eglamkowski's Journal: Trapped in the closet

Trapped in the Closet is what some have called hip-hop opera. I don't expect very many of my readers to be familiar with it, but it's actually not so bad. You can watch it on Youtube, but what I'm particularly interested in is chapter 6, which I'll let wikipedia's description, included at the end, suffice for those who may not care to watch the whole thing (takes a good half hour to get to the end of 6, start of 7).

The question is: how culpable is the police officer for the shooting in this incident? You'll need to watch the video to really be able to argue the point - at what point does a police officer entering a home without permission, but in which he believes a crime may currently be being committed (in this case, he fears it may be assault leading to murder, so there wouldn't be time to go get a warrant), cease to be an enforcer of the law and instead himself become a home invader? Was it ok for Sylvester to grapple with the officer right there at the end of Chapter 6?

Wikipedia explanation of chapter 6:

After the realization that Gwendolyn cheated on Sylvester while already knowing he had also cheated on her, Sylvester laughs at the craziness eventually also causing Gwendolyn to also laugh and apologize. Sylvester then tells her what he went through the previous night. The police officer, whose name is revealed to be James, is concerned about Gwendolyn, turning his car around and going back to the house where he sees Sylvester's car parked in a crooked space with the lights still on. James looks around the back and sees the door has been broken in and then pulls out his gun and goes in to investigate. He hears Sylvester and Gwendolyn laughing hysterically which he mistakes as yelling and crying. As Sylvester continues to explain what was going on, James thinks Gwendolyn is being abused and when she says that Sylvester is "killing her" with his stories, James bursts in. Sylvester notices the guy as the same cop who pulled him over. Gwendolyn tries to calm them down while Sylvester threatens James to get out of the house with his gun. After Gwendolyn begs and James insists, Sylvester drops his gun, and puts his hands up to freeze, James winks and smiles at Sylvester which angers him and then he struggles with James over his gun. While they are fighting, the gun accidentally fires.

It is imperative....

[FortKnox]

... IMPERATIVE of you to listen to Wierd Al's "Stuck in the drive-thru".

IMPERATIVE!

Cop was very personal

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

opposed to professional.

Why no call for backup as he approached the situation from outside?

Oh. Fiction. ;-)

Re:

[eglamkowski]

Unfortunately, bad cops do really exist. Thus the quesetion - did he at some point cease being a cop concerned with protecting the public/enforcing the law and become a home invader in which the home owner was justified in defending against?

I don't know the answer myself, it's a tricky situation, especially because it was personal for the cop.
The odds of such a thing occurring in real life may be low, but not zero.

If nothing else, just consider an interesting philosophical discussion to pass the time.
Waiti

Re:

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Yeah. He stopped being a professional - somewhere about the time he ID'd the car.

Re:

[eglamkowski]

Maybe not quite that soon. Sylvester is depicted in the earlier chapters as having some pretty bad anger management problems, threatening to shoot Rufus, Chuck and Cathy. And his wife was also very concerned about his propensity for violence which is why she didn't want to tell him who she had slept with - she didn't want him hunting that guy down and killing him.

Further, we can infer that Sylvester's wife had discussed with the cop (who is the man she had slept with...) the fact that Sylvester has this a