Was Sonny Negligent?

When Michael arrives at the hospital to visit with Vito, he finds that there is no one there guarding his father. When he questions the nurse she informs him that the police made all of the Don's 'visitors' leave about 10 minutes ago. So he makes the call home and informs Sonny that there is no one at the hospital to protect Vito.

My question is this;

How is it that none of the Corleone people who were at the hospital were able to get word back to the Corleones that Vito was left unguarded?

And if it was a matter of the bodyguards NOT being able to make the phone call because they had been arrested, then how come one of the policemen on the Corleone payroll, or someone within the hospital itself didn't inform Sonny & Co. that McCluskey had rounded up and arrested the Corleone bodyguards?

In theory, as much as I liked Sonny, he was negligent in that he had not taken EVERY precaution necessary to make sure that his father was and would remain protected. Sonny had not covered all of the bases to insure that if something were done to compromise the Don's protection, there would be someone on the Corleone payroll from both the hospital and the police department to immediately let him know.

You raise a good point.This could be another case of FFC dropping the ball on details,but just for discussion's sake, here is my two cents worth:

Sollozzo,preparing to kill Vito,tells McCluskey to remove the bodyguards from the hospital,and hold them until after the hit goes down.(Remember McCluskey says "I thought I had all you guinea hoods locked up").Being a crooked Police Captain,I'm sure he could arrange for the Corleone guys to be kept incommunicado for an hour or so,with some of McCluskey's crooked henchmen standing guard.

I would guess that among cops,it's an open secret as to who is on the take,and from which source.Guys on the Stracci pad would know which guys were on the Barzini pad,and so forth,so it wouldn't be tough for Mac to keep his guys separate from the rest.

The hospital staff is probably told that it was a police matter and to keep their mouths shut.At that time of night,there were not that many employees on duty,so there may not have been any one with contacts to the Corleones.
Also,the nurse who helped Michael was reluctant at first,because she was concerned for Vito's health,and didn't want to risk disturbing him,so maybe when the bodyguards left,she felt that the peace and quiet would do him good.

There is also the possibility that no one at the hospital wanted to get mixed up with the Cops and the Corleones.

Sonny was described in the novel as being short-sighted. In fact, he even described himself as "short range" in the novel. Not having enough soldiers around Vito is certainly confirmation of this.

However, I would add that 10 minutes is not a long time. Is it long enough to kill Vito? Of course. Remember that this was was set back in the 1940s. There were no cell phones and instant communication like today. It could have been that there were not many readily accessible pay phones nearby. And if one of the soldiers did manage to slip away, they may have driven back to the Corleone compound instead of risk staying on the hospital premises.

DC, my short answer to your question is: no, I don't think Sonny was negligent. He had no reason to know that McCluskey was on Sol's payroll at that point, so he had no reason to believe that Mac would pull Corleone people out. And, they could have been held incommunicado for just long enough to let the murder happen.

In retrospect, Hagen was right to replace the gunsels with detectives licensed to carry firearms. But, I don't blame Sonny for not anticipating that his own men, carrying guns illegally, would have been arrested. His most urgent priority in the immediate aftermath of the shooting was to get some protection for Vito in the hospital.

I am firmly on both sides of this argument.

Sonny was negligent in that every plan should have a backup plan. While he was correct to put Corleone family people as guards, he should have had a Plan B in place. It took Tom all of a few minutes to have the armed guards and the potential of a show cause order in place after Michael placed the call to Sonny. Moreover, once it became clear that McCluskey was involved with Sol, Sonny still did not understand that Sol was probably invulnerable with a police captain as his security. It took Michael to solve this problem.

In Sonny's defense, it appears Vito had been in the hospital for several days before Michael's visit, and the use of Corleone guards seemed to be working. Don't forget these guys were remived when the hospital was on the graveyard shift, and more likely than not, based on what the nurse said, someone on someone else's payroll made a complaint that the guards were interfering with the operations of the facility. It would have been easy enough for McCluskey to keep the Corleone people from getting in touch with anyone. Remember there were no cell phones then!

Sonny was not so much negligent as he was not thoughtful. As the novel points out, Sonny had a tactical skill that few exceeded, but he lacked the strategic ability of this father. Thus, he chose to use the approach with which he was most comfortable: warfare. He eschewed diplomacy because he did not know how to utilize it. Tom did. Sonny should have combined his tactical skill with Tom's diplomatic skill. To the extent that he didn't, he was negligent.

how they let fredo be the driver when paulie called in sick is beyond me. the only thing sonny did that was not smart was letting sollozzo know how he felt about the
Tattaglia's.