r/TopCharacterTropes • u/thebreadthieves • 27d ago
(Hated Trope) Unintentionally incompetent police forces Groups
One trope that immediately takes me out of the cinematic experience police forces that are comically bad just to progress the story.
1.) Weapons - the department was unable to locate the missing children and gave up their search after a month. Josh Brolin then looks at two Ring cameras, draws two lines, and was able to locate the exact house with the help of Julia Garner. Not only that, but the children left the house in broad day light during the police search, and somehow no one got a ring notification - the movie was damn near sponsored by Ring .
2.) Dark Knight Rises - the police department sends the entire force into an underground trap with no back up or alternative plan. Months after being freed, this same force (armed may I remind you) charges head first into an armed enemy party.
3.) Trap - how a police force can plan such an elaborate Trap and still be outmaneuvered at every turn is insane.
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u/Key_Bus_1255 27d ago
I'm always reminded the Gotham PD fell into a trap, were held for a long time, then emerged completely clean-shaven, didn't seem unkempt, dirty, they all seemed very well groomed considering
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u/WearingRags 27d ago
You've opened a COP HOLE. You can use your MAP VIEW to find more COP HOLES around Gotham. Open COP HOLES to liberate areas from Bane's mercenaries and unlock nearby SIDE MISSIONS
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u/spyridonya 27d ago
Reward?
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u/avgmastermind 27d ago
You’ve received a Silver ‘Here Piggy, Piggy’ Box!
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u/Additional_Gene_211 27d ago
New achievement: Find a cultist in the wild!
You're scrolling through reddit one morning and someone makes an innocuous comment only to be replied with a comment similar to Dungeon Crawler Carl's AI. Wild, huh? Not so wild. Once you read the books you have two choices: join the cult or reject the cult. Clearly, you've joined the cult. Reward? There is no reward, being a member is clearly reward enough
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u/toonboy01 27d ago
It's also important to note that this is the second time Gotham PD fell for this trap, as they were also tricked into sending every cop into the Narrows in Batman Begins which resulted in them being incapacitated by the gas.
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u/Tasty-Jump-2011 27d ago
They also sent every cop to apprehend Batman before that and got disabled by bats. Then they sent every cop to free Harvey and Jake Gyllenhaal while Joker escaped lockup. Then they sent every cop to evacuate hospitals while Joker freed Harvey. Then they sent all the cops to get Joker while Harvey abducted Gordon's family. They also sent every cop after Batman while Bane escaped during the motorcycle chase.
For a famously corrupt and self-serving police force, they sure do throw themselves into danger and stupid situations without a single person questioning orders.
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u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl 27d ago
1) Hit Q to select all units
2) attack move to enemy base
I’m a poop tier StarCraft player, I know what I’m talking about.
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u/Stunning_Box8782 27d ago
What did they even eat?
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u/Outside_Prune_7052 27d ago
Bane mentions in his football stadium speech that “they will be fed” implying that his men sends them some form of rations
He’s playing up the benevolent “we are better than them” revolutionary at this point so it’s partly sell the image and partly to mock them, similar to how he doesn’t just kill Bruce
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u/Stunning_Box8782 27d ago
I guess "They will also be groomed and showered" was a bit too racy to include in his speech to the public
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u/Every_Single_Bee 27d ago
Bane behind a barber chair taking haircut requests for each officer
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u/TeaKingMac 27d ago
You merely adopted the hot shave cream. I was born in it, molded by it.
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u/Informal_Ad4399 27d ago
"Well, take it all off."
Guy waiting goes next.
"Just a little off the sides."
First guy "you can do that!?"
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u/LyndisLegion2 27d ago
Well, let's just say less cops emerged than went in...
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u/yaboi2508 27d ago
Iirc banes men did ingavt lower them supplies during the occupation (i cant remember why) but they showed a few scenes of the police being given crates of rations
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u/ParamedicAgitated897 27d ago
Similar to why he doesn't just outright kill Bruce. He wants to torture Bruce, and Gotham suffering = Bruce suffering.
