County, New Jersey. He is now an associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. “They weren’t really given a chance.”

Higgins said officers' radio problems are common. It's such an age-old concern that it was raised by the commission that investigated the September 11, 2001, attacks.

“Radio systems, frequencies, how to communicate,” he said. “It’s very confusing.”

District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said he had not read the attorney general's report as of Thursday morning. However, he said interagency communication has long been a concern of all police departments and deserves ongoing attention.

“When you have a multi-jurisdictional response, you need to be able to communicate,” he said. “The city has to communicate with the sheriff, he has to communicate with the city, he has to communicate with the city and the village.”

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Not surprisingly, the Attorney General's report concluded that there was no reason to prosecute Officer Canestrare for the shooting of Murphy. The report states, among other things:

• Hoosock, who was behind a tree in the backyard of a neighboring home, was hit twice by bullets fired by Murphy from his back deck. Hoosock never fired his weapon.
• About 90 seconds of silence passed before Murphy appeared on the street in front of his home and began shooting at Jensen. Jensen returned fire but was fatally injured.
• The medical examiner recovered four bullets from Murphy's body – one from Jensen's gun and three from Canestrare's.
• At least twice during the chaos, officers shouted at residents to return to their homes.