How Sting got a broken rib from Police drummer Stewart Copeland before rocking Shea Stadium

Although they were arguably the biggest rock band in the world at the time — riding high off the smash success of “Every Breath You Take” — the Police were hardly in sync with each other when their “Synchronicity” Tour hit Shea Stadium on Aug. 18, 1983.

But it was a playful wrestling match with drummer Stewart Copeland that caused singer-bassist Sting a painful pre-show injury before the trio took the stage at the former Queens home of the New York Mets 40 years ago. 

“Infamously, I cracked a rib of his after the soundcheck at Shea Stadium,” Stewart — whose new book “Police Diaries,” out Thursday, traces the group’s early years — told The Post.

“We’re there horsing around, Sting grabs my New York Times, and I grab it back. Pretty soon we’re wrestling for my New York Times, which by now was unreadably tattered anyway, but I was gonna get my goddamn newspaper back and applied a knee to his ribcage. And he’s yelling, ‘Ow! Damn!’”

Although the epic show — featuring two more Rock & Roll Hall of Fame bands, R.E.M. and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, as opening acts — went on for the Police, they later found out that Sting had powered through a hairline fracture to his rib.

“So we played one of the best shows we ever played that night with his broken rib,” said Copeland. “We killed it.”

Still, the Police’s blockbuster tour behind 1983’s “Synchronicity” — their eight-times-platinum LP, which also included the hits “King of Pain” and “Wrapped Around Your Finger” — found the London-born band on the brink of a breakup. In fact, they never made another album after their biggest-selling one, thereby going out on top when they effectively split up in 1986.

By the time they got to their fifth album — after making their debut with the reggae-punk vibes of 1978’s “Outlandos  d’Amour,” featuring their breakout classic “Roxanne” — Copeland says that it had become “hell on earth” for the Police as a band.

“It was a very uncomfortable place — and we drove each other crazy,” said the 71-year-old Virginia native. “We now understand where all that tension came from. And in fact, given that understanding, I’m very grateful that we got as many as five albums out of Stingo, because by then … he had a very clear idea of how the arrangements should go.

“At first, it was collaboration. It became more and more compromise for him — and it got tougher and tougher for him to make those compromises.” 

Copeland jokes that, beyond creative differences with Sting, the Police’s breakup was about preventing a frontman “homicide.”

“The times when I came the closest to homicide, the times when it became absolutely critical that I choke the life out of this man, were when he would come over to me and tell me something about the hi-hat.” 

Indeed, the two Policemen came from two different places philosophically. “You know, Sting was looking for a beautiful place, and to create something serene and moving and, dare I say, intellectual,” said Copeland. “For me, it’s about burning down the house — it’s a party.”

Really, it should be no surprise that the two bandmates might have had different ideas about what exactly the Police should be in the end. As he tells in “Police Diaries,” Copeland was the founder of the group who recruited guitarist Henry Pandovani and then Sting to take on the burgeoning London punk scene.

In fact, it was Copeland who penned the band’s first tunes before Sting honed his singular songwriting chops — especially after the more adept Andy Summers replaced Pandovani on guitar.

“It wasn’t until Andy joined that he started to write the really cool stuff,” said Copeland, “because Henry only knew three chords, so Sting was kind of limited.”

Ultimately, Sting would level up his tunesmith skills to write the Police’s biggest song, “Every Breath You Take.” That smash is one of the band’s hits that is reimagined on “Beyond Borders,” Copeland’s 2023 collaboration with Indian artist Ricky Kej that includes world-music makeovers of Police faves.

“We did ‘Every Breath You Take’ in Zulu,” he said. “Is that cool or what?”