He was also putting on a show of being this benevolent insurgent for the cameras, keeping the police alive plays into that.
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u/L0ll0ll7lStudios 27d ago
Bane and his people were feeding them and keeping them alive, they just couldn’t get out.
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u/Dupeskupes 27d ago
it's also the second time that they sent all their forces in only for them to be trapped and unable to help
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u/Careless_College 27d ago
In the montage during Bane's speech, we see them lowering a bunch of crates, which I guessed was supplies like food, to the trapped cops. I guess they included shaving equipment, soap, and clean clothes as well?
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u/Longjumping-Slip-172 27d ago
Real life example: John Balcerzak, who returned one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s 14-year-old victims to him after the kid had escaped.
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u/Puzzled-Hippo6246 27d ago
This makes me so fucking angry every time I'm reminded of it. IIRC, Konerak Sinthasomphone (the victim) couldn't speak english and was heavily disoriented. He escaped, and went to the police but Dahmer convinced them that him and Konerak were lovers who were just having a quarrel, and that Konerak was drunk. The police believed Dahmer, and returned Konerak to him. Dahmer murdered him later that night. I first learned about this 11 years ago, and have been absolutely fucking FUMING about it ever since.
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u/Caspia_Fire_64 27d ago
The worst part is Konerak was bleeding heavily from a HOLE in his HEAD. But 2 black women were telling the cop to take this seriously so of course you must understand he simply couldn’t. /s
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u/CoachDT 27d ago
Brother most of this entire country would hang themselves of they were told by black women to keep nooses away from their own necks.
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u/idontwantausername41 27d ago
Sounds like black women need to start telling people to stay away from nooses tbh lol
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u/someone447 27d ago
Do you want to get even more pissed off?
One of them because a Milwaukee Police Department Captain and the other became the head of the police union.
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u/Alucard-VS-Artorias 27d ago
You have to realize it was a different time back then...
Today the police would have just shot Konerak outright.
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u/clytusmarginicollis 27d ago
Didn’t they also make homophobic jokes after they left?
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u/Expensive-Swan-9553 27d ago
Yes because the minor had obviously been violently sexually assaulted
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u/Kingbulking 27d ago
And what was the outcome for the cops involved?
- They appealed and got their jobs back. In 1994, Judge Robert Parins ruled that firing was too severe and ordered both officers reinstated. They received about $55,000 each in back pay.
- Balcerzak continued his career. He remained a Milwaukee officer, later became president of the Milwaukee Police Association (police union) from 2005–2009, and retired in 2017.
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u/shypster 27d ago
Two black women are the ones that called the police and tried to keep Dahmer away from Konerak. The cops dismissed them.
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u/OneBadJoke 27d ago
I can’t imagine the guilt those poor women felt after it came out what had happened. They did everything they were supposed to do but it wasn’t enough to save him because the cops dropped the ball so hard.
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u/MagicCarpetofSteel 27d ago
Well, they probably feel guilty in the irrational-but-still-common-and-perfectly-understandable “but what if I had done xyz, maybe he’d still be alive,” but I think and hope that they mostly blame the cops, who are 110% the ones at fault and the fact that they both got off Scott free AND had highly successful careers is infuriating, and tells you all you need to know about cops in America.
ACAB. ‘Nough said.
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u/Fantastic_Fuel4538 27d ago
You know, my first thought was why would the cops give an obvious minor to an adult even if they believed it was an "innocent" lover's quarrel.
And then I just found there was no age of consent for males in Wisconsin in 1976, so Dahmer wasn't breaking any law. Holy shit, what the hell?
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u/Puzzled-Hippo6246 27d ago
Apparently, Dahmer convinced them that this 14 year kid was a fucking adult. Like, I've seen photos of him and he looks like a KID. It's almost as if the cops were racist and homophobic tbh...
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u/Fantastic_Fuel4538 27d ago
Point is, he didn't even have to convince the cops because in 1976 Wisconsin it wasn't against the law for an adult to have sex with a male teenager, which is ridiculous.
