MovieChat Forums > Magnum Force (1973) Discussion > Vigilante/murderous crooked cops

Vigilante/murderous crooked cops


How come so many people on here condone the actions, of Briggs, Davis, Red, Sweet, and Grimes? These men were MURDERERS!! Who cares who you murder? MURDER IS MURDER? Honestly them killing the mobster who got off on a technicality didn't bother me, and neither did the pimp. What about the pool party? Everyone there was a criminal who deserved to be executed? What about Davis cold blooded murder of fellow officer Charlie McCoy? Remember when they murdered Early and tried to murder Harry? Harry, McCoy, and Early were bad and warranted that? The bombs they planted were strong enough to kill other people in the area too!! Had the bomb in Harry's mailbox detonated, his neighbors warranted a death sentence? In my opinion, these cops were far worse than every person they killed or tried to kill!! They killed the criminals, for being criminals, ok fine. They MURDERED INNOCENT COPS AND WITNESSES, THUS GOING AGAINST WHAT THEY STAND FOR, AND IN TURN ARE NO BETTER THAN THEIR ORIGINAL TARGET!!

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I agree 100% but still its a great dirty Harry movie. The plot and storyline is as it was just meant to be.

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That's why Harry completely turned down their offer to join them. He saw them for the criminals they were. To some degree anyway these guys used being vigilantes as an excuse to kill. Which they obviously enjoyed doing. One of the great things about Harry Callahan is that he is completely incorruptible.

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I had a brother, a Viet Nam helicopter rescue hero, who came out and joined the Detroit Police Dept. When Dirty Harry came out in 1971 S&W gave law enforcement priority on ordering the 44 magnum, He and the 3 special force cops he worked with all ordered one. He complained to me that they would arrest a perp with a 13 page rap sheet and he would be out the door before they were done with their paper work thanks to lawyers and liberal judges. When Magnum Force was released he was already talking about doing the same thing. But sadly things deteriorated so bad in Detroit by that time where the mayor stopped having COPS work in teams and made them patrol alone he was murdered with his own gun in a bar hostage situation (perps never caught). Sorry but I do not go along with the idea that 100 bad guys should be allowed to walk rather one innocent one be sentenced. Things are getting so bad in this country with the out of control radicals funded by the George Soros types that I can foresee something like that beginning. We are at war, and in war there is lots of collateral damage. I am of the motto of live free of die.

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How did he get shot with his own gun. Any newspaper link you can provide?

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I've known cops that can tell you who is a member of a local gang, can point them out when they are walking down the street, but they can't arrest them because the reality is the justice system has rules that require evidence that is admissible in a trial and for most of what these gang bangers do there is not witness beyond the gang members or the victim that if left alive is not going to risk testifying and getting his house shot up in a drive by that could easily kill his family as well as himself. These cops will tell you if they were allowed to just to execute these gang bangers that the crime rate would plummet.

It is times like this where I wish we had death squads to go execute the known criminals. I have seen it work in cities in Brazil where you went from a place you could be robbed on the sidewalk in broad daylight to a place where you could walk around and night alone and not worry about being robbed... unfortunately I've also seen those same cities go back to hell holes as soon as liberals got back into power and shut down the death squads.

Death squads can be a marvelous thing, it is only a shame we don't have them in the US. Out justice system looks good on paper but it only works when you have criminals that obey the laws to begin with, which never happens.

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The problem is that just like every other form of authoritarian government, power will corrupt absolutely.

Who decides who is to be eliminated? Sure it starts with those who should be but will certainly become something else.

That was the genius of Magnum Force. In Dirty Harry, Callahan was railing against the system defending the criminals over the rights of the law abiding. After that movie came out, people assumed Harry might be a vigilante in the sequel. MF is brilliant in that it shows Harry a believer in law and order. This surprised the rookie cops who were probably stunned that Harry wouldn't join them given his previous record.

Look, I get it. When NY cops rounded up a big gang of M-13 hoods recently, I "jokingly" asked why the hell we even know about this? They should take them out in the ocean and drown them like rats. When murderers, rapists, gangers, etc. catch a bullet, I'm glad.

Ranting aside, death squads will lead to abuse. If we just got rid of liberal lawyers who turn dangerous criminals loose, our system would be much better than it is now.

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Given the number of criminals in this country you would need death squads killing on a daily basis for generations before they ran out of bad guys to kill and were likely to cross the line killing innocents. Hell if you set up a couple hundred death squads today, the members would be retired or dead from old age before they ran out of bad guys to kill. And running out of baddies is the real problem with most death squads as the ones in Rio were paid by local businessmen on a so much per body method which did become a problem when they ran out of bad guys to kill and still wanted to get paid.

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