Friday and Gannon check out the homicide "call car" when they report to the shooting scene. However when they return to headquarters they are driving their regular Fairlane detective unit.
Sgt. Friday tells the shooter that when he shot the officer with the 12 gauge double barrel shotgun that he put 276 pellets into the officer. A 12 gauge 2 3/4 inch double 00 buck shotgun shell has 8 pellets per shell. The shooter would have to reload and fire both barrels of the double barrel shotgun about 17 times to have put that many pellets through the barrel and into the officer.
When Friday and Gannon interview officer Roberts in the hospital a ventilator tube is shown across his body apparently attached to a tracheostomy. If this were the case Roberts would not be able to speak, as the tracheotomy is below the vocal cords.
Police artist Hector Garcia produces two portraits that are done in the style of a comic book or storyboard artist and not with the somewhat amateurish technique often evidenced in those mask-like reconstructions so often seen in newspapers and on TV. The likenesses are a just a bit too accurate suggesting that the actors may have served as models and are nearly three-quarter views instead of the traditional head-on stiff poses that show evidence of erasures and modifications as the trial-and-error sketch is refined. It simply doesn't look like the work of a genuine police artist. Instead, the draftsmanship suggests a commercial artist's spontaneously executed rough for a magazine ad or cartoon and doesn't look much like the average police-are-hoping-someone-can-identify-this-person poster.
In addition, the sketch artist starts by asking to start with the shape of the gunman's head, drawing an egg-shaped circle on the sketch pad and beginning to shade as the shot cuts away. He begins the drawing before the witness gives any information. Neither final sketch shows any evidence of this initial drawing, meaning at best that the sketch artist threw away the page and started over.
The shooter's getaway car is described as being green more than once. Yet when they find the car and are looking it over, it is not green at all, but a light blue.