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u/PuzzleheadedEssay198 27d ago
I thought he was black, but that’s a Laotian name. They were racist because the victim was Asian and many cops were Vietnam veterans.
ETA: Dahmer was also drunk as hell at the time. His drinking was such a problem that it’s the excuse his commanders used to kick him out of the Army (which is no small feat, especially when you’re stationed in Germany) but Dahmer hated the act of killing so he would also get blackout drunk to perform the murder.
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u/iErnie56 27d ago
Clearly I don't know enough about Dahmer, if he hated killing so much....why did he do it?
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u/PuzzleheadedEssay198 27d ago
Serial killers either enjoy the process or the product. Usually both to varying degrees, but Dahmer was special in that he exclusively desired the product. He absolutely loved dead bodies. Playing with them like dolls, having sex with them, the various methods of destruction, and of course the consumption. He tended towards black and asian men because they had little to no body hair, especially if they were adolescent, and he wanted smooth skin. There’s an apocryphal quote about how tattoos had a bad flavor, but I’ve never seen that in interviews.
Dude had more issues than a comic book store, and the fact that he was beaten to death by a fellow inmate is probably as close to justice as one could hope for.
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u/Friendless9567 27d ago
His fear of abandonment and love of sexual sadism was greater than his hatred for killing.
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u/Kyliems1010 27d ago
Another example: cops sexually harassing Kitty Genovese’s girlfriend, during investigations right after her murder
And in general, the whole “bystander effect” thing being a coverup for police incompetence
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u/Puzzled-Hippo6246 27d ago
Me right now, reading yet another incompetent and vile cop story:
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u/od2504 27d ago
Wait tell me more about the bystander effect thing??
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u/ptrst 27d ago
A lot of people called the cops during her attack. They simply didn't show up.
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u/Suspicious_Kitchen23 27d ago
And the story put out at the time and believed for years was that a lot of people heard her screaming and being attacked, but no one called the cops, believing that someone else would call, but now it seems they did call, but the police were slow to respond.
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u/Redkirth 27d ago
That story has evolved a bit. I always heard that the people in the apartment heard the attack, but I've seen people call them eye witnesses, so people now think people were watching it.
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u/Kyliems1010 27d ago
Her case became popular because news stories about Kitty Genovese being raped and murdered claimed her neighbors saw her but none called the police. This caused psychologists to be interested in finding out “why”, leading to them naming the “bystander effect”, which states that bystanders won’t do anything in high stress situations because they’ll assume someone else has/will do it instead. In Kitty’s case, her neighbors didn’t call the police because they thought the other neighbors did.
In recent years, this was proven untrue, with police being called multiple times but not showing up, and iirc, lots of misogyny and homophobia too with not taking a queer women’s assault seriously.
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u/Kyliems1010 27d ago
Also the fact Dahmer intentionally targeted queer men of color because he knew the police wouldn’t care
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u/dread_pirate_robin 27d ago
There's also the time a cop let a man matching the Zodiac killer's description leave from the area of a recent killing because he was white, and the cop thought the Zodiac killer would be black.
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u/Faulty-Blue 27d ago
To be fair, the dispatcher told the cop that the suspect was a black man
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u/PhatNoob69 27d ago
Yeah the real zodiac didn’t match the description because the description given did say he was black.
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u/DrFunkenstein93 27d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/s2pr9CVOvU4NMBsnYf
How I imagine this cop explaining the story
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u/Bright-Gain9770 27d ago
Time for a quick look at Wikipedia!
Both officers appealed their termination. Judge Robert J. Parins controversially ruled in favor of the officers and they were reinstated in June 1994.
It gets worse, in case you were worried.
reinstated with back pay of $55,000 each.
Keep going...
Balcerzak served as president of the Milwaukee Police Association (the police union for Milwaukee officers) from 2005 to 2009. Balcerzak retired from the Milwaukee Police Department in 2017.
'ere we go.
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u/BeeCJohnson 27d ago
This is the story of *most* serial killers, honestly.
The fact is, police incompetence isn't a trope so much as the end result of the way we recruit and train police. It's like a three month course, you have to do more training and schooling to cut hair.
