History PoliceAreUseless / LiveActionFilms

** Averted in the third film. See RealityEnsues below. [=McDylan=] is seen initially as a bumbling but friendly SVU Detective who by the end proves to be an effective investigator and police officer who [[spoiler: is forced to shoot Jennifer in order to stop her from killing her latest victim.]] The police in general are shown to be competent and quickly connect the victims [[spoiler:to the rape survivor group that Jennifer was a part of.]]

* NBC Movie Of The Week, ''A Cry For Help:The Tracey Thurman Story'', doesn't even begin to describe this trope. First off, the abusive husband already has a restraining order against him, but it doesn't stop him from marching on over to Tracy's house. Then Tracy calls the cops, who take their sweet ass time getting there. By the time they do, the husband has ''stabbed'' her multiple times. This also draws in a crowd, who now are witnesses to this crime. The cop also restrained a guy who was restraining the husband, who beats her up. Guess what the cop does? He stands there and looks as the husband beats her up and rants on how she should die. While they did call an ambulance and restrain the husband from clawing at her while she was on the stretcher, the fact that they could have done so much more and could have prevented some of the damage done onto Tracey got them ''sued'' for it, [[{{Deconstruction}} making]] [[DeconstructedTrope this...]] For reference, [[TruthInTelevision this is based on a true story]], and the resulting lawsuit [[RealityEnsues considerably improved the average police response to domestic disturbances]].

* ''Film/Hayride'': The police team in this movie, in their investigations of [[Film/{{Hayride}} the murders that happened]], don't believe for a moment that Ol' Pitchfork is real. They then try to keep Steven and Corey in the hospital, fail to find [[spoiler:Ol' Pitchfork's secret cellar beneath his house]], and being killed by Ol' Pitchfork. Even [=SWAT=] officers are no match for the guy.

* ''Film/HomeAlone3'': The cops show up the first two times Alex calls about a burglar. However, since the bad guys are internationally-wanted criminals working for North Korea, not run-of-the-mill crooks, they are able to evade detection and capture (although the cops appear to [[NoPeripheralVision lack peripheral vision]]). He doesn't call them a third time, thinking they wouldn't show up. He does, however, call an Army recruiting office about a strange computer chip he finds in his toy car. While the sergeant dismisses his claims, he does agree to pass the serial number up the chain. He does, and it eventually reaches the office of the Federal agent looking for it, who immediately heads to Chicago.

* ''Film/{{Changeling}}''. First, the police (who, in that city-Los Angeles, were extremely corrupt at that time) refuse to investigate Walter's disappearance until the morning after Walter's mother, Christine, reports it. Then, after months of "searching", they give her a boy who isn't her son. They refuse to believe her when she points this out, despite many obvious discrepancies between his physical characteristics and Walter's (such as the boy being ''three inches shorter'' than Walter). It just keeps getting worse from there, with the police actively obstructing any and all attempts to locate the real Walter, simply to avoid losing face. An officer who has discovered a murdered boy is even ordered not to investigate because it could mean finding the real Walter's body and admitting that they never found or even tried to find Walter to begin with. They even go so far as to have Christine involuntarily committed to a mental institution to destroy her credibility. The staff there turn out to be no less corrupt than the police. The worst part is that ''Changeling'' is based on a ''true story''.

* Played with in ''Film/{{Abominable}}''. Sheriff Halderman and the other cops are completely incompetent, but [[OnlySaneMan Deputy [=McBride=] is actually legitimate at his job, which results in him being the only one of the cops to survive when he goes off in search of real evidence while the others wind up [[spoiler:wandering into the territory of the creatures.]]

* Averted in the horror movie ''Film/JeepersCreepers''. When the two frightened, teenage heroes from out of town run to the small-town police in the middle of the night with wild stories about a monster pursuing them, the police utterly break the formula by being quick to believe them and trying their level best to protect them, with the force finally facing down the monster in a standoff. Their efforts prove useless, though, as it has a HealingFactor.

-->Imagine the scene: a truck arrives at the police station with two traumatized teens, who come to the sheriff and say "We were in the woods where there were three guys killing and eating people, they've been doing this for years, there's a graveyard of old Fords, Jeffrey Dahmer ain't got shit on them! They killed our friends, they killed even killed the cop you sent to investigate, and we don't know if they're dead! Better call the Army, the Coast Guard, the Mounties, the guys are dangerous!". And the sheriff just reacts with "Alright, send in George."

* In the B-movie pastiche ''Monster'', the mentor instructs his successor that the police will never show up until after the monster is defeated. In the end, after TheHero dunks the monster in a vat of liquid nitrogen, he wonders where the cops are and realizes that it must still be alive. After defeating it one more time, the cops finally show up.

* PlayedForLaughs in ''Film/TheLostWorldJurassicPark.'' While running wild through the streets of San Diego, a ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' is confronted by a fleet of police cruisers. The dinosaur roars a challenge, and all the police cars promptly turn around and take off, leaving the city and its civilians to fend for themselves.

* A somewhat more well-thought out example happens in ''Film/DemolitionMan''. The San Angeles Police Department has been reduced to a peace-keeping force for a city full of petty crimes. As such, when Simon Phoenix, a real criminal awakened from cryogenic stasis, starts making trouble, the police are utterly incapable of stopping him. Only Spartan, a cop from the same era, is up to the challenge.

* In ''Film/AskAPoliceman'', Turnbottom Round prides itself as the village without crime; there has not been an arrest recorded by the local police for 10 years. Unfortunately, this is more to do with Sgt. Dudfoot and his constables Albert Brown and Jerry Harbottle being too incompetent, lazy and corrupt to so much as recognise a crime, let alone stop one. Even when they attempt to fabricate a crime for their own benefit, it goes hilariously wrong.

* The Keystone Kops were one of the earliest examples. Indeed, this was their schtick.