Strawman Has a Point: The film presents police officer Sgt. Doberman as the face of authoritarian evil for trying to do his job and treats his shooting of a teenager as a Moral Event Horizon. However, the kid was pointing an empty gun at him while screaming "Die, pig!!" The intended sympathetic characters immediately dismiss Doberman's argument that he had no way of knowing the weapon was unloaded, conveniently ignoring the fact that it's a completely reasonable point. Anyone who's had firearms training — especially police officers — knows they absolutely cannot afford to assume that any gun aimed at them isn't loaded. Anyone pointing a gun at somebody guaranteed to have both the means and ability to shoot back, and making an open threat, is either Too Dumb to Live or trying to die — even a regular civilian would have carte blanche to use deadly force to defend themselves in that situationnote You can use or threaten to use deadly force if you reasonably believe it is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to yourself or another: having a gun aimed at you by someone screaming "die!" would be a more than sufficient affirmative defense in using deadly force to defend yourself, let alone the guy who's job is to prevent people from waving weapons at other people and threatening to kill them.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: Sgt. Doberman. Yes, he's a power-tripping dick who aggravates the situation with how he deals with the kids, but after he shoots Richie in an obvious case of self-defense, the movie stacks the deck against him in such a heavy-handed and ignorant way that it's hard not to take his side.