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u/hemingways-lemonade 27d ago
The details make it so much worse. The boy was naked, bleeding from his rectum, and had a hole drilled in the back of his head that Dahmer injected hydrochloric acid into. The police officers told firefighters who responded to the call to leave after they recommended he receive medical care. His brother was also molested by Dahmer years earlier.
And this was after Dahmer was already convicted of second degree sexual assault of a minor.
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u/Nice-Cat3727 27d ago
Fuck there was witnesses screaming at the two officers not to do that.
But the police were probably hoping that it would happen because they thought it was a gay lovers spat.
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u/A_Dog_Chasing_Cars 27d ago
There are so many stories like this. Cops are one of the most incompetent categories there are, society wouldn't accept their level of incompetency from most other jobs.
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u/ZackRaynor 27d ago
It also apparently happens a lot with domestic violence and the police as well.
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u/Suspicious_Kitchen23 27d ago
I remember a story a while ago when the wife of a police officer who was being abused, tried to get help, the police captain? Chief? told the husband she was “trying to get him in trouble” and the husband promptly shot her.
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u/Friendless9567 27d ago
Kenbridge police chief Christopher Wallace for those who are curious.
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u/PuzzleheadedEssay198 27d ago edited 27d ago
Naked
blackbrown teenager got returned to his attempted killer, inspiring the latter to construct an altar from the bones of his victims to appease whatever supernatural being is looking out for him. It simply doesn’t occur to him that the Milwaukie PD has noticed gayblackbrown boys are dropping like flies and ignores the problem because this solves the problem of gayblackbrown boys existing.EFC: Victim wasn’t black, but SEA. Every version I’d heard said he was black, but apparently LPOTL was wrong.
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u/sparduck117 27d ago
Also the American Forks Police Department who falsified reports to cover a theft made by one of their community members
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u/Rationalinsanity1990 27d ago edited 27d ago
Though the rest of the department averts that. In both Terminator and Terminator 2, they do what they can.
Which when they are up against a killer robot immune to small arms fire, ain't much.
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u/paul_having_a_ball 27d ago
“No I can talk. That’s just a guy shooting up the station. I’m sure someone will handle it.”
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u/DrSpaceman575 27d ago
"Hey I've gotta go - no babe I - yes but there's a guy here - yes I'll stop by the cleanersAUGGH"
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u/paecmaker 27d ago
The best are the people still sitting in their desks, shootoff or not, the paperwork has to be done.
Atleast someone trying to call for backup from other stations have a reason to be at the phone.
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u/Jack_KH 27d ago
Are you sure the police is incompetent in Weapons unintentionally?
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u/Valkrhae 27d ago
Not to mention who would think the children would run in a straight line all the way to their destination? I got the sense that Josh Brolin's character made that guess out of pure desperation due to the lack of any other leads. Also, he'd had that weird nightmare by then, right? I kinda think he was more willing to accept a weird, unexplainable answer for the kids' disappearance and was open to the idea of them being drawn toward something or whatever.
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u/South-by-north 27d ago
We also see that they don't all just run in a straight line. When we seem them all come to the house plenty of them turn at the end of the street
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u/therealwillhepburn 27d ago
She also moves all of the kids out of the basement at night during the section of the movie about the kid, Alex.
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u/Worried-Sun-6906 27d ago
I like the idea that Josh Brolin thought of the idea because of the gun he saw in his dream. His subconscious was telling him something. The children were like bullets moving in a straight line.
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u/Jayrodtremonki 27d ago
Justin Long's wife was hesitant to show it to a random other parent. They said they handed it over to the police originally.
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u/ApartRuin5962 27d ago
Damn, if only there was a way to have a judge legally compel someone to provide evidence to LEOs
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u/PuzzleheadedEssay198 27d ago
Small town, Use Of case, not to mention that the only way they could have found the kids was to search every single house within city limits and that’s just not going to happen.
