Big action movie and TV shoots on the city streets, including running gun battles and controlled explosions, have local residents flooding 911 with calls — and ducking for cover, The Post has learned.
The emergency calls have prompted NYPD and FDNY units to race to the scenes, only to discover the streets decked out with flood lights and camera rigs.
Police have no choice but to take each call “very seriously,” said one high-ranking law-enforcement source.
“We don’t mess around. We go into the situation thinking there could be a bad guy with a gun firing shots.”
“But then we get there and it all dies down because it isn’t real,” the source added. “You have to go into the situation thinking that it is real.”
Local precincts are typically notified when a film shoot is taking place, but the source said there is always someone who calls, screaming, “They’re shooting up the place! Send the cops!”
The latest incident occurred Wednesday morning on the Staten Island set of “Nurse Jackie,” a Showtime series starring Edie Falco.
Seven freaked-out residents dialed 911 to report a horrible car wreck at the intersection of West Shore Expressway and Korean Veterans Parkway during the morning rush hour.
But it turned out to be a “mock accident” with an overturned car, one police source said.
A police officer, who was assigned by the Mayor’s Office to oversee the set, heard the frantic calls over the radio and quickly notified an NYPD dispatcher that it was just a TV shoot.
EMS still responded looking for a trauma patient, one official said.
On Sept. 18, the popular CBS show “Person of Interest” violated its permit by using prop guns outside of the set’s perimeter on Fifth Avenue and East 47th Street, sources said.
People in the area spotted the actors waving around realistic-looking fake guns on the bustling Midtown street, and at least one alarmed witness called cops.
The Mayor’s Office shut down the set.
Another CBS hit, “Blue Bloods,” was issued a permit for simulated gunfire at 58 Verona St. in Red Hook, Brooklyn, according to the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.
The actors fired their prop guns during the late- night shoot on Oct. 24, prompting a flurry of 911 calls and a cop response, a source said.
NYPD brass disputed those claims.
A cop assigned to each film set is supposed to notify the local precinct when a violent scene is under way.