One Eight Seven

One Eight Seven also known and abbreviated as 187 is a 1997 crime drama film directed by Kevin Reynolds. It was the first topbilled starring role for Samuel L. Jackson, who plays a Los Angeles teacher caught with gang trouble in an urban high school. The films name comes from the California Penal Code Section 187.

Fifteen months after surviving from the ordeal, Garfield, now a substitute teacher, has relocated to John Quincy Adams High School in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, but the trouble starts again when he becomes a substitute to a rowdy, unruly class of rejects, including a Chicano tag crew by the name of Kappin Off Suckers K.O.S.. Their leader, Benito Benny Chacn, a menacing felon attending high school as a condition of probation, makes it clear to Garfield that there will be no mutual respect between them.The tension mounts when a fellow teacher, Ellen Henry, confides that Benny has threatened her life, an action against which the administration of the school refuses to take action, fearing legal threats. After Benny murders a rival tagger in cold blood, he inexplicably disappears, and Bennys severely unstable tag partner, Csar, takes over as leader and class antagonist. When Csar steals Garfields family heirloom watch, again the principal is more concerned about a lawsuit and again refuses to take any action to recover Garfields watch. The watch was used in a science experiment where Garfield gives a small dose of Demerol to a pet rat. He mistakenly informs the class that Demerol is Morphine Sulfate of his own. Ellen and Garfield develop a close friendship that approaches the beginnings of a relationship, but which is stymied by Garfields diffident and destabilizing behavior, likely arising from posttraumatic stress disorder and his confrontations with the K.O.S.. Garfields past also garners him the unwanted admiration of Dave Childress, a burnedout, alcoholic history teacher who carries and keeps guns at the school. ........

Source: Wikipedia