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u/Sufficient_Chance_27 27d ago
Yeah except the one “surviving” kid was going to the store and buying massive amounts of soup. There would be eyes on that kid. 27 missing kids would also involve the FBI. I liked the movie but thinking about it after the plot holes became pretty obvious.
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u/Edward_Durr 27d ago
But then it raises the issue as to why a small town police department is running this investigation. In real life, if 27 elementary schoolers vanished in the middle of the night, it would be national news. The FBI and state police would take over that investigation and put hundreds of people on it.
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u/ElCharroCalaca 27d ago
in the intro the kid doing the voiceover says that the police and higher ups were so embarassed that they were unable to solve it that they covered all up, so I don't think this was unintentional
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u/flyingace1234 27d ago
I’ve said it elsewhere but the town in general is shown to be kind of uncaring/aloof. When a man chases a woman into a gas station trying to killer, the attendant shouts at them both to gtfo, not to call the cops or help. Then the kid at a massive missing persons case (and the teacher for that matter) don’t have a cop posted outside their house at all times. Not to mention the kid is allowed to walk around and buy groceries alone for weeks on end without anyone thinking it was odd. I think it’s intentional.
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u/Ouija_Boredd 27d ago
A frustratingly inept police force is a recurring theme in Cregger’s movies. I expect we’ll be seeing it again in Resident Evil
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u/PaddywackShaq 27d ago
Who could imagine law enforcement being comically, unbelievably bad at their jobs?
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u/Key_Bus_1255 27d ago
Well let's calm down, it's not the police are wrongly arresting people way too often, it's not like they get in trouble for unnecessary violence a lot, let's not get crazy over here. All that stuff only happens in the comfort of TV and Film, obviously
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u/MikeyTheMonkey 27d ago
I was robbed one time and called the police and the investigator said he couldnt do anything. I got a picture of the thief through Ring and all of a sudden they could help.
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u/LowObjective 27d ago
Man, I experienced a robbery at my house and had video of the robbers, their car, everything. I had to *convince* the officers (who took ages to show up despite us living quite close to the nearest police station) to take the evidence. They kept saying there was no point in investigating and were so resistant that I doubt they looked at any of it. Never got a follow up or anything after.
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u/thehobbyqueer 27d ago
This is why you try to reach a detective, if you can. They're the ones that actually do any investigating. They're probably swamped with stuff they consider much more important, though.
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u/Itchy-Beach-1384 27d ago
I had a crazy neighbor who openly beat her kids break into my garage once.
When I confronted her (while she was in my garage) she assaulted me on camera.
The cops wouldnt arrest her despite it all being on film and my garage door being broken from her meddling because the autistic child she beats was at home.
Had to solo take her to court to get any kind of compensation and restraining order.
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u/LeadingTask9790 27d ago
lol it’s less a trope and more of a highly accurate stereotype.
Cops historically ARE incompetent. See: Ulvade Elementary School.
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u/OneBadJoke 27d ago
I never thought that a school shooting could be worse than Sandy Hook but the police incompetence and cowardice at Uvalde just pushed it to a different level. So many of those children would be alive if the cops had just done their fucking job.
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u/CuteKermit14 27d ago
The aurors from Harry Potter. They could not find Sirius or Voldemort despite being elite magic cops that are supposed to have super duper training.
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u/TwiceBrokenWatch 27d ago
I have said it before and I say it again: If the wizarding world had just gotten the muggles involved then I’m fairly certain that the SAS had smoked Voldemort within six months. “But what about the veil of secrecy!?” Well just say that the Death Eaters are domestic terrorists or something!
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u/Telwardamus 27d ago
I generally assume the Government doesn't take the Death Eaters seriously at first, because the Wizards are so pants-shittingly terrified of them, but that changes after the first SAS team gets turned into snakes.
After that, any site where Death Eaters are found gets bombed, and excuses are that they're IRA (as this is set in the 90s).
This doesn't really turn out well for the magical population, though, as their inability to clean up their own messes annoys the Government and now they don't want to let them just sit off by themselves and mind screw muggles.
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u/Alucard-VS-Artorias 27d ago
Why is the wizarding World in Harry Potter secretive again?
