SPOILER ALERT re: "Lakeview Terrace" - Is it possible that all of those cops are BEHIND the guy with a gun and no one takes him out?

On the whole I quite enjoyed it, he was one scary neighbour !!

Oh I enjoyed it, too, overall.

The lights. I swear, I would have launched an attack on the house. He made my neighbor from hell look nice.

I just don’t believe all those cops would be behind the guy and they can’t apprehend him? No tazer? No rubber bullets? No anything?

And there’s no way I’d believe cops would shoot the cop (Samuel Jackson) dead.

The first consideration here is that this is a movie only and Hollywood presents things that aren’t logical or realistic 9 times ouf of 10. That being said, here is a more genuine explanation of the incident:

The key factors in this equation are that the supposed suspect in this scenario (even though Samuel Jackson was the sociopathic neighbor) had his back to the cops and they were behind him. This means that he didn’t pose an immediate threat because he was not directing any hostility toward the group of police officers.

Now, as far as Samuel Jackson was concerned and here is the key element even though he was a policeman himself, he was armed with a gun, facing the other cops and this was posing a direct and deadly threat to them. This is a deadly force scenario and if a perpetrator refuses to drop his weapon after he’s repeatedly been told to do so, officers might have no choice other than to use deadly force to subdue the suspect and end the situation.

@cak I agree. I would have shot him the first night the lights came on. I was getting pissed and it was just a movie.

@Bluefreedom, but I thought the cop’s demand to drop the gun was directed at both Jackson AND the other guy. The cops could see that the other guy had a gun, and he was going to shoot Jackson. Assuming the cops WERE talking to him as well as Jackson, seems to me they would have shot him in that situation. He was about to shoot Jackson and he was not putting down the gun as directed.

@Quagmire. Once again, the police are trained to focus on the foremost threat which is the firearm being aimed at them by Samuel Jackson. Even if they were talking to both individuals to drop their weapons, they still have the more immediate threat from Jackson to deal with first. Additionally, if the police shoot the neighbor in the back, they are going to have to answer some tough questions from Internal Affairs Division and probably appear before a Civilian Review Board for what will be called a questionable shooting.

“if the police shoot the neighbor in the back, they are going to have to answer some tough questions from Internal Affairs Division and probably appear before a Civilian Review Board for what will be called a questionable shooting.”

That’s why I say they did not have to SHOOT the neighbor. He couldn’t see them so they could have maced him from behind or even overtaken him.

I thought in hostage situations, i.e., when someone is holding a gun to an innocent victim’s head (and for all practical purposes that’s what was happening), often the police will shoot the gunman dead, without themselves being in danger? Oh well. Thanks.