TommyS.

21st Jan 2018

Home Alone (1990)

Question: Why did it take so long for the police to arrive at the Murphy's House since Kevin called 911? Since he called them we went through the Spider Scene, Kevin cutting the rope, Marley rescuing Kevin and then after he returned Kevin home the cops finally arrived. Why did it take them so long to arrive?

Answer: A lot of things come into play during a police call and it's not all cut and dry. Proximity of units to the call, other calls happening at the same time, severity of other calls, location of backup units, etc. Realistically, anything under 10 minutes is considered a fast response time. I've personally waited in upwards of 40 minutes for police response at my job.

Answer: A lot of things happened after Kevin called the police but all of these things took place pretty quickly. And the movie is set in a suburban area so it took the police more time to get there that it would've taken, say, downtown.

Lol, suburban police respond in minutes. Big city police, even downtown precincts, can take 30 minutes or more.

This depends on where you live, and what the police department is like - i.e, being understaffed. I've heard of my local police taking three hours to respond. I live in a suburban area.

Answer: This is just one of many inconsistent and/or unrealistic details in this movie. Police would normally respond to an emergency call much sooner. If the movie were more realistic however, the plot could not play out in the funny way that it does.

raywest

What's unrealistic about it? There's a caller claiming to be in the house which is a possible hostage situation. In that case, you would want as many officers as you could get on scene, emergency call or not.

Answer: There had been a hoax call that evening already so perhaps this is actually much more accurate than initially thought.

Answer: Suburban cops usually do not respond quickly.

TommyS.

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