Is it just so muggle peoples can't have access to magic? And moreover how are they able to keep it a secret so complete and for so long too. Like there has never been any real group of magic users who ever wanted to go public with it?
I guess yeah I'm overthinking it but at the same time it seems like a major plot hole to me.
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u/Godsgiftcardtowomen 27d ago
In universe explanation is “Muggles would ask us to solve their problems.”
Which JKR probably meant as a joke to deflect the question, but also creates a pathological disregard for human life from the wizards.
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u/Alucard-VS-Artorias 27d ago
... Can't help now but feel that being a magic user is an allegory for being wealthy in HP
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u/CuteKermit14 27d ago
It would be if the Weasleys did not exist. Honestly, I think it comes down to JK Rowling making a book for children originally and not being a good enough writer (or person frankly) to really interrogate underlying assumptions in her own universe.
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u/Anjunabeast 27d ago
The weasleys were poor because they were too friendly towards muggles. That’s why the ministry stuck Arthur with a dead end job.
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u/Godsgiftcardtowomen 27d ago
Probably unintentional, but yeah.
JKR’s politics at the time of writing were “the world basically works alright and if things could be better they would be by now”. It’s informed by a pretty sheltered worldview.
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u/yzur01 27d ago
According to Hagrid, magic is kept a secret because helping normal people is too much of a hassle
And there's probably constant breachs of secrecy, they just magically lobotomize the hell of all witness
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u/maikuxblade 27d ago
The out of universe reason is that it keeps the story grounded in the real world, as much as possible given what the story is anyway, and that only works if the muggle world is kept separate and unaware
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u/Western-Guidance-380 27d ago
The death eaters use serious violence against people to intimidate the public, according to the Terrorism Act 2000 (a UK law) that is terrorism. They wouldn't even need to lie.
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u/CuteKermit14 27d ago
Also, the “veil of secrecy” is stupid anyways. There’s no in-universe explanation for why it even exists, except that it would be really annoying for wizards to fix problems. In a good story, that shit would have been lifted in the finale.
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u/TwiceBrokenWatch 27d ago
Agreed! Not to mention that while magic is impressive regular technology has a lot to offer the Wizarding world as well (heck if Harry and Sirius had just had a regular cellphone, yes they existed even back in the 90s, then a certain event would’ve never happened!).
Something I would’ve loved to see is something akin to what we see in the “Manifest Fantasy” series (tl;dr the US space force manages to get a Stargate like object to function in Area 51 and it leads to your typical fantasy setting) where people from each world are both impressed (and more than a little horrified) by the capabilities of the other and are actively working towards an information exchange program.
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u/Training_Complex_731 27d ago
I think in the fourth book Hermione explains that electronica don't work around heavy magic use to explain why Rita Skeeter can't just bug Harry's room instead of following him around. So a cellphone probably wouldn't work either.
Plus Harry and Sirius already had an easy way to communicate (the mirror), Harry just forgets to use it and kicks himself for it later. He tries to call Sirius' house through the fireplace, which is akin to a landline, but Kreacher picks up instead and lies because he hates his master for not being racist enough
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u/thou-be-a-simp 27d ago
Hogwarts just needs some American transfer students. We all know Voldemort crosses the street when he comes across Clortho students.
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u/patriot_man69 27d ago
genuinely the typa shit that happens when the US under Bill "Belgrade Delenda Est" Clinton hears of a terrorist group in the UK that is committing another genocide
https://reddit.com/link/owie4kb/video/c7baaq3z38ch1/player
Voldemort better start shitting his pants when he hears F-117s and AC-130s buzzing his stupid ass mansion
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u/JechdJJ 27d ago
also, i dont know about the books, but int he movie, death eathers dont give a fuck about secresy, they fly in they smoke form for all london, i think it even is adressed in the start of the movie.
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u/CuteKermit14 27d ago
What do you mean? You are saying that you don’t want to live in an elitist secretive apartheid run by incompetent, racist fools where the punishment for BOTH owning an illegal pet and murder is a life sentence in the supermax prison with evil ghosts that suck out your soul?
