Just a little slip! (Courtesy of WABC)

New York's finest are up against New York's bravest again.

The scaffolding incident on the Upper East Side showcased the widening gap between the fire department and police department, according The Times.

As the three men were hanging on a scaffolding unit, both departments approached the rescue from different methods. The fire department made their way to the 17th story to pull the three workers in through a window while an officer on the police department's Emergency Service Unit deployed himself from the roof.

The men were rescued safely, of course, but the rift between the departments remains a problem.

"This is an ongoing issue that’s been around for a long time, and I think the real critical part is that we were told, several years ago, that the citywide incident management system fixed this, and it did not fix it,"  Glenn Corbett, a professor of fire science at John Jay College told The Times. "This was an issue on 9/11, with separate command posts for the Police and Fire departments, and there continue to be instances where coordination is missing now."

The problem doesn't end there, either. Chief Michael Massucci, who led the fire rescue team, told The Times that the "firefighters wound up aiding the officer, too. They pulled him in through the same 17th-floor window because he could not climb back up the building’s facade and most likely did not have enough rope to reach the ground."

In whose hands would you rather place your life?

mewing@observer.com