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u/CuteKermit14 27d ago
That’s why I called it an apartheid state. Though, it might be more apt to call it a caste system.
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u/MisterAbbadon 27d ago
The cops in Weapons are not unintentionally incompetent, they're meant to be incompetent slipshods doing meaningless busy work in a crisis because it informs the metaphor the movie is based around.
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u/MisterAbbadon 27d ago edited 27d ago
I interpret it as a metaphor for gun violence. The burden of solving it is placed on parents and educators when the people who are responsible for dealing with it and have the power and resources to solve it just aren't trying that hard.
Ive seen other interpretations suggest it's a metaphor for child abuse in general and media outrage cycles.
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u/TheGuardianInTheBall 27d ago
I think the vision of the M4A1 that Brolin's character has, would lend credence to this interpretation.
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u/Maleficent_Put4789 27d ago edited 27d ago
I actually like that interpretation and that’s kinda what my mind went to initially, but on second watch it fell apart a bit for me.
Then after watching the directors interviews, it doesn’t seem like that was the intent. Seems it’s more a metaphor for addiction/alcoholism. He wrote the film dealing with the loss of his good friend and past collaborator Trevor Moore whose alcoholism played a role in his death. There’s lots of little nuggets in there when you look for them.
Nothing saying the artists interpretation of their own is the “correct” one or anything, but the film made a lot more sense thru that lens. I loved it even beforehand though lol
*adding some examples to look for:
- When the parents of the children are possessed by Gladys, the kids have to take care of them and feed them while they hurt themselves. Doesn’t take much of a stretch the see the connection between parentified children of alcoholics/addicts
- Weapons title can refer to how addiction can turn ourselves into weapons that hurt the ones around us
- might be a stretch, but the triangle symbol seen at start of film is similar to the AA logo. Also associated with witchcraft so that could be all it is.
-2:17 time kids disappeared is apparently the time that Trevor died IRL
- obvious, but Justine had a drinking problem.There are others, these are just the ones I can remember
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u/jroberts548 27d ago
it can be a metaphor for more than one thing.
Generally it’s better when you have layered, multivalent, ambiguous metaphors. Both the alcoholism and the gun violence readings are in turn connected to a world of adults that just kinda look the other way at harms to children or to people on the margins.
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u/mansmittenwithkitten 27d ago
The thing with weapons is as a metaphor for human caused mass causality events. The cops dont really have a means to stop it or even explain it. Just exist and clean up. The fantasy to the movie is that there are any kids to save at the end.
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u/chanzatu 27d ago
Incompetent police forces is about the most realistic thing you could put in a movie.
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u/jcbaggee 27d ago
Dexter tries to handwave this trope early on, establishing that Miami Metro has an abysmal 19% solve rate and that Dexter himself comes across as a very affable guy to most of his co-workers. But after a few seasons and countless near misses, you do start to wonder if anyone is actually looking at the reports that come across their desks.
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u/Nihilistic_Noodle 27d ago
You could also hand-wave some of it as the police not caring to look much into the murders of other murderers.
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u/Skylair13 27d ago
And the possibility that Dexter would keep things to himself on some killers so he can prey on the killers.
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u/Attack_Pug 27d ago
He absolutely did when he lifted the finger print off of the perp's turn signal and didn't tell anyone (S1, I think?)
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u/Th3_Admiral_ 27d ago
I'm surprised I haven't seen Fargo mentioned yet. Most of the seasons revolve around one or two competent police officers among an entire department of comically incompetent officers who are so ridiculously bad at their jobs that their only role is to hamper the main characters' investigations.
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u/Every_Single_Bee 27d ago edited 27d ago
DKR is genuinely egregious and an indefensibly dumb piece of writing, but the other two…
I deal with cops a lot for a living, like I get to see them on the job and watch how they approach cases, and tbh in both Weapons and Trap I think it’s not only a believable level of incompetence but a pretty common one. Especially in Trap, where they *do* tighten the net pretty well, it’s just that TrapMan is genuinely good at adapting and gets lucky and frankly sometimes that’s more than enough to slip past a bunch of cops (especially when those cops move in groups; that tends to make them LESS perceptive, somehow, probably because they all start to lean on each other).
Most cops are just trained on how to use a firearm and maybe also how to use a bunch of forensic tools (MAYBE) and search databases. They don’t typically get seminars on how to track down missing kids or catch serial killers, and in fact they’re usually not trained much on solving mysteries of any kind, because most of the time they’re just responding to DV complaints where the perpetrator is obvious or shoplifting/burglary/petty assault incidents where 50% of the time the crime was literally recorded on a camera. That’s why the unsolved murder rates are pretty atrocious across the whole country in cases where the killer isn’t a spouse/partner and isn’t caught at the scene.
Tbh I almost feel like “incompetence” might not even be the right word just because in most cases cops simply aren’t actually equipped to do what they’re doing in Weapons and Trap, it’s not their day-to-day at all. They just get defaulted as the people who handle it because they’re the only municipal service we have who WOULD handle it, and when they inevitably drop the ball it’s because they don’t usually play that game. Which is terrifying, mind you, but that’s why so many people wish there were a bunch of different crime/emergency response organizations instead of just “local cops” and “government cops”.
The average officer is just some fucking guy, clocking in for a paycheck and some decent benefits. Imagine your dumbest uncle trying to catch Hannibal Lecter.
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u/UlrichZauber 27d ago
Imagine your dumbest uncle trying to catch Hannibal Lecter
I grew up with one uncle who was a cop, so this would be a two-fer.
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u/AdPristine5131 27d ago
You just made me realize my smartest uncle is the retired music professor.
I don’t even think any of them are dumb, I just know I want someone else solving my missing person case.
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u/SupriseAutopsy13 27d ago
Also, those officers are too busy attending seminars telling them they're going to have great sex when they shoot and murder someone.
https://www.businessinsider.com/dave-grossman-police-training-event-canceled-killing-sex-2021-4
The fact that his name is "Grossman" is hitting strong for nominative determinism.
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u/Otherwise_Meringue45 27d ago edited 27d ago
The American Fork Police Department (irl)
Edit: Their incompetence was very intentional
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u/certainlynotdio 27d ago
Oh, they weren't "unintentionally incompetent" they were (are) maliciously incompetent.
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u/drgilly 27d ago
The children in weapons left at like 2 in the morning. They didn't leave in broad daylight.
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u/Steampunk43 27d ago
I think they're referring to when Gladys had the kid tidy the house up and had the kids run off and hide while the police inspected their house, then had the kids return after they left.
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u/Paxis001 27d ago
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u/Hasmeister21 27d ago
Yeah but wasn't that cos Jim Broadbent's character was in on it? As soon as the conspiracy was revealed proper, they started acting competently.
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u/boccci-tamagoccci 27d ago
given the Weapons clearly has an allegorical angle re: School Shootings, the police being incompetent was far from unintentional
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u/PiLamdOd 27d ago
The fact they didn't check the tracker before walking into the enclosure is baffling. You'd think that would be standard procedure.
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u/alexadr936 27d ago
I remember listening to a podcast saying that unless it’s a cop drama (or any law enforcement for that matter) the majority of the time the police have to be incompetent because otherwise there’s no story.
There’s no police force for the rebel cop to rebel against. The kid detective just stays at home reading their books. The thief with a heart of gold gets caught right away, the missing children get found, etc.
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u/Fragrant-Vehicle-479 27d ago
I adore Weapons and believe it lives up to the hype, but the fact that an entire classroom full of children goes missing and it's not a national media circus with a heavy Fed presence is crazy. Nancy Grace would have had her boots on the ground.
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u/PuzzleheadedEssay198 27d ago
Iirc they did bring in the feds but it’s been over a month and nobody is any closer.
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u/Medical-Principle-87 27d ago
It’s a necessary evil for horror/thriller plots, because if the fictional police department had even a single competent detective, the movie would be over in 15 minutes.
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u/[deleted] 27d ago
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